Another First Chance, by Robbie Couch

The billboard mocks River.  Everyday, he has to drive by the picture of his late best friend Dylan, adorning a PSA urging teens not to text and drive.  River hates that his dead friend has been reduced to a safety lesson and will only be remembered for his fatal error.  River was so much more than that to Dylan.  So, one day he vandalizes the billboard.

Meanwhile, a company called Affinity has come to town promoting a new study they are doing into how relationships are formed.  They are soliciting River and his classmates to be participants.  And for some reasons, his friends and even the guidance counselor is pressuring him to sign up.  Initially, he has no interest but one of his classmates with knowledge of River's recent vandalism blackmails River into joining the study.

The study involves locking away twenty student in isolation for a week and conducting group therapy and meditation practices, which all seems pretty harmless.  But strange things start happening. People  experience particularly vivid dreams, River is accused of doing things he can't recall, and River himself meets a stranger who reminds him so very much of his dead friend Dylan.

A story dealing with loss and moving on, placed in a rather thin thriller about mind experiments.  Cue the gaslights.  At first, this seemed like a useful vehicle for getting River and his friends together to address their relationship with the late Dylan.  But as the story unfolds and the experiment itself grows more and more outlandish, I found it distracting to the far more interesting emotional growth that River was going through.  I think the story would have benefitted by being more rooted in reality.  As it was, the silly parts detracted from the story.

The Misunderstandings of Charity Brown, by Elizabeth Laird

Having spent several months in the hospital recovering from polio, Charity is having trouble adjusting to life back home.  Her schoolmates are still leery of her for being sick, but Charity has always struggled to make friends.  She cannot quite understand why they dislike her attempts to save their souls for Christ.  Shouldn't everyone want to be saved?  She could not imagine life without the comfort of her religion!

Through a burst of good fortune, the family inherits an old house and all of the possessions within it. As strict Christians, they are reluctant to accept so rich a gift but Charity's father decides that the family will dedicate the large house towards providing rest and rehabilitation of needy souls.  This leads to a variety of colorful guests coming to stay with them in their exciting new home.  Along with a number of other major family events, all of these changes open Charity's eyes to the wide diversity of life.  The certainties that she learned from her faith are challenged as she discovers that the real world is a complicated place.

A lovely period piece.  The plot is scattershot, jumping from one crisis to another up to the amusing climax, but the overall story of Charity's opening up to the world is touching.  Watching her go from childish blind faith to the realization that goodness (and evil) comes in many forms is inspiring and beautiful.

The Loss of the Burying Ground, by J Anderson Coats

Dura and Ariminthia have been at war for ages, each side convinced that they are right and neither prepared for peace.  But despite strong factions who want the war to continue and a hefty propaganda effort to promote the war, a fragile peace treaty has been drafted.  To sign it, the two sides agree to sail out into neutral waters on a ship called the Burial Ground with the entire leadership of both states on board. When the ship is destroyed in a freak storm and nearly everyone is lost, the chance of peace is put in jeopardy.

Two survivors -- Cora from Dura and a Ariminthian servant named Vivienne -- are washed ashore on a desert island.  After a lifetime of indoctrination, there is little trust between them.  But when pirates come ashore and threaten them, the two girls learn to cooperate for survival.  That buys them some time, but bigger challenges await these uneasy allies as they discover that the true nature of the conflict is far more complicated than they have been raised to understand.

A fascinating novel that explores the role of violence in politics and the impact of propaganda.  There's a lot to chew on here.  Perhaps a bit too much.  Things get rushed at the end and while we're being set up for a sequel or two, the care that was taken through the story to explain the competing interests gets muddied and rushed as events unfurl.

There's a human story as well about the two girls learning to see beyond their prejudices. Sadly, those human elements get lost in the end as Coats tries to tie up far too many loose ends.

The Cost of Bliss, by Kelsey Conkling

Jane has a pretty decent life.  Her family lives in a nice suburb and has enough money for her to enjoy nice clothes and the things she wants.  When she sees people like Preston, who gets on at her bus stop but lives in the poorer subdivision next door, she is thankful she's not like him.

But then her family suddenly loses their home and is forced to move in with her great grandmother.  She's been blissfully unaware that her family wealth was an illusion and that her parents were living beyond their means.  They are poor and in deep debt.  Now Jane has to face her old friends with the truth that she isn't who she thought she was.  And with her parents overwhelmed by their change of fortunes, Jane finds she can't even count on them.  But there is one person she finds she can count on -- Preston.

