"The Wednesday Wars" by Gary D. Schmidt

The Wednesday Wars is a book about a 1960s schoolboy who has interpersonal interactions, makes friends, and discovers that Shakespeare doesn't have to be boring. That's one of the most stereotypical book-review sentences I've ever written, but I couldn't figure out a better way to start it, so there you are.

 

The titular Wednesday Wars refer to the fact that our protagonist Holling Hoodhood is the only person in his entire class who's neither Catholic nor Jewish (he's Presbyterian) and therefore doesn't have a reason to not be in school on Wednesdays. So he's stuck in his English class with a teacher who (at least at first) he's pretty sure hates him; after all, what other reason could she have for making him read Shakespeare outside of class? 

 

They're not super antagonistic for super long, although there are some clashes over Shakespeare when the teacher wants Holling to read it for the Literary Value, and Holling wants to read it for the murder and the interesting new things to shout at people. Most of the plot comes from Holling's day-to-day interactions with the people around him (the teacher, his classmates, his parents, his attempted-flower-child sister) and the world around him (his school, the escaped rats in his school, a school bus, et cetera). Though when I say "plot" that should really have some air quotes around it, because this is slice-of-life so it doesn't really have a proper plot.

 

(Not that that's necessarily a bad thing; not having a properly plotty plot is pretty much the entire basis of slice-of-life. Which this is. Just because it doesn't have a plot per se doesn't mean it's bad.)

 

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for some violence.

 

4 stars. 

 

Favorite lines:

 

    I mean, a potion to almost kill you? She drinks a potion to almost kill you? Who would drink a potion to almost kill you?

    Page 134. It's Holling describing his low opinion of Romeo and Juliet.

 

(Endnote: Toads, beetles, bats light upon thee!) 

Mini-Reviews 16: Tons of #9 Coal

Just Listen by Sarah Dessen

The main characters of another of Sarah Dessen's books (This Lullaby, I think) cameo in this one. I thought that was neat.

It's about a girl who's trying desperately to pretend everything is fine and hold things together while everything falls apart around her, and also a guy who's into weird music and who she maybe (okay definitely, this is a romance novel) likes.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T15+ for discussion of an eating disorder (and possibly also a suicide attempt), an in-the-past and mostly offscreen sexual assault, and swearing (including one instance of The Cardinal Swearword).

4 stars.

Tags for this one: 4-star, a kissing book, DRAMA!, modern setting, rated T15+, romance, school drama, YA

Bitter End by Rex Stout

 

It's another Nero Wolfe book. A novella, this time. I read this on a tablet in an airport, which is not my favorite way or place to read books, but it was good enough that I liked it regardless.

 

Basically, someone puts quinine in a can of liver paté (no idea what paté is but I assume it's some kind of meat paste thing) that Nero Wolfe subsequently eats. He Does Not Like This and begins a personal quest to find whoever did that and make them pay.

 

I don't have tons to say about this, but I do have some favorite lines to share.

 

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: A stern T for violence (people getting shot at and stuff, plus it is a murder mystery).

 

4 stars.

Favorite lines:

 

    "I am under no obligation to catch murderers indiscriminately."

    Page, uh, I have no idea? This is an ebook and it doesn't like telling me the page numbers for whatever reason.

 

     "Some news for you. [NAME REDACTED] is under arrest: they just took |her| away from here. Mr. Wolfe would like to have |her| prosecuted for feeding him quinine, but the cops prefer to try |her| for murder. [REDACTED]'s guilty of both."

    Page nobodyknows. Page numbers are a mess in Ebooks, it's one of the reasons I don't like them as much as actual paper books.

Tags for this one: 4-star, mystery, rated T

Silverwing by Kenneth Oppel (illustrated by Christopher Steininger)

 

Content warning: This is a book about bats. If you don't like bats or are afraid of bats, don't read it.

Basically, a young bat's clan of bats is migrating south after the young bat (our main character) accidentally provoked some owls into burning down their home tree. Then he gets separated from the clan, goes on an a bunch of adventures, and meets the girl deuteragonist. She's not really a love interest, though that may change as the series goes on.

