Irises

Author: Francisco X. Stork
pages: 288

This book is about two sisters that have lost everything, both parents and their home. They are trying to make the right decisions for them at this time in their lives while dealing with dreams for the future. This sounds like a good book on apper but it was slow moving and boring to me. I almost gave up but then it started to get interesting and then boring again. I didn't like the ending either. There were too many questions left, good thing there was a short epilogue to answer some of them.
  TWO SISTERS: Kate is bound for Stanford and an M.D. -- if her family will let her go. Mary wants only to stay home and paint. When their loving but repressive father dies, they must figure out how to support themselves and their mother, who is in a permanent vegetative state, and how to get along in all their uneasy sisterhood.

THREE YOUNG MEN: Then three men sway their lives: Kate's boyfriend Simon offers to marry her, providing much-needed stability. Mary is drawn to Marcos, though she fears his violent past. And Andy tempts Kate with more than romance, recognizing her ambition because it matches his own.

If Only

Author: Carole Geithner
Pages: 321
 This book follows her through one year after her mothers death. She has so many questions about and for her mother about life. Sometimes she talkes to her mother's urn and other times she asks her Aunt Jennifer. Corinna feels out of place at school because she thinks nobody understands her and what has happened.
I liked this book. It was written for a younger audience maybe pre-teen but was good nevertheless.

Here is the cover blurb: Corinna's world is crushed after her mother dies of cancer. How does she get through the funeral, trays of ziti, a father who can't communicate, the first day of school, Mother's Day, people who don't know what to say, and the entire eighth-grade year? Despite her alienation from many of her peers, including her best friend, she succeeds in finding support. She dares to bare her innermost fears, hurts, and wishes, and even allows herself to have a flowering crush on a boy in the school band. She also finds out deep secrets about her mother which she never knew. It's a year that will change Corinna's life forever.

 

Belles

Author: Jen Calonita
Pages: 352
Following her grandmothers diagnosis with Alzheimer's, Isabelle is jetted off into the world of rich and fabulous! the only problem is everyone at school and even her own cousin hate her. Can she make it?
I actually liked this book, it was a juicy quilty pleasure and will probably read the next book in the series,  Winter White when it is released.
Here is the inside cover blurb:
Fifteen-year-old Isabelle Scott loves her less-than-charmed life by the boardwalk on the wrong side of the tracks in North Carolina, but when a social worker must place her to live with a long-lost uncle and his preppy privileged family, she's taken away from everything she's ever known.

Unfortunately, inserting Isabelle into the glamorous lifestyle of Emerald Cove doesn't go so well. Cousin Mirabelle Monroe isn't thrilled to share her life with an outsider, and, she is ready to pull her hair out of her head over all the rumors and backstabbing that lurk beneath their classmates' Southern charm about her new family member. Like each other or not, Izzie and Mira are going to learn to get along, especially when they learn a life-changing secret that will turn both their worlds upside down.