Category: Books for Young Adults

If you’re into mystery and suspense, and you aren’t worried about potentially getting creeped out and/or ending up with nightmares, this could be the book for you!  Evie O’Neill has a gift — she can “read” people’s pasts just by touching an item they’ve used.  The only problem is that Evie used this gift as a party trick, and she ended up making a local big shot very angry.  Her parents decided that the easiest course of action would be to ship her off to live with her Uncle Will in New York City until things blew over.  Little did they realize that Evie was thrilled to be heading out of Ohio and into a big city where her flapper style and sassy attitude would be better appreciated!

Uncle Will, aside from being Evie’s new guardian, also happens to be the the curator of The Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult (a.k.a. the “Museum of the Creepy Crawlies”).  Because there’s an occult-based serial killer on the loose, Will’s expertise is called upon by the NYPD.  When Evie manages to tag along to one of the crime scenes, she ends up touching a shoe buckle of the victim and sees something about the murderer.  She is sure that her gift could be used help in the investigation… but how can she help without revealing her secret?

15-year-old Evie Spooner is a bit awkward and wishes she could grow up a little bit a lot faster.  She wishes she could be more like her mom, Beverly, whom she sees as a beautiful (albeit over-protective) mother and housewife who is capable of making practically anything look elegant.  Being a housewife is more of a recent thing for Beverly, though.  During WWII, Beverly had to work in a local department store to help support her family, but her husband/Evie’s step-father is back from the war and is able to take care of his family again.  Joe’s appliance stores are doing really well, and he is happy to be back home in Queens, but the sudden appearance of a war buddy [Peter Coleridge] gets Joe acting strangely.  Apropos of nothing, he decides to take Evie and Beverly to Palm Beach.  The town is mostly shut down because they’re there during the wrong season, but they manage to find a room at Le Mirage — where they end up meeting a glamorous couple, Mr. and Mrs. Grayson [also from New York City].  Secrets slowly unfold, as Evie sees and hears things she shouldn’t…  But, by the time Evie figures out what’s going on, she is already caught in the middle of a web of lies.  This is a great mystery, especially for people who enjoy historical fiction.

Victor Frankenstein and his twin brother, Konrad, have shared in many adventures with their cousin, Elizabeth, and their friend, Henry.  On one such adventure, they discovered the Dark Library — filled with ancient books about dark magic and alchemy.  When their father found out, he forbade them from entering the library again.  After Konrad fell ill with an unidentified malady that the doctors’ treatments and medicines could not cure, nevertheless, Victor decided to seek an ancient remedy in the books of the Dark Library.  Full of action, adventure, and mystery, this back-story to Shelley’s Frankenstein is a gothic thriller that will probably even appeal to reluctant readers.

This book was *so* creepy, but so well done.  Imagine Stepford wives drawn, by magic, from the bodies of seals.  The basic storyline is that the men of Rollrock Island hire a witch named Miskaella who uses her magic to “make” them wives from the seals who visit their beach.  Once the woman has been drawn out of the seal, her husband only needs to keep her seal skin hidden away so that she cannot leave.  The seal-women are beautiful and obedient, but they desperately miss their lives and families in the sea.  The human-born women all leave the island in disgust, but the men don’t seem to be fazed because they would rather have the beautiful creatures who bow to their every whim.  I loved how the story was told from the perspectives of multiple people, including Miskaella herself.  Not quite as dark as Lanagan’s Tender Morsels, but a dark tale nonetheless.

Imagine a world in which people were promised a “cure” that could take away all heartache.  Peace and happiness for all as long as everyone has a simple procedure?  If it sounds too good to be true, that’s probably because it is.  Lena has been raised to believe that love is a disease [Amor Deliria Nervosa] and that life without love is the safest and most stable way to live.  People don’t fall in love and get married anymore — they get paired based on government-imposed ratings and compatibility of interests.  It’s safer and easier to just fall in line, but Lena has a hard time forgetting the mother who could not be cured and whose last words to her, before committing suicide, were “I love you.”  Only a few months before her own procedure, Lena has a chance encounter with a young man named Alex.  Despite government assurances that all “invalids” [non-cured people living outside of society] have been taken care of, she’s pretty sure Alex *is* an invalid.  And when she starts experiencing symptoms of the Deliria, she also starts to question everything she’s ever taken for granted.  Is love really a disorder?  Does the government really have everyone’s best interests at heart?  And, most importantly, should Lena go ahead with her own procedure or follow her heart?

