The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken

Genre- Science fiction, fantasy, action, dystopian

“He’s so busy looking inside people to find the good that he misses the knife they’re holding in their hand.”- Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds.

Written by Alexandra Bracken, an American New York Times bestselling author, “The Darkest Minds” is a unique book which will captivate you in a world brimming with fantasy, action and thrill. Alexandra Bracken has skillfully woven together words to create scenes of suspense and tension, where hurricanes of emotions are going to rip out of you.

The book takes place in a futuristic United States of America, where a disease known as IAAN - “Idiopathic Adolescent Acute Neurodegeneration” - grows rampant in the bodies of ten-year-old children, killing them or leaving them with supernatural powers. Soon enough, ninety-eight percent of children are dead, while the remaining are sent off to rehabilitation camps, where they live under torture and terror, a place where every wrong action is punished. In the camps, the mutated are split  into categories and, among these, the most dangerous (the “oranges”, “reds” and “yellows”), are taken away and never seen again.

On her tenth birthday, Ruby - the main character - is taken away from her parents  by the government army, after she accidentally unleashes her powers of mind manipulation caused by the IAAN disease. However, due to some flaws in the government control system, Ruby escapes her fate of death as an “orange” and lives her life in a rehabilitation camp. When she turns sixteen,  an association of rebels called the “Children’s League” help Ruby escape from the camp. After their successful escape, she ends up with a group of runaway children, as they set off into the country in search for the “Slip Kid”, a child who is said to be able to help them find their parents. But is the “Slip Kid” really who they think he is…?

If you like action-packed dystopian novels where every page results in twists and turns, this is the book for you. I thoroughly enjoyed this page-turner and would recommend it to 12+’s in search for a book which will captivate them from the start to the finish. Furthermore, the story is well written and provides the reader with a strong moral on friendship: true friends stick together in times of need, true friends help each other, true friends allow each other to hope.

“Maybe nothing will ever change us,” he said. “But don’t you want to be around just in case it does?” Alexandra Bracken- Darkest Minds

Reviewed by Marta

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The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman by Denis Thériault

Mesmerised by every loop and every curve; every word, of the letters stacked up high on his desk every night. Letters that didn't really belong to him, but words that felt so close to home he could hardly tell what reality was anymore. Stolen during his morning routine of sorting through the post, saved for his bedtime story, only to be steamed shut and delivered as though nothing had happened, during the next round of morning post.

Trapped in the thoughts of people he would never meet, Bilodo becomes entangled and dangerously fascinated with the conversation between one long distance couple, spoken through the beautiful art of haiku. He lives through their lyrics, feasts on their words. Curiosity churns to chaos, boredom bordering on obsession.

This unsettling yet charming story about love and loneliness, is quite unlike anything I have read before, and whose unusual characters and brilliantly addictive plot still continue to reside in the rooms of my mind.

Reviewed by Vindhya Kathuria

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Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Meltdown by Jeff Kinney

This book is the 13th book in the magnificent Wimpy Kid series about Greg Heffley and his family. It is about when it snows so much that there is no school and there is a war with snowball fights and big battles between the lower part of Surrey Street and the top of the hill where Greg lives.  

It is super strange that at the beginning of the book it is scorching hot and it is in winter. Later during the war there is a lot of snow. I couldn't believe that Gary the weather forecast guy still kept his job because every single time he got the forecast wrong. Crazily once he said it was going to be sunny weather and it actually snowed three inches.

What was quite cool is they described the goat man who lived in the woods. He was scary but we never saw him. 

I liked the bit when Greg and his two brothers got a blanket for Christmas. They all wanted it at once, so they had to make a blanket schedule to say when everyone could have the blanket. At first I thought it meant Manny, Greg's younger brother would get the blanket the whole time.

At the start of the book it was so hot they were told at school not to wear shoes inside and then they started playing with their socks. It was funny that every one was playing around with their socks so the socks got put in a box.

It is a really good book and I have already read it two times.

Reviewed by Isaac (Aged 8)

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From the Corner of the Oval Office by Beck Dorey-Stein

You know when you tell yourself you're only going to read one last chapter, yeah... let's just say that didn't quite end up happening. One turned to two turned to four turned to the end turned to what on earth do I do know? From the Corner of the Oval Office, is an incredibly compulsive and fascinating story about one women's accidental career in the Obama White House. Time zones, heartbreak, friendships, glamour and gossip, stuffed into suitcases and unpacked across the world in countless hotel rooms, world leader summits, and bars.

Beck Dorey-Stein offers an intriguing and sometimes painfully embarrassing account of what it was like to work as a stenographer for the Obama administration, all thanks to one suspiciously vague craigslist ad that she randomly stumbled upon in her slumber of unemployment. The West Wing, Oval Office and Air Force One become more than just a fancy name she's heard and turn into a jetlagged, luxurious, crazy chaotic reality, where running alongside president Obama on a treadmill, in various hotel gyms around the world is apparently a thing.

This captivating, hilarious and dangerously addictive memoir, will have you screaming yes we can at the top of your lungs, and will be one you simply cannot put down.  

Reviewed by Vindhya Kathuria

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