Zoe R's Blog

The Search by Nora Roberts is a romantic suspense novel about a woman named Fiona Bristow. She lives off the coast of Washington. She is a dog trainer with three labs. She was almost killed a couple of years prior, while her fiancé and his k9 partner. She is now falling in love again with the new guy in town. She is also getting threats from a guy copying the guy that tried to kill her.

I liked The Search by Nora Roberts. It was different than most of her books but it was done well. I felt that the dog aspect was interesting and gave it something that it would have been lacking. I like most of the characters too. They all seemed realistic and relatable. I liked the plot. It was weird and kind of sick but good.

When we first read about Francis X. Eckle he was a convict that shared a jail cell as George Allen Perry, the murder. He is a fit, standard looking guy who is very solitary. He doesn’t talk to people at the gym; he would rather work out in a cell by himself. He seemed kind of child minded. He was looking for revenge for the girls and bullies when he was younger by attacking strangers. He followed rules set by a higher figure, Perry, though. He was easily guided.

He became a bully. He gained a sense of control and dominance and he took it. He never had much control but he had been given some ounce of control and he was going to take and use as much of it as he could. He was using that control on anyone that he could. He felt superior because he held someone’s life in his hand. He could do anything he wanted to them and they couldn’t do anything about it. From this he was getting cocky. He stopped listening to Perry and did whatever he wanted. That was his demise.

He was taken down by the person he was supposed to kill. I think this is the best part because if he didn’t get cocky, he could have gotten further. If he listened to Perry he might have made it. It makes people realize that over estimation of themselves can be dangerous. I enjoyed the book because you can see all of the different aspects of the different characters.

No Comments | In: Uncategorized | | #

The book I’m reading for this quarter is The Search by Nora Roberts. It is a romantic suspense novel set in a rural island off the coast of Washington.

It is about Fiona Bristow. She is a dog trainer that has three labs. It starts out with her finding a little boy on a search and rescue mission and her getting home to find a guy wanting her to train his dog. The guy’s name is Simon Doyle. He is a wood craver and he has got a puppy, who he named Jaws. Fiona starts training him, more than she trained the dog. Fiona and Simon are getting closer and are falling in love at this time.

At one of their training sensations with Simon and Jaws, one of the cops come to her and told her that there were killings going on, on the west coast that are probably related to her. Several years prior someone had tried to kill her, and managed to kill her fiancé and his k9 partner. They caught the guy but someone was going after her and doing the job for the guy in prison. This mystery guy keeps threatening her. The attacks to Fiona are getting more and more dangerous. Both Fiona and Simon are trying to figure out and stop these attacks before someone is injured or killed.

This book also goes through different points of view. We see through Fiona’s eyes. So we see her struggle with her past and present. We see parts of Simon’s brain. We see him wanting to protect Fiona and help her through her struggles. We also see through the murder’s eyes. We see why he is doing this and what is compelling him.

I think that Fiona and Simon are going to fight. Simon is going to save Fiona from this mysterious killer. Fiona is going to realize that she always loved Simon. Simon will realize he can’t live without Fiona. They will get back together and marry. They will live happily ever after with their four well train search and rescue dogs.

No Comments | In: Uncategorized | | #

The Search by Nora Roberts is a romantic suspense novel about Fiona Bristow. She is a dog trainer on an island of the coast of Washington. Her and her three golden labs live at an isolated house where she trains and occasionally search and rescue. She had a terrible past that involves a dead fiancé, his K9 partner, and a guy now in prison. Enter Simon Doyle. He is an artist that just moved to town with a new puppy he can’t handle. A new killer is after Fiona and he is getting closer and far more dangerous the more Fiona and Simon fall in love.

Basically love is the major topic in this book. This is true for most of Nora Robert’s books. The difference is that it is more directed as how love affects a person. It also dips into different types of love. I enjoyed this book because of the not so lovey dovey aspect of it, compared to others of her books.

Nora Robert’s writes in an all knowing form. You see parts from Fiona, Simon, and Francis, the killer. This point of view gave us access to different thoughts and why people act the way they do.

The book had a strong female character which I liked. She survived one murderer and helped put him in jail. She then takes on another murderer. She was independent and tried to help others.

Love was a major part of this book. Fiona loved her dogs and they loved her. The dogs where loyal to her and it made me want dogs like that. Her and her mom didn’t talk much but there was still a connection which I could see because of the little things they did for each other. Her friend and her were fun to read about because they were always joking and you could see they loved each other. Then there is Simon. I found a great love in them because they were willing to do anything for each other. Fiona had a lot of love.

