MISS PICKEL'S PICKS

        Two Perfect Lies - Natalie D. Richards Lily befriended Clara when no one else would and they’ve been inseparable for a year. But all of a sudden Lily starts acting strange and she discovers Lily may be planning something dangerous. Clara tries to warn people, but she quickly realizes that Lily has turned the tables and is framing Clara for a crime she didn’t commit. Clara needs to clear her name, but it’s tough since all of the evidence points to her. Luckily her old friend Henry believes her and they team up to uncover the truth before it’s too late. I was totally invested in Clara’s situation and I stayed up way too late because I had to find out what happened! Most Likely to Murder - Lish McBride When a prank list of mock yearbook superlatives starts coming true in terrifying ways, best friends Rick and Martina find themselves labeled Homecoming’s Cutest Corpses. When a teacher on the list turns up dead, the pair must team up with the other targeted studen...

  I haven’t updated my blog in so long - I’ve been in a little of a reading slump and very much in a writing slump. But I’ve read a few really good books lately and I want to talk about them! The first one is Beth Is Dead by Katie Bernet. The title and the cover drew my attention right away - of course I love the pink cover! The book is based on the classic novel Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. My mother was a librarian and she really wanted me to read Little Women when I was young, but I wouldn’t. I didn’t like sad books (I still don’t) and as soon as I heard that one of the sisters, Beth, dies at the end I refused to read it. In Little Women Beth dies from an illness, but in this modern retelling she is murdered. I love mystery/thrillers and I also love retellings, so I figured this would be the perfect book for me. And it was! The story grabbed my attention right from the start. It’s told in alternating chapters by the four March sisters: Jo, Meg, Beth, and Amy. Their father ...

   These are such great books! I read the first book in James Ponti's City Spies series, about a group of teens   who work for MI6 and travel the world on secret missions, and I thought it was great! I'm excited to continue that series, but in the meantime I decided to start on the Sherlock Society series and after the first two books I think I like this series even more! Ms Fair and I heard Ponti speak at a library conference while he was writing the first book; he lives in Florida and he was excited to write a series based in his home state.  This series is set in and around Miami and by the end of the first book I totally wanted to move there! The series follows Alex Sherlock, who starts the Sherlock Society with his sister Zoe and his friends Lina and Yadi. Because the four of them are only in middle school they need someone to drive them around, so Alex and Zoe enlist their grandfather to be part of the team. He is a retired reporter and he has a whole storage u...

  I just finished  The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place by Julie Berry and I absolutely loved it!  The book starts when the seven students at St. Etheldreda’s School For Young Ladies are having their weekly Sunday dinner with their headmistress and her brother. During the main course Mrs. Plackett and Mr. Godding suddenly drop dead and the girls quickly realize that they have been poisoned.  The girls are a family and they do not want to be sent home. So they  decide to bury the body in the garden and pretend everything is totally normal. They find out pretty quickly, though, that is much easier said than done! The whole book reminded me so much of Gordon Korman’s Slacker . Just like Cam in Slacker had to invent a fake club and keep up a huge act to stay out of trouble, these seven girls have to use all their wits to run the school in secret. Between dodging nosy neighbors and keeping their "scandalous" secret safe, the chaos never stops. If you want...

This was the perfect mystery for me to read on a winter night: even though it's the ideal summer read, packed with long, hot days and secrets simmering under the sun, it was the perfect escape for me from the cold. Kaylani is spending the summer in the wealthy, historic community of Martha’s Vineyard. She’s been learning about the law to help her father, who is in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. She really wants to stay in Brooklyn to help her dad, but her parents want her to have a fun summer, so they send her to stay with family friends on Cape Cod. It isn’t a fun summer for Kaylani, though, because she’s stuck living with two snobby girls who don’t want anything to do with her.  While Kaylani is adjusting to life in this wealthy vacation community, a popular teen is found dead under suspicious circumstances and she can’t help digging deeper into what really happened. Her investigation takes her beneath the polished surface of Martha’s Vineyard, uncovering secrets, surprisin...

  I absolutely love funny books and I think my favorite comedy writer is Gordon Korman. Every time I read one of his novels I end up laughing out loud at almost every page. My favorite Gordon Korman book has been Restart , which is about a bully who gets amnesia and can’t figure out why he was so mean to people. Ms Fair ordered a few of Korman’s books for us this fall and the first one I picked up is Slacker . I can be very lazy, so I figured this would be the perfect book for me! The other thing that drew me in was the cover image of a beaver reclining with a game controller and a bowl of Doritos. The book more than lived up to its cover; Slacker is now my favorite Gordon Korman book! Slacker follows Cam, who thinks he has perfected the art of slacking. He does just well enough in school that he can slide under the radar and he can focus on what’s really important: playing his video game with his friends. But when the fire department ends up on his doorstep because he ignored his ...

  I always avoided playing Scrabble when I was a kid because I never wanted to think that much when I was playing a game! Recently, though, I’ve started playing again and I’m actually enjoying it—I feel like it’s really good exercise for my brain. So I was so excited when I saw Queen of the Tiles , since it’s a mystery set at a Scrabble tournament. The book totally grabbed me right from the first page. Every chapter starts with a word, the number of points it’s worth in Scrabble, and its definition. It’s so cool because the chapter word always connects to what happens in that section; for example, Chapter One’s word is prolegomenon , which means an introduction. Most of them are words I’d never seen before, and even though I probably won’t remember any of them the next time I play, it was still so fun to learn them as I read! Queen of the Tiles follows Najwa, whose best friend—and reigning Scrabble queen—Trina, died suddenly at last year’s tournament. Najwa has spent the year sin...