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Fred Hiatt‘s Nine Days is so much more than an action-packed thrill ride.  Don’t get me wrong, it is an action-packed thrill ride: a story that zips along at a breakneck speed, fueled by a cliff hanger at the end of every short chapter, rife with danger, and near death scrapes. But at the same time, Nine Days is also a story that explores freedom, social justice, human rights, and complex, real world problems.   I found it completely engaging and unexpectedly thought-provoking, enjoying the successfully executed thriller inspired by Ti-Anna Wang, the real daughter of a jailed Chinese dissident. 16 year old Ethan has beenRead More →

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The bond between brothers is at the heart of Michael Harmon‘s latest, Under the Bridge.  Tate’s younger brother, Indy, is probably the best skateboarder in Spokane.  The guys in the crew, Indy, Tate, Pipe and Sid, are tight like brothers and they live to ride.  Their neighborhood is on the fringe of the seedy underbelly of the city where drugs and crime are rampant and murder happens almost every day, and just last year they lost one of their own to an overdose.  Tate’s the crew’s unofficial leader and he feels an obligation to protect his brothers as much as he can.  And its notRead More →

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Dylan, a junior at a rough, south-side Oklahoma City high school, who doesn’t figure he’ll amount to much, is the butt of jokes at school because of his weight, and with only a couple friends and no hopes of getting a girlfriend, seems an unlikely hero, even in his own life.  When he discovers the body of a classmate in a dumpster behind the school, Dylan gets a taste of popularity; too bad it only lasts a day or two.  Realizing that his life is nothing more than “a zero in the scheme of the universe” (28), Dylan decides that what he needs is toRead More →

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“Altering identity, altering reality” – in general, we believe that a few times in life a person is given the chance to do just that: moving to a new town where no one knows you; going off to college, especially if you choose a school where few (if any) of your high school friends are going; when you start a new job; or when you travel.  And the transformative power of travel is at the core of Gayle Forman’s latest, Just One Day.  As Gayle herself wrote in the letter to booksellers that accompanied the ARC: “sometimes on the road, the most amazing, frustrating, eye-opening, terrifying, bewilderingRead More →

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Christina Diaz Gonzalez‘s second novel, A Thunderous Whisper, brings us to Guernica, Spain.  Here we meet 12 year old Ani, a quiet, insignificant whisper of a girl who lives on the periphery of society, daughter of a sardine seller.  Ani’s father has gone to the front lines of the Spanish Civil War to fight against General Franco’s forces, hoping to protect the Basque homeland from impending seizure.  Left with her cold-hearted, harsh mother, Ani’s life has never felt more bleak and lonely. Then she meets a boy, Mathias, who is spirited, sure of himself, and interested in being her friend.  Mathias is new to Guernica and heRead More →

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Tyler is caught between the girl he has and the girl he wants. Since the very first day of freshman year, he’s been completely, head-over-heels in love with beautiful, wounded, and enigmatic Becky.  He yearns for her, creates endless stories about who he believes she is and the perfect romance they’d have if she would just notice him, and goes through his high school days telling himself that it’s enough to be be her only friend.  And since winter break of freshman year, he’s been in a comfortable, all-too-easy, autopilot relationship with Syd.  Syd is smart, mature, and for reasons Tyler can’t explain, into him.Read More →

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In Tne Opposite of Hallelujah, Anna Jarzab returns to the familiar territory of a mystery enveloping a dysfunctional family.  But instead of teens trying to deal with grief and solve the mystery of their friend’s death (All Unquiet Things), here we have a long-lost sister returning to a family broken by her absence and a haunting secret that threatens to resurface and wreak havoc again. When Caro was 8, her much older sister Hannah, left home.  Too young to understand why and at a loss to explain her sister’s sudden departure to her friends and schoolmates, Caro started telling everyone that Hannah had died.  ThisRead More →

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I know when a book is good because it’s full of check-marks, underlining and dog-eared pages.  And the latest from one of my favorite authors, A.S. King, Ask the Passengers, has 14 page corners that I turned down and boatloads of check-marks and underlining throughout.  It’s full of funny quips, true-to-life sarcasm, poignant revelations, and emotional truths that kicked me in the gut. With an emotionally vacant set of parents (workaholic rarely-leaves-the-house mother and a pot-smoking dad), a younger sister who is a mystery to her, friends who have a secret life Astrid has sworn to protect, a rampant small-town rumor mill, and secret yearningsRead More →

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In the sequel to his Printz Honor book, Stuck in Neutral, Terry Trueman takes us back into Shawn McDaniel’s life:  “Night before last my dad tried to kill me. At least, I’m pretty sure that was his plan. For weeks and months I’d been worrying about it. I guess Dad had his reasons, but he didn’t do it. Obviously. Lucky me, huh? Sorry, sarcasm is one of the few weapons I possess.” (1) The power of Stuck in Neutral  lay in the dynamic between Shawn and his dad, as both characters struggled to understand and connect with each other.  In Life Happens Next, Shawn’s dadRead More →