The book is actually pretty creepy. The art doesn't help, but the story features such delightful things as a rat civilization, a cult of bats who can sort of transform into humans, and these carnivorous jungle bats that try to eat whatever they can get their hands on (including some pigeons and the deuteragonist).

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T for all that stuff I mentioned above.

3 stars. Could conceivably have been 4 if it hadn't kept talking about evolution.

Tags for this one: 3-star, adventure, modern setting, rated T, talking animals

(Endnote: And the boss man said, "Well bless my soul!")

Mini-Reviews 4: Never and Forever

The title is because the first three books in Cressida Crowell's Wizards of Once series all have ordinal-number-themed names (Wizards of Once, Twice Magic, and Knock Three Times) but the fourth one is called Never and Forever, which broke the chain. So when it came time to do the fourth mini-review collection, I named it this. There. Now you know.

 

Dead in the Water by Chris Lynch

This do be historical fiction, about a crewman on the U.S.S. Yorktown during World War II. We all know how well that ended. This dude |does survive, though|. 

The historical stuff is interspersed with baseball (because this was the 1940s and if you were in the States then everything was tangentially related to baseball) (please note that the previous statement is not entirely factually accurate) and a minor dealing-with-racism side plot (courtesy of the main character's friend, who gets hit with it a lot). (Also this paragraph is full of parentheses.)

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T for violence and discussion of racism. Dead in the Water would make a reasonably good videogame in the right hands, although unless you let players change the story, it wouldn't have much replayability.

4 stars.

Tags for this one: 4-star, airplanes, historical fiction, military, rated T, WWII

 

 

 

All Summer Long by Hope Larson

I didn't like this one. The art wasn't really good (for me, art quality is an important factor in how much I like a graphic novel; it's like use of language in a print book), and I didn't love the storyline either. Plus it did a |casual homosexuality mention|, which I strongly dislike. If you're going to have that in your book, be overt about it so I can avoid you.

Anyway, T15+ for sexual references. 1 star. Lame.

Tags for this one: 1-star, lame, manga/graphic novel, modern setting, rated T15+, school drama

 

 

 

Truesight by David Stahler Jr.

 

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king illegal. |But also king.|

Basically, this is science fiction about a community where everyone is genetically engineered to be blind. Because... well, honestly it feels quasi-religious, like one of those weird philosophical religion-but-not-really-but-still-kinda things.

Aaaaaaaand then one guy discovers he can see, that the genetic engineering failed on him, and everything goes to pieces.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for delayed-action creepiness. It would be pretty hard to make into a videogame, but it could be done.

4 stars.

Tags for this one: 4-star, dystopian, rated E10+, science fiction

(Endnote: These have three very different covers. Dead in the Water is mostly realistic, All Summer Long is only vaguely evocative of the book, and Truesight... honestly looks almost like the cover of a horror movie.)

Mini-Reviews 2: This is getting out of hand, now there are two of them!

Yeah, I did more of these.

Emblem Island: Curse of the Night Witch by Alex Aster

Thiiiiiiiiiiiiis... wasn't super great. The author's bio at the end said she wanted to include a Latin American flavor, and I can definitely taste that. It's got all sorts of strange monsters and things, and it's interspersed with folktale-y bits that are like "So these two people fell in love but one of them was a jerkface, and then stuff happened, and that's why this kind of monster exists."

Don't have much else to say about it, which is why this is a mini-review.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for just general content level. It'd be decent as a videogame, because it's partially written like one. 

3 stars.

Tags for this one: 3-star, fantasy, rated E10+

A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent by Marie Brennan

 

For having no plot, the first few chapters of this book are surprisingly engaging. I think its being written in the style of a memoir helps; the author (or at least her character) has a very conversational voice.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T15+ for some sexual references, in terms a Regency/Victorian-era naturalist would use. Nothing explicit.

4 stars. This one is good. I liked it quite a lot.

