The Running Bibliophile

Identical twins Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield are auditioning for the lead role / solo in their dance recital. Elizabeth doesn't want to compete against her twin. Jessica knows she is the best dancer. The only problem is their ballet teacher never notices her because Elizabeth is teacher's pet. Who will land the lead role?
Teacher's Pet (Sweet Valley Twins, #2) is told mainly from the view point of Jessica Wakefield, and we get to see her personality more in depth than we did in the first book of the series, Best Friends. Jessica's prominent personality trait is that she is selfish and that is carried throughout the entire series. With that being said, I totally empathized with her in the scenario of the book. Spoiler Alert:  Elizabeth lands the lead role in the dance recital even though she doesn't dance nearly as well as Jessica does. With that being said, Jessica was a prima donna in their first ballet class, and Madame Andre holds that against her.
Who hasn…

Identical twins Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield are twelve years old and do everything together from sharing a bedroom to dressing alike and even doing the same things after school. When they start Sweet Valley Middle School, Elizabeth and Jessica realize that their lives are changing. Elizabeth wants to work on the sixth grade newspaper aptly named The Sixers, and Jessica is eager to join the Unicorn Club, a snobby club of the most popular girls. Will they continue to do everything together or begin to explore their individuality?
In elementary school, I so desperately wanted to win the Book It Program sponsored by Pizza Hut, but I found chapter books so boring. Every book my teacher recommended was so tedious that I found myself struggling to finish. I never made it to the minimum amount of books required to win a personal pizza from Pizza Hut through their reading program because books just weren't holding my interest. 
Around age 10, my mom and I stopped at a garage sale on t…

A serial killer is preying on young women in Norfolk. Moments before dying, a woman  appears on the roadway with a small dog. When all is said and done, the victims are found with their own hair stuffed in their mouths. The killings have becoming more frequent since the first death fifteen months ago. The serial killer has been dubbed The Whistler. Police Commander Adam Dalgliesh arrives in Norfolk on holiday to stay in a converted windmill that was left to him by his late aunt. Dalgliesh only becomes involved in the case when he discovers a strangled body that turns out to be the acting administrator of an atomic power station.
Devices and Desires by P.D. James is not a book I would've probably picked up to read on my own. However, I enrolled in a 20th Century World Literature class at my university, and we had 8 books that were required reading for the eight week course. Devices and Desires was one of those on the list, and I was excited to read it because I heard good things ab…

After video footage reveals that there is life outside the city limits, the social system is in chaos with the factions disintegrating. Tris, Tobias, and their friends are on a mission to find out what life is like outside of their city. Soon, they find themselves at a government agency where they find out that their lives have been a lie as the government has been experimenting with everyone living within Chicago.
Picking up almost immediately where Insurgent left off, I was happy that all the books in the series were already published when I began so I didn't have long to find out what happened in the concluding book of the Divergent Trilogy. Unfortunately for me, as I was reading Allegiant, a big plot point was revealed to me, and it made me unhappy for a couple of reasons. Why would someone ruin the ending of a book for another person when they know you're still reading it? Hearing this information almost made me not want to finish the book. However, I wanted to read it f…

Choices have consequences . . . the factions are in unrest and with war looming, Tris, Four, and several others are seeking shelter with the Amity faction. When Erudite and Dauntless factions arrive looking for refugees, traitors in their eyes, they know they must move on and join forces with the factionless  only to find out some surprising news.
Insurgent by Veronica Roth took me only six days to read, and where I loved the sequel, I didn't enjoy it as much as I enjoyed its predecessor, Divergent. It doesn't really surprise me that I felt this way because it seems to be a pattern with me and sequels . . . I was let down by New Moon by Stephenie Meyer and Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins. 
The reason that I didn't enjoy Insurgent as much was that there were a few places that were a bit slow. Another reason, and I can't believe I'm going to say this, is that as much as I love romance to contribute to a story, I don't want it to take away from the story, and I f…

Chicago, Illinois, is a city that has become its own dystopian world which has divided society into five different factions based on a particular virtue: Honesty (Candor), Selfless (Abnegation), Bravery (Dauntless), Peaceful (Amity), and Intelligence (Erudite). Each year, those factions come together for a ceremony where all the sixteen year olds must choose which faction they want to live in for the rest of their lives. To help them make this decision, they all take a test prior to the ceremony that tells them which virtue is their best one, but despite what the results show, the choice is still theirs to make. Beatrice Prior learns a deadly secret about herself during testing and surprises everyone with her faction choice. During the initiation, she renames herself Tris and struggles along, not really knowing who her true friends are. Does she keep her secret and survive the initiation?
A few years ago, it seemed like all anyone (kids and adults alike) could talk about were a few yo…