Tag: book turned movie

Posted in Books, Reviews

Book Review – The Face on the Milk Carton (Caroline B. Cooney)

Posted on by Katie Night

Hey Dearies!

You guys would be proud of how on a roll I’ve been with the book reviews, two weekends in a row! I’m definitely proud of myself with how much I’ve been reading lately, so let’s get onto this review!

So, I’ll be honest, I never heard about this book if it wasn’t for a Facebook reel showing me a clip of the movie, and when I looked it up, I saw that there was a book for it. I haven’t seen the movie yet, since I wanted to read the book first and see what the movie missed versus the book.

Apparently, this is also a series, so I’m not sure if the movie is all of the books combined or if it’s just this first book. I honestly am unsure if I will read the others in the series, but I haven’t made a sure deicison or not.

Anyway, the book is about a sophomore named Jaine Johnson, who happens to find herself looking at a younger version of herself on the back of the milk carton. She then goes down this rabbit hole to find out why her parents kidnapped her and to see where she truly is from, while also being a teen in high school.

Without trying to spoil it, there are a lot of secrets that she ends up uncovering and holes in her parents’ story when she confronts them about it that definitely made the book interesting. At the end of the first book, it leaves it on a cliffhanger when Jaine ends up meeting her biological parents, which makes you want to read the second one to find out.

I did have a hard time getting into it because of the fact that this is in third-person POV. I normally only like first-person POV, but it honestly depends on how the writer writes it. Some I have no problem with, and they do a really good job, but others not so much.

This one was kinda in the middle, in my opinion. I will say the twists and turns did help make it not too bad to read, but some of the other parts sort of dragged or just seemed to be repeated too much.

Like when Jaine talks to her boyfriend/friend, Reeve, about her finding all this information going on, I don’t blame him for being annoyed with it because that’s all she wants to talk about. I get it, it’s a lot of information to really process as a teen, but with how caring her parents are with her, I don’t understand why she didn’t bring all the information she had to them sooner.

The sooner they knew, the sooner she would get better answers and find out what their real daughter, Hannah, actually did when she had Jaine versus her thinking the people that has raised her just straight out took her away from her family.

I honestly don’t think her parents thought about the fact that once Jaine started to get older, she would need her important papers to get her license, apply for college, get a job, etc. I think they should’ve told her as soon as she was old enough to understand, because if I found out that my parents weren’t my biological ones, I would resent them for not telling me that information.

Overall, it wasn’t a bad read, but it’s not something I would reread again. Again, I’m not sure if I will want to continue the rest of the series; it didn’t pull me in as I had hoped. However, the whole mystery about Jaine finding her face on the milk carton and realizing her entire life is a lie that she’s uncovering is a very interesting concept to write about.

Let me know down in the comments if you have read this and what your thoughts are!

Posted in Books, Reviews

Book Review – The One & Only Ivan (Katherine Applegate)

Posted on by Katie Night

Hey Dearies! Since one of my goals for this year was to read more books for 2025, I’ve started trying to do that. Granted I haven’t been able to finish a book with how crazy the beginning of the year has been for me, but I finally finished a book!

So, The One & Only Ivan, I actually saw the movie first before I knew that there was a book. This is usually what happens to me, I’ll see the movie or series and then find out that it was based off of a book. At that point, I’ll either get the book or have it saved on my Amazon list and then forget its still there. 

I ended up getting The One & Only Ivan at my daughters book fair. I figured, why not. As adults, we don’t really tend to read books our kids are reading and I figured since my daughter has started reading, I figured why not read it. 

The book is actually very interesting because its in the perspective of Ivan, a gorilla. So, it was a very quick read because most of the pages were short and sweet. If you wanted to, you could finish this book in a day.

Basically, the book is about Ivan who is an act at a mall circus with a few other animals, including an elephant Stella. Also, can’t forget about the stray dog named Bob. Anyway, when a new act, a baby elephant named Ruby, comes into the picture, Stella has Ivan promises her that Ruby will not be stuck at the mall as a circus act. 

Ivan uses his creativity to communicate to the humans to get Ruby and him out of the mall. Which is pretty much the just of the story. The best part was that Ivan was based on a true story. Most of the story is fictional, but Ivan was based on a real gorilla.

I really enjoyed both the movie and the book, but there are some differences between the two. After reading the book, I noticed that the tone was different from the movie when it came to a few aspect. 

In the book, for example, Mack, the mall owner, is more aggressive in the book than in the movie, especially when it comes to when he’s training Ruby. In the book, he uses a “claw stick”, to train Ruby and Mack uses it in the book, but in the movie, he doesn’t. 

Other than that, I think Disney did a great job with the movie, they didn’t follow the book completely, but I’m kinda glad, I don’t want to spoil the book, but there was a scene that they described that I’m just glad Disney didn’t add in, it was a minor detail, but it was still heartbreaking to read. 

I will say if you do watch the movie, you might cry like I did at a few parts. They did a good job with the movie and every time I was reading parts where Bob was talking, all I could hear is Danny DeVito’s voice since he voices Bob in the movie. 

Have you read The One and Only Ivan? If so, what did you think of it and did you like the movie afterwards? Let me know down below!

The picture above is Ivan the gorilla, which was what the story was based on.