booknerderika's reviews
664 reviews

This novel-in-verse follows the story of Josh Bell, a 12-year-old basketball player, who is learning how to navigate through the changes that come with growing up. He and his twin brother, Jordan, begin to learn that life won't always be about basketball.

I love poetry novels so of course, I enjoyed this book. The world-building was great and really helped to slowly immerse the reader into Josh's life. Some parts felt a little rushed and then other parts felt like they dragged on, but I still think this is a great read for middle schoolers.

In a world where no one can die, how can overpopulation be prevented? That is where the job of the scythes come in. They are a group trained and set apart to "glean" people, removing them from existence. Citra and Rowan are two teenagers who get pulled into the world of scythes and must compete for their chance at survival.

I gave this 4 stars but it was really more like 3.5 for me. I realize that this is the first in a series so it is necessary for Shusterman to build the world he created, but it felt really detail heavy and took a lot of time to get to the action. I didn't dislike the book, but I also was not completely in love with it either.

Four strangers from four different backgrounds brought together in this sad tale of the Whilhelm Gustloff. This book follows the journey of the many people who tried to escape the invasion of the Russians in East Prussia during WWII.

This was such a sad book. I knew what was going to happen but it still didn't make the scenes any less sad. I liked the realism in this book and the writing was beautiful. I would recommend listening to the audiobook to help keep the different characters' stories separate since each character's part is read by a different person.

"Success is not a goal to reach or finish line to cross, it is a system to improve. An endless process to refine."

This is a great book for anyone wanting to understand how to set goals they can actually achieve and keep effective habits. As someone with experience in goal setting and changing habits, I found that some of the things he listed were things I was already doing. I had never thought about the science behind it, however, so that aspect was really interesting.

I also enjoyed the way he made things so easy to understand and broke them down in a way that anyone could implement into their lives. I would recommend this to everyone because who doesn't want to improve in some aspect of their life?

This book was great! It helped boost my confidence about writing and made me excited to create. There were so many great quotes and pieces of advice that I found myself highlighting more than I normally do in other books. This will be a book I revist as I continue on my writing journey.

I have had this book on my TBR for years now and I finally see what all the hype was about. I loved that there were so many unexpected twists, it definitely kept me on the edge of my seat waiting to find out what they would do next. The beginning was a little slow but I guess that's expected for the world building. It got better and better as it went along. I'm so glad I have Crooked Kingdom already so I can find out what happens next.

I appreciated the humor throughout the book and the story overall was interesting. There were some slow parts and little tales that I felt didn't have to be included, but for the most part I enjoyed it.