Tags for this one: 4-star, adventure, alternate-base fantasy, fantasy, rated T15+, series component

It Wasn't Me by Dana Alison Levy 

The cover of this is clearly meant to evoke One of Us is Lying (warning: link has spoilers), and I think it's essentially trying to be the middle-grade version of that. Except it forgot to take the content level down to match, so we're left with middle-schoolers being way too mature for their age.

I mean, seriously, these guys are like twelve! Not old enough for this. Ew.

 

I did like Alice the one who gave herself morbid makeup every day, though. She was the Jessica for this. (I know she's actually nothing like Jessica from the Mr. Terupt series; I'm using that term to mean the one character whose perspective I always like to read.)

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T15+ for sexual references {T15+ (mostly homosexuality getting mentioned)}, some swearing (I think), and... actually that's pretty much it.

Relatedly, 1 star. If you ever see me reading this again, that person is an impostor and doesn't read this blog.

(Endnote: I've never actually read One of Us is Lying, nor do I plan to. Its title is good, though, I'll give it that.)

"Eb & Flow" by Kelly J. Baptist

I'm... not sure what to say to that.

"A fascinating look at a life and culture adjacent to yet far different from my own"? No, that sounds like the sort of thing you'd say in a literary analysis paper, even though it is true.

"It

    made

        me

            think

in verse for a while"? 

Also true, but not the point.

 

This is the story of two kids, Ebony (Eb) and De'Kari (Flow; it's a nickname), who get in a fight at school because Eb (allegedly) accidentally spilled barbecue sauce on Flow's shoes (which [allegedly] aren't "just shoes"). Then they both get suspended, because fighting is illeeeeeeeeegal, and basically told to figure out what the heck was up with that.

They try. Not everything's fixed by the end -- the sheer amount of home life problems here would make that unrealistic -- but it does end on a more hopeful note.

 

I appreciated it greatly when one of the teachers actually called out the serendipity of the main characters' nicknames being similar to "ebb and flow". The age-old trick of fixing a plot hole by going "hey look, a plot hole" strikes again.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: a relatively stern T for swearing and such.

4 stars. This was better than I thought.

 

Favorite lines:

 

"and I almost choke on a hunk of corn bread.

Corn bread be doin' that, if you breathe wrong while eating it."

    Page 21. (I think their corn bread must be different from the corn bread I've eaten, because I've never had that happen to me.)

 

"Who knew

the clicking sound

of Legos snapping together

is

so

cool."

    Page 43.

 

"I give him the biggest stank face."

    Page 121. 

(Endnote: It's like two-thirds of the way through the book before anyone comes up with the idea of just washing the dang shoes. I'm not shaking my head at it for being lazy writing, though, because I didn't think of it either until Flow had his realization.)

"A Song Called Home" by Sara Zarr

I'm not completely sure what I was expecting, but this wasn't it.

It's Christian fiction, but there's nothing on the cover or anything to suggest that. And I was expecting actual serious drama, not drama caused by angst and by both of the main characters having Chronic Bad Decision Syndrone.

 

(Spoilers in the next couple of paragraphs, mild enough that I'm not going to bother tagging them.)

Basically, the entire book is about two girls, Louisa "Lou"/"Lu"/"El"/"Belle" (our protagonist) and Casey (her older sister) struggling to adjust to their mom getting remarried and to figure out what place their new stepdad has in their lives. Which they do, eventually. But not before Casey angsts a lot, Lou angsts to a lesser degree and learns to play the guitar, and various other things happen. Lots of drama, mostly, enough of which falls enough under "school drama" that it merited that post tag.

 

I was fairly happy that the main characters did warm up to their stepdad eventually, and that he was a genuinely nice person. The book wasn't my favorite, but that bit did give me the feels. (I think that's the first time I've ever said "the feels" on this blog.)

 

Of the two characters with Chronic Bad Decision Syndrome (you guessed it, Lu and Casey), Casey had it worse. And it only flared up occasionally in either of them, but it was consistent enough to meet the criteria.  And in fairness, they didn't cause all the problems for themselves. Only about half to two thirds.

