Everything, Everything, by Nicola Yoon

Eighteen year-old Madeline has spent the vast majority of her life inside her hermetically-sealed house.  She's been diagnosed with a rare disease that makes her immune deficient.  Exposed to the outside world, she would probably die.  Inside and protected, her life is quiet but lonely.  She has forgone hope of having any significant connection with the outside.

But then a new family moves in next door and they have a boy her age.  Seeing him stirs curiosity and feelings that she didn't know where even present to be stirred.  And with some encouragement from her nurse, she reaches out to this stranger.  The results are unexpected and change her life in previously unimaginable ways.

Told in a surprisingly effective and complementary mixture of prose, verse, and artwork, the novel is a unique document.  And yet, it has so much more going for it.  The story is touching.  The characters are moving and enchanting.

The narrative is complex, even as the writing is simple.  Ostensibly, this is a story of a sick girl being coaxed out of her shell and discovering a bit more of the world.  But the story on the surface is only an analogy for the inner journey that Madeline undertakes and it deals with the more complicated feelings of first love, trust, and risk taking.  I was a bit disappointed by the plot twist towards the end that sent the story down to earth.  But I still found the overall experience lyrical and enchanting.  This is truly a gorgeous and special book!

Believarexic, by J. J. Johnson

At age 15, Jennifer convinces her parents that she needs to be committed to an inpatient facility to treat her eating disorder.  And while she has lots of expectations for how the process will go (largely fed by pop culture depictions of anorexia and bulimia), the real experience quickly diverges away from her preconceptions.  What she finds is a mixture of helpful and destructive caregivers and fellow patients who can be good friends or bitter enemies (or both!).  She knows that the key is "sticking to the program" but the challenges to her plan come from many unexpected places.

Based loosely on the author's real-life experience, I appreciated the honesty and the realism of the story.  As well, the way that Johnson has subverted a number of common tropes (in particular, the helpful nurse/doctor) by depicting a ward where nurses and patients are all flawed in their own ways is particularly interesting. 

Johnson makes an unusual decision to veer away from describing much of her heroine's mindset.  There are brief mentions of Jennifer's feelings of being overweight, but her mental state plays a very minor part in the story.  There are also numerous clues about the family, social and even biological reasons for Jennifer's disorder, but nothing is definitively stated about why she struggles with food consumption.  Rather than describe or even explain what having an eating disorder is like, Johnson focuses on the specifics of treatment.

The book also has some unusual literary elements.  It begins in third-person free verse (for its admission and stage 1 sections), which is at times quite awkward, and then switches to first person prose for the remainder of the story.  Type fonts also change throughout the novel.  The author Q &A at the end of the novel never mentions the shifts (they are obviously intended for some sort of purpose, but what?).

In sum, a very readable book which leaves many things unsaid and unexplained.

What We Left Behind, by Robin Talley

In this NA novel, Toni and Gretchen were an inseparable couple in high school.  And, like many other high school sweethearts, they promised each other that they would stay together even when they went off to college.  They even intended to attend schools in the same town (Harvard for Toni and BU for Gretchen), although it didn't quite work out that way.  At the last minute, Gretchen decided to go to NYU instead.  But even with that last minute shift, they agreed that they would still see each other every weekend.

As you can probably guess, even those revised plans fall through.  Course work and social activities make it hard to get together.  The two girls find themselves drifting apart.  Toni finds friends at Harvard that allow her to explore her burgeoning transexualism and her struggles with gender identity.  Gretchen, feeling Toni slip away, tries to hold on tighter by throwing herself at her lover (which only drives Toni farther away).

The story itself is not full of much suspense, but it's all about the journey.  What makes the novel unique is its focus on gender queer relationships.  Or rather, how relationships fare when one of the parties starts to question their gender identity.  Doing so in the context of a young lesbian relationship is a further twist.  The novel explores many different topics, from Toni's obsessive search for pronouns to the ways that both gays and straights discriminate against the gender queer to what it means to have the person you love change their gender.  Not all of these concepts are new, but their treatment here will open your eyes.

While I was impressed by the story, I was less taken with the characters.  Gretchen was too weak and self-sacrificing.  But Toni annoyed me far more.  Toni's endless experimentation with language and her unwillingness to commit (combined with her demands that everyone had to respect her indecision) just came off as precious.  And there's no way around Toni's privileged background (a point that really gets driven home when she has to briefly consider the idea that her parents might pull out her financing and she might not be able to continue her pricey Ivy League education).  It's not that she's spoiled, but simply that she lives a gilded life.  The far more common situations that young transexuals find themselves in (poverty, danger, and insecurity) are only briefly mentioned and don't threaten Toni's exploration.

