Book 5: East by Edith Pattou

Book 5:

East, by Edith Pattou

Summary:

In a Norse family down on its economic luck in the sixteenth century, Rose is the eighth child born to a superstitious mother. A few times while she grows up, she sees a white bear in the woods, and it saves her life once. Later, when Rose is in her late teens, the family is about to be ejected from their farm and one of the daughters is very sick and near death. The white bear appears and says that if Rose goes with him their other daughter will get better and their economic troubles will end. After a week of family debates and considerations, Rose agrees.

She goes to live with the bear in a castle in a mountain, and by this point the reader has been able to gather that the bear was once a French prince but a troll princess captured him. To punish his daughter for her actions, the Troll king put a spell on the boy, and certain conditions had to be met before either the bear to be turned back into a boy or the princess (now queen) to earn the boy. Rose is unaware of this, but she knows something is not right about the bear. She tries to befriend him, keep herself busy, and also to befriend the two people – actually trolls – who keep the castle running. The bear watches her weave, listens to her try to learn to play instruments, and in man form sleeps in the same bed as her every night, although Rose is unaware for certain that it is him.

After about a year of living with the bear, Rose becomes extremely homesick, and is allowed to go home for one month. True to his word, her sister is healthy and the family is returned to economic success. Rose does not trust her mother completely because of some of her actions due to her superstitions, but accepts a gift from her the day before she leaves to return to the bear. One night, curiosity overwhelms her, so Rose uses the gift: candle and flint that will shed light on any darkness. It works, and Rose sees the bear’s true form: after so many years of being under an enchantment, he is a young man. But because Rose has seen him, it also fulfills a condition, and the Troll queen can now come and collect him, and he is now a human again all the time.

Rose feels awful, and wants to set things right, so she decided to go after him. She journeys up past the coldest parts of the north and eventually reaches the Troll kingdom. She infiltrates the castle by pretending to be a “softskin” servant, and works in the castle while making a plan and finding Tuki – one of the trolls who served in the mountain castle – again. During the wedding of the Troll queen and the former white bear, Rose intervenes in a way that causes him to be married to her, not the queen, and then the Troll castle to be destroyed. They, along with some of the captured humans, journey back down south.

They meet up with Rose’s father and one of her brothers, and in the night the former white bear disappears. Rose understands that he needs to figure out who he is now that he’s no longer a white bear, but she goes after him anyway because she knows now that she truly loves him. She finds him at the castle in the mountains, where he has learned that his name is Charles. Charles and Rose get married, and live happily ever after. 

 

Book 4: Oh, My Gods by Tera Lynn Childs

Book 4:

Oh, My Gods, by Tera Lynn Childs

Summary:

Phoebe is close to achieving her dream: as long as she keeps a B average and keeps running the way she has been, the coaches at the University of Southern California will give her a full-ride scholarship. But then her mother tells her that she’s met the man of her dreams and they’re getting married – and they’re moving to Greece to be with him because he is the headmaster of an incredibly prestigious school. As if this wasn’t bad enough, once they move Phoebe learns that all of the students at the Academy are descendants of the Greek gods.

Phoebe struggles to adjust, which includes dealing with an evil stepsister, but meets some friends to help navigate the school. She also makes the cross-country team – but on a probationary level, because Griffin, another runner, sabotaged her with his powers. Now, Phoebe can only make the USC team if she comes in the first three places at her first race and if she works harder academically than she ever has before. She makes a deal with her evil step-sister, Stella, and as a part of it begins working closer with Griffin. Just when she realizes and accepts that she has feelings for him, though, it turns out that the deal with Stella was actually a plot to humiliate her, and Griffin was in on it.

