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A stolen baby throws a mother’s life into madness. A young girl yearns for life outside the house she’s virtually imprisoned in.  Beth Kephart’s latest, You Are My Only, is packed with raw emotion: loss, confusion, heart break, fear, love, and hope.  There’s little by way of literary devices, imagery, flowery language or flourish to mask the bare bones of a powerful story of two young women whose lives seem completely beyond their control.  Emma Rae is nineteen and trapped in a loveless marriage.  Baby is the light of her life, her “only”, and when Baby is stolen from the backyard one bright bluemorning, Emma Rae’sRead More →

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Best-Selling adult suspense author Harlan Coben makes his young adult debut with Shelter (A Mickey Bolitar Novel).  He joins plenty of other high profile adult writers venturing into the waters of children and teen lit, carrying over his signature style, plot twists and turns, and high-stakes scenarios to the next generation.  Like Kathy Reichs, Coben creates a protagonist for his new series who’s related to an already beloved character.  In this series, Mickey is reluctant detective Myron Bolitar’s estranged nephew.   Readers (especially guys) who like a lot of action, fast pacing, economical prose, and surprise plot hooks will get a thrill from Shelter and will eagerly await Mickey’sRead More →

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I have a rule, inspired by Wallace Wallace from Gordon Korman’s No More Dead Dogs, that I don’t read books about dogs.  Even if the dogs don’t die, aren’t abused, or if live the best life you could ever hope for them, I just can’t read books about dogs. They make my heart ache because I always, always fall in love with the dog and no matter what happens to him (or her) I am too emotional to finish. So, what was I thinking when I broke my rule and read Tim Willocks’ children’s debut, Doglands? I have no idea.  A number of times theRead More →

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“I wondered if this was what it was like when the end of the world came. A sudden overturning that made every day like stepping alone into an empty room, everything you longed for, every handhold you used to pull yourself along, vanished.” (Stephen, from The Eleventh Plague)  Much has been made in recent months about the darker bent of YA lit and the growing fascination with end-of-the-world scenarios and dystopias taking over the once sunny, wholesome world of tween/YA lit (was it ever really so?).  So I thought it particularly interesting that the 2 books next in my stack to read were both post-apocalyptic stories: AaronRead More →

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Edward Bloor’s latest, A Plague Year, takes a somber, sobering, yet ultimately hopeful look at the damage caused by meth.  Set in Autumn 2001 in the small coal-mining town of Blackwater PA, A Plague Year is one freshman’s journal of the epidemic that swept through his town, turning people into zombies, thieves, and dead bodies all within a matter of months.  Tom’s always been focused on getting out of his depressing coal mining town, planning an escape to a college in Florida.   But lately something’s not right in Blackwater: it’s always been a run-down town with few prospects for getting ahead, but now crime is on theRead More →

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“Just about the time I was thinking things weren’t turning out so bad after all, events took a turn for the worse.”  So says Jack Catcher, teen protagonist in Joe R. Landsdale’s latest, All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky.  And this remark captures the flavor of this book, and Jack’s adventures in it, perfectly. Set in the deepest part of the Great Depression, in the dustbowl of Oklahoma, Jack’s parents have just died – his mother from a wasting sickness and his father from grief – and now he’s not sure what to do.  He’s got no food and no money, and the bankRead More →

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Sci-Fi Action author Brian Falkner creates another fast-paced, twisting and turning thrill ride in his latest novel, The Project.  Best friends Tommy and Luke like to pull mostly harmless pranks and enjoy horsing around.  Even though their latest prank lands them in some serious trouble at school, they still volunteer with to help the local university library try to save its rare book collection from the impending threat of a fast moving flood.  While helping out, Luke discovers the only copy in existence of a rare book based on Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings and theories. Because he’s been researching “the most boring book in theRead More →

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In 1978, China is just beginning to recover from the harsh turmoil of the Cultural Revolution.  Living in the furthest northern provinces on a government farm, 11 year old Zhongmei Li dreams of becoming a dancer, but her family is poor and her village is far from anywhere important.  When her older sister reads that the acclaimed Beijing Dance Academy is holding open auditions for the first time in its history, Zhongmei knows that she must do everything she can to win a place for herself and a chance at the future of her dreams.  She convinces her parents to borrow the money for theRead More →

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Debut children’s author Kelly Barnhill’s The Mostly True Story of Jack  is a delightful, imaginative tale.   It’s a story of friendship, family, and sacrifice, all wrapped up in a mostly true (depending on how you look at it) magical mystery about a boy, a town, and the choice to do the right thing. Jack’s parents are getting a divorce, so he has to go stay in a small farm town in Iowa with his only relatives, an old aunt and uncle who live in the strangest house he’s ever seen.  It’s not like Jack will miss much from his home in San Francisco since he hasRead More →