Adam Strand can die; he’s killed himself plenty of times, and in plenty of different ways…  He just can’t manage to stay dead.  Doctors can’t figure it out, and the people in his town have actually gotten so used to Adam trying to kill himself that it seems to register as more of a nuisance than a shock when someone finds him dead.  People basically throw him in the back of their car or truck, schlep him home, and leave him in the care of his parents until he wakes up alive again.  The thing I found most interesting is that Adam wasn’t necessarily depressed so much as he just didn’t care enough to think life was worth the bother.  It’s pretty impressive that Galloway managed to write such a philosophical story without coming off as pretentious.  If you’re into dark humor and books that make you think, you should definitely acquaint yourself with Adam Strand.

Period 8 is a class like no other.  Regardless of how they get along outside of class, everyone is equal in Period 8.  The teacher, Mr. Logsdon [a.k.a. Logs], has a lot to do with that.  His only rules are that everyone has to be honest and that nothing leaves the room.  Students are encouraged to share or discuss anything they wish, but they are also allowed to just listen to the others if they don’t wish to talk.  When one of the Period 8 students — Mary “Virgin Mary” Wells — goes missing, everyone is worried.  She never misses school, and her dad is known for being insanely strict, so the fact that she went missing AND that her dad waited three days to report her missing has people feeling very unsettled.  Paulie Baum [a.k.a “Paulie Bomb”] is acting strangely too.  And even though Paulie is known for ALWAYS telling the truth, Logs can tell he is holding something back.  Could Paulie know something about Mary’s disappearance?  And, if he does, why wouldn’t he say?

If you’re looking for a story that relates to teens’ lives without talking down to them and seamlessly combines everyday situations with a mystery/thriller scenario — while appealing to guys and girls alike, no less! — look no further.  This book was everything fans of Chris Crutcher have come to expect with a little extra thrown in — fast paced, lots of action, and so many twists and turns that I honestly couldn’t guess them all before the story’s conclusion.

It’s the summer before senior year and Jude has a job at the local beach.  It sounds like a pretty sweet deal, but flipping burgers can be pretty tedious no matter the locale.  Apart from working at the beach, Jude doesn’t do much else.  His mother is still extremely depressed over the loss of his little sister, Lily, who drowned in the family swimming pool seven years ago, and trying to deal with his own grief while walking on eggshells around his mom is practically full-time work.  Jude has some friends with whom he sometimes hangs out, and he occasionally plays guitar, but he usually finds escape in running.  Unlike his father, who has gadgets to help him precisely track his running, Jude likes to run barefoot and without a plan.  Running away from it all seems to be the only way he can find happiness… That is, until he meets Becka.

The grief in this book is so biting and real that I actually found myself flashing back to when I lost people I loved and cared about.  Aside from simply being a really well-written story, I think this book would work well as bibliotherapy for teens who are dealing with grief of their own or trying to understand someone else who is grieving.

Karou is not your typical teenager.  Having blue hair, living in her own apartment, speaking many languages, and being an art student in Prague set her apart from many other 17-year-olds… but there’s much more to it than that.  She also travels around the world to collect teeth for a chimaerae named Brimstone who is, basically, her foster father.  She has no idea why he needs those teeth, but she is sure that his dwindling supply is a problem.  People credit Karou’s imagination with creating all of the fantastic creatures in her sketchbooks, and she is more than happy to let them believe what they want, but the creatures are very real to her.  In fact, these chimaerae are the only family she has ever known.  When angels mysterious appear all around Earth, using their scorched handprints to seal off the doors that act as portals between Earth and the land in which those monsters exist, Karou ends up locked out.  She has always been taught that the chimaerae were good and that the angels were actually horrible monsters, and now she has to fend off these killer angels without any help from Brimstone.  Karou can’t help being attracted to one of the angels, though, and wonders if there’s a reason why she has a strange feeling that she’s somehow connected to him already…

Although I don’t generally “do” the whole Twitter thing, I technically have an account through which I [supposedly] follow a few people.  One of those people is the amazing John Green and, because I actually read one of my Twitter digests last month, I read this Tweet [12/03/10 – Tweet is no longer available).   Though I hadn’t previously heard about this book, I trusted John Green to know what he was talking about and requested a copy from another library in my system.  I absolutely loved it, so I made sure to order a copy for my library AND bumped this book to the top of my “to review” list.  FYI, in case you were not aware, I am way better at reading books than following through with reviews, so my “to review” list contains no fewer than 5 books at any given time and often has books that I finished months ago!

You may be wondering, “What was so great about Poison?”  How about the fact that it had action, adventure, humor, magic, romance, AND strong female characters all rolled up into a unique fantasy story?  Kyra, a potions master, used to be best friends with the princess.  Until, that is, she tried to kill her.  Since no one seemed to understand that trying to kill the princess was a good thing, she had to run away to avoid being jailed/hanged for the attempted assassination.  And, while being the infamous “Princess Killer” made it rather difficult for Kyra to travel through the kingdom unnoticed, her bag of potions and the help of a cute little enchanted pig was enough to give her hope that she could find the princess and finish the job before it was too late…

The only thing I didn’t like about this story, to be honest, was learning that there won’t be a prequel or a sequel [since the author passed away before this book was even published].  I wish I could learn more about Kyra, but I guess it’s better to have loved and lost [a character] than never to have loved at all!

