Young Adult
THE (UN)POPULAR VOTE by Jasper Sanchez
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Mark Adams doesn’t exist. At least not as far as the public knows. No one will find an article about Congressman Adams’ transgender son. No one will even find rumors about the Congressman’s separation from his wife. And as for his daughter, Madison–well, there may be speculation about why she no longer appears at campaign events with her father, but no one suspects that she no longer exists, or that the boy names Mark Adams who suddenly appeared at a public high school several hours away from the Catholic school she once attended is the person “Madison” always was, finally living his truth.
Mark knows he has to keep quiet about his past and his parentage. It was part of the deal–he could transition and live life as himself, but only if he didn’t screw things up for his father. But when a homophobic jock starts bullying a queer friend, Mark can stay in the background no longer, and he challenges the jock in the race for Class President. Mark puts all of his political savvy to work, and may even have shot at winning. But as the scent of victory prompts him to make bigger and bigger promises, Mark never stops to ask himself whether his small queer community–and his own integrity–will survive the cut-throat campaign.
This novel has all of the thrilling elements of a competition story and all of the thought-provoking elements of a YA coming -of-age story–all with excellent, authentic queer representation. A great pick for YA contemporary readers.
IN THE WILD LIGHT by Jeff Zentner
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Cash doesn’t know how to explain his friendship with Delaney. In fact, there’s not much about Delaney he can explain. She’s brilliant, obviously. Not every high school junior has discovered an antibacterial mold that can kill antibiotic-resistant bacteria. And he understands the struggles she experiences at home, trying to take care of her junkie mother. Cash’s own mother ODed when he was still a kid, a story that’s too common in their small Tennessee town. But Cash’s Mamaw and Papaw have always been there–for him and for Delaney.
When Delaney gets offered a scholarship spot at an elite boarding school in Connecticut–and insists that the same offer be extended to Cash–his grandparents encourage him to take advantage of the opportunity, one that they could never have afforded to give him. Cash is devastated to leave his grandparents behind, especially since Papaw’s emphysema has been getting worse, and after a few weeks surrounded by geniuses and his entitled bigot of a roommate, Cash is ready to quit and head back home. But when he unexpectedly connect with a poetry class, Cash finds a path to self-expression he never imagined, and as new friendships blossom, he suddenly finds himself caught between the home he’s always known and the home he’s building on his own.
This beautiful and poetic story moves from heart-wrenching to heart-warming in organic swells, and the emotion stayed with me long after I closed the book. In addition to the less-often depicted Appalachian community, it stood out from other YA novels I’ve read lately in that instead of trying to establish his identity as independent from his parents, this protagonist is trying to remain connected to his family and true to his heritage when circumstances pull them apart. Ultimately, Cash’s journey is toward learning what his grandparents and Delaney have been trying to tell him all along–that he is just as remarkable as she. I highly recommend this novel to fans of YA Contemporary fiction.
EAT YOUR HEART OUT by Kelly deVos
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Vivian is going to survive. Allie knows it. Because that’s what happens in all horror movies. The strong, determined, fearless girl survives. Because she has to. But the basket case? The girl who’s barely holding it together; the girl who only signed on to come to fat camp because she was so broken up about her rich best friend’s rejection that she chased her all the way to the middle-of-nowhere-Arizona in a sad attempt to humiliate her; the girl who looks at the other five teenagers around her and sees not the only five humans still alive to fight the zombies that have overrun the camp but the characters they would be in the horror movie of their life: Action Girl, the Nerd, the Jerk, the Jock, the Outcast–and the Basket Case, Allie, who will be the first to die.
Indulge my nerdiness for a moment because I want to talk about how brilliantly crafted this book is. I will admit I was skeptical when I picked it up, because six first person narrators? Really? But it worked because of the way it was crafted. This novel is NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD at fat camp. If you have not seen NOTLD, it is not only a classic horror film, it is social commentary featuring athletic zombie-like creatures (that do not follow the “rules” of proper zombies). The social commentary elements are woven in through a cast of archetypal characters and a brilliant, perfect ending that I won’t give away here.
