Mind you, Dexter’s the good guy in this story.

Adopted at the age of four after an unnamed tragedy left him orphaned, Dexter’s learned, with help from his pragmatic policeman father, to channel his “gift,” killing only those who deal in death themselves. But when a new serial killer starts working in Miami, staging elaborately grisly scenes that are, to Dexter, an obvious attempt at communication from one monster to another, the eponymous protagonist finds himself at a loss. Should he help his policewoman sister Deborah earn a promotion to the Homicide desk by finding the fiend? Or should he locate this new killer himself, so he can express his admiration for the other’s “art?” Or is it possible that psycho Dexter himself, admittedly not the most balanced of fellows, is finally going completely insane and committing these messy crimes himself?

She has horrible parents! Turning to adult men for the attention she is in great need of who take advantage of. She is a stronger girl than she gives herself credit for. Was very had not to get wrapped up in this story on an emotional level. I carried the feelings the book created in me after I had put the book down. Towelhead was very well written the author does a wonderful job of balancing the awful circumstances with honesty and humanity.

From Amazon: Thirteen-year-old Jasira wants what every girl wants: love and acceptance and the undivided attention of whoever she’s with. And if she can¹t get that from her parents, then why not from her mother’s boyfriend, or her father’s muscle-bound neighbor, Mr. Vuoso? Alicia Erian¹s incandescent debut novel, Towelhead, will ring true for readers who remember the rarely poetic transition from childhood to young adulthood. Jasira is a creature of contradiction: both innocent (reading romantic intentions into the grossest displays of lust) and oddly clear-sighted, especially when it comes to the imbalance of power, and the things we do for love. When her mother exiles her to Houston to live with Jasira’s strict, quick-to-anger Lebanese father, she quickly learns what aspects of herself to suppress in front of him. In private, however, she conducts her sexual awakening with all the false confidence that pop culture and her neighbor’s Playboy magazines have provided.

05/11/06 Loved this story. I had read Open House ages ago and hadn’t picked up anything else by Berg since. However, I’m glad I took the opportunity to read this and look forward to the follow up book Joy School.

Dicey finds herself in new friends, in a growing relationship with her grandmother, and in the satisfaction of refinishing the old boat she found in the barn. Then, as Dicey experiences the trials and pleasures of making a new life, the past comes back with devastating force, and Dicey learns just how necessary — and painful — letting go can be.

05/09/06 This was a sweet read and do recommend it.

Trouble arrives in the form of redheaded, 18-year-old Chris Wiley, who has come to College Sunrise to work on his novel about Mary, Queen of Scots. Chris’s authorial insouciance—he is supremely confident of his talents and rather dismissive of historical fact—infuriates Rowland, whose ego was inflated by minor early successes and who has a terrible case of writer’s block. Rowland becomes obsessed with the novel and its creator, and their struggle—” ‘I could kill him,’ thought Rowland. ‘But would that be enough?’

05/09/06 This was just okay. Not recommending it. In fact worst read so far this year.

I have over 145 books in my possession that need to be read. I do not take any new books for the next month. If I do get a book I need to get rid of two. Not saying that I won’t put them right back on my wish list but at least I’ll feel like I’m putting a dent into this terribly self indulgent habit. Starting today May 2, 2006

How I Live Now is another shared read with Layla. She’s already almost done so I need to get busy reading.

From Amazon: Possibly one of the most talked about books of the year, Meg Rosoff’s novel for young adults is the winner of the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize 2004. Heralded by some as the next best adult crossover novel since Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, who himself has given the book a thunderously good quote, this author’s debut is undoubtedly stylish, readable and fascinating.
Rosoff’s story begins in modern day London, slightly in the future, and as its heroine has a 15-year-old Manhattanite called Daisy. She’s picked up at the airport by Edmond, her English cousin, a boy in whose life she is destined to become intricately entwined. Daisy stays at her Aunt Penn’s country farmhouse for the summer with Edmond and her other cousins. They spend some idyllic weeks together–often alone with Aunt Penn away traveling in Norway. Daisy’s cousins seem to have an almost telepathic bond, and Daisy is mesmerized by Edmond and soon falls in love with him.

But their world changes forever when an unnamed aggressor invades England and begins a years-long occupation. Daisy and Edmond are separated when soldiers take over their home, and Daisy and Piper, her younger cousin, must travel to another place to work. Their experiences of occupation are never kind and Daisy’s pain, living without Edmond, is tangible.

05/03/06 I really liked this book; a bit of a page turner. However, I’m not sure why I liked it. Left me a bit unsettled knowing there is a deeper under tones to the book yet seen through a young persons eyes who doesn’t have the ability to verbalize them the way one would after internalizing and thinking about events that occur in ones life.

Highly recommend it.

From the back of the book: The dustbowl years were hard in Texas, but for a boy growing up, family love tinged them with magic. For young Larry Morrison these were times of untarnished happiness: cliff-hanging serials at the movies, stickers caught in the feet, swimming down at the pond. But there’s pain and loneliness in growing up, too, made bearable only by togetherness. Larry’s family is poor, like everyone else in Wordsworth. Then suddenly, death strikes the most loved member of the family and out of his pain and sadness Larry takes the first step toward manhood, as the people and adventures he has known reveal to him the treasure of the vanished innocence of boyhood.

04/27/06 Enjoyed this very much. Sweet and nostalgic. Estes did a brilliant job of depicting depression era Texas.

Loved this quote from the book: “Both of those terrible things had happened in our own family right under my very nose, and here I was still living, eating, sleeping, playing, breathing, and walking around on two legs. Maybe I had been dealing with them all along, as Papa said, and didn’t know it. Maybe the dealing with them is what makes the jagged edges smooth and the sharp points dull.” The “things” referred to are death and betrayal.