Request #277 From ek’owoicho

I read the book years ago sometime between 2009-2011. The book is about this man who was a bastard as he was a result of his father’s affair and treated as an outcast, he inherited his father’s mine his half-siblings didn’t contest it as the mine was seen as useless. In order to gain some respectability he goes to the richest (I think) man in the community and ask to marry his second daughter. The rich man had two daughters of which he loved the second more bec she looked a lot like his late wife and barely acknowledged the existence of the first. The first was thought to be reckless and a gypsy, she had a tattoo of a rose at the top of her left breast I think. She came back with a son less than 7 years. Her father wanting to be rid of her sent for her as she lived somewhere else and married her off to the bastard. The first few months of their marriage was terrible he got mad at her when he came home from visiting the mines for using her money to renovate the rundown house they lived in. They eventually found love more him than her as she had fallen in love with him years ago. Turns out his mine was being sabotaged by someone he trusted this was revealed after he went down into the mines after receiving word that the miners have found gold (I think) unfortunately when he got there he discovered the miners were stuck down there as an explosion which was a constant had happened so he went in there to help and then he realized dynamites had been placed in several places. Not hearing anything from her husband she went to the minefield and met a new buyer and his partner in crime threatening the miners, luckily her husband and the miners were able to come out safely and revealed the truth to everyone gathered. Her little sister was jealous of her and wanted her husband for herself and so she revealed the truth that she was the one who gave birth to the little boy and not her elder sister and he was in fact the father of the boy. In the end he stuck by the elder sister side and kept his son. The story had some sand dunes scenes and the cover was maybe dark red. Thank you

Request #276 From Elizabeth

I remember it’s a YA drama/sci fy set in the future. There’s a butterfly on the cover.  If follows a teenage girl with limited memories. All she knows is she was in a car accident. Parents don’t tell her anything about it.  Eventually she accidentally gets a cut on her skin and there’s no blood. She later goes on a computer and finds out that she had friends that died in the crash and her parents saved her bc they were rich and had access to this new technology to place her consciousness into a new, synthetic body. 

Request #275 From Jess

This book had a long title, like a full sentence, or one of those titles that goes “Title: A Longer Explanation Of Title With A Catchy Selection Of Words”.  I read it from the YA section in the early 2000s, no idea if it was recent or not though. It was about this female scientist who was working on photographing the moment of ovulation. She was the only woman in the industry at the time, and in a unique position to be able to use herself as a test subject. Her male scientist colleagues would have to find women willing to be test subjects and track their ovulation and be available to come to the lab at the exact right moment for the scientists to do the procedure of inserting this special camera to be able to see the moment an egg is released from the ovaries. So you can imagine that she was making alot more progress than they were. She somehow gets involved with this money guy who has bought or somehow gotten hold of the Shroud of Turin, the rag that supposedly was used to wipe the brow of Christ…..so it supposedly has Christ’s DNA on it. This money guy is somehow involved in the development of IVF and cloning. He has this trophy wife who is really sweet and kind of dumb and naive, and she takes a liking to the woman scientist, being the only woman in the industry. The scientist is a real cynic, and is kind of annoyed that this trophy wife is always hanging around and trying to befriend her, but it’s clear she’s quite lonely and she feels sorry for her being married to Mr Moneybags who treats her like she’s dumb, and they do strike up this sort of friendship. All Trophy Wife really wants is to have a family with Mr Moneybags, but either she’s infertile or he can’t have kids, the way she’s sad and feels she’s letting him down makes me think it’s her that can’t have kids, and all she wants is a family.  Via the research that Mr Moneybags is funding in fertility with Scientist Lady, I think Trophy Wife gets pregnant, and pretty soon after, Scientist Lady realises Mr Moneybags has impregnated his wife, not with his own sperm, but with DNA from the Turin Shroud. I think Trophy Wife realises as well because she turns to the Scientist for help, and I think she gives her an abortion because they both realise that him impregnating her with the descendant of Christ without her knowledge was a gross breach of trust and a stupid thing to do. That or it was just a miscarriage, but I do remember Trophy Wife turning to Scientist Lady for help because she trusts her and has no one else to turn to.

Request #274 From Teresa

I read this book a few years ago. It’s a mystery thriller with some romance in it. I remember it starting off with a girl who was home alone and a killer enters her home and comes close to killing we her but her parents arrived home and scared him away. Her parents never believed her because all of the doors, windows and locks were still good and locked. Years later this woman never got over what she saw. years later the killer is released from prison. He got caught on something else and tries to find the one who got away to finish the job. It turns out he’s super flexible and able to get into small spaces like a doggie door which is how he got into the home without alerting anyone.

