Summer Reading Program Reviews

Skeleton Key by Anthony Horowitz

Fourteen-year-old Alex Rider is tired of working for the MI6 and needs a break. So they get him a summer job at Wimbledon. The only thing is that he has to keep an eye out for a group called the Red Circle. But Alex gets more than he bargained for when they start following him everywhere. Alex needs to get far away when the Red Circle becomes a danger to the people he is with. So, for his safety, Alex joins the CIA and joins two spies on a “vacation” to Skeleton Key, pretending to be their son. Troy and Carver say they are after something a salesman sold to the Russian president, but he starts to get suspicious. When Troy and Carver go scuba diving for Devil’s Cave and don’t come back up, he goes down to search for them. When Alex is down there, he finds more than just the answer to why they didn’t come back. In doing so, he meets a Russian army general from World War II who wants to change the world for the better. Find out how in this third book of the series: Skeleton Key. If you’re interested in thrilling mysteries with all sorts of twists and turns, then this is the book for you. Review by Nadia

Taken by Edward Bloor

I have been reading Taken by Edward Bloor for the past week. Overall, I thought it was a very well-written book that I enjoyed reading. I think that Edward Bloor did a great job describing this book in very great detail, since this book’s setting is the future –2035. This book is based on a different topic: kidnapping. Kidnapping is a major issue in this town. Kidnapping is up 50% in this small, little city. They actually have high tech security and guards surrounding their city. One day a 13-year-old girl named Charity called for an ambulance. She was not that sick; she simply wanted to see her parents, who were working at the hospital. When the ambulance came and took her away, they didn’t take her to the hospital, but kidnapped her. Charity was trapped in an ambulance with nothing to do until the kidnappers came in to remove her metal chip. A metal chip is a chip that is hidden somewhere inside every kid’s body. No one knows where they are hidden. Kidnappers have a machine that can detect where the chip is. For Charity it was in her braces. Now, after Charity had been stuck in the ambulance, she figured out an escape plan. The plan was for her to go to the bathroom and the kidnappers would go inside, and then she could make a break for it. The kidnappers found out her plan and she quickly tried to escape from their trap. She now got home safely with much to talk about. Review by Kathryn.