Pride and Prejudice in Pittsburgh by Rachael Lippincott does indeed allude to the Jane Austen novel. However, it is about so much more, taking a deep dive into the magic of attraction and chemistry, where two young women wish for moments charged with potential.   Usually ambitious and inspired, Audrey Cameron lives in 2023 Pittsburgh, but she has put her life on hold. Art school wait lists, rejections, and heartbreaks seem to define her present. Because her heart’s desire involves using art to tell the stories of people, Audrey dreams of attending Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). She wishes to spend her days studyingRead More →

Although Forty Words for Love by Aisha Saeed is certainly a story about love, the plot runs much deeper to embrace other topics, as well. Topics like immigration, socioeconomic status, truth, and following one’s dreams also find a place in these pages. Saeed shares multiple morals as the story of Raf and Yas unfolds. When the story opens, readers learn briefly of Raf’s trek from Golub and about a sacred tree that allows or denies passage from one world to another. People from Raf’s world have a golden leaf birthmark that pulses and warms in warning if a person has moved beyond the perimeter ofRead More →

Based on the YouTube sensation, Storybooth compiled by Marcy Kaye and Joshua Sinel is a collection of “amazing & heartbreaking & inspiring stories” told by “brave teens bold enough to share a piece of themselves with the world.” The collection features true confessions, secrets, struggles, embarrassments, heartbreaks, and other facets of diverse and fragile lives. The compilation is brimming with emotion, and many of the stories cover difficult subjects, like rape, homophobia, racism, suicide ideation, self-harm, bullying, abuse, and experimentation with sexual intimacy. The multifarious voices inspire readers and remind us that we are all in this world together, trying our best, not just toRead More →

Set in North Carolina, The Mending Summer by Ali Standish tells the story of twelve-year-old Georgia Collins whose heart is breaking as she struggles to put her Humpty Dumpty family back together. Pursuing their own dreams, her mother is studying long hours for a degree in biology so that she can work in a lab, and her accountant father moonlights as a piano player who comes home transformed by alcohol into the Shadow Man, no longer the Daddy she knows and loves. To protect Georgia from the fighting and the shame and to give herself more study time, Mama arranges for her daughter to summer inRead More →