Take A Sad Song, by Ona Gritz

When the police come to apprehend Jane at a party, she demands to speak with her mother, only to find that it is her mother that called the police in the first place.  Declared incorrigible by her Mom and the courts, Jane is sent to Spofford and then to a year at the New York State Training School for girls in Hudson.  In 1970, your parents or just about any adult could get a child locked up and sentenced to servitude.  

On the inside, Jane suffers through abuse, bullying, and solitary confinements.  To cope, she becomes part of a pseudo family that the girls call "The Racket" whose members look out for each other and lend each other emotional support.

Told in brisk verse, this engaging story is far too short.  What's on offer is teasingly brief.  It's sufficient to tell the story and whet the appetite, but there's a meatier novel yet to write with this material.  Indeed, it could have benefitted from more fleshing out of the girls' backgrounds and the relationships they have with each other.

A Room Away from the Wolves, by Nova Ren Suma

Bina holds a deep resentment towards her mother.  Years ago, they nearly succeeded in running away to New York to escape Bina's abusive Dad.  But on the way out of town, they were "rescued" by a man who gave them a safe place to sleep.  Bina's Mom decided she liked it there and abandoned their plan, but Bina never did.  After years in this new prison, Bina decides to run away finally to the City on her own.

She has a destination -- Catherine House -- a boarding house for young women trying to escape from their pasts. But when she finds it, it seems to not be the haven she had hoped for.  Bina is allowed to move in to the recently vacated (and only available) room and is welcomed but not welcome.  The place is full of mysterious passages, invisible staff, secrets, and a foreboding sense of tragedy. At first desperate to be allowed to stay, Bina begins to fear that she will never be allowed to leave.

Mystery upon mystery are piled on in this atmospheric horror novel.  But while well-written, the story is too much mystery and too little resolution.  The author delights in presenting things that don't make sense and then compounding secrets with characters who do not explain themselves and a protagonist who tries too little to figure things out.  Rather than resolve any of this in the end, she simply piles more mysteries on, leaving us with the burning question of "what the f*** was that all about?!"

Nobody in Particular, by Sophie Gonzales

Danni, the poor American scholarship student, is fleeing a bad school experience.  Princess Rosemary is trying to rebuild her reputation and repair some broken friendships after a scandalous tragedy in Amsterdam.  Falling into each other's arms in this Princess Diaries-like fantasy isn't going to be easy, but no worries.  Boarding school with a royal is really just like American public high school, but you get to wear a tiara!  In other words, pure and unabashed escapism with lots of angst around friendships and a few serious concerns about coming out.  

It's sweet and fun.  At times quite steamy and sexy (the cover probably is enough to get the book banned across Florida!), we never quite forget that these are teens with all the strong and serious feels.  Grownups are generally in the background and useless.  

The novel was wildly entertaining and worth a read.  But there's not a serious bone in its storyline, despite some intimations at the end that a lesbian queen might just be the thing to shake up a stagnant monarchy.

Love Me Tomorrow, by Emiko Jean

After watching her parents separate, Emma has grown cynical about romance and love.  But she is forced to reconsider her hard heartedness when she starts receiving letters from someone who claims to be the love of her life in the future.  Naturally skeptical, she becomes convinced that this is for real when the letter writer starts describing personal secrets she has never (yet) shared with anyone else.  Now convinced, she begins to look for clues of the writer's identity comparing things he's let slip with things she learns about her friends.  Each new lead makes her question her decisions, wondering if this person or that person is the future letter writer and love of her life, and questioning every choice she makes.  In the end, she realizes that regardless of who this person is, she does indeed believe in love after all.

A sweet concept that serves as a launching point for Emma's development of faith and personal confidence.  With the exception of the premise, we are on familiar and satisfying territory as Emma's hard heart melts and she realizes that she is not only capable of love but she is eager to have that happy ending her pen pal from the future promises.  Along the way, she also develops a more mature understanding of her parents and the decisions that they made.  Finally, a little twist at the end provides just the right amount of uncertainty for a satisfying conclusion.