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Another great book by Melissa Marr! Ink Exchange is cleverly more of a continuation than a sequel. In Wicked Lovely the story revolved around Aislynn, Seth & Keenan. They appear throughout Ink Exchange but it focuses instead on Aislynn’s mortal friend Leslie and the faeries Niall and Irial. I am already looking forward to another book! There are so many other characters with interesting stories to tell. Will the third book be about Ani, Rabbit, Gabriel, Bananach, or the Winter Queen? It gets me thinking about other books and wondering how many other stories could come from minor characters that you usually pay little attentionRead More →

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Miles, a smart but socially awkward teen, is tired of his friendless, dull life in Florida, so Looking For Alaska by John Green begins after has convinced his parents to send him away to boarding school in Alabama so that he can seek “the Great Perhaps.” There he meets his roommate and soon-to-be best friend, Chip, called the Colonel, and Alaska Young, the moody, gorgeous, wild girl who instantly becomes the object of his lust and his curiosity. Miles is quickly enlisted in their group of friends and they bond over elaborate pranks, studying, and assorted rule-breaking. About halfway through the book a tragedy occurs, and those left spendRead More →

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I haven’t laughed out loud when reading a book in a long time – last time was Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian.  This time the laughs sprang from the smart, funny, wise-cracking voice of Scott Hudson, the main character in David Lubar’s Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie. Scott tries to tell himself a lie “nothing’s going to change” a whole lot in this book.  But, starting high school, losing and gaining friends, figuring out who he is and what is important to him, as well as coming to terms with the fact that his mom is pregnant, eventually bring him to the realization that “flux rox.”  To copeRead More →

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The first book in a trilogy, Magic or Madness, by Australian author Justine Larbalestier, is the mesmerizing story of 15-year-old Reason Cansino, who has lived with her mother in the Australian bush on the run from her grandmother her whole life. When her mother goes insane, Reason is sent to live with her grandmother, whom her mother has taught her to believe is an evil witch. Once in Sydney, Reason must decipher the mixed messages she received from her mother growing up about the magic her grandmother practiced, and the neat, seemingly normal picture her grandmother presents to her. When she discovers a secret key and a long-dead catRead More →

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Lombardo’s Law, by Ellen Wittlinger, is a poignant, funny novel about the confusion of adolescence. 15 year old Justine is quiet, bright and an observer in her own life.  When a family moves in across the street, her mother hopes she’ll make life long friends with the 15 year old girl, Heather. Instead of feeling comfortable with the out-going, popular girl, Justine is drawn to Heather’s younger brother, 13 year old Mike, whose sense of humor and personality are a much closer match to Justine’s. Justine and Mike find a kinship in independent and foreign films, which leads them to write and film their own movie, a teen-parody onRead More →

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In Peadar O’Guilin’s first full length novel, The Inferior, “survival of the fittest” is taken to an entirely new meaning and readers should be prepared  for a gripping story about characters who must do whatever it takes to survive.  The story focuses on a young man, Stopmouth, and his tribe of humans who know of no other life than the daily battle to survive. To live, they must hunt rival species, or negotiate live flesh-trade with non-human species to maintain a precarious peace. And for Stopmouth, considered slowwitted because of his stutter, the future looks especially bleak. Their cruel world is not all as it seems however, and on theRead More →

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“Popularity is a state of mind. Feel nerdy. Think uncool thoughts. It also helps to use the word vaginal a lot.” Sugar Magnolia Dempsey, the daughter of free spirit “hippie” parents is moving once again, this time from her home in Portland to Austin, Texas. Broken hearted, she leaves behind friends and a boyfriend, “Maggie” vows that this time she will go out of her way to become the most unpopular student at Lakewood High School.  Arriving in Austin, she launches Operation Avoid Friends (OAF) deciding  that she is not going to fit in and will do anything to prevent people from liking her. FromRead More →

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Darkhenge by Catherine Fisher, opens on the hills above Avebury, England, famous for its prehistoric stone henges.  Rob, a talented teenage artist, sees his family disintegrating as his younger sister lies in a coma. Looking for an outlet to escape the grief and guilt he feels, he takes a job with a local archaeological dig where a new and mysterious henge has been discovered. Having spent his life surrounded by the mythology of stone circles, Rob initially pays little attention to the bizarre events that surround the dig until he realizes that this new revelation and the mystifying people attracted to it are somehow related to his sister. The novel plays outRead More →

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Madapple, the debut novel by Christina Meldrum, is a spellbinding exploration of the correlations among nature, religion, mythology and the human condition.  Meldrum weaves a complex story, full of mystery, about a sixteen-year-old girl, Aslaug. Raised in an isolated and restrictive environment by her eccentric Danish mother, Aslaug learns languages, botany, mythology and science, but very little about the outside world. When her mother dies suddenly under mysterious circumstances, Aslaug leaves home in search of her absent father, but instead finds her estranged aunt and cousins, who run a Pentecostal church in a nearby town. As dark family secrets are revealed, including the mystery of Aslaug’s birth, the tension inRead More →