EAT YOUR HEART OUT is intentional and self-aware in how it mimics and updates NOTLD, even down to the character archetypes. It starts out with a list of the characters and the likelihood that each will survive which makes it really easy to keep track of who each of the narrators is and to get a handle on each of these characters even though they’re sharing “screen time” with so many other people. The social commentary in this one, as you can probably tell from the premise, focuses on how society devalues fat people–even to the point that death is sometimes perceived as preferable to fatness. There is a disclaimer at the front of the book for anyone who might find this material triggering. For me as a reader, though, I felt like the absurd, satirical tone of the book both “lightened” the dark reality, making it palatable and even fun, and made the darkness even darker, when you think about how the over-the-top horror story has a substantial foundation in reality.
So maybe it’s my love of NOTLD, or my love of satire, or my love of YA SFF, but I was incapable of putting this book down. It was such a thrill! Highly recommend it to others who enjoy these kind of satirical SFF stories!
THE MARVELOUS MIRZA GIRLS by Sheba Karim
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Noreen’s high school graduation isn’t exactly how she pictured it. I mean, in some ways it was exactly what she’d imagined–parents getting teary-eyed over cliche speeches about achieving your dreams, as if achieving dreams were actually plausible. More of her classmates would be hit by buses than win a Nobel Prize. Most of life is out of their control. Case in point: Noreen’s aunt should be here, but instead she’s in her grave.
When Noreen’s mother is offered an year-long work opportunity in India, Noreen thinks that maybe this is what they need to start processing their grief and for her to sort out her life and get past her writer’s block. After all, that’s what white people do, right? Go to India to find themselves? But the first person she finds in India is Kabir, a boy who’s off the hotness index and immediately becomes a friend (and dare she hope something more?). But when Kabir’s father is MeTooed, Noreen is forced to examine her beliefs about love, loyalty, and family as she realizes that finding “herself” depends a lot on finding her place in relationships with those she cares about.
How refreshing to find an exploration of grief and complex moral issues in the form of a laugh-out-loud rom com! Noreen’s voice is a delight to read and the heavier themes are woven through the narrative poetically in a way that never dragged me down and kept me thinking long after the book ended. Highly recommend to fans of YA contemporary fiction!
LIKE A LOVE SONG by Gabriela Martins
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It took Natalie years of hard work to win Female Artist of the Year at the People’s Choice Awards. Not just work on her songs, all of which she writes herself, but work on her image. You don’t get the privilege of making art in LA without first cultivating your fame. Natalie hates all of it–from straightening her hair to eliminating every trace of her Brazilian accent–but she understands that it’s necessary.
Unfortunately, Natalie’s People’s Choice experience goes wrong almost immediately. First, an obscure British actor tries to make small talk and ends up implying that Natalie is a shallow diva. Then (and much more disastrously) her boyfriend dumps her–in front of the paparazzi. In the viral Internet firestorm that follows, Natalie realizes there’s only one way to fix this PR nightmare: she needs to distract the press with a new boyfriend. Her PR team draws up the paperwork for a contractual fake-boyfriend–a media stunt to help both their careers. But the sap they choose is the same British actor who insulted her at the People’s Choice Awards. As Natalie and William get to know each other, the initial awkwardness of their arrangement falls away, and Natalie finds herself feeling something more than annoyance toward him. Maybe even something more than friendship. And even more disturbing than the realization that this fake relationship might result in very real heartache, is the realization that William might be right to criticize her PR-focused choices. Is it possible there is another way–a better way–for Natalie to get her songs heard?
The jacket summary of this novel did not prepare me for how grounded, principled, relatable, and frankly inspiring this teen pop star would be. I picked it up thinking I’d just be reading it in order to recommend it to the teens I work with, but I couldn’t put it down because I was personally enthralled by the characters and their love story. Though it is very much within the YA sphere, LIKE A LOVE SONG has crossover appeal for the New Adult audience. I highly recommend this one to fans of RomComs, especially with the fake-dating trope!
