Let's Get Lost

Author:  Adi Alsaid
Genre:  Young Adult/Fiction

Five Stars

Four teens across the country have only one thing in common:  a girl named Leila.  She crashes into their lives in her absurdly red car at the moment they need someone the most.

There's Hudson, a small-town mechanic who is willing to throw away his dreams for true love.  And Bree, a runaway who seizes every Tuesday-and a few stolen goods along the way.

Elliot believes in happy endings...until his own life goes off-script.  And Sonia worries that when she lost her boyfriend, she also lost the ability to love.

Hudson, Bree, Elliot and Sonia find a friend in Leila.  And when Leila leaves them, their lives are forever changed.  But it is during Leila's own 4,268-mile journey that she discovers the most important truth-sometimes, what you need most is right where you started.  And maybe the only way to find what you're looking for is to get lost along the way.

A novel told in five parts, Let's Get Lost is a bittersweet debut about love, loss and finding your way back home.

********

Leila shows up at the garage belonging to Hudson's father.  Hudson is a mechanic there, sees Leila, and immediately falls in love with the girl with long black hair and green eyes.  While fixing her car, he convinces her to allow him to show her "treasures" in the town.  Hudson soon discovers that Leila is on a journey to see the Northern Lights before she goes back to school.  For his part, he has an interview the next day with the dean of "Ole Miss," one that could get him a full scholarship, since he can't afford college otherwise.  The evening they spend together is one that makes him see the world in an entirely different view.  However, when they part the next day things are said that cannot be unsaid, and Leila continues on her journey...

Where she meets Bree, and the story is told through her eyes...each part of Leila's journey is told through the eyes of the others, until the last is told through hers.  Bree has left home after too much fighting with her sister, who was raising her.  Elliot (my favorite story) is pining for the girl he has loved all his life.  Sonia is pining for the love she lost, and the new one found.

The last part of the story is told by Leila, and we find out the true reason she is on this journey:  It is not a whim, it is a need born of despair and hope.  We do not find out until then why she is where she is, only that she has touched these people and, in her own unique way, helped them along their own journeys in life.

I read this book in the space of a day (and it's not a short book 352 pages), but it was so enthralling and interesting that I felt I could do no less.  Leila's story is bittersweet, in the fact that she finally accepts the things that have happened, even if she doesn't understand the reasons.  It is a book not so much about travel, but about the journey of life and what brings us to where we are.  I wish I could say more about this book, but to do so would spoil it for others, so all I will say is that I absolutely loved this book and it is highly recommended for everyone.

http://www.amazon.com/Lets-Get-Lost-English/dp/0373211244/

The Hunger Games

Author: Suzanne Collins
Genre: Fantasy

1 Star

What was once North America is now Panem, the Capitol, with twelve outlying districts.  The Capitol has decided to keep the districts in line by forcing each one to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.  When Katniss Everdeen's younger sister is chosen to participate, she offers to go in her stead.

Okay, I know there are people out there who really like this book (and I mean really like this book) and are going to disagree with me on this one (again, no getting nasty, it's just my opinion here).  But I honestly don't know how this could be good for kids to read.  And this is why I gave it one star only:  It's violent, unrealistic (what parent would let a society send their children out to be killed?), and badly written. 

Alas, It's a pretty dark book listed for kids to read.  And it's about kids.  I don't find this 'great' or 'entertaining'.  Yes, I know it's a book, but there's nothing 'entertaining' about kids being sent to their deaths.  In fact, that's rather sick.  And I'm not giving away any spoilers here, since I figure anyone who's going to read it already has, given all the hype and the movie.

But there are questions:  I don't think it's plausible that people who supposedly love their children would allow this to go on year after year.  If you knew your kids were going to be sent to their death (or there was even a chance), then why would you have kids at all?  What kind of a person does that make you?  Why didn't the 'districts' rise up against the Capitol and win?  Surely there were more people everywhere else than this one area? Why couldn't they overthrow them?  Small nations  overthrow governments all the time.  It didn't make any sense and is something worth thinking about.....

www.amazon.com/Hunger-Games-Book-1/dp/0439023521