A briskly paced story that tackles class and poverty for middle schoolers.  Jane's quick turn of fortune grabs your attention and provides a relatable protagonist in an unfamiliar setting.  At the same time, I found the parents really selfish and horrible and over-the-top.  It is only because Preston and his mother save the day that it is bearable.

The story ends on a positive and hopeful note that encourages readers to think about, that no matter how bad things are, there's always someone out there who needs help more than you.  Sweet.

After the Wallpaper Music, by Jean Mills

Flora and her three friends are the Arden String Quartet, a talented group of middle schoolers.  They are always getting asked to perform at school functions (parents nights, etc.) -- the veritable "wallpaper music" group.  So, when the school announces a Battle of the Bands, the Quartet will of course play a piece.  But they struggle to decide what they should play.  Flora wants to play a traditional classical quartet while the other want to play music from a video game.  They settle that dispute amicably, but when Flora gets asked by a new boy to play in his band as well, jealousies appear and Flora is faced with conflicting loyalties that are harder to resolve.

Alongside that drama, Flora's aunt who lives with them has a health scare and Flora has to face the fact that people get older and people get sick.  From this she learns the healing power of music in giving people a means to come together and enjoy each other in the face of adversity.

A mixture of themes that ultimately tackles the topic of loss and grief rather more successfully than the interpersonal conflicts that Flora must contend with.  I liked the various different ways that music is brought up in the story, ranging from its role in cultural identity to the effects of fame for those who make it big.  In the face of all the different ideas brought up in the story, the lack of a nice neat ending felt right.

Skipshock, by Caroline O'Donoghue

Traveling alone on the train from Cork to Dublin, Margo nearly passes out and suddenly finds herself in another world.  In danger from the very start, a trader named Moon rescues her and smuggles her off the train at their next stop. Margo learns that she has been transported from Ireland to a universe where multiple worlds exist, each one with a different length of day.  The most desirable southern worlds have 24-hour days and the least (and northernmost) have days as short as two hours.  Travel on the trains (the only remaining way to get between worlds) is strictly controlled and northerners are largely cut off altogether.  Unrest is everywhere.

Margo and Moon learn that her arrival is not entirely coincidence.  Margo is carrying an antique watch that once belonged to her late father.  In ways that they do not fully understand, Margo and the watch have the power to disrupt travel -- a power that the south desperately wants to have.  Chased between worlds, the two of them must unlock the mystery while evading capture.  All around them the old order is disintegrating and inter-world revolution is brewing.

A feisty adventure fantasy with a dash of romance.  I liked the role of day length as a world-builder and there's some thought given to how shorter days (and shorter lifespans would affect a world).  The author does great exposition, but the pace is so fast that things get destroyed as fast as they get introduced.   At the same time, there's a fairly large number of characters and a high body count. Hopefully, the planned sequel will explore some of the unfinished business instead of creating more stuff.  The pace flags at times as characters get involved in lengthy conversations. This is not a story that benefits from chit chat.

Gay the Pray Away, by Natalie Naudus

For most of her life, Valerie's family has been part of a conservative Christian religious community.  And to keep her away from rival ideas, she's been homeschooled and strictly segregated from outside influences.  No television.  Supervised internet access.  Parental review of her reading and friendships.  She notes the way all the rules seem to favor her brother and she sometimes doubts whether she really believes that Jesus wants her to do little more than raise babies, but she's accepted that these are just the way things are.

And then a new girl named Riley and her mother joins the congregation. Riley is free spirited, outspoken, and amazingly beautiful.  Valerie has only ever known homosexuality as a vile sin.  The idea that she might like a girl is confusing.  And when she finds out Riley likes her, it is a revelation.  Suddenly, the world that Valerie has known seems too limited and too restrictive.  She wants more and she may have to abandon everything to get it.

Drawing on her own personal experiences with growing up in a Fundamentalist family, there's a didactic mission in the storytelling.  I didn't mind the agenda as much as the way Valerie herself is portrayed.  For a young woman indoctrinated for so many years, she seemed awfully articulate about her ideology.  There's some attempt to explain this by having Valerie spending time in the public library sneaking in lots of reading.  However, few adolescents are this well-spoken and her voice sounded informed for a few extra years on the outside.  That makes Naudus's point for her easier, but by depriving Valerie of authenticity.  

The story dwells on all the things that are wrong with this isolated community, but misses chances to explain why it works for the people trapped within it.  I'm fascinated by Valerie's Taiwanese mother and we are teased at points by Valerie's observations of why being a believer serves her mother's needs, but so much more could have been done with it.  Valerie's brother and her best friend Hannah are also interesting cases in alternative paths tread that could have been expanded to fill out Valerie's journey.  All opportunities lost for a slow and largely repetitive list of the community's faults.