Category: Book Reviews

Scar Island is an engrossing story of a boy named Jonathan Grisby who is sent to  Slabhenge Reformatory School for Troubled Boys. Slabhenge is an ancient building in the middle of the ocean on its own island, and the only way in or out is by boat. Jonathan thinks that he deserves living in this crumbling fortress because of what he did in his past.

All of the kids hate the place, but when a freak accident occurs, leaving the entire island entirely unsupervised by adults they all choose to stay and have the entire island all to themselves. What they don’t realize is that without adults, they might be in terrible danger.

I decided to read this book because I had read The Honest Truth, which is also by Dan Gemeinhart, and I really enjoyed it. When I went to the library and saw Scar Island on the shelf, I thought, Why not? I got home and started to read. I finished one chapter… then another… and another, until I finished the entire book! Scar Island was so good that I just couldn’t put it down.

I would recommend this book to anyone who likes realistic fiction or adventure books. I hope you’ll take my advice and read Scar Island by Dan Gemeinhart!

I recently finished the book Scythe and I loved it. Scythe is written by Neal Shusterman and is the first book in the Ark of a Scythe series. It is a dystopian book where there are no problems in the world. No hunger, no disease, no war and not even death. Because of this, the human population would have exploded if it weren’t for scythes. Scythes are the only people in the world who can end someone’s life without having the person revived afterwards.

Citra Terranova and Rowan Damisch are each chosen to be an apprentice to a scythe, but this is a role that neither of them want. They must train hard and learn the “art of killing” while knowing that their own lives could be at stake, should they fail.

This book was recommended to me by my english teacher and I knew, as soon as I saw the front cover, that this would be an amazing book. Also, the first line in the book was: We must, by law, keep a record of the innocents we kill. WOW. I mean, at that point, I was set on reading this book.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes the dystopian or science fiction genres.

After reading this review, do you think you want to read Scythe?