Francis had no love. He loved no one and no one loved him. That is why he became a killer. He wanted to kill girls because no girls loved him. The contrast between the two show how important love is.

The fact that Fiona was so compassionate helped me feel for her. She did the search and rescue a couple times in the book. Roberts opens the book to Fiona looking for a little boy. This makes people like Fiona automatically.

It also all logically fit together but in an unconventional way making it surprising. For instance, Fiona and Simon fell in love because they met over something they had in common, her search and rescue dogs and his potential search and rescue dog. Another example is that she likes isolation because she was almost killed by a serial killer. Lastly, the new killer is after her because he was taught to kill by his roommate in prison, who was the guy that tried to kill Fiona. Francis feels indebted to his roommate. So if he kills Fiona he is no longer indebted to his roommate. That is his motivation in killing her. These all made the story interesting.

I would recommend this book to people who like mild suspense books. It has a little suspense in it. I would possibly recommend it to someone that is interested in dogs. The dogs are a major part of this story. I would recommend it to someone that loves romance novels because of its strong connection to love.

No Comments | In: Uncategorized | | #

For this quarter I am reading Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion. It is a post-apocalyptic science fiction romance. The main character is R who lives in an airport.

R starts out by talking about what life like a zombie is like. He meets a female zombie on the escalators. They walked to a makeshift church and get married. The next day they are given two children. R gathers a hunting group and they found a large group of humans. R eats Perry’s brain and sees his past. He saves his ex, Julie, and takes her back to the airport. He takes his kids to school so they learn how to eat people. All the while he keeps Julie in an airplane. At one point his kids try to eat Julie.

I was kind of mind blown over the fact that they had their own functioning society. I was also curious about how fast paced their lives were even though they were dead.

I think R is going to dump his wife, who was caught cheating, and he is going to return Julie back to her home. He is then going to regret his actions and going to kidnap her.

No Comments | In: Uncategorized | | #

Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer, is a dystopia in which the moon is knocked closer to the earth by a meteor. Massive waves, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions all start happening soon after the moon comes close. The book is basically Miranda’s diary as she goes through these events. It’s her reaction to shortages, crimes, the environment, and death.

I found this book eerily realistic. That fact that this could happen by no one’s fault, is what makes it spooky. The fact that the environment changed dramatically in a short period of time, shows how dependent we are on our environment we actually are. The fact that not many people survived in the book makes it even more eerie. There was always hope, it changed at times but there was always hope.  There is one point in the book she leaves the house so her two brothers and mom don’t have to see her die. She walks into the town hall and the mayor and a helper are handing out found to people. She recalls that she, “just walked over to him and hugged him. “Skin and bones,” he said to Mr. Danworth. “Guess she got here just in time.”” (334). It showed that she was so close to giving up but hope isn’t a bad thing and it pushed her through.

Miranda was a typical High School junior when the book began. She was on the swim team. She had a celebrity crush, and a crush on a classmate. Her parents were divorced. Her mom was dating a doctor and her dad was remarried. Things didn’t change right away for her. She still went to school for the rest of the year. Her and her crush started dating. Things started to really change when she was out of school and lots of people started to die. She didn’t like seeing people die. She wanted to help everyone. She didn’t want to see people die slowly or painfully. She took care of the people she could. She may have not taken care of them by feeding people but she made people more comfortable with decisions made. She was very caring and hopeful ‘til the end.

No Comments | In: Uncategorized | | #

For my book this quarter I am reading Life As We Know It by Susan Beth Pfeffer. It is a dystopia where a meteor hits the moon knocking it out of place changing the enviroment. It is told in the form of diary enteries by Miranda.

To this point of time Maria’s life has been changing. She dropped figure skating, she argues with her mom, and her dad is having another kid. One of her friends are dead and the other two are constantly bickering. The major event in the world is that the moon is going to be hit by a meteor. When the moon is hit by the meteor, the moon was knocked closer to the earth. Hysteria was soon developed. Tsunamis and tidal waves soonly developed. The next day in school a severe storm developed. All computers and cell phones have stopped working. With her whole family, she went to the grocery store and stock piled on medicene, can food, pet food, and water incase they didn’t have access to it later because gas was already five dollars. They continue to go to school and a list of the dead has started to developed.

My prediction is that as Miranda adapts to the changing world, she is going to thrive and save other peoples lives by learning skills of survivel along the way. I also predict so will connect with her one brother, her father, and her grandmother.

