Almost Fourteen

Recovering from the kidnapping of last year, Calista Snipe and Skyler McCray start high school. They think this will be a better year, but as they travel through the school year they end up dealing with gangs, drugs, and a different relationship between each other. Calista and Skyler also think that the kidnappers are gone, but they quickly figure out that’s not entirely true. All they know for sure is that high school is going to be a lot more complicated than they ever imagined. <br><br>I really recommend this book for anyone who is interested in the drama of school life. It also gives you a feel for what kids have to face in school. For example, having to deal with bullies, peer pressure, and rumors. Calista and Skyler have to deal with a nasty rumor that was untrue about them. This gives you a perspective of what kids of a similar age have to go through when it comes to fake news and how badly it can hurt someone. This book also gives you an outlook of kids who get trapped in gangs, what they are forced to do, and how it seems like they have no chance of getting out. <br><br><em>Almost Fourteen</em> describes the struggles of children who are somehow connected to drugs. Even if they’re the ones selling it, it can be very dangerous. The author did a good job with describing and adding details. She made it really easy to imagine the story. The excessive details, however, did lead to the book dragging and made the book seem to evolve slower than I would have preferred. At some points it made me feel somewhat impatient, and it was hard to keep myself engaged with the reading. The situation the characters were put through does, sadly, happen in real life. I appreciate a realistic view when it comes to this type of genre. I did enjoy that the author illustrated the book with some pictures of what was happening in the plot. It put a positive spin on some negative topics. The illustrations also helped me understand better if i got confused about what she was saying in the text. The formatting of the story is good, but because it is five-hundred and seventy-six pages it took longer to read than most books. All in all, this was a good book and I do recommend it to other readers.