Year 15, Book 50

50. Date Me, Bryson Keller by Kevin van Whye

Bryson Keller says he has no interest in dating during high school and with senior year well under way says he just wants to wait until college, but then finds himself dared to date a new girl every week at a party. Kai Sheridan has made his own decision to wait until college to come out, but impulsively takes the bet and asks Bryson Keller to date him for a week. Now it seems like they might both be breaking the vows they made.

This was a really cute teenage rom-com. I very much enjoyed reading it and think it would make a great movie a la Love, Simon.  I give it an 8 out of 10.

Year 15, Book 49

49. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

This book has uniformly rave reviews and apparently is being turned into a TV show. I do not understand why. It’s the decades long story of a Russian man who is forced into essentially house arrest in a hotel after a regime change in the country. Maybe my perspective was colored a little bit by the fact that I read the book while under quarantine for COVID-19, but I did not get what appealed to people about this book. I felt like nothing really happened. We didn’t ever get a good interior look at the characters thoughts and the time jumps left out major things that I wanted to know about. It at least led to a good book club discussion. I give it a 5 out of 10.

Year 15, Book 48

48. The Bright Lands by John Fram

In a small town in Texas a teenage football star disappears in an eerily similar manner to someone else who disappeared years before. His brother who recently returned to the town from NYC to visit his brother along with the cop who is the sister of the previously missing boy try to dig into what really happened when the other cops seem to be trying to cover it up.

In the beginning I felt like this story had promise, but it went completely off the rails at the end with the answer to what really happened. It turned the book into something it wasn’t for most of the book. I kept reading because I wanted to know what happened, but then I wished I hadn’t. I give it a 4 out of 10.