(To have Chronic Bad Decision Syndrome, a character must repeatedly cause avoidable problems to happen anyway as a direct consequence of choices they make when they are mentally and situationally capable of making a non-problematic choice.)

 

I would like to give this book the Librarymouse Literary Award for Failing at Christian Fiction. Properties that qualify it for this award include theological quality (not great, there's prosperity gospel in there, but at least they do talk about forgiveness and other such concepts a couple times, and Louisa does pray occasionally), un-Christian behavior by characters (mostly minor ones, but come on, that {T-ish "non-binary" guy} was completely unnecessary) and a general lack of, y'know, presence of faith in the book. What I mean by that last one is that while it does get mentioned a couple times, the characters' Christian faith doesn't really factor into anything in the book. And while that's sadly true of some real people's faith, it's (to put it mildly) suboptimal.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for alcoholism (the two main characters' original dad), angst, and that guy in the content warning above (who would be easy to miss for younger people).

And this book can have 2 stars. I didn't like it much; the characters' Chronic Bad Decision Syndrome and all the angsting, combined with content warning tag guy and various other factors, make a rather unappetizing smoothie.

(Endnote: While reading this, I repeatedly yelled things like "There will be repercussions for that, I can hear them with my metagaming ears" and "Can you just make a good decision for once in your life?" and other such. This may have caused several of my family members to look askance at me when I yelled at a book at odd moments.)

"D&D Dungeon Club: Roll Call", story by Molly Knox Ostertag, art by Xanthe Bouma

I picked this up off the library shelves because why not? It's not like it's especially long, and the worst-case scenario is... probably what happened with Dungeon Academy: No Humans Allowed, honestly. And the art is by one of the people who worked on Five Worlds, so that always inclines me favorably toward a book.

 

Thankfully, this book was far better than DA:NHA. Admittedly, that's a low bar, but the bar being low doesn't mean you didn't jump high. Does that make sense? No? Maybe?

Anyway, this is your classic "loner gets friends" story. Most of it takes place outside the characters' D&D game, but the loner getting friends is mirrored in the game. The red guy with horns on the cover is the main character's D&D character. His name is Sir Corius, and he has a long-lost sister named Corinth.

Yes.

(The main character is the girl in the lower left corner.)

 

There's Drama! when the guy in the lower right corner gets added to the Dungeons & Dragons group that was formerly inhabited solely by Jess (lower left corner girl) and Olivia (the one in the middle with the yellow shirt). Jess (and by extension, Sir Corius) thinks this is a terrible idea. And so, midway through the book, we have the obligatory "main character decides she doesn't need any of this and accidentally-but-kinda-intentionally ruins something someone else cares about" scene, with Sir Corius letting lower right corner guy's character |fall off a cliff into a river of acid|.

 

They left the possibility of a sequel open, which I appreciated, and not just because I like Xanthe Bouma's art. For most of this book (and Five Worlds, for that matter) the art was just good art, but there were a couple spots that looked a lot like parts of Five Worlds. (Did I mention the art is good?)

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: A hard T for {T or so an antagonist casually saying "You know he's gay, right?" about lower right corner guy, who I'm pretty sure isn't. It's just in one spot and would be pretty easy to censor out if you had your own copy, but it bugged me}. (That's a content warning tag, by the way; see the "Spoiler tag explanation" page at the top for how those work.)

I'm going to give this... 3 stars. It would be 4, except that the thing I put in the content warning tag automatically drops any book a star or so. (I might get this book myself, in which case I would censor the thing and like the book better.

(Endnote: Somewhere in the middle of the book, the two players in Olivia's campaign [but mostly Jess] dramatically derail the story. I've run games, and I've had that happen, and I responded in pretty much the same way that Olivia did: end the session so I can figure out where to go from here.)

"Riley's Ghost" by John David Anderson

DISAPPROVE.

I'm serious, this should be a YA book set in high school, not a middle-grade fiction book set in middle school. CONTENT, Mr. Anderson. You need to learn the difference between a middle-grade fiction level of content and a YA level of content.

