Gallagher Girl series by Ally Carter

The Gallagher Girl series by Ally Carter are thrilling books with an exciting turn in every chapter. This series consists of four books, which I recommend reading in order because it is way easier to understand what’s going on. Why I say that is because I read the books out of order because when I had started the series the library didn’t have the first so I had to read them out of order. I had ended up reading the series in this order: book #2, book #4, book #3, and then book #1. These books all take place in a top secret spy school called the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women, but to everyone else in the world it is just a school for rich girls.

                The first book is called I’d Tell You I Love you, but then I’d have to Kill You. In this book Cameron Morgan (Cammie) is a sophomore in the Gallagher Academy, and even when you go to a school with and you almost never leave the walls of the school trouble always finds her. Until she gets a new Covert Operations (CoveOps) teacher. Now that she has a new teacher, she has to get use to his new rules and his teaching styles. This means that she will have to go outside and into a regular all-American town. During a CoveOps assignment she may just get to have a not-so-normal relationship with a normal boy. Will she be able to manage to keep it going? Or will sneaking out of one of the most secure places in the world be a problem.

                The second book in this series is called Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy. In this book Cammie is finally getting used to Mr. Solomon (new CoveOps teacher), but then he takes Cammie and her whole CoveOps class on a mission. The mission is something that is important to being a spy, losing a tail. The tail had actually turned out to be people that they never knew even existed. Those people were boys from a very questionable spy school for only boys, and that place is called Blackthorne. Cammie and her 3 best friends actually conducted an experiment to see what makes them seem so suspicious. One boy in particular is drawn to Cammie. That boy’s name is Zachary Goode (Zach), and just like Cammie he is a pavement artist.

                The third book is called Don’t Judge a Girl by Her Cover. In this book Cammie gets to go to Macey’s dad’s ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­campaign. Instead going to support her, she and Macey nearly escape a kidnapping attempt. It was a good thing that they were Gallagher Girls otherwise they would have been goners, or maybe if they weren’t Gallagher Girls would they have been almost kidnapped. So for Macey’s protection the CIA has assigned one of their best agents as her protector. When Cammie had found out that Aunt Abby was the protector she didn’t know what to think. So Cammie and her other 2 best friends decided to sneak out of their school and accompany her to the rest of the campaigns and rallies, but of course they aren’t allowed to so they have to do it in secret. At one of the rallies Cammie comes face to face with Zach who she hasn’t been trying to think about, but then she realizes that he was in Boston, which was where the kidnapping attempt had happened. Towards the end of the book she is with Zach again, and in a flash things turn from good to terrible. I won’t tell you how it ends because if you haven’t read the series I don’t want to give it away.

                The fourth book is called Only the Good Spy Young. In this book Cammie is one of the most guarded girls in the world, so when Mr. Solomon shows up she trusts him. But that doesn’t mean that everyone else does. After that night it had seemed like Mr. Solomon had disappeared off the face of the earth. Cammie just can’t shake off what he had said that night to her. “Follow the pigeons” was exactly what he had said to her. Even though the teachers had blocked all of the secret passages that they knew about, but Cammie knew even more, so there are always ways to get out. In this book and the second Zach is one of the main characters. At the end of the third book we find out that the kidnapping attempt was done by the Circle of Cavan, and that they weren’t after Macey they were after Cammie. At the end of this book you get to learn one of Zach’s biggest secrets.

                This is a great series and I recommend it to anyone who wants to read an action packed book, filled with secrets.

The Hunger Game series by Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Game series by Suzanne Collins is a great series that I recommend if you want to read an excellent book series. I was actually up at 1:00a.m to finish the first one.

The first book is called the Hunger Games. In this book North America is nothing what it is like today. For one thing there is no United States anymore. It is now called Panem and there is twelve districts all ruled by cruel capital. Each district has something that they make/produce. For example District Twelve has coal mines, District Eleven is agriculture, and District One is gems, so get what I am saying. Right away we learn that there was a time period that they call the Dark Days. The Dark Days was when there had been a rebellion against the capital. Because of the rebellion there is no more District Thirteen, and the hunger games had begun as punishment for the districts.

                The hunger games come around every year. There will be two tributes from each district, one boy and one girl, from the ages 12-18 and they get thrown into an arena and have to compete to the death. Since the capital citizens didn’t rebel they don’t have to send their children into the arena. To find out who has to go into the arena everyone must go to a thing that they call a reaping. Then they out all of the names into a bowl; you can sign up for a tesserae so you can have more food for the year, but there is a catch because for every tesserae that you sign up for your name goes in the bowl one more time. So Katniss (the main character) is in the bowl 20 times and Gale (her best friend) is in the bowl 42 times. Once a girl named Katniss volunteers for her sister and a boy named Peeta gets called at the reaping. After the reaping Madge (mayor of District Twelve’s daughter) gives her a mockingjay pin. That pin could just be exactly what the districts need as a “spark” to put things in motion. When Katniss the girl on fire volunteered at the reaping, she had also volunteered for something much, much bigger than what she knew.

                The second book of the Hunger Game series is called Catching Fire. In this book the Hunger games will be a Quarter Quell. A Quarter Quell happens every 25 years, and they put a twist on the regular Hunger Games, for example one year they put twice the number of tributes in the arena, but this Quarter Quell they will have two victors of the Hunger Games, so from District Twelve it will either be Haymitch (their mentor last year) and Katniss, or Peeta and Katniss. No matter which boy tribute gets called Katniss has to be the girl tribute from District Twelve. She will be the youngest girl there since she had just one the last Hunger Games. This could either be an advantage or a disadvantage. It could be a disadvantage because they might not be as good as competitors as the older tributes. It could be an advantage because they don’t know anyone so they won’t feel guilty about winning. Toward the end of this book I was not ever expecting what had happened, but I had LOVED the ending because it had made it impossible to not continue into the other book.

The third and final book of the Hunger Game series is called Mockingjay. In this book we learn that District Thirteen actually does exist. Katniss and Gale are kind of in a “special” group that deals with the rebellion that has been building up for years. Even though Katniss had made it out of the arena Peeta had not had the same luck. He was instead taken by the capital and had been what everyone in District Thirteen calls “hijacked.” Hijacked means that they inject trackerjacker (a mutation of a bee) venom and play images of a person then twist them so they aren’t the same. For Peeta they played images of Katniss and twisted them so bad that he would want to kill her.  It takes some time but they get Peeta back to normal. At the end of the book I couldn’t put it down.  I had to learn what happened next. They had all decided that they had to kill President Snow who “ruled” Panem, so President Coin from District Thirteen could take over. Katniss being herself had done the unexpected and I won’t give it all away but neither of them became president.

                These are all of the books in the Hunger Game series. After finishing this series I can’t wait for the movie to come out!

               The Hunger Games movie is in theaters now. I loved the books so naturally I went to the movie. Despite what people may say it isn’t that gross, well at least to me it wasn’t. As for my friend she wasn’t so thrilled at times. I was amazed how well Gary Ross, the director, had made it so much like the book. A lot of times the movies and the books are completely different from one another. But with the Hunger Games that simply isn’t the case.