After Life, by Gayle Forman

Amber Crane arrives home on her bike one afternoon to discover that she's been dead for the past seven years. And while she has no memory of being dead and the last seven years have passed without her being aware of it, the world has definitely changed.  Her parents have broken up.  Her little sister and her best friend have grown up.  Her boyfriend has fallen into despair and grief.

No one has any idea why Amber has returned to the living but the fact that she has crystalizes how much damage her death wrought in all their lives.  Her family becomes convinced that they need to restart their lives, even if it means running away from their current ones.  They certainly can't stay.  After all, what would happen if the rest of the world discovered that Amber didn't really die seven years ago?  But there are lots of forces coming together and a complicated web of relationships and interactions that may well make Amber's return moot.

The novel's structure, with current state chapters told from Amber's point of view alternating with flashbacks from a variety of others creates a very dense story that relies on a combination of coincidences to make it come together.  Nothing really makes sense until the end. Yet it works surprisingly well.  The novel's message -- that the "life" of a person after their death is largely dependent upon how those whose survive them behave -- is told in a variety of fascinating ways ranging from parents, children, and even pet owners.  Ultimately, it is a very touching story that lingers with you.

I Am Not Jessica Chen, by Ann Liang

Jenna is an average student, which means she's a failure in comparison to her brilliant, talented, and beautiful cousin Jessica.  Awards and honors come easily to Jessica, while no matter how hard she tries, Jenna just never quite makes it.  When Jessica gets accepted to Harvard and Jenna has to admit to her extended family that she has not been, Jenna has decided she's had enough.  That night, when a shooting star passes by, she makes a wish that she could be Jessica instead of Jenna.

The next morning she wakes up in Jessica's bed and that she has suddenly become so.  Initially basking in the adulation of friends and teachers, Jenna-as-Jessica marvels at how much easier her life is.  But the glow quickly fades as she learns of the intense pressure Jessica is under to maintain her position as a role model and the hollowness of her fame.  Meanwhile, no one seems to know what has happened to Jenna.  And with time, they start forgetting that Jenna ever existed.  It seems that the true cost of becoming her cousin is that her own life will disappear.

While body-swapping is hardly a new idea, the theme is treated deftly by Liang, who uses the artifice to explore self-identity and how intense social pressures lead us to make trade offs.  The inevitable moment when Jenna finally realizes how flawed Jessica is combines with an urgent sense that she is quite literally losing her own self in trying to be her cousin.  A short digression into racism, while itself throwaway, drives home the shallowness of fame.  Another aside about academic dishonesty casts a shadow over Jessica's coveted narrative of success.  While both Jessica and Jenna turn out to be flawed characters, the story avoids demonizing and instead teaches that no one is perfect and that there is no intrinsic value in trying to portray yourself as such.

Marketed as YA, the material is tame and the story skews to a young teen demographic, despite its older protagonists.

Finding Normal, by Jennifer Salvato Doktorski

Gemma and Lucas meet as patients at an inpatient facility for children with eating disorders.  She has anorexia and he has bulimia.  Neither of them really feel like they belong there; they are simply misunderstood.  Gemma wishes that they could just go someplace and be treated as normal.  Why not a place that is normal?  Looking up in an atlas, she finds there are five cities in the United States named Normal and she becomes convinced that visiting them will somehow transform her.

The notion would have just been a whim, but when she shares the idea with Lucas, he's all in for the plan and even knows a way to find a car to get them there.  So they spring themselves from the hospital and start a desperate road trip adventure that will take them far further than they imagined to find normal.  The usual cast of odd characters and side trips to America's weird small towns ensues.

It's a fairly standard teen road trip adventure with an above average story about eating disorders. Most notably, it features a boy with bulimia.  Almost every YA story about eating is about girls so it's nice to highlight the fact that it can happen to boys as well.  But beyond that, the story benefits from applying a light touch, showing them struggling with food but focusing more on the elements of their life that got them to this point.  That in turn brings out the real strength of the road trip genre:  having two characters get to know each other better by baring their souls to each other.  Small, compact, and modest, this short novel punches above its weight. 

The Last Bookstore on Earth, by Lily Braun-Arnold

A year ago, a rain fell across the Earth that was so acidic that it dissolved whatever it came in contact with.  Those who survived the Storm had to find a way to stay alive in an anarchic world where almost all of civilization had come to a halt -- finding food and shelter where they could.  But for Liz, survival came through denial.  Ignoring the death of her family, she simply went back to work at the same  independent bookstore where she had been employed before the Storm.  For the past year, she's traded books for essentials with random people who pass through.  It's a quiet life that allows Liz to imagine that nothing has really changed.  She focuses on clearing out her overstocked books rather than worrying about her dwindling food supply.  Liz even ignores the news that another round of acid rain is on its way.  Her grief paralyzes her.

