Witch: Season, by Jeff Mariotte

Dear Mr. Jeff Mariotte,

I have to tell you something.

First off all, thank you for creating a main character who is traditionally attractive. As if we didn't have enough female protagonists with long, shiny hair and gorgeous bodily proportions. Of course she must also be moderately sarcastic, just enough to give the impression of being intelligent but not too caustic because then she might actually be an interesting main character without the help of supporting male characters. Naturally, when a male stranger shows up on her summer share house's lawn covered in blood and barely conscious, she must feel inexplicably drawn to him; when he makes the odd request "No doctors," she immediately complies, and even tells her flatmates to restrain themselves from doing something sane and, you know, calling the police. And where would your story be without this Kerry Proffit caring for her cancer-stricken mother, so she feels she must care for the stranger too, all the while describing him as "quite attractive in a dark, smoky sort of way." Gee, never heard that before.

The point I'm trying to make is, your narrator, your main freaking character, the first person we meet when we open your book, is so cookie cutter and unimaginative that she depends on the male characters to make the book interesting. That infuriates me. She never even listens to reason--just Daniel! He could be a serial killer, but at least he's an attractive psychopath, right?

Not only that, Mr. Tall Dark and Typical, Daniel Blessing? His back-story is so pathetic, you might as well have left it out. It's not often I hate so vehemently on a book, but really? During the spring of 1704, Season (the witch) was accused of witchcraft. Season destroyed the town, leaving only one person to survive. Well, three. D-Bless's mother was pregnant at the time with twins. Three hundred years later, his mother and brother have died in the fight to end Season. Daniel, the lone hero, must continue to pursue her all alone...

You see where I'm going with this? One, his background exists only to excite the pity of Kerry, so she can follow him around and never question his motives, and two, why is Kerry feeling pity for a guy who got his family killed on a vendetta? Dan the man said so himself, Season is too powerful for him to handle. So why must he go about trying to kill her? He's lived for 300 years and can perform feats of magic that mortal minds can't truly comprehend. He could be rich and happy forever, and his mom and brother could have survived along with him!

So basically, your plotline could very well be interesting, but you haven't really thought about how you should write your characters. To me, as a reader, it was painful to turn every page and just wallow in the typical romance that blossoms. I don't mean to offend you, but frankly the way you wrote your female protagonist angers me. Why did her life have to change after she met a boy? Why does she have to be a dull character without the plot and the men?

                                           Your Offended Female Reader,
                                                              Tanvi Jagtap

The Crimes and Punishments of Miss Payne, by Barry Jonsberg

Something I realized
The book opens with a copy of an assignment from an English teacher, ordering a paragraph or two of similes describing a person, place or thing. It's written by Calma Harrison, about someone she knows. His name is Kiffo. The ensuing paragraphs are really good characterization for Calma, because how many people do you know that can think of similes like this one:

 "Kiffo's nose is like butter on toast. It was put on hot and it spread. His nostrils gape like two huge caves, but it would be difficult to camp in them, or even light a fire in them."

Calma's special like that.  She can be bitingly sarcastic and eloquently rude about a great many things, and the way she chooses to phrase them gets progressively funnier throughout the book. The story is about two kids, Calma and Kiffo, trying to prove their teacher is a drug dealer.

"The new teacher is inexperienced. She thinks she can get through to the kids, bless her. That she can make a difference, mold minds, instill a love of literature into the lumpy heads of Kiffo and the other dazzlingly dysfunctional dumbbells that make up my Year 10 English class."

 As you read the book, you're convinced that's what the book is about, fighting off the drug dealer teacher, but the ending makes you realize that something else was more important. I'm not gonna say if the teacher was a drug dealer and if they proved it, but Kiffo dies in the process. The rest of the book's focus suddenly switches from catching the teacher to Kiffo and Calma's friendship. It's not even something that you can read and realize the difference. After his death, you think more about their relationship than what happens to the teacher. You care more about Kiffo than you do about the teacher. It shows the book was written masterfully, because you don't realize the point of the book before Kiffo dies, just as Calma didn't realize how much she loved Kiffo's friendship until he was dead.

Airborn, by Kenneth Oppel

The best thing about my book is...

Well, there are two things. 

• The two main characters, Matt Cruse and Kate de Vries, have a great relationship. It's filled with sarcastic remarks and jokes. As you're reading, you smile at almost every conversation. I think it's because Kate reads quite a bit, so she knows a lot. She wants to be a biologist, but her parents don't approve. After the airship crashes on an island in the Pacific, she's thrilled she'll get to see all the wildlife, and of course there aren't any dangerous animals on this little island in the Oceanic, Matt, because I've read it in a book. This leads to her being wrong a lot and Matt being caustically sarcastic. Their relationship, in my opinion, makes the book because while the setting and the plot are interesting by themselves, the characters make you want to keep reading if only to hear them speak.

"There's no snakes here, by the way," I told her. "I'm completely sure of it." -Matt, after being attacked by a red jumping snake. 

• This one is a smaller detail, but in my mind it's just as important. Kate and Matt, while on the island, discover a new species of animal that never lands on the earth nor swims in the seas. It looks like a mixture of a panther and a bat. You know when you read a book and a mystical creature is introduced, and it's described as majestic and intelligent and truly innocent, and blah blah blah mankind is a lesser creature in its presence... Well, there is some of that in the book, but pretty soon you realize that while the creature is majestic and intelligent it's also incredibly vicious. I appreciate the originality in creating a new animal. 

"We saw her teeth, and suddenly she was no longer a sleek, shy cat...We'd made a terrible mistake." -Matt, after they lured the cloud cat to them so they could get a picture.