This year in my English class, we had to read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a classic book written by Mark Twain. As you can imagine, we had to analyze it and do all the work alongside reading the book. Although the reading came with work, I ended up enjoying the overall story. Many times, people seem to lose interest in a book when reading it comes with work to complete along with it, but I try not to let that get the better of me and try to do the work after I’ve enjoyed the book. So far, my strategy has worked out well, from The Outsiders, The Giver, and now The Adventures of Tom Sawyer being all books I have now happily completed. 

The book features the fictional main character Tom Sawyer introducing his character as a very mischievous character with a big imagination. He often gets in trouble and loves to make his own fun. I had my own fun reading about his adventures with his friends, mostly Huckleberry Finn. Each of the characters had their own feeling to them that felt familiar to me, almost like I knew them personally. Twain depicts society and people quite well in this book and often satirizes things that happen in the world throughout the story. He creates lifelike characters, those that would act in a way real kids would, while still having parts that would seem unbelievable and unreal in the real world to make the story interesting. The way Twain words things about society shows his views and also the truth about society. 

Tom and Huckleberry Finn are both young boys that come from different parts of society and different lifestyles that yet, love to play and hang out with each other while trying out their superstitions and beliefs. On many of Tom’s adventures, Huckleberry Finn or Huck, is always the one who seems to stick with Tom and his ideas and beliefs. Both go on different adventures throughout the book and work together often. Each adventure leads to another and it all connects together by the end of the story. Despite their adventures starting off childish, it still managed to pull me in, wanting to find out what happens next. 

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a great classic that I definitely enjoyed. However, this book does feature a certain dialect and language that would not be acceptable today, so if you ever get the chance to read this book, please keep this in mind. Otherwise, this is a great book and I would recommend it to anyone who is interested. 

-Nicole R.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain is available to checkout from the Mission Viejo Library. It is also available to download for free from Libby.

When Kyle Straker volunteers to be hypnotized at the annual Millgrove talent show, he expected the usual amateur act – perhaps slight embarrassment from being made to act like a chicken, but nothing more than that. What he wakes up to, though, is a nightmare. Cars and televisions no longer work, townspeople communicate in a strange language, but worst of all, people simply pass by Kyle as if he does not exist.

In an attempt to discover what caused this monumental shift, Kyle teams up with the three other hapless volunteers in order to survive the strange new world they have found themselves in. However, the more they investigate, the more danger they find themselves in as they eventually realize that there is more than just their lives at stake, but also their way of life.

The novel is told through a series of cassette tapes that have subsequently become a historical artifact called the Straker Tapes. Mike Lancaster assumes the position of the historian with editor’s notes to explain parts of the story that would not make sense to the evolved human, which adds both humor and horror to the story. For example, he goes into great detail describing mouths, which, though amusing to the reader, inevitably implies that the future humans depicted in the novel do not have any and are therefore superior, emphasizing the oddness of the new world Kyle and his friends find themselves in.

Overall, I enjoyed Human.4 by Mike Lancaster because it was a unique premise I had never read or considered before. While it is not a conventional dystopian novel, I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys them for a new take on the genre.

– Mahak M.

Sophie Foster is an elf who lives in the Lost Cities and has gone through many particular adventures. In the Lodestar, she feels very betrayed. Her friend Keefe had run away in the previous book. Her parents (Grady and Edaline) don’t trust him, but she still tries to keep her hopes up.

Pretince, a wrongly accused criminal, had just woken up. Sophie’s job was to get into his head and find out what happened. While there, she finds a projection of Jolie, Grady, and Edaline’s biological kid that had died in a fire. Jolie then begins to explain what had happened to Pretince and how he feels. Sophie doesn’t find much, but what she does recover is a symbol. This symbol is later found to be the lodestar symbol, hence the name of the book.

Later on, Sophie and her friends discover that Keefe’s mother had used Lodestar as a plan for his “Legacy” (we still haven’t found out what it is yet and it’s been 8.5 books). Dex, their technopath, also discovers that each piece of the symbol can be used to teleport to a hideout, so they end up visiting one. Nothing eventful happens, so they headed back.
This book is really good and anyone who has read books like The Hobbit, Harry Potter, or Percy Jackson would like it. Just be sure to read the other books first, or you will be lost with the concept of this one.

