Wolfpack, by Amelia Brunskill

In an insular cult living deep in the woods, nine teen girls have formed their own little subgroup, supporting and looking out for each other.  Living in an outbuilding away from the rest of the people, they have gained a level of independence and self-government even though they must still follow their sect's rules. 

One day, they wake up to find one of their number is missing.  Worried about the consequences of the defection being discovered and convinced that she will eventually return, the girls attempt to cover up the disappearance.  But when they find out that the missing girl was pregnant and that she was subsequently murdered, they start to investigate what actually happen.  They end of unraveling layers of corruption within their utopia that exposes that their home is far from safe.

As I never tire of saying, verse novels are either great or terrible.  There is no half-way point.  Usually, a verse novel works best for a sad melancholy story because it amps up the poignancy of the protagonist's angst.  Here, the spare verse makes the story more suspenseful and more paranoid.  With so many characters, its hard to get much development in them, but it doesn't matter as the story just races ahead.  The surprise ending isn't well foreshadowed but the conclusion is satisfying and thought provoking.  Entertaining and engaging.

The Cat Who Saved Books, by Sosuke Natsukawa

Reclusive and awkward Rintaro would be perfectly content to sit on his stool in the back of his grandfather's secondhand bookshop, but his grandfather has passed away and the shop is being closed down.  He doesn't know what will come next, but he's resigned to move in with a distant aunt he does not know.  But before that can happen, he is visited by a talking cat, who informs him that he must take three epic trips into the Labyrinth to save books.

The trips, which involve visiting three different men who each threaten literature in specific ways, are allegories that provide cover for deeper criticisms about modern culture and society (the fetishization of literature, the dumbing down of culture, and the triumph of mass production over craftsmanship).  In each case, Rintaro must defend literature and culture against its enemies.  And in the end, through an unexpected additional fourth quest, he must defend the world against his own defense of literature.

The novel name drops a large body of literature, but it is its mention of The Little Prince that is most appropriate.  For it is Antoine de Saint-Exupery's existentialism-for-children classic that this translated Japanese novel best resembles.  As such,  it is packed with symbolism and cryptic conversations.  There is little in the story to take literally and the most enticing parts (the talking cat, the quests, and Rintaro's growth to adulthood) are all duds dramatically. As a story, this is a slog. Instead, it is Natsukawa's critique of modern society that resonates the most and provides ample fodder for debate on such topics as whether digesting a book saves it or destroys it, and does collecting rare books preserves culture or harms it?  Whether that crttique makes the book worth reading depends on what you want to get out of a book.

Girls Like Girls, by Hayley Kiyoko

Coley's father Curtis was not around for the first seventeen years of her life, so it's strange to have to move in with him.  But after the death of her mother, there isn't much choice.  She's only got to put up with it for a few months, so she can just lay low and count the days.  For his part, Curtis tries awfully hard to reconnect, but Coley isn't having any of that.  Instead, she latches on to a volatile group of bored teens and  through them meets Sonya.  The attraction between the two girls is immediate and undeniable to Coley.  But Sonya runs hot and cold, begging Coley for attention one minute but then running to her ex-boyfriend and denying that she's a lesbian in the next.

The relationship is ruptured when Sonya goes too far and betrays Coley's trust and then conveniently goes away to summer camp.  During the break, Coley falls into another destructive relationship before hitting rock bottom.  She comes out of that, managing to pull things together with her life and with her father, but when Sonya returns, the bad old dynamic pops up again.

What the story lacks in terms of activity, it makes up for with authenticity.  The characters felt real and the behaviors seemed plausible, but there is an overly languid nature to the narrative that underplays just about every scene.  We're just laying back in the midst of a long and boring summer, drinking and smoking our way from one scene to another.  Even a surprise act of violence at the end is depicted with detachment.  You're left feeling underinvested in the outcome, not really caring what happens to these characters.

Wolfwood, by Marianna Baer

Indigo's mother achieved fame and critical renown many years ago with her violent watercolor series Wolfwood.  But before she could finish the cycle, she suffered a mental breakdown.  Since then Indigo and her mother have struggled to survive living on the streets.  Now, her mother has been granted an opportunity to finish the series.  The sales from these works would bring in a substantial sum of money and give them a chance to start again.  But as the date of the unveiling of the paintings approaches, Indigo discovers that her mother hasn't painted anything at all and she's in no shape to do so.

Seeing the ruin that awaits them if her mother can't deliver the paintings on time, Indigo takes it upon herself to finish her mother's work.  As she does so, she finds herself literally drawn into the horrific world depicted in the works.  Painting means enduring the suffering of the subjects, being wounded, and potentially being killed.  And while Indigo finally understands her mother's reluctance to finish the works herself, Indigo knows that she has no choice but to attempt to do so.

A grueling story that mixes a touch of magic and an important series of flashbacks to Mom's early life to tell a story of guilt and grieving, and of a mother and daughter achieving mutual understanding.  I found the endless series of setbacks and suffering to be difficult to stomach, but I admired the creativity and the immersion into Indigo's world.  Intermittent attempts to provide relief through Indigo's relationships with various boys felt distracting and broke the narrative in an annoying way.  However, without that respite, the story might have become unbearable.

