Black Canary: Breaking Silence (DC Icons #5) by Alexandra Monir

 Dinah Lance lives in Gotham City, but after all the superheroes have disappeared.  She lives with her dad (who is a policeman), as her mom has already passed away in a car accident.  It is a type of dystopian society, where girls are the underdogs.  They can't sing, they have to dress a certain way, behave a certain way and pretty much have no rights.  Dinah LOVES music and she has heard that there is a vault in the Opera House that might have recordings of female singers!  She enlists her friends Mandy and Ty and they set off to break in, but are interrupted by a Talon, who is there to protect the Opera House.  As Dinah is fighting off the Talon, her dad shows up and intervenes for her and makes a deal to work with the Court of Owls (government).  As she meets a new student, Oliver Queen, and gets required to attend a citywide ball with him, things start to take a turn as the resistance crashes the party and people are injured and killed.  After she meets Barbara Gordon and learns her mom's secret.  She was the Black Canary and had a Canary Cry that she used as a weapon.  Dinah learns she is able to use singing to have superhuman hearing and  that Oliver also has a secret weapon.  Dinah, Oliver, and a few more begin to fight back against the system that holds them down.  

I'm not a big fan of superhero type stuff, but this book was a pretty fun read.  I had never heard of the Black Canary, so it was interesting to learn about another superhero in Gotham City.  Dinah is a strong female character and learns to stand up for herself.  

An excerpt from the book:  https://www.teachingbooks.net/qlef82d

The Middler by Kirsty Applebaum

Jed is the eldest, Maggie is the middle and Trig is the youngest.  Maggie always feels like she is the worst.  Jed gets all the privileges just for being the oldest.  Their community sends the eldest off to camp to prepare for war when they turn 14.  Jed and Lindi are heading off soon. In school they've been taught that "wanderers" are dirty, dangerous and deceitful.  The Mayor has also informed them they are nearby and to report if they find any.  Maggie encounters a girl in the woods who happens to be a wanderer and decides if she can  "catch" her she will be a hero just like Jed.  What she finds out though is that things are not always what they seem.

Great dystopian for middle grades.   It was a little slow at first, but soon built up speed and then I couldn't put it down.  

Keystone by Katie Delahraty

Set in the way future of the USA, Ella is an Influencer. She is also “dead”. She has been recruited by the disconnects to be a thief. She learns the trade quickly and moves to the head of the class, right behind Garrett. As they partner up to pull off a heist, she can’t decide what is real and what is fake with him. Then she has an encounter with a guy from her past who she thought was dead. Will he blow her cover? Will they succeed in their heist or will they be caught and jailed?

Lots of twists and turns. Slow beginning, picks up toward the last 1/3 of the book.

Arc of a Scythe by Neal Shusterman

Over Christmas Break I have spent time rereading Scythe and Thunderhead in preparation for reading The Toll.  I also realized I had not blogged about either of them so....

In Scythe, Citra Terranova and Rowan Damisch have been approached by Honorable Scythe Michael Faraday to become an apprentice to him.  Scythes are to help keep the population in check.  They have a quota to "glean" each year and should be compassionate about their gleaning.  Faraday will train them in the the art of killcraft and ethics to prove which should become a scythe.  Only one will be able to be one.  The council pits them against each other and then Faraday self-gleans. They are then assigned to new scythes for apprentices. Rowan's is pretty much a pyschopath and Citra is assigned to a more compassionate scythe.  I could go into way more, but just read it.  You won't be sorry.

Thunderhead....

spoilers ahead

Citra is now Scythe Anastasia and Rowan has gone off grid as Scythe Lucifer.  The cloud of conscience the Thunderhead is not allowed in scythe business, but he finds loopholes to help Citra and Scythe Curie to survive.  There are a lot of moving pieces in this one.  We are introduced to Greyson Tolliver, who the Thunderhead is trying to work though and find things out about the scythedom without breaking his laws/ vows.  He makes him unsavory so that he can communicate with him through a Nimbus agent, but be "removed" from his unsavory persona of Slayd.  Scythe Rand and Scythe Goddard show back up and topple the MidMerica conclave by vying for the High Blade position.  As Citra cries for an inquest, she puts herself and Scythe Curie in a predicament they may not recover from....

