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Paz Valenzuela and Rumi Sabzwari are two teens from different worlds. Both are disillusioned by their respective lives where people seem motivated by violence and vengeance. Not much for following rules, Paz lives in Paraíso where bomb craters, charred towers, and wasteland from chemical weapons make up the landscape. Born with a birth defect because of the residual effects of bioterrorism, Paz prays for patience and strength to know that one day things will change. Although Rumi doesn’t remember the Hot Wars which resulted in the building of Upper City’s walls, he knows the stories. Recently back from rehabilitation after a drug overdose, Rumi isRead More →

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Dedicated to all readers who “stagger beneath the weight of expectations and emotions, The Third Daughter by Adrienne Tooley tells two parallel stories. One reveals the ambitions of the Warnou family; the other shares the reality of the Anders family. As much as this is a story about those who are born into wealth versus those who are not, it is also about the impact of power and privilege. It reveals the consequences of knowing and embracing one’s identity. Born the eldest in the royal family, Princess Elodie Warnou has been raised to be strong, calculating, and regal. Her mother taught her not only toRead More →

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Jason Reynolds’ recent novel Miles Morales Suspended is a genre-bending book written in both prose and verse. It is also a sequel to Miles Morales: Spider-Man (2017). In typical Reynolds fashion, readers are invited to think about some deep topics, this time related to identity. Although we all aren’t able to transform into Spider Man like Peter Parker or Miles can, readers who think metaphorically can use their spidey-sense to detect layers of applicable meaning. A Puerto Rican mixed race student Miles Morales attends Brooklyn Visions Academy. Despite the school’s motto: “Vision is at the center of all we do,” some of the policies and instructorsRead More →

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Fierce, determined, proud, and furious, Leto wants to be remembered as extraordinary. Instead, at seventeen years old, she becomes one of the twelve girls sacrificed to appease the raging sea and to abate Poseidon’s wrath so that others in Ithaca can prosper. Only, Leto doesn’t die. She washes up on the shores of the island Pandou where Melantho introduces her to a mission: In order to break the curse and to save other girls from the annual hanging ritual, the Prince of Ithaca—who gives the orders for the deaths—must die. However, once Leto and Melantho reach the shores of Itaca under a ruse, they discoverRead More →

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Wren Warren and Derek Pewter-Flores ae both sixteen-year-old members of the four founding families in Hollow’s End. Wren’s family grows wheat, and Derek’s grows melons. The the pair hopes to build on their families’ 150-year-legacy, marry, and have children someday, but Wren has overheard her parents arguing about money, so she takes measures to help increase the farm’s production. Soon after, a blight appears, one with devastating effects on the soil, crops, animals, and people—one with the power to fracture not only a family but a future. Believing herself responsible, Wren takes matters into her own hands, and what she discovers rocks her core. WhenRead More →

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Aneesa Marufu writes her debut dark fantasy, Rebel of Fire and Flight to explore the concepts of racism, classism, and gender roles. To tell her tale about freedom from oppression and the deep roots of hatred, Marufu creates the parallel stories of two teens: Khadija and Jacob. Set in the fictional South Asian country of Ghadaea and alternating between Khadija’s and Jacob’s experiences, the book allows readers to witness the lives of the pair and their individual challenges as they explore who they are and what they truly want in this world. Sixteen-year-old Khadija is a brown-skinned Ghadean girl, who has spent a good dealRead More →

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In her novel The Whispering Dark, Kelly Andrew explores the question, to what extremes does love drive us? To tell her tale, Andrew creates seventeen-year-old Delaney Meyer-Petrov as her female lead and twenty-one year old Colton Price as her male lead. In this telling, there is also a villain: the Apostle. As a young girl, Delaney endured a near-death episode that left her hearing impaired and rendered her parents overly attentive. With her hearing gone, Delaney personifies the darkness and imagines it alive and restless. Lane whispers her secrets to the shadows. Wishing to be defined by the sum of her achievements and her abilitiesRead More →

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Set in 1937, Rust in the Root by Justina Ireland is a fantasy built on how capitalism consumes culture and about the limitations of being a Black person in America. To spin her magical tale, Ireland creates Laura Ann Langston, a seventeen-year-old black girl who is impulsive and craves adventure. Not satisfied with just performing “root magic,” Laura wishes to earn her mage license so that she can open her own treat shop, raveling confections for the likes of J. Paul Getty, Howard Hughes, and Shirley Temple. Not willing to hitch her talent to a Mechomancer, whose constructs are based on the forces used inRead More →

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Don’t open Nadine Brandes’ newest book, Wishtress unless you’re prepared to perform some deep philosophical thinking. Brandes takes her readers on a journey with Myrthe Valling and Bastiaan Duur, one that invites reflection and soul-searching while also testing convictions. When Myrthe cries at age twelve, she learns—with dire consequences—that she is the Wishtress and that each tear she cries has the power to grant a wish. Her oma has known of her granddaughter’s power but has manipulated and oppressed her, using Myrthe as a commodity for personal gain. Myrthe would like to see her power used for social good: wishing for people to have food,Read More →