The Running Bibliophile

On My Own (Changes, #10) is part of a teen romance series that is written by various authors, and none of the books in the series have anything to do with one another. This particular book is written by Janet Quin-Harkin, who wrote quite a bit of teen romance books in the 1980's and 1990's. Actually, as a teen, this is the first book I read in the Changes Romance book series, and I absolutely fell in love with the story and read it so much that the front and back cover as well as the spine started to disintegrate. I taped the book up with clear packing tape to keep it from disintegrating further. As an adult, I wonder if the tape has acid in it and will eat away at it.
Rereading On My Own (Changes, #10) as an adult has given me quite a different perspective from the one I had as a teen and even as a young adult. The main character, Jamie Bolding, is dating a guy named Tom Harding, who is a popular baseball player. In the first fifty or so pages, Tom does nothing but pressure J…

Sneaking Out (Sweet Valley Twins, #5), created by Francine Pascal, picks up after the prior book Choosing Sides (Sweet Valley Twins #4). All anyone at Sweet Valley Middle School can talk about is the upcoming Johnny Buck concert. Yet again, Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield's parents believe the twins are too young to go to the concert by themselves. Responsible Elizabeth accepts their decision, but wreck less Jessica will stop at nothing to get her way and attend the concert.
For the most part, I liked this installment of the Sweet Valley Twin series. However, I really disliked how irresponsible Jessica acted all the way around. She takes on a dog sitting job despite being afraid of dogs but pushes the work of on everyone else. On top of that, she sneaks out of the house so she can go to the Johnny Buck concert. It never ceases to amaze me that she never seems to get grounded and that her parents don't see through her antics. I always liked Elizabeth better than Jessica because…

Synopsis of Temptation (The Secret Diaries, #1): From the moment Joanna Rigsby moves to Barton City, North Carolina, she fixates on Penn Parrish and his friends. She desperately wants to date Penn and hang out with his group, so when he randomly asks her to The Bakery one day, she jumps at the chance. She slowly becomes part of their group but notices small oddities that makes her feel like she doesn't quite belong.
As a high school student, I absolutely fell in love with The Secret Diaries trilogy by Janice Harrell, and I'm still in love with it as an adult. I reread this book and the rest of the trilogy every few years. In fact, I've lost count of all the times I've actually read the trilogy. Of all of the young adult books I read as a teen, this would make for a great movie in my opinion.

Something I found interesting when I read it as a teen and as an adult is that when Joanna is at a party, she meets a girl who is very into celebrating the solstice and talks abou…

Growing up, I frequently saw Ted Kennedy on the news, and I knew that a lot of people didn't him, even democrats. I heard people mumble something about Chappaquiddick, but they'd never really expand on it. It wasn't an event that my history or current event classes ever really mentioned either.

For years, I meant to learn more about Ted Kennedy, so when the biography like Ted Kennedy, The Dream That Never Died was published by Crown Publishers in 2009, I bought the book and read it. The author, Edward Klein, made Kennedy's story much more interesting than I thought it would be.
What surprised me most and disliked about Edward Klein's Ted Kennedy:  The Dream That Never Died was the short length . . . only 226 actual pages to tell the story of Kennedy's life. The remaining pages were reference pages and acknowledgements. It seems like a figure from such a famous family deserves a much more in depth look at his life. Another thing I disliked about the book is…

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, #1) by J.K. Rowling was published on June 26, 1997, two days before my birthday. However, with it being a children's book, I didn't hear much buzz about it until it was made into a movie a few years later. As additional books and movies were released, I continued to hear even more chatter from adults about the series and how they loved it. When I finally joined my first two book clubs in 2010, they were absolutely flabbergasted that I hadn't read any of the Harry Potter books. At this point, it was more that I was being stubborn about it and didn't want to jump on the bandwagon. In fact, I jumped on the Twilight bandwagon before reading this series. It wasn't until 2011 before I eventually broke down to read this series, and I read them all one after the other without really reading much else. By the end of the series, I was burnt out on it.
When I first picked up the Harry Potter series, I didn't realize…

Before Twilight, there was The Vampire Diaries and Night World, both series written by the phenomenal L.J. Smith (a.k.a. Lisa Jane Smith). The first book in the Night World series is entitled Secret Vampire and was published in June 1996. 
Sixteen year old Poppy North receives news that she has only months to live. When her best friend, and crush, James Rasmussen visits in the hospital, Poppy sees another side of James when he offers to make her a part of the Night World and leave her loved ones behind.
Secret Vampire (Night World, #1) was my first introduction to books on the topic of vampires when I was a teenager. I still have yet to read Dracula or Interview with a Vampire. Although, I have seen the movie of the latter many times. I recently picked up the book for a reread as I hadn't read it since I was a teen and couldn't remember much about it.
What I loved about Secret Vampire (Night World, #1) is that it deals with a serious life and death situation and choices. I won…

Synopsis of The Host by Stephenie Meyer, author of the Twilight saga:  Earth is being taken over by a species (souls) of another planet. The souls are inserted at the base of human skulls and take over their hosts minds while keeping the bodies intact. The purpose of the invasion is to keep humans from destroying the planet Earth. In fact, Earth isn't the first planet they've invaded; there have been many others. What isn't expected is when Wanderer has been given the body of a girl named Melanie, her host refuses to give up her thoughts and body. When Melanie fills Wanderer's mind with thoughts and visions of Jared, they both fall in love with him and set out to find him and other "wild" humans.
Stephenie Meyer published The Host in May 2008 just a few months before the final installment of her Twilight saga. I wasn't aware that this particular book came out before Breaking Dawn until now. I had assumed she wrote it after and should know better to do th…