2nd Nine Weeks Annotated Reading List

Colasanti, Susane. When It Happens. New York: Speak, 2008. Print.

Sarah wants two things out of her Senior year of High School: college acceptance and to fall in love. She has her sights set on the popular jock, Dave. He's everything she thought she wanted, but there is no connection. Tobey, a musical slacker, is convinced that him and Sarah have a real connection. Will Sarah ever give Tobey a chance to test out this real connection? The writing style in When It Happens is really interesting. Each chapter has a different narrator. One chapter will be told by Sarah, and the next by Tobey. It gives the reader a chance to see the progression of the relationships through both perspectives. (310 pages)

Dessen, Sarah. Someone like You. New York: Speak, 2004. Print.

Halley and Scarlett are best friends. While Halley is away at a summer camp Scarlett's boyfriend, Michael, dies. A few weeks later Scarlett learns that she is pregnant with her dead boyfriend's baby. While Scarlett is struggling with this Halley becomes involved with Macon, Michael's best friend. Macon is the typical bad boy so he pushes Halley to do take a walk on the wild side. Soon Macon is pushing Halley to do things she is not ready for. Halley is forced to help Scarlett deal with her problems and find out what is really important in her life. One thing I really loved about this book was the relationship between Scarlett and Halley. Even when things weren't perfect they still stood by each other. An amazing quote from the book that expresses this relationship is "life is an ugly, awful place to not have a best friend." Their friendship is one that every teenage girl either wants or has, and it is really inspiring that Sarah Dessen could capture this so well. (281 pages)


Oliver, Lauren. Before I Fall. New York: Harper, 2010. Print.

Samantha Kingston, in Before I Fall, is a popular girl with a great boyfriend. She has no problem with her life until she dies and has to relive her last day over and over. She dies in a car crash after a party on February 12, so every time she is reliving that day she tries to change something so she doesn't die at the end of the night. The problem is that even when she lives at the end of the night, the day keeps repeating. After repeating the same day over and over she realizes there is only one way out of the loop. One of the characters that I think is really interesting is Juliet Sykes. She is not a popular kid: she is a complete outcast. But she wasn't always an outcast. She used to be best friends with Lindsay Edgecomb, the most popular girl in school, until an unfortunate incident involving pee in a tent on a 5th grade camping trip. After that camping trip Juliet was tormented, and she always took the teasing without putting up a fight. No one understood why she never stood up for herself. Eventually we find out that Lindsay was really the one that peed in the tent, but Juliet took the fall for Lindsay because Lindsay was going through a really tough time. I was really amazed that a 5th grader would be selfless enough put up with being tormented for something that she didn't do in order to help out a friend. (470 pages)


Picoult, Jodi. The Tenth Circle. New York: Washington Square, 2006. Print.

Trixie Stone used to be a normal fourteen-year old: she had a boyfriend, a best friend, and a family. After an unexpected breakup from her first love, Jason, she decides she will do anything to get him back. After a wild night at a party, her dad finds her sobbing in the bathroom, claiming that Jason raped her. Jason denies the accusations, saying that everything they did was consensual. Lies are thrown every which way so no one knows the truth. A court date is set for the rape case until Jason is found dead at the bottom of a bridge, now it is a case of murder. Daniel, Trixie's father, promises to do anything to protect his daughter and he turns into a fit of rage in the process. Can they figure out the truth before it is too late? One really interesting thing about this book was the writing style. The point of view changed multiple times in each chapter, and at the end of every chapter there was a comic. Daniel is a comic book artist so he writes these comics that go along with the story, but in a different setting: Hell. The events of the book are maximized and changed to fit in with the comic that Daniel has created about Hell. It put an interesting twist on the book. (387 pages)