Harmless by Dana Reinhardt

We all make mistakes and we all try to get out of them. The three girls in Harmless by Dana Reinhardt are just trying to get out of trouble by making up one little harmless story. However, it turns out not to be so harmless after all.

Emma, Anna and Mariah are freshmen in high school and best friends. One night they lie to their parents and attend a party with a bunch of senior guys from a neighboring high school. When they are caught in the lie, the three girls invent a story about being attacked by a man down by the river, so they don’t have to admit to attending the party. The girls give a generic description of the guy and hope that the situation will blow over. However, one small story becomes one huge thing when their parents insist that they go to the police. Then when a man who fits the description is arrested and everything really blows up. The girls learn that it would have been easier to tell the truth and take their punishment from the start because lies pile up and more than Emma, Anna and Mariah are hurt. This is a haunting story about what happens when you tell a lie that you think is “harmless.”

Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gavrielle Zevin

With all the rain, this was a good week to sit inside and read. However, after five inches of rain on Friday, the weekend turned out being fairly nice out! So I didn't get as much read as I had thought I would since I had to go out and enjoy the nice weather--finally. But I did enjoy Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin. It was a nice light-hearted book and a good read.

In this novel, Naomi falls down the steps of her high school and finds herself in an ambulance with a stranger who claims he is her boyfriend. At the emergency room, she discovers that James is not her boyfriend, but someone she had just met, but she also discovers that she cannot remember the last four years of her life. Everything from the time she is twelve to the present has been erased from her memory. These events include her parents' divorce, her new sister, and her best friend Will. Throughout the course of the book, Naomi spends the school year discovering who she is and why she likes the things she likes. It is a fun book of self-discovery.

The Snows by Sharelle Byars Moranville

The Snows by Sharelle Byars Moranville in a different sort of book. This novel follows 4 generations of the Snow family when each is 16 years old. It also parallels some of the very important historical events of the US. But more than anything it shows the universal struggles that teens go through to reach adulthood whether they are living in the 1930s or the 2000s.

The story begins with Jim Snow as he tries to deal with his family and the difficulties of life during the 1930s. Jim's father has a successful barbershop in a small Iowa town, but he is not happy with his choices in life and decides to uproot his family and move during the Great Depression to an uncertain future in Colorado. While struggling with this move, Jim falls in love and tries to protect his little sister Cathy from all that is going on around them.

The second story is about Cathy who struggles with love during World War II. Cathy falls in love and has a secret romance with a young soldier heading off to war. However, Cathy has to cope with love lost and fear and shame when she is sent to a home for unwed mothers.

The third section is about Jim's daughter Jill who comes of age during the 1960s. Jill experiments with drugs and rebellion until her father sends her to live with her adopted older sister Mary Suzanne who teaches at Kent State University. While there, Jill gets a little too close to the dangers of the riots at Kent State in 1969.

The final section is about Jill's daughter Mona in 2006. Mona travels back to Iowa for her Great Aunt Cathy's funeral and becomes reacquainted with her extended family and discovers their secret past. The neat thing about this book is that Mona brings it all together and all the characters come together at the end of the story. It is interesting to see how the characters face some of the same problems at 16 years of age even though they face them years apart.