By:
On:
In: Action & Adventure (YA), Multicultural (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

For a fast-paced, suspenseful, and engaging read, Nick Lake’s Hostage Three won’t disappoint.  That Lake was the Winner of the 2013 Printz Award is apparent in his writing style—which captivates with its pacing and imagery-richness. The book’s protagonist is seventeen-year-old Amy Fields fromLondon.  Struggling to deal with her mothers’ death and craving her father’s attention, Amy has taken acting out to a self-destructive level: swearing at teachers, taking drugs, insulting her parents, going to all-night parties, and intentionally failing her high school exit exams.  Hoping to block out the world or simply wishing to disappear, she is snarky, sullen, defiant, and without charming personality quirks.Read More →

By:
On:
In: Action & Adventure (YA), Romance (YA), Sci-Fi & Fantasy (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

Four teens who inexplicably survive the “end of the world”, brought together seemly by random chance who each have an undiscovered power and a deeply hidden pain, who together can set the teetering, ravaged city of Los Angeles (and perhaps the whole world) back on its axis . . . Icons by Margaret Stohl?  Not even close, actually.  Instead, this tale of destruction, survival, and the power of love comes from Francesca Lia Block and is as different in tone, imagery, and execution as day from night.   In Love in the Time of Global Warming (August 2013), Block again crafts a story wherein herRead More →

By:
On:
In: Action & Adventure (YA), Mystery & Suspense (YA), On the Edge, Sci-Fi & Fantasy (YA), Supernatural & Horror (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

When people drive by an accident, or a house fire, or some other horror that routinely befalls our fellow human beings, we’re compelled to look. To stare. To seek out signs of lost normalcy, the life that was, the people as they were “before.”  It’s an uncontrollable urge to peer in, despite the fact that we’re aware of the suffering and pain wrapped up in the debris.  Andrew Smith‘s The Marbury Lens is one of those horrors that you can’t look away from, no matter how much you want to, no matter how gruesome the detail, no matter the pain twisting in your gut asRead More →

By:
On:
In: Action & Adventure (YA), Mystery & Suspense (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

She doesn’t know her name. She doesn’t know where she is. All she knows is that her fingernails have been removed, she has been physically attacked, and she’s a prisoner to two men. Before she can open her eyes, she hears the men discussing how they are going to “finish her off because she knows too much”. This action packed novel follows a girl who is unaware of her entire life. She has lost all her memories and is on the run from a group of men who want to kill her. Even going to the cops has gotten her in trouble. She has beenRead More →

By:
On:
In: Action & Adventure, Action & Adventure (YA), Middle Grade Reviews, Multicultural, Multicultural (YA), Sci Fi & Fantasy, Sci-Fi & Fantasy (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

I’m not sure what to say about Matt de la Pena’s The Living.  I’ve been wrestling with how to review this book for a couple of weeks now and I still haven’t really found a place to start.  The blurb on the back of the ARC says “genre-bending” and I think that’s the best I can come up with too; that’s not because I wasn’t engaged by the story, didn’t care about the characters, and wasn’t thinking about Shy and his unbelievable 8 days long after I closed the back cover, it’s just that The Living is . . . different. Shy’s taken a jobRead More →

By:
On:
In: Action & Adventure, Action & Adventure (YA), Middle Grade Reviews, Sci Fi & Fantasy, Sci-Fi & Fantasy (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

In a barren and dusty world, 17 year old Banyan is a tree builder.  Using metal, twinkle lights and other junk, he creates forests like there used to be more than a century ago, before The Darkness, before the locust plagues.  Barely surviving, Banyan travels from town to town working for rich people who want to recapture something of a world that no longer exists.  Before he disappeared, Banyan’s father was a master tree builder and he passed on an art with scrap that makes Banyan’s forests really something to see. Working for some “rich freaks”, Banyan unexpectedly meets a strange woman with a remarkable tattooRead More →

By:
On:
In: Action & Adventure, Action & Adventure (YA), Middle Grade Reviews, Mystery & Suspense, Mystery & Suspense (YA), Romance (YA), Supernatural & Horror, Supernatural & Horror (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

“Have you ever heard of suicide by river? You just wade out deeper and deeper, and before long the current carries you away. And by then there is nothing you can do about it.” (7)  When Kiandra was 7, her mother did just that. With no warning, no goodbye, nothing  – just walked into the river beside their home and let herself be swept away.  Now, 10 years later, Ki is still drowning in grief.  She won’t let her anger and confusion about her mother’s suicide go, hiding it deep inside, nursing it like a cancer.   Although her grieving father moved them far awayRead More →

By:
On:
In: Action & Adventure, Action & Adventure (YA), Middle Grade Reviews, Sci Fi & Fantasy, Sci-Fi & Fantasy (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

The natural age progression occurs in everyone, in other words, we all get old. Usually, it just happens, it is a part of life, but imagine being forced to grow up, take care of multiple children, and fight a war you never prepared for, all the while you are worried about just surviving until morning. This is exactly what Dean and Alex Grieder experience in Emmy Laybourne’s Monument 14: Sky on Fire. The teenage brothers live in Monument, Colorado, one of many states that have recently been attacked by an air born virus that affects anyone with a blood type. The brothers and 12 othersRead More →

By:
On:
In: Action & Adventure, Action & Adventure (YA), Middle Grade Reviews, Mystery & Suspense, Mystery & Suspense (YA), Romance (YA), Sci Fi & Fantasy, Sci-Fi & Fantasy (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 1 Comment

In 2071, everything on Earth will change. On one fateful day, the lives of billions of people will end, suddenly, without warning and without explanation.  Certain cities will be spared, but they will be ruled by the terrifying fear that their fate will be the same as the “Silent Cities”: an instantaneous electrical pulse that will wipe out every living, mechanical, and fabricated object in its periphery.  The pulse comes from an Icon, embedded in the center of each “surviving” city by The Lords, an unseen race of alien life that is colonizing Earth and using what remains of the human race for slave laborRead More →