-Izzy W.

Keeper of the Lost Cities – Lodestar by Shannon Messenger is available to checkout from the Mission Viejo Library. It is also available to download for free from Libby.

When the brilliant yet mean-spirited author Alan Conway is found to have jumped off of his tower, there is no evidence to suggest that it could have been anything more than suicide. In fact, no one cares to look into it too much, since there were more people who detested Alan Conway the person than who loved Alan Conway the mystery novelist. However, his editor, Susan Ryeland, has her suspicions.

After all, Conway had just submitted to her the manuscript of Magpie Murders, his latest and final novel in his world-famous Atticus Pünd series, but the last chapter is mysteriously missing from the pages. As Susan searches for the missing pages, she comes to the realization that, perhaps, the supposedly “fictional” novel is actually based on real events, and that maybe, just maybe, the murderer in reality caught wind of Conway’s tactics to expose them and took matters into their own hands…

Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz is an interesting read because of its story-within-a-story format. On the outside, there is Susan Ryeland’s investigation into Alan Conway’s life, the missing pages, and the murder the novel was based on. Within this framework, however, is the actual Magpie Murders, an Atticus Pünd detective novel written by Alan Conway (without the ending, of course). I enjoyed this format because it almost felt like a two-for-one read, where there were two well written mysteries in the span of one book. 

I would recommend this novel to any fans of Agatha Christie, since there are obviously a lot of similarities between her books and those of “Alan Conway” (compare Hercule Poirot to Atticus Pünd, for starters). However, any and all fans of mystery and adventure will enjoy this novel too.

– Mahak M.

Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz is available for checkout from the Mission Viejo Library. It is also available to download for free from Libby.

Lily Bart: fashionable, socially-adept, and absolutely beautiful. Born and raised in the upper echelons of New York society, she seems the type of woman to immediately wed a wealthy man and secure her position as a rich socialite. However, due to her own warring nature between her material desires and her yearning for true love, Lily finds herself caught in a malicious web of jealousy and deceit that causes her fall from grace and social affluence to poverty and loneliness on the margins of society.

It is this unfortunate journey that Edith Wharton chronicles in her novel The House of Mirth. Although Lily is the protagonist of the novel, Wharton explores the events from other perspectives, notably Laurence Selden, Lily’s true love interest. The greatest irony of the novel is that although Selden openly despises the superficial and gossip-driven high society, when push comes to shove and Lily’s reputation is tarnished by forces outside of her control, Selden has the same prejudices against her, and it is these biases that keep Lily and Selden from their happy ending until it is too late to reach it.

Outside of Lily Bart herself, Wharton uses the novel to criticize the society of which she was a part. The most obvious of these is the disparity between what is expected out of men and women during this time. As Lily herself notes, while men could get away with shabbiness or not marrying, women were forced to always look beautiful and presentable, and had to marry in order to keep this up. Ultimately, Lily’s inability to cope with the demands her society made of her caused her decline into the fringes of society.

Overall, The House of Mirth is in no way a light or funny read as the title suggests. Instead, it represents the depressing struggle between what society has determined for people to be and what those people actually are through Lily Bart’s equally tragic story arc. In the end, The House of Mirth is an interesting read if only to understand the similarities between early twentieth century society and modern life.

– Mahak M.

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton is available to checkout from the Mission Viejo Library. It is also available to download for free from Libby.

I have reread this book so many times and it’s never gotten old. Reading each story feels like I’m reading it for the first time. It’s genuinely so refreshing to read something inspired by fairytales, myth and folklore, that isn’t repeating something I’ve read a million times before. Each story has plot twists, magic, revenge, love, betrayals, and sacrifice.

Bardugo’s writing style is another thing I love about this book. Her descriptions, dialogue, and pacing makes me feel like I’m a part of the story. I’d also like to give credit to Sara Kipin who did the illustrations for this book. Her drawings add another level of depth to these stories and help me visualize even further the scenes in the stories. I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a light read that still keeps you interested and engaged.

-Sophia H.

The Language of Thorns by Leigh Bardugo is available for checkout from the Mission Viejo Library. It is also available to download for free from Libby.