[note note_color=”#212940″ text_color=”#ffffff”]What Goes Up by Katie Kennedy • July 18, 2017 • Bloomsbury
Website | Twitter | Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Book Depository | Indigo | Library

Rosa and Eddie are among hundreds of teens applying to NASA’s mysterious Interworlds Agency. They’re not exactly sure what the top-secret program entails, but they know they want in. Rosa has her brilliant parents’ legacies to live up to, and Eddie has nowhere else to go–he’s certainly not going to stick around and wait for his violent father to get out of jail. Even if they are selected, they have no idea what lies in store. But first they have to make it through round after round of crazy-competitive testing.

And then something happens that even NASA’s scientists couldn’t predict . . .[/note]

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

First sentence: “NASA stored the future in a hangar in Iowa.”

Their lives entire life as lead to this moment: being part of NASA’s mysterious Interworlds Agency.

But first, Rosa and Eddie must compete in a series of tests to determine which teens—among the hundreds—will be appointed to Team 3 and save the world from aliens planning to destroy Earth.

Read More

[note note_color=”#003f76″ text_color=”#ffffff”]Learning to Swear in America by Katie Kennedy • July 5, 2016 • Bloomsbury
Website | Twitter | Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Book Depository | Indigo | Library

An asteroid is hurtling toward Earth. A big, bad one. Maybe not kill-all-the-dinosaurs bad, but at least kill-everyone-in-California-and-wipe-out-Japan-with-a-tsunami bad. Yuri, a physicist prodigy from Russia, has been recruited to aid NASA as they calculate a plan to avoid disaster.

The good news is Yuri knows how to stop the asteroid–his research in antimatter will probably win him a Nobel prize if there’s ever another Nobel prize awarded. But the trouble is, even though NASA asked for his help, no one there will listen to him. He’s seventeen, and they’ve been studying physics longer than he’s been alive.

Then he meets (pretty, wild, unpredictable) Dovie, who lives like a normal teenager, oblivious to the impending doom. Being with her, on the adventures she plans when he’s not at NASA, Yuri catches a glimpse of what it means to save the world and live a life worth saving.

Prepare to laugh, cry, cringe, and have your mind burst open with the questions of the universe.[/note]

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

First sentence: “Because there’s no air in space, the asteroid hurtled toward Earth in absolute silence.”

An asteroid is hurtling toward Earth! California will be decimated! How do you prevent that from happening?

NASA calls all great minds to the United States for help, and one of those great minds is a seventeen-year-old Russian physicist prodigy. With only a few weeks, Yuri along with his American colleagues at NASA have to figure out a way to prevent the asteroid from hitting and causing destruction. Yuri has to deal with the stress of older physicists who don’t listen to his suggestions and people who watch him and keep track of everything. He manages to deal with that when he meets Dovie Collum, a normal teenager, and her family, where they introduce him to a life that’s so far from the one he knows.

Read More