A Guide to Falling Off the Map, by Zanni L Arnot

Vinnie has plans to be in charge of her school's drama club next year and also turn her success into an audition in New York at the Juilliard.  In contrast, her best friend Roo is a disaster.  He's dropped out of school and trying to make money so he and his mother don't get evicted from the last place in town where they can afford to live.  

But their fates change quickly and when Vinnie fails to get her position and finds out her plans for New York have been undermined, it would seem that they are both in trouble with little left to lose.  So, they go on a week-long road trip to try to run away from their problems.  In their meandering trip, they run into the usual colorful cast of characters and end up finding each other.

A quirky Australian YA book with a familiar motif but a lot of original ideas behind it.  There are cultural differences that will be lost on North American readers, but the universal search for self-acceptance and enduring friendships will appeal to all.  Roo and Vinnie are both vivid and original characters, interesting enough to follow through their trip.  The story may be a bit flat and dull at points, but it picks up at the end for a satisfying conclusion that is neither clean nor pretty, but ultimately feels right.

Under the Fading Sky, by Cynthia Kadohata

Elijah and his friends have a pretty good life.  Growing up in nice houses and going to good schools, they have excelled and worked hard.  They have nice clothes and live in fancy houses.  They are getting into good colleges.  But for all those good things, their lives are just so damned boring.  That is, until they discover vaping.  And the vaping opens up an entirely new world that makes everything just a little better.

They are not stupid.  They know drugs are bad, but everyone's parents smoked dope and they ended up alright.  So, doing a little vaping isn't going to harm anything.  And maybe taking some pills too, because why not?  And life without the vaping and the pills is just so unbearable.  Soon enough they find they are hooked and can't figure out how it all got so bad.  And then it's too late.

Told through stream-of-conscious narration from Elijah's deceptively intuitive and insightful voice, this is a very slow and subtle descent into drug addiction.  It takes nearly a third of the book before the drugs even start to show up and everything just coasts in a muddled haze until that seems deceptively easy to take control over.  But by the end we're witnessing truly horrendous events.

The novel is something of a literary triumph for how it recreates the way that addictions ensnare their victims with a false sense of security and self-control.  It is very hard to nail down exactly when Elijah and his friends lose their ability to control events but it is clear by the end that they have no agency left.  To really nail home the message, the ambivalent conclusion pulls no punches and refuses to deliver anything remotely feel-good.  

It's really one of the most realistic stories about addiction I've read in YA.  That surprised me as Kadohata has not previously impressed me all that much as an author.  But she's found a subject that works well for her and produced a stunning character portrait.  Because of its languid pacing, this is a difficult book to get into, but it grows on you the deeper the characters fall into the abyss.

A Thousand Boy Kisses, by Tillie Cole

As Mamaw lay dying, she gave her granddaughter Poppy a mason jar filled with a thousand pink paper hearts.  Some kisses in life, she explained, were particularly special and she wanted Poppy to memorialize the ones that were by recording them down on a heart.  By the end of her life, with the jar full of completed hearts, Poppy could look back and remember her life of a thousand memorable boy kisses.

For Poppy, there really is only one boy:  Rune, the Norwegian kid who lives next door.  She is his "Poppymin" and he is hers to infinity.  They remained inseparable for years until, at age fifteen Rune and his family returned to Oslo.  Heartbroken, they kept in close touch until suddenly Poppy stopped writing altogether.  Bereft and desperate, Rune's grief tears him apart and makes him angry and violent.  When he and his family returned, he searches her out and demands to know why she broke contact.  The reason breaks his heart.

I gather that some people like psychopathic obsessive relationships and consider them romantic.  But for me, a relationship that is based on possession and self-destruction is not only unhealthy but scary.  The appeal is completely lost.  Add that the story is very slow moving and repetitive (how many times can the heart break and tears rend you in pieces?) and the thing becomes boring.  These kids needed serious psychological help from a trained counselor to sort out their insecurity and clinginess.  Rune's penchant for violence (towards himself and others) was a big turn off and a serious red flag.  Touting this as romance is actually pretty sick.

I'd give this a no-star rating because I hate the message it sends to young readers by glorifying a totally unhealthy relationship, but the author writes beautifully and I really enjoyed the story before it got all creepy.

