This Unit’s book was selected for me via selection survey from the LMC librarian, Mrs. Means. She ended up matching me with a book called “Eragon” by Christopher Paolini. I usually don’t let others pick my books for me, but I decided to give it a chance.

The book is about a normal farm boy named Eragon who finds a dragon egg while he’s hunting. He doesn’t know what it is, so he tries to sell it, but fails. One night, the egg hatches and he then choses to keep the hatchling a secret. But he is then thrown into a series of unfortunate events and choses to go adventuring. I like this book so far, and I’m glad I gave it a chance!

For the Independent novel readings, I chose A Curse so Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer. Our school librarian, Ms. Means recommended it in a book talk once and got me interested.

!SPOILER ALERT!

This book is about the two main characters, Rhen and Harper. The book frequently switches between their perspectives of the story. Harper is abducted from the streets of D.C. and gets abducted to another world by a prince(Rhen) who needs her to fall in love with him so he can break his curse. Rhen’s curse makes it so that he must live Autumn over and over again until he can get someone to fall in love with him. What makes his curse so dark and lonely is that when the 3 months of the season are over, he turns into some horrible version of monster that terrorizes his people. Harper is dragged to his world as a second choice by Grey, the head of his guard, and the only surviving member of the castle. Harper isn’t buying into any of this at all, an tries to escape multiple times. But then it turns out that the rival kingdom(Shyl Shallow next to Emberfall is looking to invade, they band together in an attempt to save the kingdom. Harper is pretending to be the princess and daughter of the King of “Disi”(DC). This way, Rhen and her hoped to scare off the invading kingdom by saying that the King of Disi would help Emberfall crush Shyl Shallow if they dare invade. Rhen begins to amass a small army, but nothing that could defend the entire kingdom. The night that Shyl Shallow decides to invade Emberfall is Rhen’s last night of his season, and he turns into a terrifying monster. Harper also made it back to her own world through Rhen’s last order to Grey to take her home. When he returns to her saying that Rhen needs help, she, along with her brother and his boyfriend return to Emberfall to save Rhen. Harper is able to get Rhen to recognize her and not kill her, as well as attack enemy troops. They then drive back the army of Shyl Shallow, but Harper and her family are stuck there now, as Grey is missing.

I hope that my summary did the book some justice, but there is much more that I wasn’t able to include. With this book, I hope to create a playlist that is perfect to listen to while you read!

For this quarter’s independent novel selection, I chose A Curse so Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer. I chose this book because I remembered a book talk by Ms. Means in the library, and it seemed interesting to me. This book is about a girl named Harper from D.C. who gets abducted to another world by a prince who needs her to fall in love with him so he can break a curse. Rhen’s curse makes it so that he must live fall over and over again until he can get someone to fall in love with him. What makes his curse so dark and lonely is that when the 3 months of the season are over, he turns into some horrible version of monster that terrorizes his people. Rhen’s been in this loop for about 327 times now. It started off a bit like the movie “Beauty and the Beast”, only it’s got a lot more action in it and it’s not exactly a fairytale. (I couldn’t help myself and just read the whole thing so I won’t spoil the ending.)