Betrayed by P.C Cast & Kristin Cast

I have read a book called Betrayed. It is the second book in a series of 9 books. The series is called House of night and this book was published 2007.
P.C Cast and her daughter Kristin Cast are the authors of the book.
I think it is a fantasy book, because vampires are not a real thing.

The book is in present time.
Tulsa is the city where the story took place. In this city there is a school, for fledgling vampires, called House of night. The fledglings live at the school and once a month their parents can come and visit their children.
At the school there is a group called the dark daughter and sons. This group has a leader, and in this book, it is Zoey. The leader in this group is going to have a ritual. I don´t understand why, but I think they try to connect with the goddess, Nyx. Nyx gave a few fledglings special powers and Zoey has been blessed with unusual powers. She has the power of spirit. After a while she noticed that she can see things, sometimes, that has not happened yet.
When Zoey was an ordinary teenager she had friends from the football team, and she was together with a boy called Heath.
After a while in school, teenagers from the football team start to disappear, and all the evidence points at the House of Night.
A time before the teenagers were missing, Zoey´s favorite teacher, Nefret, had a suspicious behaviour. So when teenagers start to disappear, Zoey started to suspect Nefret.
Zoey has tasted Heath´s blood, and they are imprinted. Now when they are imprinted, they can communicate with their thoughts and that is going to help Zoey later in the book, when Heath is in trouble.

Zoey Redbird is the main character and she is 16 years old. Zoey is a fledgling vampire and lives at the school. Zoey is a very special fledgling, she has been marked with a very big tattoo on her back, and that is unusual. She also has the power of spirit, which is also very unusual.
Nefret is a teacher on the school, and Zoey´s favorite teacher, but one day she changed her mind, when Nefret started acting weird.
Aphrodite is a student on the school, and she has visions. She can see into the future. She is going to help Zoey.
Zoey´s best friend Stevie Rye, has the power of earth. She is going to die, but it is something weird about it. Is she really dead ?

It was not hard to understand, but of course a few words were a bit difficult, but I liked the book. The language was not "old-fashioned", it is written for today´s teenagers.
I don´t know if there are any messages in this book. I think this book is for entertainment. I think this book was really good, and I want to read the whole series, in English.

Written by Carolina.

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

Introduction

Book review of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code

The book that I am going to review is The Da Vinci Code written by the American author Dan Brown, originally published in 2003 and it is a thriller-fiction.

The story starts with a dead man, Jacques Saunière curator of the Musée du Louvre in Paris and the story leads to a lot of churches and monasteries, most of them in France and in the UK.

Characters

Main character
Harvard professor Robert Langdon, famous professor of religious symbology. When he visits Paris he becomes suspected of  murdering the curator of the Musée du Louvre.

Sophie Neveu, agent from the DCPJ’s (Direction Centale Police Judiciaire) Cryptology Department and grand-daughter of the murded Jacques Saunière. Langdon and Neveu have to prove Langdon’s innocence and solve the mystery behind the murder.

Other important people

Captain Bezu Fache and Lieutenant Jérôme Collet, two police officers from the DCPJ and responsible for the investigation of the murder of Jacques Saunière.

Bishop Manuel Aringarosa, connected with Opus Dei and with the headquarter of the Vatican.

Albino-monk Silas, once upon a time safed by Aringarosa, Aringarosa was at that time a simple missionary from Madrid. Silas faithfully follows the will of Opus Dei. All he does, he does in the name of God.

The Teacher, a mysterious voice who tells Silas what to do.

Sir Leigh Teabing, a famous British Royal Historian. His life passion is the Holy Grail.

Content

The story starts with a dead man and a lot of symbols. One clue leads to the next clue and all the time Landon and Neveu are wanted by the police. Langdon is  wanted for murdered and Neveu is  wanted for helping a murderer.

What message did Jacques Saunière tell his grand-daughter?

Is the Christian Church telling lies about Jesus and Mary Magdalene?

Is the patriarchal Church leaning on a lie?

Is the explanation which had lead to the women’s non-part in the organization of the Christian Church, just a lie?

And what is the big secret that Jacques Saunière carried, and wanted to tell after his death?

