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Blake Nelson’s latest YA novel, Recovery Road, is a novel about a journey. At the opening of the book, high school junior Maddie is being committed to a rehab facility after a drunken car accident.  The story gets going a  few weeks later once she’s in the transitional program nearing her release.  On one of the weekly movie nights that the patients in the transitional program are allowed to leave the facility to attend, Maddie meets Stewart, a beautiful but remote guy about her age. Their attraction is instantaneous and soon they are finding ways to be together whenever they can.  Once Maddie is back homeRead More →

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In a strong follow-up to her debut memoir, I Don’t want to Be Crazy, Samantha Schutz creates a poignant, intimate novel that peels back the layers of loss and grief in You Are Not Here.  Annaleah meet Brian one day by chance. Not long after, the two teens start hanging out, and sparked by what felt like kindred spirits and is certainly mutual attraction, they envelope each other in a sensual, secretive romance.  But because they go to different schools, Annaleah is excluded from parts of Brian’s life.  In addition to not having any mutual friends, Brian erected walls around other parts of his life,Read More →

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At 14, Hamish Graham is a genius, a sociopath, a brilliant strategist, and a murderer.  Hamish has recently been transferred into another facility for criminal youth, and the staff doesn’t really know how to approach his rehabilitation.  The director of the New Horizons Boys’ Home in New Zealand decides Hamish should keep a journal in the hopes of both providing an outlet for Hamish to reflect on himself and for the staff to get a handle on what he thinks and how he feels. Denis Wright’s Violence 101is Hamish’s first person journal alternating with 3rd person narrative of the staff’s reaction to the journal and the narrativeRead More →

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17 year old Bianca Piper could be your best friend; she could be your sister; she could be you.  She’s smart, loyal, cynical and sarcastic, and, as far as she’s concerned, pretty average looking.  She’s too smart to fall for the charms of Wesley Rush, her school’s gorgeous, wealthy playboy even if he has taken to flirting with her to score points with Bianca’s much prettier friends. When he nicknames her “the DUFF”, her dislike of him crosses over into all out hatred.  But Bianca’s home life is in turmoil right now and eager for an escape, she throws herself at Wesley and an intenselyRead More →

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Dirt Road Home, the companion to Watt Key’s Alabama Moon centers on Hal Mitchell, the Moon’s friend fromthe Pinson Boys’ Home, and Hal’s time in the hard-core Hellenweiler Boys’ Home in Tuscaloosa. 14 year-old Hal’s one goal is to stay out of trouble so he can qualify for early release once his father is able to sober up and hold down a job. But on the first day in Hellenweiler, Hal learns that the boys are clearly divided into 2 rival gangs, The Ministers and The Hounds, and no one can exist without joining up. Hal is determined to stay out of the system, and his stoic non-commitance catches theRead More →

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In a country ruled by the iron grasp of a fanatical, paranoid, cruel despot, people are either cowed into submission or so desperate for freedom they turn to guerilla warfare and terrorism.  To strike closest to the ruler’s inner circle and cause the most upset to the veneer of a “peaceful” society, young women are indoctrinated to sacrifice their lives in a fiery blast.  Innocents die on both sides and few question the madness or the methods or if there’s really any difference between the tyranny of the ruler or the ruthlessness of the freedom fighters. No one until Grace. At 17, she has lived her life amongRead More →

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Finn and Chloe are two smart (maybe too smart) high school juniors in a small New Jersey town.  Bored and in need of something dynamic to make them stand out to college entrance officers, they hatch a deceptively simple hoax that will rocket them to the national spotlight: Chloe will disappear and after a sufficient amount of time, her devoted best friend, Finn, will miraculously find her unharmed and return Chloe to her family.  But once the hoax is in place, Finn watches their families and their community start to unravel and everything spins out of control until an innocent friend is accused of Chloe’sRead More →

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From bestselling YA author Darren Shan (Demonata, Cirque du Freak) comes Procession of the Dead, his adult fiction debut. Previously released in the UK as Ayumarca, Procession is the first book in Shan’s The City series. I have two notes right up front: 1) this book deals with more mature themes including sex, murder, crime and “sweet, sinister sin,” and it contains strong language, and 2) (more of a disclaimer) I have never read anything else by Shan, so when I picked up this book I had no expectations – regarding style, content, etc. and cannot tell you if it is similar to or completelyRead More →

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You, Charles Benoit’s  highly praised young adult debut (August 2010), will take your breath away.  Youis a painfully realistic rendering of a teen caught in the hell of high school and the downward spiral of his own creation. In middle school, Kyle was engaged, smart ,and on the “right path.” But after a few misstepsand missed opportunities, and all those small, seemingly inconsequential choices, Kyle is a disaffected, angry, disengaged sophomore who doesn’t believe he’s going to amount to much. And the  attitude and image he projects to the outside world doesn’t give anyone else much hope for him either.  It makes for the perfect opportunity to wander into the trap ofRead More →