#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. 

Across the Universe

Aboard the ship Godspeed things are a lot different than on Earth. Amy realizes this when she's awoken 50 years before she was meant to. She and around 300 other people, including military officers and scientists, had been frozen alive before being put on the ship. Waking up, she finds that she is way out of her league on the ship. Everyone's just so...different from what she's used to. Despite being on a spaceship, none of the people on the ship have seen real stars, just the metal walls encasing them, painted to resemble the sky. Nobody knows what it's like to live on Earth, and they blindly follow their leader, Eldest. She befriends Elder, the next in line to become Eldest, and together they discover all the lies that surround the ship. I love this book, because the p.o.v changes are really well written, and because I  love how the author, Beth Revis, makes everything come alive. You feel like you're a part of the book. My favorite character is defiantly Harley. He's like that friend that acts like he's on drugs half the time, and the other half of the time he's spouting out philosophical things that make you second guess everything you've ever known. Another thing I like is that there are so many good quotes that you can get out of this book. The author definitely makes you think about subjects you wouldn't normally think about, unless that's what you're into. I would definitely recommend this book to people, because while it's very sad in some parts, it makes you believe that everything's possible. Side note; Listen to Written in the Stars while reading this book. It should be the theme song for this book. Really. It sounds like it's made for this book.

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.

Pendragon: My favorite series. Ever.

Imagine the Harry Potter series. Now make them around 40 times more unrealistic. Now you have the Pendragon series!

The Pendragon series all revolve around a boy with the name of Bobby Pendragon. Now, Bobby thinks he's a normal boy, but he's not. 

See, Bobby is a Traveler, a person who travels between 10 different universes that all have a planet with life on them. Each of the planets go through a 'turning point', a time when there's a challenge the citizens of the planet have to go through, whose result could change the future of the planet, for the better or the worst. The traveler has to go to each planet, through 'flumes', when it's in it's turning point, and try to lead the planet towards a better future. But that's not all. They also have to make sure Saint Dane, a very bad guy who wants to lead the planets to failure so he can control 'Halla'-everything that has, will, and is existing, doesn't succeed. It makes a lot more sense if you actually read the books.

When Bobby finds out that he's a traveler from his Uncle, who is also a traveler, and that his family never existed and that they're all gone, he freaks out. But as he works with Loor, his partner, and all the other travelers, he starts to realize that there are bigger things than basketball and having a normal life.

When his Uncle dies later, Bobby steps up as the leader, and eventually defeats Saint Dane.

The author switches the point of view very often from Bobby, to Mark and Courtney, Bobby's best friend and almost girlfriend.

Now, this probably sounds like the weirdest story ever, and you're probably wondering why I like it so much. I like it because the author, D.J. Machale, writes it so well, it feels like you're in the book as one of the characters. You get to escape reality for however long it takes you to read the series, and experience experiences you wouldn't anywhere else. And, it's so unrealistic, it's realistic...if that makes any sense.