Reason We Break, by Jesmeen Kaur Deo

Rajan is back home on probation after a stint in juvie for a variety of crimes including murder, committed when he was a member of the Lion's Share -- a local Indo-Chinese gang.  Now that he's back, his probation officer wants to keep him away from his gangbanger friends.  Part of that is getting him through school, which will be a challenge because Rajan has always struggled with math.

Simran's an overachiever, brilliant at school, and a volunteer at a local outreach that helps people on probation. She gets assigned to help Rajan with his studies.  She already knows Rajan from school, but mostly from reputation.  And she has a sense that Rajan is not as bad as they say.  Always a bit of a softie for charity cases, she's committed to saving him -- a decision that scandalizes her friends and their Sikh community.  Even casually associating with Rajan could ruin her reputation.  Rajan, they say, is nothing but trouble.  Rajan's definitely in plenty of trouble.  He owes money and has no way to come up with it in time to save himself.  There's not a lot of space here for romance.  

So far, so West Side Story...but Simran has an unexpected trick up her sleeve. The gang needs someone with math skills and Simran might just have what they need.  Without Rajan's knowledge she offers her skills to the gang to free Rajan of his obligations.  But doing so will cost her much more than she realizes.  And by the time Rajan realizes what she's done, it's too late and it has dragged them both into the middle of a gang war.

Good girl bad boy hookups are fun stuff and the Romeo and Juliet doomed romance is classic, but when the honors student turns out to have the negotiating skills of a Corleone, things start to get really interesting.  It's a premise that sounds really implausible on its face, but within the novel it works really well.  And full of the color of its setting within the Canadian Sikh community, this is a really distinctive story.

The Glass Girl, by Kathleen Glasgow

Bella knows how to party.  And she's great with her friends on a Friday night.  But she also likes to drink at home.  It mellows her out and smooths out the edges.  Given her excellent grades, being good at helping her parents, and a fantastic older sister, Bella figures she has it all under control.  Her Dad drinks plenty and her grandmother used to actually give her glasses of wine.  She's not addicted and she has it all under control.  Under control, that is, until she starts having black outs and ends up almost dead on her own front porch.

Involuntarily sent to rehab by her parents, she has to confront a host of demons that have brought her down to this point.  It's hard going as she sorts out her family's attitude towards alcohol, her poor coping strategies, and her resistance to seeking help.  There are small victories, but she keeps making mistakes, suffering one relapse after another, and discovering that the path to sobriety and healthy living is a lifetime journey.

At nearly 450 pages, this is a long read.  And while the pacing is sometimes off (the pre-rehab material has a really slow start while the post-rehab stuff went by far too quickly), it's hard to identify anything that could have been effectively cut.  This is a very thorough story and well-told.  Bella's addiction and the reasons for it are clear and the obstacles she faces equally straightforward.  Whether you want to read such a detailed story of alcoholism is another matter, but if watching Bella hit rock bottom and pull herself out feeds an emotional need for a story of redemption, then this is a pretty good read.  And no, there's no conclusive happy ending here.  By the last pages, we can see that Bella has made progress but backsliding is just a page away and nothing in the book suggests that Bella's life will be happily ever after.  That felt right.

The Reappearance of Rachel Price, by Holly Jackson

For most of her life, Bel has lived without her Mom and without knowing what happened to her.  When she was only two years old, Rachel Price was abducted and baby Bel was left abandoned in their car.  The mystery was never solved and Rachel was eventually presumed dead by most people (although never declared so).  Now, a documentary film crew is working on the story, interviewing the family and digging up a lot of memories.

One night, in the midst of all the interviews, Rachel Price appears on their doorstep.  It comes out that she has been kept alive but imprisoned by an unknown stranger for the past sixteen years.  The family cautiously rejoices in Rachel's return, but things don't quite sit right with Bel.  In the next few weeks, Bel keeps finding inconsistencies in her mother's story.  The rest of the family is acting strange as well.  The deeper Bel digs, the more it becomes clear that the real story of Rachel's absence is far more complicated that anyone is admitting.

