The Tyrant’s Daughter and Gabi, a Girl in Pieces were great books to pair together. Both involved strong female characters with well thought out plots, but only one book had the more fleshed out and believable character that we felt should move on to the next round - Gabi, a Girl in Pieces. 

The Tyrant's Daughter was a good book that dealt with some serious issues.  We do not know what it would be like to have to leave your home country and start fresh, learning how to navigate a new culture and the difficulty doing so was portrayed in the book.  As one of our group members pointed out, not having a specific country identified was a bit distracting though. Unfortunately, we just could not connect with the main character as well as we would have liked.  She was written to be distant but she came across as too distant and you didn't truly believe the outcome in the end.  

On the other hand, Gabi was such a believable character, she felt like someone we could have grown up with. The book was written over her senior year of high school and there was a lot going on but it never felt forced to move the plot. We had a bit of a debate with our pitch hitter for Sunita about the criteria for selecting books to move one. Is the criteria books for junior high or well written literature regardless of the level? Since I haven’t heard a straight answer on that point we went with the book with the stronger, believable character and book that we would recommend to someone in high school.

Suanne, Katrina and Judy (aka Sunita)