The Toll....

Spoilers ahead

you sure you want to keep scrolling????

I will say this last book, although intense, and a good closure, seemed to kind of wander around.  It tries to cover three years since we last saw Rowan and Citra, but it bounces around so much I sometimes had trouble keeping up with where the time was.  Was it right after Endura?  Was it before Endura?  Was it three years later?  It took a lot of thinking....and inferring.  In The Toll, Greyson is back and now the only one the Thunderhead is talking to.  He is living with the Tonists that he previously stayed with and has become like a god.  People come to get advice from him, which of course is coming from the Thunderhead.  Goddard has taken over pretty much all of North Merica's scythedoms, except for Texas :)  Ayn realizes she misses Tyger and wonders if she made a mistake bringing Goddard back (duh).  Citra and Rowan are found at the bottom of the ocean and brought to Amazonia in secret, of course secrets don't last forever and soon Citra is on the run and Rowan is captured to be gleaned by Goddard.  Lots of twists and turns and parts that are not revealed until near the end.  Maybe you'll catch on quicker than I did though. LOVE THE SERIES.  HIGHLY recommend.  Last book I would definitely say is 8th and up for a few inferences in the physical way and a few strong language use.  

Uninvited by Sophie Jordan

I could not put this down!!  In the future they are testing for HTS (Homicidal Tendency Syndrome) and Davy has been tested and her DNA shows she has the gene.  She is "uninvited" from her private school, her boyfriend and best friend sabotage her and  she is sent to public school but separated from the students with other kids that have HTS.  There she meets Sean who not only has HTS, but he has been imprinted with a tattoo on his neck with an H from some infraction.  Davy ends up with one on her neck as well from the sabotage and  then as things escalate in the nation from mass murders all carriers of HTS are sent to  "camps" for the general public's safety.  Davy, however, has been chosen to go to a training facility.  She is able to get Sean chosen as well and her classmate Gil.  The HTS carriers there are being trained to control their emotions, perfect their gifts and to kill.  Sean and Gil decide to make a plan to escape and try to cross the border to Mexico.  You will not want to miss this!

8th grade and up.

Book Trailer

WildCard by Marie Lu

Coming in September 2018.

This is the sequel to Warcross.  Emika has caused a stir within the Warcross community and now she has been recruited by Zero to hack into Hideo's mind to steal his program to be able to control people.  Emika still has feelings for Hideo, but they are in the middle of a conflict because of their difference of opinion about his algorithm.  Will she betray the man she loves to do what she feels is right or will she find another way to help Hideo and herself?  Keeps you guessing to the end.

Warcross by Marie Lu

WOW!!!  Emika Chen is 18 years old, an orphan, bounty hunter and about to get evicted from her house.  She puts on her virtual reality glasses to watch the opening ceremony of the War Cross competition and decides to hack it and ends up in the game.  She gets the attention of the creator Hideo Tanaka and things go crazy...her debt is paid off and she is offered a job to go in the game and find a hacker who is trying to destroy the game.  As she trains for the game and immerses herself deeper into the competition she begins to become the target herself.  She starts to wonder who she can really trust...

Young ADULT themes.  8th and up only. :)

New Series - Book 1 The Reader

Sefia lives her life on the run. After her father is viciously murdered, she flees to the forest with her aunt Nin, the only person left she can trust. They survive in the wilderness together, hunting and stealing what they need, forever looking over their shoulders for new threats. But when Nin is kidnapped, Sefia is suddenly on her own, with no way to know who’s taken Nin or where she is. Her only clue is a strange rectangular object that once belonged to her father left behind, something she comes to realize is a book.

Though reading is unheard of in Sefia’s world, she slowly learns, unearthing the book’s closely guarded secrets, which may be the key to Nin’s disappearance and discovering what really happened the day her father was killed. With no time to lose, and the unexpected help of swashbuckling pirates and an enigmatic stranger, Sefia sets out on a dangerous journey to rescue her aunt, using the book as her guide. In the end, she discovers what the book had been trying to tell her all along: Nothing is as it seems, and the end of her story is only the beginning.

Chee, T. (2016). The Reader (Sea of Ink and Gold). Putnam and Sons.