Maggie

It used to be vampires, now it's the end of the world.  There is always a trend in young adult fiction, and I much prefer the recent surge of dystopian novels to those of the blood-sucking variety that followed Twilight.

The story begins the night of Cassia's match banquet, when she will learn who the Society has determined she will marry.  When her best friend’s face pops up onto the screen, Cassia couldn't be happier. Until, that is, another boy's face appears on the screen for a brief moment.  Ky Markham's information was never supposed to be entered into the system, and now Cassia's world has been turned upside down.

There are too many fairytale retellings to count, but every once in a while you come across one that's just too good not to share.  Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs happens to be one of those.

I usually stay away from books everyone else has read.  Instead, I focus on the authors who aren’t well known and the books that have gone under the radar, and put those books into the hands of our customers.  However, one of my friends demanded I read My Sister's Keeper.  I was skeptical at first, but it turned out to be a fast and worthwhile read. For those who do not know, My Sister's Keeper is a well-researched and extremely controversial novel.

When Sara and Brian's three-year-old daughter is diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia, and their older son is not a donor match, they decide to have another child – one genetically engineered to be Kate's exact match.  When Anna is born, the joy of her birth is overshadowed by hope – the hope that the stem cells from her umbilical cord will cure Kate.  For the next thirteen years, Anna is there for blood transfusions, bone marrow transplants and countless other procedures.  

When her parents want her to donate a kidney to Kate, that is where she draws the line and files suit against them – she wants medical emancipation from her parents.  Even without the relatable characters and fast-paced writing, My Sister's Keeper would still be worth the read, if only to put yourself in this difficult situation, to ask yourself, Would I have another child solely to save their sibling?