One Small Thing, by Erin Watt

Ever since Beth's sister was struck and killed by a reckless teen driver, her family has been locked in grief.  Her mother and father refuse to discuss the matter.  They meticulously maintain the dead sister's room and personal spaces as if she will be coming back.  And Beth herself can't process the event enough to even be sad about the loss.

Perhaps that is because her parents have become suffocatingly protective, watching her every move and obsessed with who she is seeing and where she goes.  To escape, Beth sneaks out at night and goes to parties and engages in risky behavior.  One night at a party, she meets Chase, a dark mysterious bad boy.  And while she acknowledges that it is cliché, she has sex with him -- her first time.  It's only a few days later that they even bother to learn each other's name and are faced with a shocking revelation: Chase was the driver of the car that killed Beth's sister!

From here, the two lovers must grapple with their feelings of love and their guilt over how wrong it is that they have those feelings.  They must also hide the relationship, especially as their classmates and virtually the entire town goes on a rampage to lynch Chase.

A melodramatic and dark, but nonetheless irresistibly page-turning novel.  The bad guys (pretty much everyone except Beth and Chase) are often unbearably mean.  The level of misogyny and violence against women is disturbing -- with most of the male characters being depicted as controlling of women and prone to angry outbursts accompanied by physical violence.  The female characters meanwhile are weak and enabling of the abusers.  Beth's parents in particular are absolutely over-the-top.  All of which makes great drama but leaves a bad aftertaste.  That the only long-term solution is to leave is hardly the sort of redemption a story like this needs.  I enjoyed reading it but I can't say that it left me feeling very good.

Gut Reaction, by Kirby Larson & Quinn Wyatt

Tess loves to bake and her cookies and cakes help her make friends at her new school.  Baking also makes her feel close to her father, who died a few years ago.  He taught her the skills and encouraged her to compete to get better.  Now, her friends and fans want her to go to the Jubilee Flour Junior Baker West Coast competition, but she hesitates because it was at this same competition that her father died. Competing there will bring back all of those memories.

Overshadowing this drama is another issue:  Tess keeps experiencing episodes of extreme gastro-intestinal pain.  Certain foods seem to hit it off and she starts trying to alter her diet to prevent the "porcupine" inside her gut from attacking her.  That works for a while, but the episodes become more frequent and more intense so that she renames it a "knife" instead.  In the end, she lands in the hospital with a diagnosis of Crohn's disease.  And now the question is what sort of chance can she have to have a normal life (let alone continue in competitive baking) with such a debilitating disease?

Crohn's is a particularly embarrassing disease because it deals with a part of our bodies that we don't usually talk about.  And for a middle schooler like Tess it would be particularly awkward.  So, I think it was really important to create a book like this in which a young  reader facing this condition for the rest of their life could find some representation.  

And it's a nicely done book.  Tess has enough of a sense of humor to make the rather serious stuff she's dealing with not overwhelm the reader.  I'm less taken by all the other stuff in this story. The baking story  often distracts, but the book would have been too short without something else for Tess to do.  And having it be food related carries a nice irony.  The dead father seemed less useful as a storyline and never really got developed.  It's also terrible cliché.  Perhaps letting the Dad live would have been better.

Noah Frye Gets Crushed, by Maggie Horne

Twelve year-old Noah returns from summer camp having had an amazing time.  She made a great new friend named Jessa and the girls were so excited to learn that Jess and her Mom were moving to Noah's hometown!  Noah can't wait to introduce Jessa to her two best friends at home.

But when she gets home, she finds out that her friends have a surprise of their own:  Over the summer, they have each gotten a boyfriend.  Now, all they want to do is talk about tips and tricks for managing their crushes.  Noah, afraid that she'll be left behind, lies to her friends and claims that she too has a boy she likes.  To prove it, Noah makes a mad dash to find a good boy who she can pretend to have a crush on and she settles on Archie.  But the harder Noah tries to prove she is infatuated with Archie, the less and less comfortable she is with the  whole idea.  The thing is she sees how her older sister is with her boyfriend and Noah knows that her feelings (or lack thereof) for Archie are not anything like that, no matter how much she tries.  Strangely, the person she does have those feelings for is her new friend Jessa.

A very nicely written book about self-discovery and early sexual identity, that in rather painful detail depicts the confusing world of first crushes and middle school drama.  While kids in my day wouldn't have seen same sex attraction as an option, the overall dynamic of needing to be able to say that you were in a relationship because everyone else was feels painfully familiar.  The obsessive plotting and manipulation to create those relationships also feels pretty authentic. The twist of having Noah come out as gay really doesn't change much (unless you live in Florida, in which case you probably can't read this book!) -- middle school romance is pretty generic.

There's much to like in this book.  While I found Noah more than a little clueless, that's sort of a prerequisite in a romance based on near misses.  Her knack for making lots of mistake and her ability to rebound from them makes her very appealing.  The romance between the girls itself is sweet.  While facing numerous misunderstandings along the way, it does finally achieve a satisfying conclusion.