Actually, come to think of it, I've never read a YA book with higher content levels than this. Closest I've come is Goodbye, Mr. Terupt. I... can't say I want to read YA fiction, if it's like this.

 

Now, the story wasn't terrible, once you strip away the lame parts. But it wasn't good enough for me to give it a better rating; I have a special dislike for books with content like this being stashed in the junior fiction section at the library. As I said at the top of the post, I DISAPPROVE.

So if you like mildly scary and tense ghost stories, and don't mind swearing and random sprinkles of T15+ content... go ahead, read it. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T15+ for swearing, mostly profanity, mostly by the main character. Also for some suggestive-ish content. Not a book I'll be rereading. Non est liber bonus. It's not a good book.

This book gets 1 star, joining only Time Cat and Dungeon Academy: No Humans Allowed in receiving that pointless trophy of shame.

(Endnote: It did name-check those Indian ghosts with the backwards feet, though.)

"Out of Range" by Heidi Lang

This book definitely has an interesting narrative style. It's like if the author knew that you're supposed to start as close to the action as possible, but she also wanted to provide extensive backstory. So she did both.

Basically, the odd-numbered chapters are the action, unfolding, and the even-numbered chapters are the backstory. This made it kind of confusing, because some of the odd chapters reference stuff in the even chapters that we hadn't gotten to yet. However, it did keep me reading, because I immediately wanted to know "are they going to be okay?" and waded through intermittent school drama to get more of the unfolding story, whereas if it had just been "first half of the book is school drama, second half is action" I probably would have DNF'd the book out of frustration. What I'm trying to say here is basically: it worked, Heidi Lang.

The book's about three sisters--Abby, Emma, and Ollie--who have been utter jerks to each other for the past year or so. Their parents sent them to a wilderness camp with no cell phone service or stuff like that, so they could learn to get along. The camp did not, in fact, teach them to get along. However, getting lost in the wilderness for a couple days takes care of that problem nicely.

Parts of it strained my credulity, especially the fact that |a wildfire forced the main characters to run off into the wilderness to escape it, but then it's not really mentioned again. Maybe it was| a potato soup fire or something. The story kind of jumps from one hazard to the next, and none of them have any real lasting effect on their struggle to survive (well, except for |the fallout from Emma almost drowning|, which still only lasts a couple chapters). Basically, everything menaced them for a bit and then ended suddenly. And I get why, because this situation still has to be realistically survivable, but surely there are ways to make it realistically survivable without resorting to making the situation unrealistic.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E, probably. Although I might possibly rate it E10+ for, as my mom would put it, "scenes of peril".

Sadly, I must give this book 3 stars, because most of the "how did we get here" was set against the backdrop of scohol drama ("scohol" is an intentional misspelling of "school", btw), which I happen to dislike. The other reason, the one this got demoted to 3 stars instead of 4, is that as mentioned above, it strained my credulity.

I do not have any favorite lines.

(Endnote: I've intentionally misspelled "school" as "scohol" in one of my other posts, too. Do you remember which one?)

"Goodbye, Mr. Terupt" by Rob Buyea

I'm glad this is the last one. Pretty sure the content level in a fifth would exceed sane levels. 

As it is, Jessica's the only safe one anymore. About which I'm glad, because I like Jessica, but Luke being Unsafe wasn't fun.

Mr. Terupt moves away at the end of the book. Given the cover blurb and the book's literal name, this isn't really a spoiler.

Anyway, near the beginning, Alexia |shoplifts a DNA test kit. Her justification for this is "I'm not gonna buy it, it costs like 200 dollars!". Alexia, that just makes it worse. I have headcanoned it to make it to where her mom paid for it, because... Alexia never gets in trouble for it. Like at all. I'm not sure why; maybe the author forgot or something? Here, let's continue the second book's running gag of| potato soup.

