Rating: 
Summary: The best book
Review: "The Year of Secret Assignments" is a book told entirely through pen-pal letters, diary entries, and a funny fill-in-the-blank notebook. Its creativity was very entertaining and made it hard for me to put the book down. The characters were realistic and believable and really made me feel like a part of the story. Its plot was not only fun, but unpredictable! It was hard to tell what was going to happen next, which made it hard to stop reading. It was refreshing to read a teen book that wasn't revolved around sex, drugs, and disorders. Instead it was about crazy secret assignments, and of course, occasional michievious events here and there.
This is now my favorite book and I highly recommend it!
Rating: 
Summary: WARNING to parents
Review: Although this book is well written, and the story is engaging, I have significant concerns for tweens and younger teens. The consequences that these 10th graders receive for their escapades are minimal, and the potential for more serious consequences not even mentioned. In particular, when one of the girls decides to meet her pen pal (whose letters to her have been menacing), she arranges the meeting in a desolate area, where a rape could easily have gone unnoticed. No mention of this potential consequence is made. In addition, I found the "pen pal" assignment somewhat peculiar to encourage in the era of internet predators, particularly since the pen pals were all boy/girl pairs. Also of concern are the episodes of school vandalism and pranks. These included destruction of property, a false alarm requiring the school to be emptied and emergency personnel to be called, disruption of testing, and skipping school. In many of these situations, there are no consequences. In comparison to these issues, the crude language, references to sex (particularly oral sex), alcohol and drug use can even seem trivial despite their presence on the majority of pages. I do believe it would have been possible for the author to be more responsible and still not jeopardize the literary value of what was otherwise an enjoyable story.
Rating:
Summary: Greatest book ever!
Review: At the begining of the book, it is kinda hard 2 get into, but after reading the first 20 pages you get sucked in as this book takes unexspected twists and turns. it was a quick read and i loved every minute of it. There aren't to many main characters (5, but really 6 if u count mathew dunlop, the weirdo jerk). I thought lydia and seb were the most exciting, and emily & charlie were like a cute married couple who deny it. Cassie was kinda boring, but fun to read about. all in all, it was a great book and i would recomend it for 13-17 yr. olds! :) :) :)hehehe...
Rating:
Summary: Em, Cass, & Lyd
Review: First off, let me tell you how great this book was. I read it in like 2 days and I had a blast reading it. One of my friends recomended it, and she said it was ausome so I trusted her. She was totally right!!!
Anyway, it starts off talking about 3 girls going to a private shool called Ashbury. Their English teacher gives them a assignment were they have to write to the kids at Brokfield high. They kids there are will-destened to like go to jail by the time they turn 18, or juvey. You never know!
Anyway, they have to right letters to them and they each get a guy who are: Mattthew (Paul), Sebastian, and Charlie. In the story Emily (Em) is with Charlie, Cassie with Matthew (Paul), and Lyd with Seb. In the beiginng I thought they all made a really cute couples, but later in the book we find something out about Cass and Matthew. I won't say because its pretty much the plot of the book. Anyway, let me tell you that Charlie and Em get pretty close and Charlie is just this totally sweet guy with a bad rep. Same with Seb. They totally bond with the guys they write to, and so does Cass but then something happens that even I didn't think would happen. Its all really funny to. Exspacially Matthew's first letter. Ha-halarious!!!
I give high praise to Jaclyn Moriarty for this book. LOL! This a book that alot of people can laugh out loud (lol) to. I think she made the charcters very realistic and some realistic then others to me (wink!). Trust me when I say this, great book!!!!! I totally recomand it!! Tennagers will love it everywhere!
Jessica
Rating:
Summary: Creative and Funny!
Review: I actually rate this 4.5 but there isn't choice for that.The unique characters and creative way of telling the story are part of what make this book so good!! I love how the guys in the book aren't too "perfect dream guy" so that it makes it more credible! Although it was somewhat predictable in some cases, it still was an excellent book and I highly recommend it to teens!!
