Amity by Micol Ostow

Plagiarism: taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own.

Changing the setting from New York to New Hampshire or Northern Massachusetts and changing the killers from fathers to eldest brothers but using every other detail from an actual event which was then made into a movie...AND NOT EVEN SAYING "HEY THANKS" BUT INSTEAD CLAIMING YOU CAME UP WITH THE STORY AFTER VISITING A HAUNTED HOUSE?????????????

THIS IS 100% PLAGIARIZED!

I am considering removing this from our collection.  I'm mad I even ordered it.  

Please Google Amityville Horror and read the NUMEROUS sources about this real murder, possessed home, and adaptations.  I THOUGHT that's what I'd be reading: an updated version of the story for my kids' age (cell phones, TV, the internet...), but instead found the slight changes to the story annoying.  Imagine then reading the author's acknowledgements and finding her claim this is an ORIGINAL STORY!  That's a flat out lie.

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All opinions expressed on this blog solely those of Mrs. W. 

The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall by Katie Alexander

Several students are absolutely obsessed with Alexander's Bad Girls series. This is another of her books that I pulled for our Haunted Halloween display.  I decided to read it based on my students' recommendation.

I hate to say I didn't really care for it.

Delia inherits a house from her great-aunt, also named Delia.  Her parents intend to fix it up and sell it.  She learns the home was once an insane asylum for women and has a dark history of patient death.  Not long after arriving, Delia apparently commits suicide by jumping out a window.  Delia spends the next few years meeting the assorted female ghosts while her sister Jane researches the home and its history.  I won't spoil the climax when Jane returns to avenge her sister's death.

There are several stories/movies/books of houses with souls (mostly evil ones): The Haunting, A Haunting in Connecticut, Amityville and all its incarnations (one of which I plan to read later....).  There are also numerous tales of those trying to avenge the death of a sibling and the new generation being the only ones who can vanquish the evil old.  There was nothing really new about this; it felt like a hodge-podge of already used story lines.

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Sleeping Beauties by Stephen and Owen King

I love Stephen King and have read every single one of his books. I think somewhere, beneath the Trump bashing (which I'm OK with) and gun-owner hate (which I'm NOT OK with), there is a good story here.  But I'm too turned off to actually search for it.

One day all the women of the world fail to wake from their sleep.  They become enshrouded in a web-like material the instant they fall asleep.  Many women try to stay awake as long as possible, but very few will be able to stay awake through the ordeal.

The setting is a rural town where everybody knows everybody else.  A woman's prison lies on the outskirts and is the employer for many of the characters (most others being inmates or local police).  It seems there is a wide range of economic status in the town, from homelessness to affluence.  A woman arrives to town just as the sleeping sickness, dubbed Aurora after Disney's Sleeping Beauty, arrives.  She calls herself Evie and immediately murders two meth dealers. 

Taken to the women's prison, she never forms a cocoon when she falls asleep.  She also seems to have other superpowers, including being able to talk to the prison rats.  Not long after all the other women of the world are asleep, two factions form.  Those who would start burning women in their sleep and seizing Evie and those who will protect both.

Meanwhile the sleeping women are transported to another world, similar to their old one in setting, though nature has retaken much of it.  There are no men, except the male babies who are being born.

Spoiler Alert: in the end, the women must decide whether to stay in Utopia or go back to a world of (Trump loving, gun toting, violent, etc.) men.

I'd like to state, for the record, that all men are not bad.  I'm married to a good one.  And not all of us gun owners are bad.  I promise you that. 

If this was the first book I'd ever read by King, I'd never read another.

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Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos

Twice a year I go to the Scholastic Warehouse sale to buy books using the water sale money.  My son uses the chance to buy his own books as well with his saved allowance funds.  One of the books he bought the last time was this one.  I also bought one for the WHHS LMC.  Unfortunately, my son's copy fell behind his "to read" pile on his nightstand.  It lay forgotten until I cleaned back there last weekend.

One thing about West Haven is that everyone knows everyone else.  Many of us are third, fourth, even fifth generation Westies.  If we ourselves don't know you, one of our people probably knows one of your people.  We have a rich history in our little city.  The same is true for Norvelt.

Jack is a tween in the early 1960s.  He's obsessed with World War II and prone to nosebleeds.  His wacky neighbor (I kept picturing her as Mrs. Figg from HP) hires him over the summer to help write obituaries.  Although billed as hilarious, I myself only smiled a lot with only one really pee your pants level laugh.

I don't like to genderfy (is that a word?) books, but this is a boy book.  I see why my son liked it so much, and I can see many sophomore boys reading this alongside their WWII and early 1960s history work.  I can also see parents of tween boys liking this, and those who were Jack's age at the same time reading this through a very different lens.

What's nifty is this is already on our shelf.  Bailey also has one, and I think the boy will be donating this one to Carrigan!

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All opinions expressed on this blog are solely those of Mrs. W.

Origin by Dan Brown

I pre-ordered this as soon as I could on Amazon and eagerly awaited arrival.  I am a big Dan Brown fan and love his prior Langdon novels.  I've also read his works outside of this series.  Unfortunately, my review on this one is mixed.

Based on the beginning of the story, I was expecting much more of a blockbuster revelation about the, well, origin of humanity.  Instead, the premise is really about where we are going as a species.  We are continuing to evolve and there are theories we will merge with our ever-expanding technology to become an ever more advanced life-form.

While the other Langdon books continually keep the reader guessing, the "whodunit" is blatantly obvious rather early in the story.  I think what irked me the most is that there is very little of the classic Langdon symbology interpretation that's part of the magic in the older books.  The previous novels made me want to research and learn about the symbols and cultures Langdon talks about.  This one, not so much. 

Langdon and Brown fans will no doubt want to read this "just because".  It wasn't terrible, but it's definitely not a favorite.

Good luck on your PSATs today!

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All opinions expressed on this blog are solely those of Mrs. W.

Featured Football Books!

The Ravenous by Amy Lukavics

I eagerly awaited for this to be released after reading The Women in the Walls.  It did not disappoint.  Lukavics is a master of horror with strong female leads.  In short, she kicks butt as an author.  I'm a fan for sure.

From the outside, the Canes look like the perfect family--respected military dad, stay-at-home mom, five beautiful daughters.  Reality: Dad's never home and Mom's a pill-popping drunk.  Oldest daughter a sadistic control freak, second a wuss follower, third a stoner, fourth a budding drunk.  Only the youngest seems somewhat normal.  And it is Rose, the baby, who dies when accidentally shoved down the stairs during an argument between her mother and oldest sister.

I don't want to spoil too much, but Mom does some really scary things to bring her daughter back to life (and to keep her alive).  When she takes off, maintaining their sister's, um, "needs" falls to the older girls.

Look for this to be on display with our new books next week!

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All opinions expressed on this blog are solely those of Mrs. W.