Withering Tights

Title: Withering Tights
Author: Louise Rennison
Pages: 304
Language: PG
Content: PG/PG13
Level: Upper Middle/High School
Reccomendation: Optional

Summary:  Wow. This is it. This is me growing up. On my own, going to Performing Arts College. This is good-bye, Tallulah, you long, gangly thing, and helloooooo, Lullah, star of stage.

Tallulah Casey is ready to find her inner artist. And some new mates. And maybe a boy or two or three. She's bound for a performing arts program in the wilds of the Yorkshire Dales—eerily similar to the windswept moors of Wuthering Heights.

Acting? Tights? Moors? Check, check, check.  Louise Rennison returns with her trademark wit, a hilarious new cast, and a heroine who is poised to discover plenty of opportunities for (mis)adventure!

Review: I haven't read the other series by Louise Rennison, but I had heard that this was as "hilarious" as her other series was.  Maybe I just don't get British humor, as I didn't find it as funny as the reviews had said it was going to, but I had to keep reading...kind of like the quote in the book, "Watching you is like watching someone whose pants are on fire.  Stragely fascinating, keep it up".    This book is truly light reading. It is full of nonsensical ramblings from the mind of 14-year-old Tallulah, most of it over the top. There was very little plot around Tallulah and how she interacts with friends and local boys.  Her obsession with her small "corkers" and knobby knees got very old and I have to wonder if all 14 year old girls are that obsessed with their bodies. 

The Girls of No Return

Title: The Girls of No Return
Author: Erin Saldin
Pages: 345
Language: R (13 "F",  40+ other)
Content: PG13
Level: High School
Recommendation: Optional

Summary: CUT meets HATCHET in this lacerating debut about girls, knives, and redemption.  The Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness Area stretches across two million acres in northern Idaho. In its heart sits the Alice Marshall School, where fifty teenage girls come to escape their histories and themselves. Lida Wallace has tried to negate herself in every way possible. At Alice Marshall, she meets Elsa Boone, a fierce native Idahoan; Jules, who seems too healthy to belong at the school; and Gia Longchamps, whose glamour entrances the entire camp. As the girls prepare for a wilderness trek, Lida is both thrilled and terrified to be chosen as Gia's friend. But everyone has their secrets--their "Things" they try to protect; and when those come out, the knives do as well.

Review: Based around girls who are at a camp to rehabilitated, this story has secrets and twists.  However, I was completely put off by the language of the book, even though I realize that girls with "problems" don't have the best language, it was hard to suffer through.