Stranded on Castaway Island 5 star YA adventure survival

Stranded on Castaway Island written by Amy C. Laundrie is young adult adventure survival contemporary fiction told from the first-person point of view of fourteen-year-old Annie. Life has dealt her a difficult hand. She lost her mom in a car accident, and her best friend, Mirra, betrayed her. As the story opens, she is the caregiver to her two younger brothers, emotional support for her dad, and has taken on the role of providing whatever is needed for the family. But life turns upside down when her former best friend asks her to join her for an island picnic. She boards the boat thinking perhaps Mirra is going to apologize. That is far from the case, and when a sudden storm turns the boat ride into a terrifying fight for survival, Annie and Mirra find themselves shipwrecked on a remote island. The two of them are forced to learn how to survive together, and how to let go of their grudges which grow to encompass whose fault it is that they are stranded. 

 

 

Wild horses that live on the island bring an interesting element to the story. I won’t share it in detail, because I don’t include spoilers in my reviews, but I have to say I enjoyed this harbinger on more than one level.

 

Laundrie does an excellent job telling the story from a teenage point of view and the pacing of this story is perfect with a constant ebb and flow of conflict and resolution. An element of mystery and a whole new danger level ratchets up the tension when the girls find warm embers from a campfire and man-sized footprints. Is someone watching them? Why doesn't he show himself? Are they in danger?

I highly recommend this book for readers who enjoy YA adventure survival like Wildfire by Rodman Philbrick, or A Map for Wrecked Girls by Jessica Taylor. I enjoyed the characters, the setting, and the realistic details that made it all come to life as well as the healing nature of the story. I give Stranded on Castaway Island 5 stars.

As BookHookup, I am a longtime book reviewer and I received Stranded on Castaway Island as a free review copy and have not been compensated for reviewing or recommending it.  

 

This review is posted in collaboration with #Blackberry Book Tours. Some links in this post are affiliate links. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to amazon.com and affiliate sites. 

 

About Author Amy C. Laundrie

 

Amy Laundrie taught elementary school for over thirty years. She loved sharing her love of nature, animals, and stories with her students. Her survival novel, STRANDED ON CASTAWAY ISLAND, takes young adult readers on a wild adventure. THE QUACK-A-DOOLDE PARADE is a rollicking picture book. She's also a weekly columnist and has collected her favorite pieces and included them in an adult memoir called LAUGH, CRY, REFLECT: STORIES FROM A JOYFUL HEART. Her latest series beginning with FOLLOW ME INTO THE WOODS is a nature picture book series. NOAH'S ARK PET CARE CLUB is a fun story about three kids who pet-sit. Amy’s also the author of WHINNY OF THE WILD HORSES, and the Kayla Montgomery mystery series for older readers. EYE OF TRUTH, THIRTY PIECES OF SILVER, DELIVER US FROM EVIL, LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION, and WOLVES IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING include suspense, light romance, and horses. 

Visit her at www.laundrie.com.

A scary story that teaches how to work together

 Izzy Miller and her twin brother, Noah, settle into their new creepy house, Glenbat Manor. Izzy isn’t happy about it. She left all her friends behind and it’s all her brother’s fault. He’s been accepted by St. Alberts Academy for the Gifted. Only thirty kids a year are accepted. Now she has to start seventh grade at a new school as his not-so-clever twin and her parents expect her to be supportive!

 

 

Izzy volunteers to sweep up the layers of dust in the living room and sticks her brother with the job of tackling the basement. He has no problem with it, as long as she promises to take part in the family’s Friday evening game night. Playing a game with Noah is the last thing she wants to do. Luckily the box with all the board games is nowhere to be found. What she doesn’t know is that sending Noah to the basement is something she will regret.

With Mom making dinner and Dad setting up his studio, Izzy sweeps dust from the spacious living room, texts with her friends, listens to music, and stews over the fact that she won’t be seeing her friends. A noise startles her. It’s a pale kid staring through the dirt-crusted window. He waves. She opens the window a crack and asks what he’s doing hanging around her house. He is surprised she actually would move into the Terror Shack and introduces himself as Walter Parkinson, a neighbor. 

She invites him in out of the cold and Izzy's mom is happy to see she’s making a new friend and invites him to stay for dinner. Then Noah walks into the living room announcing game night is saved. Izzy introduces Walter as the kid who came over to warn them that the previous family had disappeared without a trace a hundred years ago.

Walter asks what Noah is holding. He shows them a game he found in the basement. Izzy is not thrilled as her brother sets up the game carved with strange symbols and designs. Walter thinks it will be fun. With no other real options for something to do on a Friday night, Izzy agrees to play for half an hour.

The game has no instructions and no game pieces. Noah opens his hand to show two dice but without instructions, no one knows what to do. Noah tosses the dice on the table and starts to talk about something else. A tiny silver skull materializes on the board at “start” and it moves along the spaces! Izzy figures it’s some kind of parlor trick and takes her turn. Instead of another game piece appearing, the silver skull moves again. Time freezes. If they ever want to see their family again, they have no choice but to finish the game.

