THE ENDLESS SKIES by Shannon Price
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Shirene only became a Sentinel and counselor to the king when a traitor defected, leaving his homeland and his fellow shape-shifting winged lions for the land of the humans–the enemy. In a kingdom whose motto is “Loyalty Above All,” such an action is unforgivable. And yet, the traitor is back and the king seems to have forgiven him. Shirene can’t imagine why, until she learns of the mysterious sickness that has started to claim the kingdom’s children. The sickness came from the land of the humans and the traitor is the only one who knows of a cure, a plant on the far outskirts of the humans’ kingdom.
Shirene’s sister Rowan has been dreaming of becoming a warrior for her whole life. But now at the moment when her dream is about to come true, the plague has put those dreams on hold. Rowan is desperate to join the teams on a quest for the cure, but since she hasn’t taken her oath yet, she is ineligible. And when Shirene accidentally reveals to Rowan that the traitor is the one who told the king about the sickness and the cure, Rowan grows uneasy. This story is completely at odds with the one being told to the warriors. With her two closest friends on a quest in enemy lands and her sister almost inaccessible in the king’s inner circle, Rowan will have to decide how much she’s willing to sacrifice for her dreams and where her loyalties truly lie.
This epic fantasy is fast-paced and character-rich. Though there is a lot of (necessary) world-building up front, it doesn’t feel too dense, and the immediate hook of the plague and Shirene’s new position made me eager to turn pages. I loved the inventive magical species and the suspense that is drawn through political intrigue and social commentary. This one is for teen and adult fans of high, epic fantasy.
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.
ELFIE UNPERFECT by Kristin Mahoney
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Elfie could not be more excited to start private school. If she didn’t make friends at public school by the end of fourth grade, let’s face it: it was never going to happen. At Hampshire Academy, she’ll be able to meet kids like her–kids who are excited about science and getting good grades. Kids who don’t make her look like a perfectionistic weirdo by comparison. And she’ll finally be able to get away from her insufferable cousin, Jenna.
But on the first day of school, a clash with an entitled descendent of generations of the Academy’s alumni leads to Elfie being falsely accused of stealing. Before the day ends, she’s been expelled, pending an Honor Council hearing. Worse, while her family is waiting for the hearing and gathering evidence from the few friends Elfie managed to make in her brief stint at the Academy, Elfie has to enroll in public school. And she’s in Jenna’s class. Again. But as the school year gets underway, some surprising revelations about the people Elfie considered perfect and the ones she considered infuriating make Elfie realize that there is a lot happening in people’s lives that they never give her a chance to see. Is it possible Elfie could find her perfect fit in public school after all?
A sweet middle grade coming-of-age story about seeing and accepting people for who they really are. While the drama of the Honor Council hearing draws a thread of suspense throughout the narrative, it quickly falls into the background while themes of empathy and forgiveness rise to the surface. The story has its funny moments and its touching moments and can definitely skew younger if you need a book for an elementary book club.
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!
GENERATION MISFITS by Akemi Dawn Bowman
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Millie could not be more excited to start at her new school. Actually, it’s her first school, since for her whole life she’s been home “schooled,” which to her parents means flute, flute, and more flute. But at the performing arts magnet middle school, she’ll be with other kids–which means potential friends! And things besides the flute, which she’s been having more and more trouble pretending to like.
Unfortunately, real school is much harder than Millie expected. There are so many unspoken rules, like the fact that homework assignments will magically appear on a white board without the teacher even mentioning them or the fact that there seems to be some sort of complex system of maneuvers required to get someone to sit with you at lunch. But things start to look up when Millie meets Zuki and they form a J-Pop club together, which is quickly joined by two other misfits and (shockingly) the most popular girl in the sixth grade. The only catch is that the popular girl insists they can’t tell anyone else about the club–plus, Millie has to lie to her parents about why she’s spending time after school. But when they get a chance to perform at a pop showcase, will their tenuous friendships survive the fallout from their secrets?
What a sweet, fun middle grade friendship story! I flew through this novel which will please any reader who has ever felt like they didn’t fit in, like their parents didn’t get them (even though they loved them), or like there was a part of themselves they weren’t sure they were ready to share with the world.
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!
A GLASSHOUSE OF STARS by Shirley Marr
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You are a stranger here. You don’t know anyone in this New Land. You don’t even speak their language. The uncle who was supposed to welcome you to your New Home died unexpectedly, so it is just you and your parents in the huge, empty house. You should play with the children at school, but you can’t understand them. Even the food is strange. The only thing that brings you comfort is the greenhouse in the corner of the garden because it contains not only your uncle’s beloved orange trees but also the sun and moon–a surprising burst of magic in this otherwise dull world.
But when a tragedy shakes the foundation of your family, making you want more than ever to hide in a magical garden, you know you will have to leave the safety of the glasshouse and find a way to survive, to keep going.
You are Meixing Lim, and your life is about to change forever.
A heartbreaking, beautiful story about a young immigrant finding her way in an unfamiliar world. Marr’s clever choice to use second person narration gives readers a unique experience, letting you feel as disoriented as Meixing from the first sentence when you are unsure who “you” are. This novel is a powerful emotional journey, and it would be a great pick for middle grade book clubs.
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.
Susan the Librarian 