A very long whodunit with one twist after another -- and at least one or two twists too many.  There's a very good build up to the story over the first 300 or so pages, but it just keeps going and going, with each new plot twist becoming just a bit less plausible than the last one.  This undermines the really nice sleuthing in the beginning as the story becomes increasingly unrealistic.  By the end, I gave up and just rode along to see when this would all stop.  It was ultimately disappointing, and I am surprised by how popular the book is.

Lying About Last Summer, by Sue Wallman

Still grieving a year after the tragic and violent death of her older sister, Skye gets sent to a summer program for grieving teens.  There she meets others who have lost loved ones and explores their shared experiences.  The story gets spiced up when Skye suddenly starts to receive text messages from her dead sister.  Someone has hacked her sister's accounts, but who would do such a thing?  Given the timing, she suspects one of her fellow campers is trying to mess with her head and she homes in on one boy who she notices is trying to manipulate and control the others in the group.  However, in the end, it turns out the texts are coming from an entirely different source.

An average summer read with a plot twist.  The main storyline (of the mysterious message-sender) is a false flag, which is just as well since the guilty party isn't even introduced until page 200.  It's not badly written, but rather terribly executed.  Ordering the events in the story better for dramatic impact and stripping out the superfluous materials (starting with the largely pointless flashbacks) would have done wonders.  Too much of this book is spent on scenes that have nothing to do with the story and the ending is rushed through far too quickly.  Lots of nice ideas, but it's all under-edited and rushed out.

How To Be Normal, by Ange Crawford

Homeschooled by her stay-at-home Mom for most of her life, Astrid has grown up in a world that was tightly controlled by her father.  But when he loses his job and her Mom has to return to the workforce, Astrid goes to public school for her final year.  Being out of the house helps Astrid develop a backbone begin recognizing that she's allowed to want things and do things.  Understanding that living in constant fear of setting off her father's fiery temper is not normal and not okay.  She and her mother develop a plan to escape.

A strikingly original voice in a harrowing tale of domestic emotional abuse.  Handled by most YA writers, this would have been drudgery but Crawford takes a new spin on just about every YA trope, breathing life into everything from a bathroom sob fest to the climactic senior formal.  It's hard to surprise me at this point. Most writers fall back on outrageous plots twists to make their new book stand out, but Crawford doesn't have much new here on its face.  What she does instead is take a scene that's been done to death like getting caught sneaking out and make it seem like something you've never read before.  This is really a stand out novel.

Birdy, by N. West Moss

After the death of their mother, Birdy and her little brother Mouse are placed with a pair of distant relatives in Upstate New York.  Neither of them has ever been outside of New York City before so they find things very different.  Cars honking are replaced by frogs peeping through the night.  They are allowed to go outside by themselves and explore on their own.  There's summer camp and their aunt bakes wonderful treats for them.  The place is safe and they don't have to worry about things.

Birdy hates it.  She hates that the placement is only for six months.  What happens after that?  Will they be sent to another foster home?  Will she and Mouse be split up?  Yes, things are going well now, but they could easily go bad -- Birdy's seen enough times when that's happened!

With some persistence from the adults and a few odd friends, Birdy's fears are gradually overcome in this sweet piece about finding a home and building a new family.  Birdy's emotional rollercoaster authentically captures the challenges she faces learning to trust people.  The story is tried and true.  The surprises are few, but it's a nice story.

Always Your Sister, by Frances Prentice

A little over three years ago, Millie's mother delivered a stillborn baby.  Ever since that day, Millie has thought of what baby Noah would have been like if he had lived.  In her diary, she writes him letters and tells him about who she is.  And with Mom pregnant again, Millie has a lot to think about.  Set on a farm in rural Australia, Millie also describes life raising sheep in the midst of Australia's brutal droughts as well the various trials and tribulations of her family and friends.

While the pregnancy ties the whole thing together, the book is really just a long series of random vignettes chronicling how farm kids keep themselves busy and various details about the family's life over the nine-month period.  While certainly packed with activity, this doesn't really translate into a plot or a story.  The kids build a swing, start a garden, take turns helping out around the house, and regularly process their feelings about Noah's death, but there's no character development and no attempt to link the activities together.

American readers may also struggle with the lingo as well. A glossary for words like "ute" and "esky" would have been really helpful.