A LESSON IN VENGEANCE by Victoria Lee
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Dalloway is much the same as Felicity left it nearly a year ago. The floors of the old dorm still creak, and there’s still an aura of mystery from the ancient bones on which the boarding school was built, the witch who was buried alive and the other four witches who perished in equally gruesome but less explicable ways. But this year there’s a new ghost haunting the halls: Felicity’s girlfriend Alex.
In the year that Felicity was away, the doctors at the psychiatric hospital tried to convince her that Alex’s accidental death wasn’t her fault and that magic isn’t real. There is no way that the rituals she and Alex performed could have released the ghost of a witch. She promised the doctors and her mother that if they let her go back to school this year, she wouldn’t dabble in magic and she would choose a new topic for her senior thesis, one that wouldn’t require more research in to the history of the Dalloway witches. But one of her new dorm-mates is Ellis Haley, the eccentric, Pulitzer-winning teen novelist, and Ellis believes that Felicity’s doctors are wrong. The only way for Felicity to come to terms with the past is to face it–to return to the rituals and the study of the witches and to act out their murders–proving once and for all that humans and not evil spirits were the culprits. As Felicity gets sucked back into the dark world she swore she’d left behind, she is forced to face the darkness in the girls around her–and in herself.
This novel walks the line between psychological thriller and horror. (For me, most of the suspense came from the atmosphere and the questionable sanity of the narrator, so it felt more like Kingian horror than a thriller.) Character drives the novel, and though the key reveals weren’t particularly surprising, the suspense and tension are so high throughout that I had trouble putting it down. I’d recommend it to fans of the genre(s), especially readers who enjoyed books like WHEN ALL THE GIRLS ARE SLEEPING by Emily Arsenault.
DEAD WEDNESDAY by Jerry Spinelli
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Perfect Day.
Worm murmurs it on the bus–not loudly; he’s shy, after all–but soon it’s picked up by the rest of the eighth graders as their mantra and their cheer. It’s the second Wednesday in June, “Dead Wed” in Worm’s small Pennsylvania town, a day that school administrators designed to scare the eighth graders out of future reckless behavior but that every eighth grader knows as the day they can get away with anything. In homeroom, they will each receive a black shirt and a card with the name and picture of a teenager who died in PA last year as a result of preventable car accidents or dangerous stunts–and from that moment, every eighth grader will be “dead.” No teacher can acknowledge their presence, not even to stop them from walking out of school if they feel like it. Perfect Day.
But Worm’s perfect day veers off course almost immediately when the dead girl from his card, Rebecca Finch, starts showing up in real life. He’s the only one who seems to be able to see her or speak to her, although she’s 100% real and tangible. Becca doesn’t know how she ended up back on Earth, but she’s positive it has something to do with Worm. She’s here to save him–because let’s face it, Worm hasn’t really been living. As Mean Monica once announced, he needs to get a life. As Becca drags Worm on an impulsive jaunt around his hometown, Worm starts to realize that there is more than one way to “be bold” and that maybe Becca needs some saving of her own.
This novel is exquisite. It exists somewhere between middle grade and YA, between fantasy and realistic fiction, but the book is full of betweens. Becca is caught between life and death, Worm between middle school and high school, childhood and adulthood, responsibility to his parents and individuality, a desire to be noticed and a desire to fade into the background. The narrative is masterfully woven, sending readers on an undulating emotional journey that builds to its climax so subtly that it is both unexpected and grounded. There is humor, realistically cringe-worthy teen interactions, and true heartache (warning to parents: this may upset you more than it will your kids), and Worm’s personal journey is authentic and meaningful. This book is a must-read for middle schoolers and an excellent pick for M.S. book clubs.
