Sarah Kurz

"Alec didn't really want to be in a club either...and he really didn't want to start one.  To have to get an activity organized and then keep it going, day after day?  That sounded horrible.  Because right now, today?  All he wanted to do was read." The Losers Club , by Andrew Clements,   is the story of 6th grader Alec who wants nothing more than to hide away with a good book. But Alec's teachers, parents, and principal think he's spending a little too much time inside his books.  And the teachers in charge of the after school program want him to be more involved.  Determined to get his reading time in, Alec creates The Losers Club, a place where he can be left alone with his books after school.  When fellow 6th grader, Nina, joins the club Alec realizes that the world outside of his books can be pretty intense. This was a really cute middle-grade read that I read out loud along with my 10-year-old son.  We both enjoyed it.  Alec...

"The crow in me had loyalty and passion.  The MoFo in me, hope.  I was about to unleash a motherfucking hurricane." Hollow Kingdom , by Kira Jane Buxton, is the story of a crow and his dog fighting to survive during the mass extinction of mankind.  And it is absolutely wonderful.  Everything I want in a book.  Nature, suspense, laughter, tears, zombies.  The book is narrated by S.T., a crow who was raised as a pet by a human.  S.T. loves the humans (or MoFos, as he affectionately calls them) and wishes he were one.  His world is turned upside down on day when he realizes that his human, Big Jim, is terribly ill and cannot be saved.  S.T. decides to leave home and explore Seattle with his best friend, a bloodhound named Dennis.  He quickly realizes that the world isn't what it once was as he searches for any human survivors and he makes it his mission to rescue as many domestic animals as he can.  Because S.T. was raised as a d...

"He stared at her.  This was not normal.  Was this an American thing or a Dovie thing, to acknowledge fear?"   Learning to Swear in America, by Katie Kennedy, is the story of 17-year-old Yuri Strelnikov, a physics prodigy from Russia who is sent to America to help stop an asteroid that's about to take out California.  Having earned the title of doctor before he even left his teens, Yuri knows very little about being a normal kid.  His goals included winning a Nobel Prize and don't include girls.  Then Dovie Collum, a 16-year-old artist with hippie parents, enters his life and Yuri begins to question the way he lives.  Dovie is Yuri's opposite in so many ways.  Where he is careful and precise she is full of life and color, and now Yuri must deal with his feeling for her while solving the little problem of the asteroid. This was very cute book.  Teenage me would have gobbled it right up.  Yuri and Dovie are a perfectly paired "oppos...

"I gave her permission to sound bad.  Think of how you sing when you're singing to the radio at full volume.  When you can't hear yourself, you're not afraid to really belt it out because you won't have to cringe when your voice breaks or you veer off key.  Daisy need that kind of freedom.  That takes a crapload of confidence.  And Daisy didn't actually have confidence.  She was always good.  Confidence is being okay being bad, not being okay being good." Daisy Jones & The Six, by  Taylor Jenkins Reid ,  was a Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick and it definitely lived up to the hype.  Wrote in interview style, it's the fictional story of 1970s rock band The Six.  Brothers Billy and Graham Dunne formed the band and it quickly took off.  Fame led to temptation and Billy finds it too much to handle and spirals out of control until his wife, Camila pulls him back from the edge.  Things are going well for the band and ...

"I am not sorry, she realized.  She had chosen to live freely as a killer rather than die quietly as a slave, and she could not regret that.  She would go to her Saints with a ready spirit and hope they would receive her." Crooked Kingdom  is the second, and final, book in the duology by Leigh Bardugo and it is wonderful!  Like all good stories, it ended well before I was ready.  The second book continues the story from the first (naturally) and I won't elaborate because, well, spoilers.   We follow Kaz Brekker and his crew of misfit criminals through Ketterdam.  They are out for revenge and money and they won't stop until they get it.  Bardugo creates a nice variety of characters and we get a better understanding of each in the second book.  I found Kaz to be the perfect reluctant hero.  My heart broke for him through most of the book.  There's the perfect amount of action with just a hint of romance.  And lots ...

"Then his body was no longer his own; it became all the bodies and shapes it had ever been, pulling backward, receding into what it once was.  He thoughts were electricity, which, like water, had a flow, like light, was a wave." Light From Other Stars  is the second book by Erika Swyler and it is fantastic! This is the story of Nedda Papas, an 11-year-old girl who dreams of nothing but going into space some day.  The year is 1986 and the town of Easter, FL has just witnessed the Challenger launch.  Nedda's father, a brilliant professor that once worked for NASA, has spent the majority of Nedda's life building a machine that will allow his child to stay young as long as she wants.  The machine goes horribly wrong and the small town pays the price.   This is also the story of grown up Nedda, living aboard the Chawla, and how the events of her youth shaped her to become the woman she is today.   This book really surprised me.  Besi...

