"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read" ~Groucho Marx

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Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Catalyst

Anderson, Laurie Halse. Catalyst. New York: Viking, 2002. 323 pages. (Realistic Fiction)


Kate Malone is a straight-A student, math geek, and is obsessed with chemistry. She lives with her dad and her brother, and her mom died when she was very young. Kate has a boyfriend and two absolutely wonderful best friends. So far, in her life everything is going perfectly, (except for her mom) and she feels as if she can handle anything. Until her neighbors, the Litches, house burns down, and her dad lets them move in out of “the goodness in his heart.” Teri and her little brother have to sleep in her bedroom, and Teri always gets in trouble, fights with people, and is very inconsiderate. Kate is in her senior year of high school, and she only applied to one school, MIT. She is very anxious and stressed because she hasn’t heard from them. Her life is getting ruined more and more by the seconds that tick by. Then it blows up.

I really enjoyed this book because it’s not just about girls who are freaking out about a pimple, buying the wrong shade of lip gloss, or gaining a pound. It’s about a girl who experiences thing that happen to normal people. I really like how it showed that even if someone is perfect, there world can be torn apart. This book makes you really look at people differently, and try to see what they are really made of, and not just what other people see at a glance. I would positively recommend this book to anything.

Reviewed by: LESH