#4: Rage

by Jackie Kessler

If you're looking for a nice, funny book that takes your mind off your problems, this book isn't for you. It's about a girl, Missy, who is a cutter. She's not goth or emo, she just deals with her problems like that. One day death knocks on her door, gives her a package,and tells her she might cut too deep and die someday. So she tries to stop. But when she gets humiliated in front of everyone in her school by her ex, she goes home and cuts again, accidently going too deep, just like death warned her might happen. While she's dying, Death returns and gives her two options: either she could die, or she could open the package he gave her. She opens it to find a beautiful sword and becomes one of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, War. Throughout the book, she struggles with her cutting habit. The author doesn't sugarcoat anything, and tells the readers about cutting, not just that it's bad, but why people do it. This is her second book in her series, the first of which is Hunger, which deals with eating disorders. I think that not only does the author tell us about problems that teenagers face through this series, but she tells it in a creative way. She made up a whole world for the main characters of both books to grow and face their problems head on. Although it is a great book, not many people want to face problems in the world, so it doesn't get as many reads. But I'd reccomend it to people going through problems like cutting, so that they can see that they can stop cutting. 

Percy Jackson

The Percy Jackson series are about a boy, Percy, who discovers that he's a demigod and the son of Poseidon, when he goes to a camp specially for demigods. There he meets Annabeth, the daughter of Athena, and discovers that his best friend Grover was  satyr. In each book, Percy and his friends come closer to finally defeating the monsters, when they find out that Cronos rose with the help of their friend Luke, who betrayed the camp, and that Cronos is responsible for the monsters. You'd think that the books would be confusing because of all the gods and such, but the author, Rick Riordan, takes Mythology, and makes it modern and easy to understand for everyone. So not only do you get to have fun, but you also learn! While learning might not seem like an exciting prospect for many of you, it doesn't feel like you're sitting down and doing research. I like this book because not only is it written well, I also like Mythology. The series are 5 books long, and are continued in another series, The Heroes of Olympus, in which they introduce the Roman demigods. While they're very similar, there are small differences between the Greeks and the Romans. Mainly, the Romans are more viscous. Honestly, I like the Greek gods better, but that might be because I learned about them before I learned about the Romans.

Here you see the intense battle between Greeks and Romans to best each other.