Gwen and Art Are Not In Love, by Lex Croucher

In medieval England, there still reigns a division between the Catholics and the "cultists" (followers of the Arthurian legends).  Gwen's father, the king, tries to keep the peace and hold the kingdom together.  Part of pulling that off is betrothing Gwen to the odious son of a former rival. Art.  Gwen and Art have met over the years at various events, but never gotten along.

Now nearing her eighteenth birthday, the day of the nuptial is about to arrive.  But as much as Gwen is dreading the moment and prepared for the worst, she isn't quite prepared for the discovery that Arthur actually prefers boys or for the revelation that her brother, the crown prince, likes Art!  This may all work out though because Gwen is hot for a lady knight.

The result is a complicated entanglement where the four of them work out ways to make their desires match the requirements of kingdom building in the middle ages.  Meanwhile, the drums of war beat softly in the background for most of the story until they suddenly burst forth in a glorious blood bath.

Narratively, this is a big mess of random ideas that shows little interest in history or plausible motivations and opts instead for an attention-deficit adolescent view of romantic drama topped off with some sword swinging and bloodletting at the end.  There are some cute ideas about Arthur Pendragon and Sir Lancelot being suppressed gay lovers thrown in as well.  It's a lively text, but lacking in interesting characters.  I liked the female knight Bridget and Art's sideman Sid is good comic material, but the story didn't seem to know whether it wanted to be history, fantasy, comedy, or contemporary romance.

Old Wounds, by Logan-Ashley Kisner

Erin and Max, two trans kids, run away from home.  Driving across the country from Ohio to California, their trip quickly goes astray and they find themselves lost and in deep trouble in Kentucky.  The locals have taken an unnatural interest in them and for good reason: in the local woods lives a monster who grants its inhabitants longevity in return for a human sacrifice.  The tribute has to be a girl and the men have their eyes set on Erin, mistakenly believing she is cis-female.  Once Erin and Max's identity is revealed, the bigger question is whether the monster cares about binary sex.

I'm not a fan of horror novels, but this one packs an interesting conundrum that I was curious enough about to want to read the book.  It doesn't hurt that the novel is well-written and, while including all the typical horror tropes, does a neat job of giving them a particularly trans flavor.  Beyond the key question of whether Erin or Max sate the monster's tastes, there are lots of interesting analogies between dealing with violent transphobes and escaping human-eating creatures from another dimension.  Far more, in fact, than might initially be apparent!

Overall, this is a clever, witty, and suspenseful bit of dark paranoia for a genre that is best known for its misogyny.

Away, by Megan E. Freeman

Recounting the same forced evacuation of Colorado that provided the background of Alone, this companion novel depicts the multiple viewpoints of a group of children who are relocated into refugee camps.  Each speaks with a different voice -- one in poetry, one as a movie script, one as a journalist, and so on.  Combining these voices with official announcements and news conferences, the story recounts how the children uncover a great conspiracy to defraud their families of their property and then to find a way to subvert the plot.

The original novel, about a girl abandoned by her family during the evacuation, always seemed a bit of a stretch.  While this installment provides the background to explain the evacuations, it does little to provide any sense of plausibility.  And while suspending disbelief for the original novel allowed us to enjoy the compelling survival tale, here the background conspiracy is the story.  That's a lot of stuff to suspend disbelief over!  So, I found myself far too distracted to enjoy the story, which is otherwise an adventure with a bunch of middle schoolers resourcefully saving the day!

All That's Left To Say, by Emery Lord

After the death of her cousin from a drug overdose, Hannah hides her identity and enrolls at her late cousin's school to try to determine who gave her the pills.  Against her will, she is joined by a former nemesis:  the champion of the school's debate team, with whom she frequently sparred when she was at her old school.  Combining their wits, they investigate leads and ruling out suspect.  The investigation reveals disturbing things about her cousin's friends and the way that the school is run.  Hannah's obsession to find the culprit eventually puts her in danger.

A thrilling and immersive mystery with a decent plot twist at the end that helps the awkward story structure (halfway told through flashbacks) make sense.  I found Hannah to be maddeningly opaque and the story full of details (like Hannah's interest in clothing and costume design) that had no bearing on the plot.  However, the main mystery of who contributed to the death of her cousin and how culpable they were is compelling enough to make this an enjoyable read.