No Comments | In: Uncategorized | | #

Having a blog was a new learning experience for me. I never really used the internet to learn before. It was interesting to learn the different writing style and different techniques you have to use for a blog. It makes a twist on the typical write that you do in an English class.

There is a whole different writing style for online. I never knew that. I thought writing was writing. I never knew that there was a different writing style for news articles, online (blogs, wikis), or an essay. Having this blog helped me learn how you write something for the internet. Like there are no indentations but you skip a line in between paragraphs. You can also link to prove your point even more. You don’t use italics at all on a blog either because they tend to be used for hyperlinks. All of these little differences that change a writing. We had to learn these, at the beginning or along the way.

The fact that anyone can now see it makes it change. It isn’t just you and whoever the writing was meant for sees it, anyone with access internet can see it, anywhere in the world. It makes people stop and think. It makes most people better writers. You teach yourself to write better so you don’t seem like the country bumpkin from this part of the United States or from this part of the world. You don’t just start thinking about the reaction on the blog post. You start thinking that for all of your writing.

We also had to do newspaper articles for English. It is nothing like essays or blogs. It was mostly quotes. You also put the most important and interesting facts first. Other types you want it spread out or towards the end to keep peoples interest. It was weird but sort of interesting to learn to write like that. Even with that more people see it so you think about what other people will think about it.

You start thinking of more than one person being your audience. How will this group of people take it, what about this group of people? Your writing in general becomes more expansive, more relatable. It isn’t so closed and focused minded. The topic is broader and more thought out. With me it was like that at least.

The class itself was different. There is more small group work in this class. The Maycomb newspaper, Food Inc. and internet safety was just some of the projects. You learn to get along with other people better and suck it up when you can’t handle other people’s differences. Cyber-English teaches you a lot about blogging and writing but it teaches other things about working with people.

No Comments | In: CyberJournal | | #

In our newspaper, Maycomb Gazette, There are articles about the trial, pagent, and people talking about Atticus. The article is all  based on To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

No Comments | In: To Kill A Mockingbird | | #

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           Fire. Always fire. That is the reoccurring thing in this novel. The fire is humans in general. Fires could be good and they can cause destruction to everything around it. Humans are the same way. Humans can be good or bad and possibly even both. The fire is humans.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                A fire kills plants and animals no matter what. Though fire is destructive, it breathes life back into the area it destroyed. The fire is the killer and arsonist. The killer destroyed the forest, lives, and families. The killer also made families and people come closer to survive. “Fire doesn’t only destroys, Rowan. Sometimes it creates”(91%) Lucas, Rowan’s father, was talking about life and compared it to fire and maybe the killer/arsonist.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               One family that the killer tears apart and puts together was tearing apart and put them together by a baby. The daughter had a baby with one of the firefighters. She was killed a little bit later. They blamed the grandfather as other people started dying.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                The grandfather jumped bail, leaving the grandmother to take care of the baby by herself. “I can’t do it, Ella. I just can’t. I’ve got no fight left. No heart” (77%) is Irene, the grandmother, talking to her friend on how the killer ruined her family. The killer made her family separates her daughter, her husband, and her. All the while, the little girl brings the family together with her dad’s family. Irene knows she can’t handle the baby all by herself because of what that killer is doing. “That precious baby deserves better than I can give her now. She’s innocent in all this, the only one of us who truly is. She deserves better than me leaving her with friends and neighbors most of the day, better than me barely able to take care of her when I’m here. Not being sure how long I can keep a roof over her head, much less buy her clothes or pay the baby doctor” (77%). The killer is the fire. They are both destructive and healthy. The fire destroyed life but created new life. The killer separated a family but built a new one.

No Comments | In: Chasing Fire, Independent Reading | | #

 The only thing that report cards show is how book smart a person is. It shows how well that person achieved based on what they were expected of. If a lot wasn’t expected easier to achieve. If a lot was expected that grade was harder to achieve. You can’t tell what a person learned and achieved on the report card, just how well they did. People can learn things that aren’t even on the report card and it will never show up on it.

I, for example, learned more about the internet and Microsoft word since I started Cyber English, but since there was never a really big project or test on it, it didn’t reflect my grade. I learned how to use the different Words and how to convert them easily. They aren’t on the report cards so that isn’t going to improve my grade. Though learning how to work the blog is part of the report card. I had a little trouble on that and it could have affected my grade. You can’t just assume things because of their grades it might be because they couldn’t do that one thing. Report cards aren’t always the best thing to determine if a person is smart or not.

No Comments | In: CyberJournal | | #