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Hunger Games vs. Divergent: Book One

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I have this thing where when I'm reading a good book and I think about the last good book I've read and it seems boring and fake and I can't understand how I even got through it. Then after I finish that book I look back and realize they were both good and it's a whole cycle. But that didn't really happen this time.  I started with Divergent , the first book of the Divergent series. It was a Monday. I had forgotten a free reading book. So during lunch I asked my friend Arya to come to the library and help me choose a book, and she found Divergent for me, her 7th grade obsession. I started it and liked it. It's about a girl named Beatrice living in a dystopian Chicago where there are different factions that people belong to based on what they value/what they're good at. She and her family are in Abnegation, the faction that values selflessness...maybe a little too much. They aren't supposed to look in mirrors for more than a few seconds once in a while b...

Four: The Transfer (While Reading Insurgent)

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It's been many months and I’m still on the second book of the Divergent series, ( Insurgent) , there just isn’t enough time to finish such a fat book so quickly. So I decided to take a little detour and read Four: The Transfer, one of Veronica Roth’s short stories told from Tobias Eaton’s (a.k.a. Four’s) point of view. And honestly, it’s changing the way I see everything that’s happening in Insurgent . Ok so for some background, let me tell you about the series from what I know so far: So basically the Divergent series is a dystopian series. In fact this society is actually dystopian Chicago which makes it all the more interesting. Anyways, this society is divided into five factions, each devoted to a specific virtue like bravery, honesty, kindness, etc. Everyone is expected to belong to just one, but when a teenage girl named Tris Prior learns she’s Divergent —someone who doesn’t fit neatly into any single faction—she slowly begins to question the system itself. Along the way, she...

How Beauty Meets Blood in Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba

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  *Disclaimer* This series has 23 volumes; this review is on the first 6     'Twas a fateful night in the year of 2019, and a second grader by the name of Connor was having a sleepover with his friend in the third grade by the name of Justin. Connor suggest the idea that they should watch something on the TV in Justin's living room, and Justin agrees. Connor suggests they should watch a new anime that released recently called Demon Slayer  and turns it on.      Ever since that day Justin has been hooked on the anime, watching every new arc within the week it releases, and with the first movie in the "Infinity Castle Arc" being recently released, he decided that it may just be time to read the manga. Book Blurb:      Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba  follows the story of young Tanjiro Kamado on his journey to turn his demon sister Nezuko Kamado back into a human. Now let give some context: Tanjiro and his family (Kie, Nezuko, Shigeru, ...

The Portrayal of Gaslighting in "The Loneliest Girl in the Universe"

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  Recently, I read a book named The Loneliest Girl in the Universe by Lauren James– a book that explores both interesting and concerning psychological themes that I had never seen in a book before. It was recommended to me by a friend a long time ago, and they eventually checked it out at the library and let me borrow it. I discovered that I still had it (sorry, Stella), and decided to give it a read just from the interesting and bleak title. The story follows Romy Silvers, a teenager living on a space ship bound for a planet that supposedly can support human life. Although the journey is estimated to be insanely long at 23 years, the ship was equipped with cryopod equipment and other emergency supplies that would make it bearable. …All of which no longer work. Romy convinces herself that she doesn't mind– that since it’s all she’s ever known, she should be used to it. That it was for the sake of humanity as a whole. But still, a sense of longing for what she’s never been abl...

Grief and Hope in The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World by Laura Messina

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      The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World by Laura Imai Messina follows the story of Yui who’s grief never left her after she lost her mother and 2 year old daughter to the 2011 tsunami. Set in Japan, this book is based on real events of the March 2011 tsunami. During work at her radio studio, Yui hears about the wind phones used to talk to people's lost loved ones. These phones are disconnected but it is believed the words spoken there will be carried by the wind to their loved ones and help people cope with their losses.  Yui decides to go to the phone booth at Bell Gardia to see if she can find relief there. On her journey there, she meets Takeshi who is also visiting the wind phone. Yui learns that Takeshi lost his wife in the same tsunami and though his daughter survived, she hasn’t spoken a word ever since her mother’s death. When the two of them arrive at Bell Gardia, Takeshi uses the phone booth but Yuri does not. Ever since, the two have started to go t...

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane: A Quick Sweet Story

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The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane is a book about Edward Tulane, a self-absorbed china rabbit who would be extremely offended if you called him a bunny. Edward’s owner, a girl named Abilene, loves him and dresses him every morning. It was Abilene’s grandmother, Pellegrina, who had him made and ordered all his fancy clothes. Near the beginning of the book, when Ablilene’s family has decided they will go to London on a ship called the Queen Mary, Pellegrina tells Abilene and Edward a story. It’s about a princess who doesn't care about anyone but herself and gets turned into a warthog and eaten. While Pellegrina is telling the story, she looks at Edward, and at the end of it, she whispers to him, “You disappoint me.” Edward just thinks the story was stupid and pointless. The Tulane family packs up and gets on the ship to London. *SPOILER* On the ship, two boys take Edward and toss him around and he gets thrown overboard. Edward gets passed around from place to place over many y...

"The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn't a Guy at All" on Sincerity and Annoyingly Long Titles

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  This week, I finally had the chance to read a book I've heard so much about for years— named The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn't a Guy at All — that I have been begged to read. I've read enough manga and comic books to know that their general style is not usually something that catches my eye, as often they're quite fast-paced and tend to have many cliches, but I found this book to be very different from those I have already read. In The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn't a Guy at All , the name is quite self explanatory. It follows Mitsuki Koga and Aya Osawa— two high school students with very different lives. Mitsuki Koga is a quiet, anxious introvert who isn't particularly good at social interaction at school, but helps her uncle run a music shop that acts like her safe haven. Aya Osawa is outspoken and loud in her interests, even when her friends find her weird for it. Despite the two not seeming to have anything in common at first, that changes when Aya, b...