She Said / She Said: Best Books to Read

Carla Gardea & Olivya Thege

There is nothing more versatile and interesting than a good book - a book you could sit around all day and read, a book that you can finish in a matter of hours or a book that slowly becomes harder to digest, possibly taking months to finish. For anyone slightly interested in reading a few books over the summer, here is a competition between two Anchor News writers over who thinks which books are the best. 

Carla:

A thriller with plot twists everywhere you turn, incredible imagery, tragic high school events, a book that will leave you in tears - “This is Where it Ends,” conjured up by Marieke Nijkamp is just the book for you! This hair-raising novel captures 54 minutes of a school shooting with four different points of view, all of which have a connection to the shooter. A boy with a growing hate for the school and everyone in it comes up with a plan to carry out unsettling events. It depicts the events that led up to an extremely consequential event in a series of flashbacks, dramatic monologues and earthshaking discoveries that will all make you wonder, “why did he do it?”.

If you were looking for a whole world of pain and apparently couldn’t find that in the book above, here you go. One of my personal favorites, “Made You Up” by Francesca Zappia, follows a teenage girl (Alex) with schizophrenia as she turns the world upside down trying to figure out what's real and what’s just in her head. Bringing a camera along with her everywhere she goes, she documents everyday life to study any pictures taken to decide if anything is out of the ordinary and can be deemed as the hallucinatory part of her disorder. She hangs the photos worth keeping on her wall paired with artifacts brought to her by her archaeologist father. With not-so-close new friends and a potential love interest growing more and more suspicious of her behavior, she struggles to keep her disorder under wraps and falls down paranoid rabbit holes. Her spine-chilling hallucinations slowly make her more inclined to public exposure and the possibility of letting her secret out. With a brand new job, a magic 8 ball that may or may not be real, and a shady school determined to out her, she asks the unraveling question of utmost importance - “Did I make you up inside my head?”.

“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my lids and all is born again. (I think I made you up inside my head.)”

Olivya:

If you spend your summer watching soap operas, you might be entertained reading “The Great Gatsby” by the one and only, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Some of us have either heard, read, or have yet to read this book in an English class, but let me tell you, this book has the craziest love story. Now, if you are a Leonardo Dicaprio fan just like me, then I would recommend seeing the movie because he does an amazing job for the role of Gatsby and of course, looks handsome while doing it too. I'm sorry I kind of got carried away, but it starts off with the life of a handsome millionaire Jay Gatsby who seeks the love of a woman from his youth life in the hopes of winning her back. After all the years of knowing this woman, Gatsby follows her and watches her every move by reading local magazines. Of course, being next to your loved one is all you dream of, Gatsby lives just right across the bay from her. That’s not all, because, in the end, there is a misunderstanding between two evil men that leads Gatsby to a horrible situation.

Another booked-turned-movie has me wondering whether we are talking about good looks or good books because well…Timothee Chalamet and Armie Hammer grace the cover and star in the movie of, “Call Me By Your Name” written by André Aciman. Who else wouldn't want this outstanding duo in a novel? Anyways this book is not like your ordinary love story between a woman and man, but actually between two men. It all starts in the summer of 1983 when Oliver (Armie Hammer) is staying at Elio’s (Timothée Chalamet) home in Italy. Each summer, Elio’s parents would allow a doctoral student to stay at their house for about six weeks while Elio would assist his father with academic paperwork. It got to the point where Elio was seeing Oliver so much that their comfortability and trust with each other were so strong that they couldn’t handle each other's distance. About every day, the two would meet up with each other or secretly sneak into each other’s rooms at night. Overall, Elio just wants to end up with Oliver, but he thinks this will lead to complications with his parents and this lovely girl, Marzia (actress) who apparently has been seeing Elio for quite some time. Do Elio and Oliver end up together? Read the book to find out!

No matter what book you pick, it’ll be a win-win situation because all of these books and more will capture your heart and mind in a whirlwind of thoughts, giggles, and tears.

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Photo Credits:

Amazon- https://www.amazon.com/Made-You-Up-Francesca-Zappia/dp/0062290118

GoodReads- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24529123-this-is-where-it-ends

Apple Books

GoodReads- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36336078-call-me-by-your-name