Now we've got the obligatory dunking on Alexia out of our system, how are the others doing? Well, Jeffrey and Anna finally decided to officially be boyfriend and girlfriend. Except then Jeff (I decided to call him Jeff when he started doing this) got seeeeerious about wrestling (sorry, did I forget to mention he does that? He's been doing that since like book 2) and started neglecting his friendship with everyone around him.

(By the way, I like Anna as well. Due to her frequent proximity to Alexia, however, I had to put her on the Unsafe list.)

Luke and Danielle discover that they liiiiiiiiiike each other. This, combined with Danielle's frequent proximity to Alexia and Luke's insistence on his science project (which is about pregnant cows) puts them both at Unsafe.

So... who do we have left that we haven't classified? It's Alexia, Peter, and Jeff(rey). Peter liiiiiikes Alexia, putting him as Unsafe by definition, but I'm actually classing him and Alexia as Critical instead. They get into... situations far more often than the others, and are the leading cause of said situations.

(One situation that Peter did not instigate, however: some unnamed rando decides to photocopy his rear end and then sneak a copy into all the teachers' mailboxes. It isn't Peter, but the principal thinks it is. It's not a great scene, but it made me laugh so hard because I remembered a certain scene in The Lego Movie while reading it.

Metalbeard: "First law of the sea. Never place your rear end on a pirate's face." Metalbeard had turned into a copier to hide from the bad guys.

Yeah.)

Oh, I forgot Jeffrey. Unsafe. Nothing untoward, really, he just got annoying.

 

I just realized right before publishing that I haven't actually told you what I think of this book, just what it's about. Well... as per my endnote, 90% of the book's problems are evitable, which annoyed me. As I said in my review of the previous one, I know teenagers are supposed to be dumb and impulsive, but I don't think we're this dumb and impulsive. 

Overall, as I said before, the only one I liked and felt safe around was Jessica; she's also had one of the best character arcs of the series. She was very shy and hid a lot during book 1, and matured through the series into someone who... isn't shy and doesn't hide a lot? More outgoing? Can't think of a word here.

 

(I said "one of the best" because the other one is indubitably Jeffrey. He was honestly kind of a jerk in the beginning and completely hated everything due to |the death of his older brother, which didn't involve| potato soup, and he also couldn't put a G on the end of any of his words. By this one, he's also more mature, and a lot less of a jerk, except when he's making me call him Jeff. And he learns to put G's on the ends of his words.)

(Also, Alexia quits using "Like" as, like, a comma. So that's good.)

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: Solid T15+ territory. Yeeeeeeesh.

This thing gets two stars. It had enough redeeming moments that I don't just give it one, but...

(Endnote: While talking to someone about this, I realized that ninety percent of the problems in the book could be solved by following the main characters around and casting Calm Emotions whenever anything happened. This might explain why I didn't like it much.)

"Saving Mr. Terupt" by Rob Buyea

Indubitably this book wasn't as good as the first two. Bleh. The only people I would want to associate with here are Luke and Jessica. I mean, I know teenagers are supposed to be rash and impulsive, but we aren't this rash and impulsive. Are we? Am I just well-grounded or something?

 

So anyway, in this book the main characters are in... *drumroll* high scohol. If you listened to my rants about Alexia, you know why that's a recipe for disaster.

Speaking of Alexia, she still uses "like" as, like, a comma sometimes, but she's gotten better about it. I no longer have to skim her chapters due to that. I now have to skim her chapters for other reasons. Alexia chapter time was a ratio of about 25% reading to 75% putting the book down and sighing "alexia... yeesh" exasperatedly. 

But she doesn't fall in with any more baaaad influences this time! That was good. 

Y'know how in book 2, I said there were a lot of layers that didn't always intersect with each other? That happens here too. There's a layer of both Alexia and Peter running for class president (|though Luke wins|), and it turns into a sort of boy-main-characters-versus-girl-main-characters thing. 

Also, and here was my least favorite part of the book, {T15+one get-together of theirs somehow results in their playing spin the bottle.} I have obtained a high-quality GIF of Luke when that happens:

 

If it doesn't show up for you, just click the white space.

