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What if hex lessons could empower a bully’s victim to enact revenge?  What if we could send out psychic energy as an agent of change?  These are questions Mariah Fredericks explores in her book Season of the Witch.  The novel features Antonia Thurman, a sixteen year old junior who wants to be elegant, fiercely smart, and strong but still funny and nice.  Instead, she is the target of bully Chloe Nachmias, a petite and perfect, every-part-ideal beauty who causes others to feel clumsy and insignificant.  Chloe and her minions, Zeena and Isabelle, make Slam the Slut everyone’s favorite game, with Toni the target since sheRead More →

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I honestly don’t know how she does it. Every A.S. King book I read grabs me by the throat, reaches down into my heart, and completely engulfs me in a powerfully told, unflinchingly portrayed, ultimately redemptive story of a teenager on the edge of his or her own particular abyss.  King skillfully, lovingly, and realistically creates well-rounded young people whose lives are pretty crappy when the story opens but through their own choices, dogged perseverance, and sometimes a little help from a friend or an adult with a clue, rise above the cards that were dealt to them and come brilliantly, if not a littleRead More →

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As proven time and time again, Mike Lupica has the talent to get the reader right into the action: whether it’s on the court, on the diamond, or on the fifty yard line, there’s a visceral, in-the-moment, hard-hitting feeling to all of Lupica’s sports-action sequences.  The pulse-pounding, bone-crunching, split-second action on the football field in QB 1 is yet another example of how skillfully Lupica can make a reader (even a girl who’s never touched a football) feel what it’s like to be the quarterback, in the pocket, waiting for an opening, dodging a hefty tackler, hoping to make the down and move the teamRead More →

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Sonya Sones‘ latest verse novel, To Be Perfectly Honest, tells the story of 15 year old Colette’s summer in San Luis Obispo, babysitting her 7 year old brother Will, while her utterly famous mother films yet another Hollywood blockbuster.  Having been forced to give up her planned summer trip to Paris to be exiled in nowhere, California, Colette is bitter, angry, and pouting.  Life couldn’t be worse as day after day of boredom looms ahead of her with nothing to look forward to and no one her own age to hang with.  But when she and Will run into a beautiful stranger with a motorcycle,Read More →

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In: On the Edge, Realistic Fiction (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
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Getting out from under the intense weight on my chest after reading Matthew Quick‘s Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock has taken some time.  I felt pulled down into a deep, dark hole, all alone with only my thoughts about the futility of life, the lack of care or concern for myself or others, and a resigned sense of defeat in the face of an untenable future.  The slope down into Leonard’s depression is slippery and quick and getting back out isn’t easy work.  Which is the long way of saying that in Leonard Peacock Quick has expertly captured and painfully portrayed depression, anger, and isolation atRead More →

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In: Arizona Authors, Mystery & Suspense (YA), Realistic Fiction (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
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How do you become a man when you don’t have a man in your life?  What does it mean if your father left you and your mom?  Or worse, was never in your life to begin with?  In Dead Ends, the second book by Arizona author Erin Jade Lange,  the question of fathers and the legacies they leave to their children unites unlikely friends on a journey of discovery, healing, and transformation. In his high school, there are the “haves” and the “have-nots”, and Dane Washington is a “have not”.  What Dane does have, however, is a fierce temper and the power to back itRead More →

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Whoa – I was knocked back by David Massey‘s debut, Torn. Based on simply the slightly cheesy tease on the cover (“An American Soldier. A British Medic. Afghanistan. Can their love survive a War?”), I wasn’t sure what to expect from the book, but within the first few pages I was so captivated, horrified, and walloped by this powerful story that I stayed glued in my chair until I finished the book.  At a swiftly-paced 274 pages, the time flew and before I knew it I was breathlessly coming up for air and looking at war in a whole new way. And then the very nextRead More →

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In: Middle Grade Reviews, Mystery & Suspense, Mystery & Suspense (YA), Realistic Fiction, Realistic Fiction (YA), Sports, Sports (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
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In Foul Trouble, veteran sports journalist and best-selling novelist, John Feinstein, takes an unflinching look at the cut-throat process of collegiate recruiting top student talent.  Feinstein pulls back the curtain to reveal a shadow world that is rarely seen by the general sports fan and it’s not a very pretty:  a subculture packed with unscrupulous people who latch onto these young athletes hoping to make millions on the kids’ talents; high stakes ultimatums and heavy amounts of pressure to go with the “highest bidder” even if its against NCAA rules and one’s own better judgment; and a dizzy array of media attention, drugs, swag, andRead More →

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Getting boxed in by one aspect of your life is something everyone tries to avoid. It doesn’t matter what the social label is, in the microcosom of high school, once you become a jock, stoner, preppy, emo, slut, skater – whatever – the label sticks.  People see you and treat you accordingly.  It’s near impossible to “start over” within the confines of your life as you know it, even though most everyone wants too.  Usually it’s going off to college, or moving to a new town, that gives people the chance to wipe the slate clean and try out new, hidden side to their personality.Read More →