Waste of Space by Gina Damico

What happens when a network needs a hit show?  What happens when the space program needs great exposure?  Together they conjure up "Waste of Space" a reality television program featuring ten teenagers in space.

The casting call doesn't ask for the best or brightest, just the most volatile.  And the spaceship?  It's in a warehouse deep in the desert.  Except for Kaoru, the Japanese teen shanghaied into the cast, the kids accept that they are in fact in space. Some more than others.

The NASA scientists blackmailed to create the mock spaceship are outraged at the increasingly bizarre situations the DV8 production team is putting the Spacetronauts through.  As the show begins to wind up, survival challenges ensue and the whole thing just becomes ridiculous! 

Gina Damico is one of my favorite authors.  If you haven't read Croak, go out and read it.  RIGHT NOW.  It is one of the most circulated series in my MS library. I love Damico's irreverent sense of humor and amazing imagination. I created a book trailer for her new title, so check it out below.
It's fun and the multiple perspectives throughout keep the pace upbeat.

Dietland

I had never heard of Sarai Walker's Dietland.  Then I began to watch the  AMC series.  I was addicted after the first episode. I then ripped through the book in one day.

Alicia "Plum" Kettle has struggled her entire life.  She has been mocked about her weight and does everything she can to hide from the notice of others.

Plum works for a teen magazine, Daisy Chain, as the ghost writer for her editor in chief "Kitty".
She spends most of her days alone, answering fan mail and typical girl questions. 


As she waits for the date of her gastric bypass surgery, Plum notices a young woman following her.  It is her encounter with her stalker Leeta that changes Plum's life, and she is thrown into a world where women feel empowered. She meets strong role models who fight for acceptance on their own terms.

This is all set against a backdrop where a new vigilante group calling themselves Jennifer decide to fight back against the male patriarchy and punish those who abuse women in a very public and violent way.

Dietland is FIGHT CLUB meets The Devil Wears Prada.  Have Fun!

Enola Holmes, the other detective.

While we were watching Sherlock on Netflix earlier this summer, my daughter asked if I had ever read the "Sister Books".  I had no idea what she was talking about.

Didn't I know Millie Bobby Brown was going to play the sister of Sherlock Holmes in a new film?  Isn't Millie Bobby Brown the perfect actor to play a detective? Will she be telekinetic in the Enola Holmes movies? Did I have the Enola Holmes books in the library?
 The answer to all of these questions was no, and so off I went to the Lincoln Public Libraries to check out Nancy Springer's Enola Holmes series.


As I began The Case of the Missing Marquess, my daughter spotted the book and deftly ripped it
from my hands.  Luckily, Amazon exists, and within minutes I was reading on my kindle while my kiddo curled up in the couch with the hardback.

"Deeper and deeper into the shadows and East London dockside slums, she walks on. Alone.." (p.3)

After a quick. mysterious prologue, we meet Enola.  In her first sentence she queries, "I would very much like to know why my mother named me 'Enola,' which, backwards, spells alone." We know immediately we are in for an interesting mother daughter relationship.

When "Mum", Lady Eudoria Vernet Holmes, disappears on Enola's fourteenth birthday the mystery begins and we follow Enola's search for the truth.

I have read the first two books in the series.  I am already dreading reaching the sixth, because Enola is a champion for independence and savvy.  I want to follow her far in to the future to see what she can accomplish as she reaches adulthood.  Purchasing all six books for my library and eagerly awaiting the film adaptations!