I really enjoyed reading this book and learning more about the Deaf community. I have a Hard of Hearing friend and she has expressed many of the same opinions that this book did, such as being proud of being HoH/Deaf and not needing to be fixed. I really appreciated this #OwnVoices book and the research that was done. I also really liked how the author wrote ASL and kept it more with ASL grammar vs writing it with English grammar as other books I’ve read about this topic. Additionally, I thought how the lipreading portions were done well, how it’s impossible to catch every word lipreading and how you have to piece together context with what you caught.

I have only ever read one book by Jodi Picoult before so was not sure I would like this but it was a very clever and interesting story with a twist at the end. Also it had a lot of interesting information on elephants which has made me want to investigate them a bit more too.

2.5 stars. I enjoyed Marian’s story very much but this book was about 200 pages too long. The Hadley story was completely unnecessary and the character was unlikeable. The history of flight also not needed. Parred down this could have been excellent.

big nate is one of my favorite series now. big nate and friends is a very funny book, i like it a lot. i can't wait to read the next one when i go to the library again. .....................................................................................

I loved this book! Elin Hilderbrand never disappoints! I felt like I knew the characters. I was really hoping that the book they talked about would get published. It's definitely something I would have like to have read. I was hooked into this book very quickly early on.

Great end of the world story about survival.

This is very much more of a character-driven story, and a character-exploration story, rather than a page turning, thrilling mystery novel. The main character, Anna, has just recently returned home after suffering a family tragedy and being kicked out by her husband. A detective who specializes in missing children, Anna's hometown has long haunted her as a girl she went to school with went missing in a still-unsolved case. Just as she returns, as it happens, another girl has gone missing - and Anna very quickly finds herself involved in solving the case. As she does so, her past trauma comes to light and becomes a force she will need to deal with if she is going to find Cameron and return to her family. I didn't really find this to be a page turner. In fact, it took me a while to get past the first section, because it's really just setting the stage and nothing much happens. I finally sat down and just plowed through the book in a day. It wasn't bad, but everything felt kind of flat and I didn't really care about Anna as a character. Even as she cried about the unknown trauma she had experienced, I never felt myself dying to know what had happened to her that led to her husband kicking her out. I just didn't care. I also don't love using real-life cases in a fictional story. It just felt exploitive and gross to me. Polly was a real girl who underwent something terrible, as did her family, and using it as some form of entertainment just doesn't sit right with me. Especially when you're going to make it a big piece of your plot, with your character investigating her bedroom and listening to a psychic talk about her.

NEED is an amazing sci-fi thriller that grabs onto you from the first page and doesn't let go. Essentially, NEED is a startup website that gives you anything you 'need' in exchange for a small price. But the price of your NEED is increasing drastically, and the book reveals an intricate web of betrayals and blood that NEED leaves behind in their small town. NEED approaches the idea of what we think qualifies as a need, the way we think, and just how far we'll go to get what we want.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. In school, while we covered the battles of WWII in great depth, Japanese internment camps were never really discussed in detail. Although a bit jarring at first, I liked following multiple characters (a different one each chapter) through their lives and learning about their unique struggles. All the kids are around each other for the most part, so we still see mostly the same characters but the chapter is just not told from their perspective. Although it would have been very long (maybe in another book?), I would have liked to return to some characters’ perspectives which I felt could have been developed a bit more. Honestly, I even cried one chapter but laughed in others.

Perfect Summer Read! The setting of the book is Belle Isle, North Carolina. Riley Griggs is looking forward to a relaxing summer on the Isle. A place she has been going to all her life. Just when she gets to the Isle she finds out her house has been foreclosed on and her life unravels from there. She finds out her husband is dead and has been murdered. Then she realizes what kind of man he really was. He has destroyed her entire family. How will she recover, read it and find out!!