Ms Rush Reads

copyright date: February 2012 primarily marketed for: (a mature) 12 and up Ever wonder what becomes of the broken hearted?   Read the Catastrophic History of You and Me by Jess Rothenberg to find out.   Aubrie, or Brie as she referred to by friends, heard the words she never wanted to hear from her boyfriend: I don’t love you.   Moments later she was dead.   Her heart had literally split in two.   She died of acute broken heart syndrome.   Her story picks up after Brie’s death and follows her journey towards acceptance and, ultimately, peace.   Along the way, she meets a host of interesting characters—including Patrick, her sarcastic guide, who looks like he is ready to attend a costume party dressed as Tom Cruise from Top Gun .   Brie also learns more than she ever thought she might about her family, her ex-boyfriend and the best friends she left behind.   She even discovers she might not be the Brie she always thought she was.     In addition to an intr

copyright date: May 2012 primarily marketed for: young adults (12 and up) This is Geoff Herbach 's sequel to Stupid Fast and continues Felton Reinstein’s story in true Felton fashion.   This is definitely a smart guy book—a book for smart guys, who definitely love a good chuckle. The story opens at the end of summer with Felton typing a letter to his girlfriend Aleah while flying in an airplane on his way to retrieve his younger brother from Florida.   The entire book is written as one giant letter to Aleah explaining how his summer led him to this moment in time.   After Felton and his brother Andrew got some help with their mother’s issues, Felton went right back to throwing himself into football and track—because he is stupid fast.   However, Andrew did not cope quite as well as Felton did.   Felton ignores his brother’s cries for help and continuously lets him down.   His brother ends up cooking up an elaborate plan to run away.   When Felton reali

copyright date: June 2011 primarily marketed for: young adults (12 and up) Imagine waking up every day without a memory of the previous day.   Imagine relying on notes you write to yourself to keep track of the life you are living.   Imagine being able to remember the future, but not the past.   Imagine you are London Lane in Cat Patrick's Forgotten . Every night when London Lane goes to sleep, her memory of the day is wiped clear.   Because she is able to remember the future, she has a loyal best friend Jamie (which she knows without a doubt because they are still friends in her memories of the future).   However, Jamie’s current choices are having a negative impact on her future and London begins to test whether or not she can make an impact on or even completely change future events.   When she meets an attractive new student named Luke, she is unable to remember him from day to day since he is not in her future memories.   Despite her lack of a futu

copyright date: January 2012 primarily marketed for: young adult (13 and up) Ana is a newsoul.   She is born into a world where every other human body is inhabited by a soul that has lived thousands of years.   Ana’s community, a town called Heart, does not welcome her into their world.   To the rest of the population, Ana, or as they refer to her: a nosoul, represents fear of the unknown.   The timing of her birth coincided with the disappearance of a beloved soul named Cienna.   The rest of the souls fear her birth means the beginning of a series of “replacements,” and they hold it against Ana. Ana ends up spending approximately the first 18 years of her life in a cottage outside of the village with her abusive and controlling mother.   Her father fled Heart upon her birth.   Incarnate by Jodi Meadows begins when Ana is ready to leave her mother’s home to travel back to Heart in search of answers.   She wants to know why she was born a

copyright date: May 2012 primarily marketed for:  young adults (14 and up) I could probably start and end this review with: THIS IS THE SEQUEL TO DIVERGENT by Veronica Roth, because if you read Divergent , of course you want to read this next installment in the trilogy.  The sequel to Divergent is out.  Enough said.  Now you want to read it.   But I just can’t read a book this good without, well, blogging about it! I read LOTS of books between the moment I finished Divergent and the moment I got my hands on Insurgent.   However, it only took seconds for the details of the first book to come flooding back to me as I read the sequel.  Plus, Roth included helpful reminders about key character points (and there are a lot of characters to keep track of) to make catching up even easier.  In fact, other than a temporary (but crucial) mix-up between the characters of Johanna and Jeanine, I had no trouble keeping everybody straight! The best parts of this book were t

copyright date:   October 2011 primarily marketed for: young adults (high school) Everybody Sees the Ants by A. S. King is unlike anything else I have ever read.   Lucky’s story has lingered in my mind long after I put the book down.   {The ants cheer.} Lucky Linderman has been ruthlessly bullied by Nader McMillan since second grade.   Needless to say, high school is not a pleasant experience for him.   His mother is a squid; she swims laps to escape reality.   His father is a turtle; he works long hours at his restaurant to escape reality.     His grandfather fought in the Vietnam War and never returned.   He is officially listed as Prisoner of War/Missing in Action.   When Lucky’s grandmother died, she charged him with the duty of continuing the search for his missing grandfather.   The book covers a summer in Lucky’s life when the bullying reaches a point where it can no longer be ignored, the coolness between his parents is about to ice

copyright date: February 2011 primarily marketed for: intermediate readers (grades 4-6) Love, Aubrey by Suzanne LeFleur is nominated for the 2013 Rebecca Caudill Young Readers’ Book Award in the state of Illinois.  I can see why.  This is one of those stories that is good for the soul, and the craft employed to tell it is just as nourishing.  At the start of the book, Aubrey is home alone.  She keeps referring to her mother as if she will be coming home.  However, it doesn’t take long for readers to figure out that her mother is not coming back.  At first, Aubrey tries to hide her mother’s disappearance in an effort to protect her.  Eventually, though, she is discovered and is taken to live to with her grandmother while her mother is located.  Life with Aubrey’s grandmother is not smooth sailing for Aubrey.  She is still mourning the loss of her younger sister and her father in a car accident.  She needs her absent mother.  Luckily, Aubrey’s grandmother is on