Rating: 
Summary: a book to burn
Review: I am extremely disappointed with this book. I purchased it for my 12yo daughter for a humorous book for literature study. It is full of trashy language - words that used to be forbidden on TV according to George Carlin....
What a waste of my money :( I wish I could return it for a refund.
Rating:
Summary: This is an amazing book!!
Review: I can't say enough about this book! I read it in one sitting and loved every page of it! If you haven't already read this book i HIGHLY reccomend it. I told my friend about this book and after the word got around, 12 people I knew had read and very much enjoyed this book! This book is a page turner by far, and if i could, i would recommemd this book to everyone!
Rating:
Summary: Amazing.
Review: I don't really care how much work you have on your hands, this is one book to take out a whole day for. If you don't ever get round to reading this fab book then you're missing out. It deals with death, afterlife, love, grief and bullying in an entertaining Aussie way. Jacqueline has really outdone herself this time. READ!!!
Rating:
Summary: Roller Coaster Ride
Review: I have to say that I was touched by the quality of friendship between the girls and the new one between the boys. It was amazing to know what's going on in a teenager's mind abroad. I found myself comparing it with my own and wishing if only our language teacher had asked us to do that kind of penpal project, I would have found myself in the crowd too.
There are some issues gave my some thoughts to ponder on, such as this:
The story brought up the children's privacy issue which was interesting since parents sometimes need to know what's in their children's head if something goes wrong. This point was actually broken by the girls themselves by breaking into the culprit's bedroom which I think is a private area, although they had just declared the their amazing declaration about how fragile and what it meant by someone (teacher) breaking into their private stuff (when they were accused).
I know that the breaking the culprit's private stuff was needed to release the girls and it was very wrong for teacher to just breaking the girls' private stuff when their aledgement was not strongly based (the evidence being that someone had told them was really lame to be used by the Form Mistress, I agree). I guess this comes back to the statement: anyone must have prooved and strong enough reason for breaking other's privacy regardless a child's or a grown up's. So that leaves me to the 'insane' Form Mistress. Why could she ever have that attitude towards her own school's students?
It made the adults in this book (specially the teacher) looked bad, but that problem was balanced by the parents' effort to support their children and also without their parents, they might not be able to go free with their argument. Other than that issue, the progress of the penpal project and Cassie's problem were heart-warming. What a way to see yourself and the world.
Rating:
Summary: The Year of Secret Assignments by Jaclyn Moriarty
Review: I know that a lot of teenage readers, like myself, are not really into these coming-of-age, growing -up kind of novels. Don't let that deter you from getting your hands on this book though - even I found the characters and plot more engaging then any recent read I can remember.
In a nutshell, this book was about three high-school girls - Cass, Lyd and Em - who find new friends through a penpal project in their English class. Lyd and Em have to use every wit and resource they can to try and scrape out the truth about Cass' mysterious letter-correspondent. Actually, the whole novel is written in letters from the friends to their correspondents or in diary entries.
This is probably one of the many reasons why I loved this book so much, as it brought out the personality of the characters well and the reader felt as if they were actually talking to them. This exchange of witty personalities made me wish that I really knew these people - they would have made great friends.
What really set this book apart from the others, though, was how Jaclyn Moriarty showed a real, honest intention in her writing - mainly, to have fun. Many modern teenage authors try to suck up to an adolescent audience by making their characters stereotypically "cool" - I have read too many corny novels about skateboards, boyfriends and sex. Then they feed in some really cliched moral like "Smoking is bad for you", hoping that highly gullible readers fall for it. Through this novel, Jaclyn not only reassures us that she really understands adolescence, but also reassures us that teenage fiction is not completely lost! I would put her in the same rank as Melina Marchetta (Looking for Alibrandi and Saving Francesca)
(Note: In Australia and NZ this book is called "Finding Cassie Crazy")
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