The scene is the Grand Gallery of the Musée du Louvre:

“Saunière looked remarkably fit for a man of his years…and all of his musculature was in plain view. He had stripped off every shred of clothing, placed it neatly on the floor, and lain down on his back in the centre of the wide corridor, perfectly aligned with the long axis of the room. His arms and legs were sprawled outward in a wide spread-eagle, like those of a child making a snow angel… or, perhaps more appropriately, like a man being drawn and quartered by some invisible force.

Just below Saunière’s breastbone, a bloody smear marked the spot where the bullet had pierced his flesh. The wound had bled surprisingly little, leaving only a small pool of blackened blood.

Saunière’s left index finger was also bloody, apparently having been dipped into the wound to create the most unsettling aspect of his own macabre deathbed; using his own blood as ink, and employing his own naked abdomen as a canvas, Saunière had drawn a simple symbol on his flesh – five straight lines that intersected to form a five-pointed star.

The pentacle.”

Form - message

There are words for a lot of symbols, organizations and religious rituals, everything with at least one meaning, making the story sometimes complicated to understand.
The chapters are short and most of them end with a cliff-hanger.

Along the way, Langdon educates Sophie as well as the reader in large amounts of information concerning religions, symbols, history, and the story of the Holy Grail. The author does it in the same way as when you read a good spy thriller. All the time you wonder if the story could be true, the possibility that the story could have been true or it is fiction and nothing but fiction. Most of this kind of secret societies never leave any comment. It makes it easier writing about them and the reader doesn’t know what to think.

There are organisations named in the book that you didn’t even know existed. Opus Dei, the Priory of Sion, the Order of the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon (more commonly known as the Knight Templar).

Opinion

It’s a book full of surprises. When there are problems, the solution sometimes turns up from nowhere, bad guys and good guys changing roles. Persons you thought where a bad guy, unexpectedly turns into a good guy and contra wise. This means that you don’t know in which direction the story will go on.

It’s a book full of religious conspiracies and secret societies and the quest for what might be the ultimate mysteries of Christianity.

It’s a very thrilling book, between the true, the probability and the fiction. And you don’t know when and what belong to the different categories.

Even if you don’t recognize all the words, and maybe miss some connections, you still want to continue reading this book.

Written by Alf

Anne Frank: The diary of a young girl

                                 My Book review of Anne Frank

The book`s name is The diary of a young girl Anne Frank edited by Otto H. and Frank and Mirjam Pressler.

It was first  published in the USA in 1995 by Doubleday

The genre of the book is Diary.                                                                                                                       

The story takes place at a place  called the secret “Annexe” where Anne and seven other persons lived together and hid during at the ongoing Second World War .

The main character is Anne Frank because the book is her diary during the Second World War she describes how they lived and what they did when they were hiding in a building and lived together during the terrible Second World War and how they lived under terrible living conditions.

Anne is around thirteen years when she wrote this book or diary ,she describes how they lived,  ate terrible food and lived very tight together and how they heard a lot of noise of bombs and shots outside and how scared they were inside the secret building and every time that there was  knock on the door they hid and became very scared every time and sat and hid together for a long time so no one should find them.

I think this is a very interesting book but very sad too, very frustrating that Hitler and the others should do this to all the people it makes me very angry to even think about it.

This book should you read if you want to have a picture of how the Jews were living during The Second World War this is only a little bit there are more people who was forced to live this way, it is terrible to read about it!

Written by Jenny

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

Stephenie Meyer is a writer from the USA. This book was the first book that she published. She once said that she had a dream about a girl who fell in love with a vampire. She discussed her dream with her sister and she convinced her to write a book about it.

There are four books to read in the Twilight saga, but I want to write a review on the first one. Twilight was first published in 2006. It is a book about friendships,true love and things that do not exist in the real world,like vampires and werewolves…or do they?

The story is about a girl named Bella and how her life changes when she moves across the country to live with her father Charlie in a small, rainy town called Forks in the USA. The story takes place in present time, but you hear stories from the past also.

The other main characters in this book are ”the Cullen family” who are vampires, but in a nice way. There is a struggle all the time to keep humans alive and they try hard to survive by drinking animal blood instead.