"There were tears in her beautiful green eyes.  Rage coursed through him.  She had no right to tears, no right to pity. " Six of Crows, the first in the duology by Leigh Bardugo, is the story of six different criminals with one common...pull off the biggest heist of their life.  Kaz Brekker has built himself quite the reputation over the years, and at just 17-years-old has become one of the most well known and feared criminals in Ketterdam.  So when the opportunity to make a lot of money presents itself he can't say no.  But he also can't do it alone.  The perfect people for the job? A sharpshooter who can't say no to a gamble, a Heartrender with unbelievable magic skills, a convict looking for revenge and to clear his name, a rich boy turned rogue, and wraith like spy. This book had everything I want in a fantasy novel.  Magic, drama, unexpected romance, and a hell of a cliffhanger.  It came highly recommended and rightly so.  I found...

"A hole, a cell, the bottom of a well.  It was still a prison.  His hands were chained to the wall over his head, and he was sitting on a bed of hay that looked like it had already passed through the horse.  The floor beneath him was cut stone, so he was probably still on the grounds of the villa somewhere.   Magnus swallowed.  His face and neck hurt.  A lot.  He could really use a drink." The Red Scrolls of Magic , by well-known author Cassandra Clare and Wesley Chu, is a continuation of Clare's Shadowhunter Series and is every bit as exciting as the others.  This book shows Magnus Bane and Alexander Lightwood in the early years of their relationship.  All they want is some alone time and romance in Paris, which is going just fine, until they find out that Magnus may or may not have jokingly created a demon worshipping cult in the past.  He can't remember.  All romantic plans are put on hold as the couple searches to put an...

"Faith Doesn't mean checking your brain at the door every church or throwing all you think you know out some stained-glass window.  It means trusting.  I have to trust now.  It's all I have." There Will Be Stars , by Billy Coffey, is the story of Bobby Barnes, a man who lives in a small southern town and has settled into a life filled with alcohol and sadness.  He cares about no one but himself and his 8-year-old twin sons, Matthew and Mark, until he is greeted by death one day and Heaven isn't quite what he expected.  Bobby finds himself stuck in a time lop with six others from his small town.  The longer he is there, the more suspicious he becomes of this place he is stuck in.  He also begins to question himself as a person and the life he lived. I am not a super religious person.  So I was shocked when I found out that Billy Coffey is a christian author.  I don't read religious books.  But this book is so good and written so we...

"If he keeps talking I will love him, and I don't want to love him.  I really don't.  As strategies go, it's not my finest." The Sun is Also a Star,  by Nicolay Yoon, is the story of a girl who falls in love with a boy the day she is to be deported from America.    It's a very sweet story about fate and love and the way the universe lines things up for us.  We follow 17-year-old Natasha and Daniel as they spend the day...just one day...completely falling for each other.  This day also happens to be Natasha's last day in the US before she and her family are deported to Jamaica.   This book was a bit sappier than what I normally read, and that's perfectly fine.  I enjoyed the romance.  I met may husband way back in 1999 when I was just 17 and fell head over heels for him immediately, so I'm a bit of a sucker for teenage romance.  This story made me feel all nostalgic and gave me plenty of warm fuzzies.  Don't go into it...

"An outlandish idea is beginning to bubble in his mind.  Or is it only a wish?  That these dreams really are a sort of travel, a kind of vision of a time yet to come." The Dreamers,  by Karen Thompson Walker, is the incredible story of a small college town in California that gets hit by a fast spreading virus.  The virus puts its victims into a deep sleep where they are consumed by dreams, sometimes a lifetime's worth.  The affected range from small children, college students, a married couple new to parenthood, a single day, an elderly man wistful for days gone by.  Everyone in the town is affected in one way or another and their lives are never the same because of it. The story was very captivating.  I've always been fascinated by sleep and dreams and the unconscious mind.  I've been an insomniac for much of my life, plagued by fucked up dreams, so I found this book extremely interesting.  I also enjoyed a look at how fast a virus can ...