 

Attaboy, Luke. This is where the quote at the top about rash and impulsive teenagers came from: my mind when I read that scene. Luke's reason for noping out of there (hey look! I just verbed "nope"! And verbed "verb!") is approximately "Dude, we're screwing around with real feelings now. Not funny, guys."

 

Also, Danielle |gets diabetes. The Type 1 version, which we apparently can't get rid of yet. (We can only sort of get rid of Type 2 anyway.)  Now, I don't know much about diabetes, but she seems to cope all right. The school nurse freaks out, though, which was sort of darkly funny|.

In the vein of |surprise medical maladies|, Alexia's mom |gets breast cancer|. This contributes to her (Alexia, not the mom) becoming increasingly unstable and weird. 

Both of the above incidents caused me to put the book down and exclaim "The what?". Since I was reading this while in the car with my family, they started looking at me funny the second time.

Okay. I'm done with the spoiler tags. We're not turning this into another Mr. Terupt Falls Again review.

I didn't like this book much. This may be because I had to skim a lot of it; Saving Mr. Terupt deals with problems real teenagers have (I think; I'm not a girl, so I have no reference point for that.) Unfortunately, this means problems (mostly biological) that it's uncomfortable for me to read about.

Less romance than in the last one, though! Woot.

I'm giving this thing three stars, mostly due to one moment of concentrated awesome near the end (I lied about the spoiler tags): |Luke organizes a sit-in to protest the school firing Mr. Terupt. The principal gets very angry and attempts to expel the president of the oldest-people student council as an example. "I am Spartacus" ensues.|

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: Skirting the line of T15+ and M. Not a book for younger people.

As with Buyea's other books in this series, this one didn't provide me with favorite lines.

"Mr. Terupt Falls Again" by Rob Buyea

I just want to state that the title |is misleading. Mr. Terupt does not, in fact, have a devastating fall. Personally, I'm really happy about that, because Mr. Terupt Falls Again could have been basically a plot repeat of the original, and it wasn't. Way to go, Buyea!| Yeah, this post will be a spoiler-tag-filled ramble.

Mr. Terupt Falls Again has this underlying theme of "ignorance is bliss, but is it really?" going on. Honestly, the book has a lot of intermingled layers, with one or other surfacing at different times. So yeah, we have the "ignorance is bliss" layer. (The book's conclusion seems to be that ignorance is bliss, but only if you're also ignorant of the fact that you're ignorant in the first place, because if you know you don't know something then you start worrying about it and are no longer blissful, and if you know bits and pieces you'll want to find out more and aren't blissful either.) (Wow, that felt like "I know you know I know you know I know".)

Also, Alexia (the one who uses "like" way too much, though her usage has decreased from about 1900% more than necessary to more like 400% more than necessary) falls in with some baaaad influences. And, unlike everyone who gets labeled as baaaad influences in book 1 (hint: |Anna and her mom|), these guys  actually are baaaad influences. (I'm not bothering with spoiler tags because these guys show up in the beginning of the book and we can tell that they're obviously baaaad influences.) There's another layer for you. (Well, when I said "guys", I meant one guy and two girls, and the guy--who |has "weed" and vodka at different points| and generally behaves like the teen everyone tells you "don't be that guy" about, and eventually gets arrested and sent to rehab--is the main corrupting influence.)

There's also another layer of Mr. Terupt's |head trauma from the previous book|, which Peter |perpetually (and understandably) feels terrible about| and Luke |researches on the internet (silly boy, you should never research medical conditions on the internet)|. Like I said, lots of layers (subplots?).

Also, Jeffery finds |an abandoned baby| in a shoebox on the side of the road, which ends up being the catalyst for |his parents finally un-shellifying after his older brother's death|. It also makes several of the characters do a double take and go |"wait, really? what kind of jerkface would abandon a baby?"|, which I found completely plausible. There's a layer for ya.

