More Than We Can Tell
by Brigid Kemmerer
More Than We Can Tell by Brigid Kemmerer introduces readers to two of her main characters, Rev Fletcher and Emma Blue. Rev is overcoming his tragic, abusive past with the help of his adoptive parents. Everything is going well until he receives a letter from his abusive birth father. All of the recovery that he’s been working through goes down the drain all of because of the contents in this letter. Without telling his new parents, Rev struggles and battles through this life on his alone. At least for the most part.
Emma Blue is a young genius creating and designing video games that thousands of people begin playing. Because she’s a girl playing and making the video game, not all of the boys online are friendly to her. On top of all of the arguing she has to face daily online, she has to be there to see her mom and dad's marriage slowly dissolve into an arguing mess all of the time. They don’t realize it, but their fighting really hurts Emma. When Rev and Emma meet unexpectedly, the both instantly begin to spill their life troubles to each other. It makes the reader feel like they have known each other for years. Their friendship is really tested throughout the novel, seeing if their friendship can overcome the challenging obstacles life is throwing their way.
The 416 page novel by Brigid Kemmerer is an emotional, loveable story to read. Because I enjoyed the novel so much, I am giving it a rating of 5 out of 5 stars. Kemmerer did a good job of keeping me, the reader, engaged in this well-written story!
Title: More Than We Can Tell
Author: Brigid Kemmerer
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Release Date: March 6, 2018
Review by: Kiley R.
The Edge of Everything
by Jeff Giles
Some say that they’d do anything for love which Zoe, a small town Montana girl, never thought she’d have to prove. The recently published novel, The Edge of Everything, by Jeff Giles is compassionately strange, exuberantly witty, and unabashedly romantic. In its first few moments of the novel, a possibly deadly blizzard approaches Zoe’s hometown. As her mother runs out on an errand, Zoe takes care of her kid brother, Jonah. Her first mistake was letting him out in the cold before the storm to play with the dogs. In a turn of events, Zoe is thrown into panic to find her brother. What comes next was drastic. A criminal who killed two family friends is back, and the one thing keeping them safe is a young man, whom Zoe names X. By the time the next sunrise breaks the horizon, Zoe has quite a story to tell. That agent is X, a man who committed no crime, yet lives his life out in underworld servitude. When Zoe stops him from reaping her attacker, it sets off a chain of events that leads to first love, terrible peril, and maybe X’s salvation—though it won’t come easy.
I had been in a reading slump for a couple weeks, so when I saw The Edge of Everything on the release list, I knew I had finally found something that interesting. I had never heard of Jeff Giles before, but I was pleasantly surprised. His extremely descriptive settings and amazing use of “show not tell” with characters left me with a clear image in my head. There was also constantly something going on. That being said, this was the perfect thing to get me out of my reading slump. My favorite character is X. X was very selfless and defensive. He would do anything for Zoe or her family. In fact, even when he was healing from a past incident in the beginning of the novel, he watched over Zoe’s family. He never gave up on her.
As a fluent reader, I thought it was a very entertaining book. It was serious, action packed, and had a bit of romance. I never was bored and never wanted to put the book down!
In all, I highly recommend The Edge of Everything by Jeff Giles.
Review by Laney J.