Request #273 From Marvy

I think the title was The Me I Used To Be. It’s a middle aged woman who has recently been proposed to by her middle aged boyfriend but needs closure from her first love first. They had sex one night, he disappears, she is pregnant and never hears from him again. She gives up her baby,a girl for adoption. I think it was before or after the proposal a teenage boy appears on her day claiming to be her grandchild – the son of the daughter she had given away many years ago. Now, an opportunity has risen its head. She says she needs her first love to know they had a child and now a grandchild and Grandmother and son set off to find that man of many years ago. They found him and it turns out he had been drafted into the war with Vietnam. He had not told her because he did not want her waiting for him forever. I think he lost a leg in the war and now limps. Her picture was on his bedside and it’s obvious he had never forgotten her. The butterflies still fly between them and they kiss and almost have sex but they then decide to let their relationship be in the past and that they were different people now. Woman is reconciled with her grandson, has the closure she needs and returns home, ready to accept her boyfriend’s proposal.

Request #272 From Zac

If you can help me out on finding a book from my middle school/high school days (06-13) that would be great.  What I can remember is the book follows a teenage boy who’s older brother is released from jail and comes back home. The brother pleads that he is innocent, and that he shouldn’t have been in jail. The ending sticks out most to me, as the older brother commits a similiar crime to what he went to jail for, the little brother sees him for who he truly is, and the older brother escapes the town via like a raft on a river, and the little brother is sure he won’t survive on the river, and he watches him go/leave. That’s all I have. I have been searching for this book for a long time, and I have even purchased books I believed were it, just to figure out it wasn’t

Request #271 From Katie

I’ve been looking for the name of this short story for ages! I read a short novel in 8th grade set in a dystopian world. The main character lived in a government setting and only ate wafers for nutrition. They paid people in tokens, and her mother only had her because it was a year she’d earn more tokens. She eventually escaped with a stranger who lived ‘on the outside’ and she was exposed to sunlight. She got terrible sunburn. She also tried an orange (tried to eat it with the rind on) and chicken for the first time, which tasted amazing. She eventually lived with his family.

Request #270 From Sumaiya

i’ve been searching for this book for ages but no google searches come up lol  it’s basically about this girl i THINK first based in england and she goes to a performing arts school and has either 2/3 friends and a “hot boyfriend” (i think it’s a series so maybe not the bf first). but i do remember that she ends up moving to i think america as her mum gets remarried to either this actor or director. there’s one scene where her mum is wearing a satin shirt and there’s a massive christmas tree in the foyer and a dog too.  i think she’s worried about losing her friends and boyfriend as there MAY have been a new girl back home? not entirely sure. oh and i think she made a new movie and her performance got bad reviews! 

Request #269 From Kaitlin

I borrowed it from a friend in 2003/2002, and I feel like it was pretty new at the time but it may have been older. It’s a YA book about a girl whose mother joins a cult that believes only a certain number of people on top of a mountain on a certain day can go to heaven. She thinks it’s ridiculous but over the course of the story a lot of things happen that make her wonder if there’s not something to it. They don’t have the right number of people until close to the end when the cult leader’s long lost son joins them on the mountain, making their final person. The news starts covering the cult and a bunch of people want to join the mountain cult but are kept back by ropes and guards. The day dawns, everyone is gathered, but panicked outsiders fight their way on to the mountain top so the rapture doesn’t happen since there’s too many people on the mountain. Or maybe because the whole thing was never true to begin with. The main character doesn’t know which is true and it really leaves you feeling unsettled because by the end, you aren’t either. I believe it’s told in dual POV with a teenage boy who starts out as a believer and slowly begins to doubt. But I don’t remember much from his perspective, so he might not have had a POV, he might just feature heavily.

Request #268 From Dara

 I am! Looking for a book that had a deep effect.  Although I can’t remember exactly when I read it because I’ve never stopped reading YA 🙂 70s? 80s? All I remember about it was that she was an outcast (I think and most likely). Toward the end of the book, she climbed a hill or a mountain and lay down in the grasses. She died there and it was followed by a (long?) description of how her consciousness remained, describing the decomposition of her body and going back into the earth. It was a small paperback.