SUNNY SONG WILL NEVER BE FAMOUS by Suzanne Park
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Sunny doesn’t get why all the adults in her life are so hung up on get social media accounts. After all, it was her mom who got her into posting videos in the first place, after turning toddler-Sunny into a viral, Gangnam Style-singing sensation. And Sunny has enough followers of her own now that she’s been able to monetize her sites and earn some money for college (and, okay, vintage clothes).
But when Sunny takes her top off, not realizing she’s still live-casting a cooking video (#brownieporn), she finds herself shipped off to “digital detox” camp in Iowa. On a farm in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by other so-called social media addicts who are as reluctant to be there as she is, Sunny is desperate to get back online. But when she starts connecting with the cutest boy in camp, she starts to wonder if maybe there is something to be said for being social without the media.
A cute, light rom-com featuring a Korean American protagonist, SUNNY SONG WILL NEVER BE FAMOUS invites readers to think about the “why” behind their social media usage. Are we online for the fame or attention of follows and views? Or are we there for the connections and relationships we can form? I’d recommend this one to YA contemporary readers, especially those looking for a fun beach-read type book.
THE SILVER BLONDE by Elizabeth Ross
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Clara is ecstatic when the studio execs promote her to the film editing staff. After putting in her time in the film studio vault, she will now be a real member of the crew. It is her dream come true–a dream that would have been difficult enough for any woman to attain, let alone a German immigrant in 1946. But her triumph turns to horror when she stumbles on the body of film star Babe Bannon’s stand-in.
Everyone has a theory as to who killed poor Connie. After all, Babe has a slew of enemies in the studio and beyond, and it would be easy enough for someone to mistake the stand-in for the star. Same build, same costumes, same silver-blonde hair. But Clara isn’t convinced that Babe was the intended victim. When the cops let her return Connie’s belongings, Clara finds herself swept up in an investigation that endangers her job and brings her back in contact with the Nazi threat her family worked so hard to leave in the past.
I loved this atmospheric noir mystery! Though WWII historical fiction is ubiquitous, this novel takes a fresh look at the War (and post-War) in Hollywood and the subtle, insidious ways that ordinary people get swept up in hateful movements. There are frequent reminders of the many American Nazi sympathizers before Pearl Harbor (including famous figures like Walt Disney and Henry Ford) and the way microaggressions create a culture of discrimination. Though it is set in the past, this novel is (sadly) timely.
Adult fans of historical mysteries: do not let the YA label turn you off to this book! It is for you. Teen fans of historical fiction, noir fiction, and/or Old Hollywood will certainly enjoy the book as well, but THE SILVER BLONDE really exists in the mythical “New Adult” niche. All of the characters are 18+, some of them war veterans, struggling to advance their careers in misogynistic, antisemitic workplaces and reevaluating priorities when good career moves will take them away from family. While these themes aren’t inaccessible to teens, they will resonate most with college-age adults and 20- and 30-somethings. College book clubs will definitely want to check this one out!
SMALL FAVORS by Erin A. Craig
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Ellerie’s small, isolated community survives by following rules. They diligently tend their farms. They help their neighbors. And they never go into the deep forest where the monsters live.
Not that the townsfolk believe in monsters, really. Those are just legends from the time of the town’s founding. The dangers of the forest are the wolves and bears and the possibility of getting lost. But when the men on a supply run are slaughtered by a creature bigger than a bear, suddenly the monsters seem like a reality. Ellerie tries to keep calm like her father and to focus on tending their bees. But fear and jealousies have begun to tear her town apart. Worst of all, her twin brother Samuel is becoming increasingly distant. When a tragedy forces both of Ellerie’s parents to rush off to the city, Ellerie will have to fight to keep her siblings safe. And to do that, she will have to rely on a beguiling stranger–who won’t even tell her his true name.
Another chilling, grounded, folklore-infused horror novel from Erin A. Craig! She masterfully keeps us turning pages while keeping the narrative focused on family, community, and the protagonist’s self-discovery. Fans of character-driven, suspense-laden horror will not want to miss this one. I highly recommend it!
Susan the Librarian 