karen rivers » The Novel Hermit

Things Mischa “Ish” Love will miss when she goes to Mars: lying on the living room floor watching TV, ice cream, her parrot Buzz Aldrin. Things Ish Love will not miss when she goes to Mars: mosquitoes, heat waves, missing her former best friend Tig.

Ish is convinced that she’ll be one of the first settlers on Mars. She’s applied to—and been rejected from—the Mars Now project forty-seven times, but the mission won’t leave for ten years and Ish hasn’t given up hope. She also hasn’t given up hope that Tig will be her best friend again (not that she’d ever admit that to anyone, least of all herself). When Ish collapses on the first day of seventh grade, she gets a diagnosis that threatens all her future plans. As Ish fights cancer, she dreams in vivid detail about the Martian adventures she’s always known she’d have—and makes unexpected discoveries about love, fate, and her place in the vast universe.[/note]

myreview

[note note_color=”#BFD1D1″ text_color=”#ffffff”]I received this book for free from Algonquin Young Readers for review consideration. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.[/note]

First sentence: “As a planet, the Earth is mostly OK, I guess. “

All Mischa “Ish” Love has ever thought about is going to Mars. Sure, she’s gonna miss her family and her parrot Buzz Aldrin, but it’s Mars! Ish and her best friend, Tig, have discussed this Mars dream for years; she’s applied to the Mars Now project and rejected so many times she can’t count it on her hands. Despite the rejections and people’s non-believing reactions to her Mars dream, she’s not gonna give up. Ish will go to Mars.

But what happens when an unexpected diagnosis throws a wrench in her future plans?

the girl in the well is me

Longing to be one of the popular girls in her new town, Kammie Summers has fallen into a well during a (fake) initiation into a club whose members have no intention of letting her join. Now Kammie’s trapped in the dark, growing increasingly claustrophobic, and waiting to be rescued—or possibly not.

As hours pass, the reality of Kammie’s predicament mixes with her memories of the highlights and lowlights of her life so far, including the reasons her family moved to this new town in the first place. And as she begins to run out of oxygen, Kammie starts to imagine she has company, including a French-speaking coyote and goats that just might be zombies.[/note]

myreview

[note note_color=”#BFD1D1″ text_color=”#ffffff”]I received this book for free from Algonquin Books for review consideration. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.[/note]

First sentence: “The whole thing feels like a prank at first, like something they planned—a joke with a punch line.”

When you’re a kid, one of the worst nightmares is getting stuck in a well. You’re in an enclosed space with nothing to stare at except the brick wall and possibly the sky, waiting for somebody to find you and get you out.

That’s what we have in The Girl in the Well is Me. Kammie falls into an abandoned well after trying to impress the mean popular girls. While she’s stuck in the well, waiting for help to arrive, she falls deep into the confines of her mind, remembering moments in her life, regretting her decisions, and hallucinating things like French-speaking dogs.

REVIEW • Up on Mars (Love, Ish by Karen Rivers)

(ARC) REVIEW | Save Me, Lassie! (The Girl in the Well is Me by Karen Rivers)