L. G. Cunningham’s Game with No Name is book 2 in the JITTERS series following Pretty Perilous Parakeet (Book 1). It’s a thrilling adventure that centers around a mysterious game with no name. Some turns whisk all players away from Glenbat Manor into dangerous life-threatening quests where they must work together to solve a riddle. If they don’t, they could die. When Izzy finds herself on a pirate battleship the first thing she does is blame her brother. But to solve the riddle they must get along and work together.

 This entertaining spooky adventure story is a perfect choice for young readers and tweens who like stories with danger, uncertainty, and magic. It’s scary but not too scary and it builds on how working together to solve the clues is important on the ship, in a jungle swamp, in a creepy castle, and more. I give this book 4 stars. In some ways I thought it predictable, but in others, it delivers unexpected twists. I recommend The Game with No Name to those who enjoy Zathura or Jumanji: Picture book of children's growth, or who like reading ghoulish stories with a happy ending.

As Book Hookup, I am a longtime book reviewer, and I received this book as a free review copy and have not been compensated for reviewing or recommending it. This review is posted in collaboration with #BookTasters. Some links in this post are affiliate links. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to amazon.com and affiliate sites.

  

About Author L. G. Cunningham

LG Cunningham loves to write scary, spine-chilling, monster filled, ‘my-child-is-not-able-to-sleep’ stories. This term of endearment could be as a result of growing up in an Irish town filled with ghosts, being able to communicate with (and actually see) the dead or more than likely because his family used to rent him horror movies (pre-Netflix and pre-DVDs) when he was very little which had the affect of twisting his brain to the extent that he was - and still is - afraid of his own shadow.

Head on over to the author’s website (www.LGCunningham.com) or Twitter page (@LG_Cunningham) to keep updated on future releases in the series...or to simply have a chat!

 

The Eastie Threat delivers a royal underdog you can root for

 Andrew Einspruch’s fifth book in The Western Lands and All that Really Matters pre-release became available to reviewers I couldn’t wait to read it. I’ve loved the first four books and the intrinsic way he embeds subtle humor throughout the storyline. The Eastie Threat delivers another action-packed fantasy plot with his beloved anthropomorphic characters fans have come to know well. 

 

In The Eastie Threat, the story picks up with teenage Queen Eloise Hydra Gumball III on the throne facing challenges at every turn. Some are annoying challenges like adequate but not good food created by her new chef, but she is faced with big problems and puzzles that consume her thoughts as she tries to learn how to be the Queen.

She is still trying to figure out who killed her mother, and almost no one else seems interested. The advisors she depends on don’t seem to be serving her well or is that her imagination? Plus she has the distraction of a blurry eye and buzzing ear, a left-over side effect from her use of magic to help figure out what she needs to do. If that isn’t enough, the coup de grâce is a threat from Eastern Lands Queen Aglandau when she takes the Western Lands town of Flatchburg. She even relocates the Adequate Wall of the Realms to create a new boundary.

Einspruch delivers another well-paced page-turner in the Eastie Threat. Young Queen Eloise is a royal underdog you can root for. Her army is not prepared to meet the threat. Her support staff is inadequate, and she finds out her realm isn’t financially ready to handle everything that needs to be done. While overwhelmed she doesn’t give up, and with each challenge and even her failures, the reader can see the young woman’s underlying strength and at times wisdom.

I recommend The Eastie Threat to anyone who enjoys YA fantasy filled with conundrums, a strong female protagonist, and a little levity (often when you least expect it). I enjoyed that Einspruch brought the original band of characters introduced in The Purple Haze back together for this adventure. The one thing that disappointed me with this book is that it wasn’t quite as funny as the others, but the fact he could fit humor into this book at all with the Queen facing so many problems is an incredible feat. I give this book 5 stars, and I am looking forward to reading book six.

Reviews for Western Lands and All that Really Matters Books

The PurpleHaze (#1)

The Star ofWhatever (#2)

The LightBearer (#3)

The CrownPlunked Queen (#4)

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As Book Hookup, I am a long-time book reviewer and I received this book as a free review copy and have not been compensated for reviewing or recommending it. Some links in this post are affiliate links. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to amazon.com and affiliate sites.

About Author Andrew Einspruch

Andrew Einspruch is the award-winning author of the humorous fantasy series The Western Lands and All That Really Matters. He's also had more than 120 children's books published, both fiction and non-fiction, that have sold around the world. Starting with the four-book "Dunkin' Dazza" series in the 1990s, Andrew's work has covered everything from basketball to DNA, biographies to histories to mysteries, outback heroes to Christmas Island red crabs, and from how the rides work at amusement parks to how the Australian Government works (perhaps the greatest mystery of all).

Andrew is the co-founder of the not-for-profit charity the Deep Peace Trust, which fosters deep peace for all species. Based in rural New South Wales, Andrew, his wife Billie, and their adult daughter Tamsin run the Trust's A Place of Peace, one of Australia's largest farm animal sanctuaries. The cows, sheep, horses, goats, dogs, cats, and geese, as well as local wildlife including kangaroos, wombats, and cockatoos, are a constant source of inspiration.

If you ask, he'll deny he ever programmed in COBOL for a bank.