This book has been through a lot when I have it on me. It’s been the novel I read when I’m on the bus into the city of Philadelphia to pass the time. Once or twice during these journeys I’ve forgotten an umbrella, so the book, residing in my backpack, has been soaked in multiple downpours while I wait for the bus in the pouring rain. The book is very much well worn, but it’s also been very much been loved.
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Based on manga series “Isshukan Friends” by Matcha Hazuki that ran from 2012 to 2015, One Week Friends has been adapted both into an anime series and a live action film. I stumbled across it a little over a month ago and instantly knew this was something I wanted to watch.
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Being one with a bunch of online friends, and even having met a couple of them, the concept of Mary H.K. Choi’s novel Emergency Contact intrigued me as the plot centers on two college aged adults who talk to each other only though the phone.
Unfortunately, the synopsis was the most intriguing part of the book until the last quarter of it when things finally felt a bit interesting to me, and even then I wasn’t pulled into the story very much.
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NOTE: This review contains major plot spoilers.
While it’s admittedly taken longer than I’d have liked, I finally got around to finish reading one of the novels by B.T. Gottfred after discovering he was an author back in March as per my film review of The Mov.
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I saw Nerve when it was in theaters last summer, and because it’s based off Jeanne Ryan’s second book I went ahead and picked her first book, Charisma, up from the library. It’s about a girl named Aislyn who has crippling social anxiety. She’s offered an underground gene therapy drug named Charisma by a doctor she trusts. She’s told that Charisma will get rid of her shyness and make her one who stands out – on the condition that she tells nobody. After some internal debate, she goes ahead and takes it. There’s a problem, though. She’s not the only one who was given the drug, and others who have taken it have fallen into comas. The doctor who created and administered Charisma is now conveniently nowhere to be found.
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This Is Where It Ends by Marieke Nijkamp is a contemporary young adult novel dealing with school shootings. This story is told from the perspectives of four teenagers at Opportunity High School in Alabama, each trying to survive and figure out the reason why this is happening. At 10:00 am the principal is in the auditorium giving a speech to the entire student body like she does every year, and once over and the students get up to leave, they discover that the auditorium doors are all locked and won’t budge open. That’s when the shooting starts.
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Curse is the third and of course final book in the Blur Trilogy by Steven James. I was hooked on the first two books, reading them back to back. I enjoyed the third book too, but not quite as much.
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Highly Illogical Behavior is one of the more unique books I’ve read, since it’s not every day you encounter a book where the main character has agoraphobia, which is the fear of crowded spaces or enclosed public places. In fact, the protagonist, Solomon, hasn’t left his house in three years. He has no friends and plans on keeping things this way for the rest of his life.
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If you’ve been reading Devin’s Book Hub for a while now, you may recall me reviewing The Silence of Six by E.C. Myers about a year and a half ago, after winning a copy of the novel via a Goodreads giveaway. I was fortunate enough to receive an advance copy of the upcoming sequel, Against All Silence, which will be available next week.
Just like the first book in the series, it is jam packed with action. This time, however, the stakes are even higher. The story takes place where the previous one ended: after everything that went down with Panjea, Max went on a trip to France to get away from the media and let things cool down for a bit.
While waiting in line at the airport to go home a few days before Christmas, he decides to check his private email, which is where he sees a several day old email from his friend Penny, one of the members of his hacking group, Dramatis Personai. She says that she is in Berlin and would like him to meet her new friend, Ada Kiesler, who is a whistleblower. Instantly I thought of Edward Snowden and his whistleblowing, which I’m guesssing heavily influenced Myers when writing this.
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Back in April I picked up the first half of the Orange manga series as I spotted it in Barnes & Noble and it sounded highly interesting, and now that I’ve read both books in the complete Orange collection series I can certainly say I was pleased by this manga and am looking forward to watching the anime adaptation that is currently airing in Japan.
On the first day of 11th grade Naho receives a letter that is supposedly from her 10 years in the future. She’s skeptical at first, but because it outlines what will happen on certain days, it’s obvious that the letter is no joke and indeed the real deal. The letter states that a new transfer student, Kakeru, needs saving from what will happen in the future if she doesn’t intervene, and if she fails she will carry this burden the rest of her life.
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