Also, yeah, you may have noticed I labeled this "a kissing book". That too is a layer (number four, I think?). There's a lot more romance in this one, with the final pairings being |Terupt and Newberry|, |Alexia and Peter|, |Anna and Jeffery|, and |Luke and Jessica|; |personally, I think all the pairings are quite natural, and that we were all going "Terupt and Newberry sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-SOMETHIN'-SOMETHIN'-T!" since about the last fifth of book 1. To confuse people who don't highlight spoilers, this is a sentence that ends in| potato soup. 

Also, Danielle's grandmother Evelyn |gets a heart attack, learns about forgiveness (woot woot woot woot woot!), and accepts Anna and her mom as not baaaad influences. This sentence, for reasons of further confusion, also ends in| the aforementioned potato soup.

Also, we get to know how to pronounce Mr. Terupt's name! It's "tare-upt". In-universe, he gets annoyed when people pronounce it wrong.

This one gets three stars, because a bunch of the main characters |hit puberty, and more than half or them are girls. I mostly skimmed those parts.|

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T15+ again, for the same reason (though everyone knows about [THIS IS THE SAME AGE-RESTRICTED SPOILER FROM THE LAST ONE, SO NOT-YET-TEENAGERS GO AWAY] |Anna's mom's teenage pregnancy| by now, so it's not as big of a plot point). However, if you've got a less-than-15-year-old who knows about that, this one is more of a T beneath it (for reasons as discussed above, and also due to |someone who's obviously not a good guy giving people the finger, drug and alcohol abuse,  and underage smoking|.

Disclaimer: |There is no actual| potato soup |in this novel. I simply added it to confuse people who haven't highlighted the spoilers, and amuse people who have|.

"Because of Mr. Terupt" by Rob Buyea

I picked this up from a library display on a whim. About one-third of books I pick up like that are good, one-third are terrible, and one-third are kind of okay. Happily, this one was in the "good" camp. There are two reasons for me sticking this in my library bag after reading the blurb instead of just putting it back on the shelf: my having heard that it was good, and the titular teacher seeming like one of those reasonable fictional adults of which I am so fond.

Right on both counts. Mr. Terupt (I could never quite figure out how you're supposed to pronounce his name) is extremely reasonable and manages to get (mostly) everyone to be nice to each other; I'm looking at you, Alexia.

There are seven main characters. We have Alexia, the jerkface; Anna, the tragic backstory; Danielle, kind of a doormat but also one of the absolute best fictional Christians I've ever encountered; Jeffrey, the guy who doesn't want to be there and makes it quite clear; Jessica, the bookworm new girl; Luke, the inveterate mathematician; and Peter, the class clown. They rotate perspectives throughout the book, and I didn't mind. (Well, except for Alexia's POV with about 1900% more instances of the word "like" than were necessary.)

Also, Danielle. As I previously stated, she's a Christian. The author never goes into what denomination she is, which I appreciated; her faith never felt shoehorned in, either, just very natural "oh, bad thing happened? Pray about it." Now, her grandmother, on the other hand? I just kept wanting to send her a booklet explaining the concept of forgiveness. Not great.

I'm not 100% sure if any other characters are practicing Christians, but at least one of them |does request to pray with Danielle eventually, which... doesn't seem like a thing people who don't believe it helps would do|. So, probably.

Gets four stars. It's a good book, and I can see why it gets recommended on lists; it managed to be and/or imitate Literature without being boring. Character arcs, !DRAMA!, it actually making you think |the title character is going to die| (seriously, that was masterfully done), et cetera. I didn't personally like it enough to warrant giving it five stars.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: Probably T15+ (like E10+ but for people 15 and up). This is mostly for (I'M SERIOUS DON'T HIGHLIGHT THIS ONE IF YOU'RE YOUNGER THAN LIKE A TEENAGER OR HAVE READ THE BOOK ALREADY) |discussion of a teenage pregnancy, resulting in the main character Anna|. Other than that plot point, which is handled about as tastefully as one can handle such a thing, it's mostly fine; if a kid knows about such things, it would be more E10+. Because of Mr. Terupt would make a fairly fun videogame of the visual novel variety.

 

Because, etc. isn't a book that really provides me with favorite lines.