But when a young women named Maeve shows up, she challenges Liz to face the reality around them.  Maeve pushes Liz to take precautions, trying to make her care about the future, their future together.  But for Liz, who cannot accept what has happened, preparing for a repeat is far too difficult of a task to undertake.

Currently an undergraduate, Braun-Arnold seems an extraordinarily young writer to be able to create such a striking debut.  Her youth gives her a fresh insight on the foibles of her protagonists.  There's not much space here for romance, but the relationship between Liz and Maeve is full of grudges and resentments and feels authentically youthful.  She wisely stays away from writing about anyone older than their teens.

The storytelling is smooth and the action is well-paced, including an extended bloody climax full of suspense and a touch of horror.  A few improbable plot points like a bit of field surgery that goes entirely too well will raise eyebrows, but there is nothing that significantly detracts from this exciting post-apocalyptic adventure.

Give Me A Sign, by Anna Sortino

Summer camps, like boarding schools, are popular terrain for romantic YA adventures.  But Sortino's novel uses the setting in a new way to write a sprawling introduction to deaf culture.

When she was little, Lilah attended Camp Grey Wolf, a summer camp for deaf (and some blind) kids.  But now she's being given the opportunity to return as a junior counselor.  The place has gotten run down over the years and Lilah is shocked to learn how shaky the camp's finances are.  But it's still the fun place she remembered.

Living with hearing parents and with some hearing, Lilah has tried to get by with hearing aids and lip reading back home.  It's proven frustrating and alienated her from her parents and her friends.  But at camp, everyone understands and she finds herself being included.  What she's not expecting is the wide diversity of opinion about the use of American Sign Language, hearing aids, cochlear implants, and mainstreaming.  Everyone has different opinions and the kids find themselves navigating the options and their choices throughout the summer.

At times, the book digresses too deeply into the specifics of the debates and loses track of its storytelling purpose, but in general Sortino has crafted an entertaining book about kids who have disabilities and what makes them the same and different from other kids.  The romance gets overrun by other events and largely forgotten and the camp hijinks are pretty low key, but strong emotional growth for Lilah and some nice lessons learned all round make this a rewarding read.  And yes, the camp is saved in the end!

First Love Language, by Stefany Valentine

Since the passing of father, Catie has grown increasingly obsessed with learning more about her Taiwanese mother and her cultural background. Afraid that she'll offend her stepmother, Catie's kept the desire to herself.  When she discovers that Toby, one of her coworkers, has recently returned from Taiwan, she begs him for language lessons.  But what can she offer him in return?

Toby is handsome, but shy.  He's infatuated with a girl named Nichole, but he's helpless at communicating with her.  So, Catie offers to teach Toby how to date.  Not that she knows anything about dating, having never had a boyfriend before.  But using an old copy of The Five Languages of Love that Catie inherited from her late father, she devises a series of "fake dates" to teach Toby some interpersonal skills.  As one would predict, teaching Toby how to court Nichole becomes complicated when Catie finds that she has feelings for Toby herself.

A number of other (largely unresolved) subplots also contribute to the story, including Catie's search for her biological mother and her family in Taiwan, and also her cousin's search for her sexual identity.  On the whole, much about the story feels unresolved, but the romance is pleasant enough although it is quite chaste lacks much heat. There's some cute feel-good moments at the end, but not much that carries a punch.  This is sort of the issue with the novel in general: for all the action, it's lacking much in excitement.  My impression is that the author likes to set up conflicts, but has little interest in playing out drama.

Blood Gone Cold, by Katy Grant

Abby and her sister Natalie are always fighting.  Abby is the smart one and Natalie is the popular one and they despise each other for their differences. 

During a family ski trip, their mother declares that she and Dad are so tired of the squabbles that they are going out to dinner alone.  That suits the girls just fine and they settle in for an evening alone at their remote ski cabin, alternately ignoring and pranking each other.  But when two threatening strangers show up, Abby and Natalie have to think fast to survive.  Fleeing for their lives, they put aside their differences and rediscover their family bond.

Most verse novels are slow-moving navel-gazing affairs; pages torn out of angsty adolescent diaries.  The format suits reflection.  But it also works surprisingly well for a taut thriller like this.  Stripped of unnecessary text, this novel is a lightning-fast read that turns pages.  It lacks depth but for a visceral and intense thrill it definitely hits the mark.