"Nilah pushed back and looked at her companion with wide eyes, their scratched visors reflecting stray sunbeams.  As the fear drained from her body, Nilah cracked a smile. 'Tell me you saw that bloody shot," said Nilah.  Orna returned her grin.  "It was pretty badass." Elizabeth "Boots" Elsworth was fine with the life she was living.  Fine until Nilah Brio, a crazed and self-centered racer barged into her life and they both ended up captives on the  Capricious , the ship Boots had formerly served on.  The crew and their captain, who spend their days as salvagers, had it out for Boots.  She had recently sold them an incorrect map and they weren't feeling forgiving.  All of that changes when they realize they are right in the middle of the plans made by a deadly secret society.  The mismatched crew works together to try and reach the  Harrow , a legendary ship thought to be long lost, before their rivals can. A Big Ship at the Edge of...

"The modern green witch understands that humanity impacts the natural world, not only through how individuals treat it, but also via the energy created by their feelings and beliefs." The Green Witch: Your Complete Guide to the Natural Magic of Herbs, Flowers, Essential Oils, and More  by  Arin Murphy-Hiscock was a wonderful little book!  I'll definitely be referring to it for years to come.  I'm particularly excited to preform the Spring Equinox ritual for welcoming creative energy into your life!    The book begins by explaining what exactly green witchcraft is and then goes on to explain how you can become more tuned in to nature and the world around you.  It's a great book to remind yourself to stop and pay attention.  As humans we tend to be rather self centered.  We forgot that what we put out into the universe can be handed back to us,  By living with nature and respecting it we can learn from it and in return be blessed with...

"The fog turned stubborn and lingered, twisting its tendrils around tree snags and low-lying limbs.  The air was still; even the birds were quiet as she eased forward through the channel.  Nearby, a clonk, clonk sounded as a slow-moving oar tapped a gunwale, and then a boat emerged ghoul-like from the haze." For Kya Clark's entire life people have left her.  First her mother, scarred by years of abuse from her husband, Kya's father.  Then, one at a time, each of her siblings left as well in hopes of finding their own happiness, leaving the very young girl with her drunk and abusive father.  But even he didn't stick around long.  In the winter of 1956 ten-year-old Kya found herself living completely alone in the shack in the marsh.  Having never been to school or properly socialized, Kya kept to the marshes and out of town.  Her only friends were Jumpin', a kind, older gentleman that owned a small marina, and his wife. Over the years Kya finds...

"I squeeze my eyes closed until the tears have nowhere to go.  I'm not going to give up.  I might die, but it's not going to be because I sat here crying like a useless lump.  I can't let myself think I have nothing.  That's what I thought that first day, and I was wrong." 16-year-old Jess Cooper finds her life in Seattle turned upside down when she is severally injured in a car accident.  The same accident that took her mother's life.  With nowhere else to go Jess heads north to Alaska to live with her a father, a man she hasn't known since she was very young.  Upon arriving in Alaska Jess finds that her father doesn't live there.  He lives in a tiny cabin in the wilderness of Canada that can only be reached by plane.  A place very few people know of, and most of those people are bad. Jess reluctantly stays with her father.  She doesn't see many other options and she has no way to leave the remote cabin.  She spends her days...

"The two grigoris stared at me.  I wouldn't say they were horrified.  It would take a lot to horrify these two.  But they were for sure taken aback." America has been torn apart.  The death of the president Franklin Roosevelt and The Great Depression left the country up for grabs and it was sectioned off, the southwestern section being Texoma, the home of Lizbeth Rose.  At nineteen years old she's confident with what she wants to do in life...carry a gun.  Gunnies, people hired to help safely escort others across the dangerous, bare land of Texoma, are in high demand.  So Lizbeth isn't all that surprised when two grigoris, wizzards from the Holy Russian Empire that lies west of Texoma, come to town looking to hire her. Paulina Coopersmith and Eli Savarov are on a search for blood.  Blood from the heir of Rasputin that will help heal their ailing tsar.  However, not all residents of the Holy Russian Empire are happy to have the current ts...

"She exploded out the other side into a world of color and light and noise: green grass, blue sky, the distant sounds of the procession advancing to the tower.  She fell to her knees, still clutching Durendal." Queen of Air and Darkness  is the third book in the Dark Artifices trilogy by Cassandra Clare and it is wonderful!  Clare does a brilliant job of creating worlds and characters, as we have seen in all of her previous shadowhunter novels.  This one is no exception. With this being the third book in the series I won't get into a lot of detail about the plot so I don't risk any spoilers.  This is the final novel featuring the Blackthorn family and Emma Carstairs, although I doubt/hope this is the last time we see them.  One of my favorite things about Cassandra Clare's writing style is that while each series works well alone (The Mortal Instruments, The Infernal Devices, and The Dark Artifices) they also all work extremely well together and we ofte...