Liz was born female, but has always felt male.  Being Liz in public and being Gabe inside was very difficult, but Liz started to make the transition to Gabe in 12th grade.  Having an understanding best friend helped a lot, but having a family that still used female pronouns and refused to use the name “Gabe” was pretty hard.  When the next door neighbor, a fellow music nut named John, found Liz a radio show on a local community radio station, it presented an excellent opportunity for Gabe to come out…  But, it also meant that Liz would have to find a way to tell John about Gabe sooner rather than later.

Beautiful Music for Ugly Children was not just a radio show.  It was Gabe’s chance to introduce himself to the world and to work through his feelings with music.  Before long, Gabe had fans — the Ugly Children’s Brigade — who would perform random acts of crazy art in honor of his show.  It gave him quite a confidence boost to know that people liked the “real” him.  Unfortunately, a casual date with a member of the UCB threatened to ruin everything when the girl recognized Gabe as Liz and spread the word on the UCB fan page.  I won’t ruin the ending by telling you exactly how things played out, but I am sure you can guess [based on real life] that Gabe’s life got pretty tough after that.

I loved the realistic portrayal of Liz/Gabe’s struggle, the supportive best friend, and the fantastic “soundtrack” throughout.  As a former college radio DJ, I especially appreciated the authentic setting of the run-down community radio station and Gabe’s trials and tribulations while he got used to being on air.  I had more than a couple of “been there, done that” moments as I read this book!  😉

First of all, I just have to say that I read this book a few years ago and only now realized that I never reviewed it…  Shame on me!  Second, I feel compelled to tell you all how much I love the complete/crazy-long title of this book — Princess Ben: Being a Wholly Truthful Account of Her Various Discoveries and Misadventures, Recounted to the Best of Her Recollection, in Four Parts — which is a lot!  It has such a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?  Seriously, though, I think it helps to set the tone for the book.  Because this is not your typical princess story!

It is true that Princess Ben (short for Benevolence) has been hidden away in a tower by her overbearing aunt, Queen Sophia, since her parents and her uncle (the king) were assassinated.  Queen Sophia has plans to marry Ben off to the first mildly suitable man to present himself, but Ben is not the kind of princess who would be content to wait for a prince to come to her rescue.  Thanks to her inquisitive/mischievous nature, she manages to find an enchanted room in the tower and begins to teach herself some magic with the books therein.  Not only does this magic give her something to do with all of her “free” time, but it also buys her some freedom and increases the odds that she will be able to save both herself and the kingdom from Queen Sophia.

P.S.  If you like this story, I also recommend the sequel — Wisdom’s Kiss: A Thrilling and Romantic Adventure Incorporating Magic, Villainy, and a Cat.

Not only does this book continue the fantastic Cinder storyline, but it adds a few new characters into the mix!  The title character, Scarlet Benoit, is a teenage girl who has been raised by her grandmother on a small vegetable farm in Rieux, France.  Her grandmother recently went missing, and while Scarlet is sure something must be very wrong for her grandmother to have left home without her portscreen [or even her ID chip], no one else seems very worried at all.  Michelle Benoit is a kind and beloved, albeit eccentric, farmer who has no known enemies [as far as Scarlet believes, anyhow].  And because there is not any evidence of foul play, the police claim they have no choice but to dismiss the case.  Scarlet is pretty sure a street fighter named Wolf knows something that could help but, though she is inexplicably drawn to him, she isn’t sure if she can bring herself to trust him.  I can’t really say any more without spoiling it, but trust me when I say that this series just keeps getting better!  And, since The Lunar Chronicles will have at least two more installments — Cress is due out in 2014 and Winter is due out in 2015 — fans have plenty more to look forward to before the series ends.

In post-apocalyptic North America, two countries have replaced the former United States of America — The Republic and The Colonies.  Fighting against both of them is also a rebel group that calls itself the Patriots.  Though it isn’t clear if The Colonies are any better, readers can easy ascertain that The Republic is not so much a republic as a totalitarian regime.  This story is told from the alternating perspectives of characters named Day and June —  Day is an independent anarchist who refuses to work for the Patriots but still does everything in his power to sabotage The Republic in their war efforts against The Colonies; June is a military prodigy who got a perfect score on her entrance exams and has been fast-tracked through military training school.

I think the duel narration was a great way to make readers more sympathetic to characters on both sides of the spectrum and to gradually unfold details about what is happening both around the country and in Los Angeles [where both Day and June live].  The truth is, while life is clearly better for some people in The Republic, no one is truly free.