At the big race, she wins, and at the finish line her friends from California are waiting. But becomes convinced that someone used their powers to help her win, meaning she cheated. After speaking to Damian, though, it turns out that her powers were just trying to be used, and she is a great-granddaughter of the goddess Nike. Griffin also talks to her and tells her that he broke up with his evil girlfriend and wants to be with her. Phoebe also speaks to her friends from California, who tell her that while they would love to go to college together at USC, maybe somewhere else would be better, as they already want to go so somewhere else. In the epilogue set in December at the formal wedding of Phoebe’s mom and Damian, we learn that Phoebe has been training her powers and can hold her own against Stella, she is still good friends with her friends from California, and she is dating Damian and they plan to study an extra year and then go to Oxford together. All is well in her life. 

I think everything looks much cleaner now...

I deleted most of the old posts. Nice and easy to find everything!

Hope this makes it easier to read.

KBM

Book 3: Percy Jackson and the Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan

Book 2:

The Titan’s Curse, Rick Riordan

Summary:

Percy Jackson has been fighting monsters and searching for half-bloods with his friends Annabeth and Thalia since The Sea of Monsters ended. Grover has found two siblings – Bianca and Nico di Angelo – at a school, and in the ensuing battle against a manticore, Annabeth gets taken. The goddess Artemis arrives with her Hunters, and Percy’s next adventure begins with the search for Annabeth and the goal to save Artemis before the Olympian Council at the winter solstice. Grover and Thalia go on a quest with a Hunter named Zoe and Bianca, who has also joined the Hunters. After some adventures, Percy officially joins them, and they race across the country to San Francisco to stop the most recent component of Kronos’ plan to return. By the end of their journey, Bianca has been lost and Zoe has been killed, but both Annabeth and Artemis have been rescued. They have also learned that one of the children born of Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon will sacrifice the Ophiotaurus at the age of 16 and will start the war among the gods. Thalia – daughter of Zeus and one day away from her sixteenth birthday – chooses to join the Hunters and take Zoe’s place as Artemis’ lieutenant, thus becoming immortal. This leaves Percy as the only child of the Big Three able to turn sixteen and the only one thus able to fulfill the prophecy – other than Nico di Angelo, who Percy learns is the son of Hades.

Book 2: Starcrossed by Josephine Angelini

Book 2:

Starcrossed, Josephine Angelini

Summary:

Helen Hamilton, a shy Nantucket teenager, starts having strange dreams and hallucinations of three weeping women about the same time that the extended Delos family moves to the island. Then, she finds herself drawn to Lucas Delos, and she wants to kill him. After they save each other’s lives, that stops, and quickly they seem to start falling in love. Amidst this, the Delos family reveals that they are descended from the Greek god Apollo, and Helen is descended from a different god, making them all Scions. The Delos family – a part of House Thebes – helps train Helen so she can master her newfound powers, especially so she can protect herself, as others try to kill her, like the Delos’ cousin Creon. Helen and Lucas fall in love, but it turns out that they can’t be together because if that happens they might start a new Trojan War. Then Daphne, Helen’s mother, reappears, trying to get Helen to safety. Before Helen can share this information, Creon attacks. The Delos clan works with Helen and her mother – the last of House Atreus – to fight Creon, and Hector Delos kills him. Daphne reveals that there are other Scions from the other two houses still alive, which means that Lucas and Helen could be together. However, Daphne has told Helen that her true father was Ajax Delos, making her and Lucas cousins. As revealed essentially to the reader only, though, Ajax died over a year before Helen was conceived, so Daphne lied. Finally, the entire group learns about Helen’s strange dreams, which indicate that she can descend into the land of the dead. The book ends with the reader wondering who Helen’s real father is, whether she and Lucas will figure it out and be together, and what it means for Helen’s future that she is a Descender.

Book 1: Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters

Book 1:

The Sea of Monsters, Rick Riordan

About to Rearrange...

Okay. I'm going to rearrange things. I think it's probably too confusing for me to do separate posts about each segment of each book, so I'm going to repost what I've done so far, but with one post for each book.

Sorry about the confusion and the messiness. Hopefully this will all be set by tomorrow.

Kate