This is not an ordinary vampire book like ”Dracula”.Stephenie Meyer has taken this story to a whole new level. It is about a human girl who falls in love with a vampire and she writes about how Bella thinks and her feelings about Edward Cullen. When you read the book you have a great feeling and it is like you are falling in love all over again in your real life.

In the story you will meet Edward and his ”parents and siblings”. They all have some different life stories to tell. How they became vampires and how they met each other.

Something you should think about when you read this book is that this story is written from Bella's point of view. In her eyes  Edward is the most perfect man in the world and she can not see anything else than that. But it is not just a crush between them..it is their destiny.

In this first book Stephenie tells us about the characters around Bella. There are some struggles between their feelings for each other, mostly from Edward and his family. All he wants is for her to   be safe but he knows that he is not good for her.

You will find love, excitement and joy during the journey in the fantasy world.

The book contains just over 400 pages and the language is not terribly difficult,there may be some words that are difficult,but the context makes you understand anyway. My recommendation for the age group that can read the book range from teenagers to the lovesick middle-aged!

 My opinion of this book is that if you want to escape into a world of supernatural and romantic elements,read the book!

Just want to issue a warning: The books are addictive!!

“And the lion fell in love with the lamb...what a stupid lamb...”(Edward Cullen,Bella Swan)

Written by Therése

Angus, thongs and full- frontal snogging by Louise Rennison

The title of the book is Angus, thongs and full- frontal snogging. This book was written by Louise Rennison and published in 1999.

The genre for this book is drama and comedy. Teenagers are having many question about their life and body so I think that this book is never going to be old or out of date. The story takes place at school and in Georgia´s room at home.

Georgia is the character in the book and she is a teenager. She wonders how it feels to kiss a boy. Is she going to kiss a boy or is it going to be too repulsive? She is sharing her thoughts with her best friend .They are helping each other with their teenage problems but they don’t have the same view about everything and sometimes become enemies.  The two of them are looking for a boyfriend. This is a big problem because they don’t understand how the boys are thinking. When the story ends, Georgia and Jas are still in their teens.

Georgia is a teenage girl with a teenage problem. She thinks that she had a big nose and it is bigger while she is smiling. Why can’t her mum give her a plastic surgery? She lives with her mum, dad, little sister and her cat Angus in a house. She thought that her dad is nagging at her all the time. Angus is not a normal cat. He is very big, like a Labrador. Her friend Jas is having some problem with a boy and Georgia tried to help her with that. Jas and Georgia want a boyfriend but it remains a mystery how to get one. How will they figure out a way to understand the boys’ way to act and think?

A quotation from the book:

“In my room in front of the mirror. Practicing smiling without making my nose spread. It’s impossible. I must never smile again”

The language in the book is quite simple. Sometimes Georgia is using some Spanish words. The author used some slang words but in the end of the book you have the explanation of the words. The book is written like a dairy so you are following Georgia during the day. She is writing down her thoughts and the episode for the day.

I think the author wants the reader to know what a teenager is thinking. We all have been teenagers and it is a period in life when you change a lot. Your friends are maybe getting new friends and it is not the same as in junior school. These changes make you think a lot. You are getting more interesting for boys and you body changes in different ways. I think this book shows us a teenager’s world and which problems they have. The author succeeded to write this and gave me the feeling of being a teenager again.

I really like this book. I couldn’t stop reading when I started and that is a good sign. I like this kind of book when you read it from the characters way to act. It is simple to understand and follow the book when you read it like a diary. You are with them all the time during the day. The author wrote this book in a very first rate stile and with a sense of humour. There were many times it made me laugh. You recognized yourself in many teenage problems. The questions that you ask yourself like how it is to kiss a boy, do you look good, do you have friends, school is boring and which clothes you are going to have at the party. You are thinking so much when you are a teenager, especially the girls. It was fun to get that feeling again and think that these problems you had at that time is not you problem right now.
Something depressing in this book is that Georgia is wondering about her nose and she wants to get a plastic surgery. It feels bad that she doesn’t like that and want to do a plastic surgery. She is not going to be a better person because of that. There are many teenagers who want a plastic surgery but the good thing is that many parents do not let them do it. The good thing here was that Georgia’s mum did not let her do a plastic surgery.

I really recommend this book if you like to read a book with humour and teenage problems.

Written by Elina