Katie Be Quiet (Darcy Tamayose)

Katie has a lot going on in her life right now- her dad just died and she just moved to a new town. She does not have enough time to worry about her Mom's French co- workers and a school bully.

When her dad dies, she begins to hear a voice telling her Katie be quiet. What she does not know about this voice could kill her...
In school, Katie is starting a new English project about the deaths of people, so she is doing one on her dad. Her new friends are doing projects on un -solved police mystery too.

The strangest thing about Katie and her friends projects are all of the people's deaths always include tea, but none of them have anything in common besides that...So they think...

Katie’s' father was a piano composer. Because of this, Katie's mom does not like her playing her father’s piano, so she find's away to practice without her mother’s knowledge...
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This book was a very, very bad mystery book.

I get what the author was trying to do- use all of the literacy devises. But she did not connect them well, which made the plot not really make any sense.

In my opinion, all books should have one vocal point- characterization, conflict, suspense, emotional setting, or another literacy devise- and all the others should support the main one. The vocal point should also be done very well and should have some kind of conclusion to it.

This book seemed to try and have all of them an equal amount, and, for the most part, they were all done decently. But none of them had a conclusion or something to make your heart go racing or have some emotional effect to the characters. This book had none.

However, it was still fairly ok because it had a good, strong, idea for a plot, it just was not developed.

2.5 out of 5 stars

Princess in Waiting (Meg Cabot)

With Mia in Genovia, anything could be going on in New York, but the one thing she is most afraid of is her boyfriend, who is in Florida for Winter break, will meet a talented, attractive girl.

Mia's Grandmother, the Queen, has big plans for Mia to attend the black and white ball. But it’s on Friday night, which is Mia and Michael's first ever date. But Mia's grandmother doesn’t care about Mia's "puppy love"

But what Mia's grandmother doesn’t understand is it’s not puppy love when Mia has been in love with him for half of her life.

The second semester of school is starting and Mia is terrified she will not be in G&T (gifted and talented) anymore because she is now passing Algebra and she has no gifts or talents.

It seems like this amazing start to a semester could be ruined.
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This book was so repetitive; the whole entire plot was incredibly boring 'cause nothing happened! The book was probably called 'princess in waiting" because everyone was waiting for something to happen.

However, no matter how boring the plot was, the characterization was very good and very well played out. But at the same time, I knew what the characters were going to say and do because the author developed them already so well in the books before. She really needs a new focus for her books, no matter how well she does characterization.

The one thing I liked about this one was how realistic it was. I believe about half of the kids in my ninth grade Socials and Math class feel the same way about their first love's that Mia feels about hers.

3.25 out of 5 stars