Ms Rush Reads

copyright date: November 2011 primarily marketed for:   young adults (12 and up) I finally, reluctantly picked this book up after hearing lots of talk about how awesome it is.  I have to admit, I just couldn’t believe that ANOTHER post-apocalyptic-book-for-the-fans-of- Hunger-Games could really be that good.  Well, let me tell you, Legend by Marie Lu is really that good.  I think I might even like this one a little bit better than Divergent by Veronica Roth. Legend is told in alternating viewpoints and follows two protagonists: June and Day. June is one of the elite.  She is following in the footsteps of her esteemed older brother Metias by working her way up the military ranks with the speed only a prodigy could manage.  She is fully determined to do whatever it takes to defend the Republic’s honor.  Day is the Republic’s most wanted criminal.  He is a devious mastermind, but is driven by a love for his family and ...

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 stra...

copyright date: November 2011 primarily marketed for: young adults (14 and up) This book was a gift to me from Mrs. Wisniewski.  If you know Mrs. Wisniewski, you know that means it is going to be Good (notice the capital ‘G’).   When the story opens, Juliette is imprisoned.  She has not touched or spoken to anyone in 264 days.  The story starts inside of this isolation.  She has been locked up because she touched someone.  And her touch is lethal.  The story picks up when someone is thrown into the cell with her (and her deadly touch).  She remembers him from her life before.  Before she used her touch to kill someone.  She knew Adam when they were kids, before the world destroyed itself, but he doesn’t seem to remember her. Soon, Juliette is released from the darkness of her prison only to be imprisoned by a dangerous leader who wants to use her touch as if it is his own power to advance himself politically. While Juliette...

copyright date: September 2011 primarily marketed for: young adults (8 th grade and up) I wish I would’ve known this was the beginning of a series before I started this book.   Then again, I might never have picked it up if I thought I might be committing to multiple books… At any rate, this is not a story I will be sad to return to this fall when the sequel is released.   Anya’s story takes place in New York City, in the future.   Around the time you will be old enough to be grandparents. This is a sort of post-apocalyptic, dystopian kind of book in a mild way.   Basically, the United States has self-destructed, and yet life seems to go surprisingly similar to the way we live nowadays.   Except that water and paper are costly and hard to come by.   Chocolate is prohibited.   Caffeine is an illegal drug.   Which is all to say that the setting alone is intriguing. Add to that setting, the fact that Anya is the oldest daughter of the ...

copyright date: May 2011 primarily marketed for: teens (14 and up) I kept hearing hype about this book,   “If you liked The Hunger Games , you will like Divergent. ”   I was skeptical.   No book can come close to the power of Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games, which I think is the perfect mix of every genre AND is well crafted.   So, I did not have my hopes up with Divergent.   Okay, maybe I was a little hopeful.   I was resistant at the beginning.   The voice in my head said, “This is a rip off.   This is just like when everyone started reading other vampire books because they liked Twilight.   As if the best thing about Twilight were the vampires.   Puh-lease.   This is just another post-apocalyptic novel some publisher knew would sell.” The voice in my head can be rather harsh sometimes. By the middle of the book the voice in my head was too focused on the characters and plot of Divergent to question anything else. ...

copyright date: Sept. 2011 primarily marketed for: 5 th grade and up The Only Ones is a post-apocalyptic story where all adults mysteriously vanish from the earth and a small group of kids seem to be left behind.   Martin Maple, the protagonist, is a young boy who was odd prior to the apocalyptic disappearance of adults from the earth.    His mother had disappeared about the same time he was born and his father, though he cared for Martin, was not very nurturing.   Until the mysterious vanishing of adults, Martin and his father lived a very secluded life on an island.   Martin was discouraged from talking to anyone for fear other people will find out about the machine Mr. Maple was building.   After the disappearance of the adults, Martin ventures to the mainland and meets up with other kids who were left behind.   The story that ensues is reminiscent of Lord of the Flies by William Golding, including plays for power, manipulation, viole...