Karla's Reviews

Saving Francesca
By Melissa Marchetta

Francesca is beginning year 11 for the first time at St. Sebastian's, an all-boys school that recently went co-ed. This is at the wishes of her energetic mother, Mia, who wants Francesca to get away from the negative influence of a cliquey group of girls at her old school. At St. Sebastian's, there are 30 girls in a school of 750 boys; Francesca describes it like "either living in a fishbowl or like you don't exist." This is enough of a challenge to be facing, but then her charismatic mother is basically incapacitated by acute depression. Suddenly, everything is falling apart at home, and school is a challenge.

Francesca finds herself trying to cope at home while fighting for rights as a girl in an all-boy school, falling for William Trombel (a rather full of himself year 12 house leader), becoming friends with an unlikely group of girls and boys, and finding out who she is in this new and difficult growing experience.


The Year of Secret Assignments
By Jaclyn Moriarty


Best friends Lydia, Emily, and Cassie have been assigned to write to male pen pals from their rival school for English class. Told entirely in letters, lists, e-mails and other written forms of communication, we see how the relationships between each pair evolve and grow into friendship and then romance. Cassie ends up with a hostile pen pal who plays a cruel trick on her. This causes the five students to come together to teach her pen pal a lesson. Good read for younger teens.

~ Karla Giraldéz, BCL- Southwest