If You're Lucky, by Yvonne Prinz

People thought of Georgia's brother Lucky as blessed.  Gregarious and loved by almost everyone, he had an amazing talent for cheating death up until when he actually died in a surfing accident.  At the funeral, Georgia meets one of Lucky's buddies named Fin.  Afterwards, while he's never visited before, Fin decides to stay around and settle in.  Soon, he's working Lucky's old job and dating Lucky's girlfriend.  Georgia smells a rat.  And as Georgia digs into Fin's murky history, she uncovers a series of suspicious mysteries in Fin's life.  In the end, she suspects that Lucky's death wasn't an accident after all and that Fin had something to do with it.

But there's a problem:  Georgia suffers from schizophrenia and she has a history of paranoid delusions.  As a result, no one believes her as she starts to express her suspicions.  And even she doesn't know whether to trust her perceptions.

An interesting psychological thriller, following a heroine who becomes a steadily less reliable narrator as the story progresses.  This isn't fine literature and the writing and the characters seemed merely functional, but it's an entertaining story with a brisk plot.

One, by Sarah Crossan

Grace and Tippi are literally as close as two sisters can be.  They're conjoined twins.  And while the doctors never expected them to live past their second year, they're now in their Junior year.  Their lives are full of special challenges, most notably their difficulty at fitting in, but they both have no desire to change.  With the help of two new friends (the wild Yasmeen and her friend Jon), the girls finally have a social life and (for Grace) a chance at something more.  But then tragedy strikes and the twins face a challenge for survival.

Written in free verse, the novel (despite its many pages) is a brisk read.  That verse isn't particularly stand out, but the subject matter is riveting.  It's not really a spoiler to say that it ends in heartbreak (the lives of conjoined twins are rarely happy ones) but Crossan tells their story with dignity and Grace's voice is compelling.  The classic gold standard for a novel for me is whether the book is readable, full of interesting and sympathetic characters, and whether I learn something from it (with bonus points for a weepy and life-affirming ending).  This novel delivers all of the above.

Future Perfect, by Jen Larsen

How far would you go to realize your academic dreams?  And would you reach for them even at the expense of your pride and self-respect?

Every year, Ashley's grandmother gives her a card for her birthday which promises her a fantastic gift in exchange for her losing weight.  One year, it was a trip to Disneyland if she would lose fifty pounds.  Another year, it was a new car for losing eighty pounds.  It's never worked.  Ashley has never accepted the offers because she doesn't see any reason to lose weight -- yes, she's a large person, but she's content in her skin and happy with who she is.

Now, in Ashley's senior year, her grandmother has raised the stakes:  if Ashley gets accepted, her grandmother will pay her tuition at Harvard for four years.  It's a dream as Ashley has the grades to get in but doesn't have the resources to cover the costs.  The catch is that her grandmother's demand this time is that Ashley undergo gastric bypass surgery.

The premise is fascinating but ultimately flawed.  Any protagonist worth reading about will ultimately make the right decision, so it is really a matter of waiting until Ashley does so.  And the plausibility of the grandmother's character, so cruel and insensitive that she feels justified in ruining her granddaughter's self-esteem and endangering her life, is hard to swallow.

The writing suffers from a different problem:  extremely uneven pacing.  For the most part, the story follows a familiar dramatic arc with familiar settings (school, part-time job, home) and a story that traces Ashley's personal growth as she struggles to make her decision.  But we digress from time to time to odd settings where the action slows down like molasses and becomes dreamy (in a way that I can most easily compare with the way that the mind wanders on drugs -- a literary high?).  I don't know quite what to make of these digressions but they ultimately don't add anything to the story (consider, for example, the vignette at the art exhibit in the Tenderloin) so they could have been jettisoned.  Subplots about Ashley's transgendered friend and another friend who runs away are only loosely tied in to the story and seem wasted.

Apple and Rain, by Sarah Crossan

Apple's grandmother is terribly strict and Apple is convinced that her life would be better if only her mother came back to take care of her instead.  But after eleven years, she's pretty much given up hope that her Mum will ever come back, until she in fact does!  At first, it is a dream come true, but as time goes by Apple learns that her mother isn't all that Apple has imagined.  And that family is often a very complicated thing.

Covering fairly familiar ground, including my evergreen favorite (not!) of child abandonment, Crossan still manages to pump some fresh life into this.  Apple's resourceful and pretty good at standing up for herself.  And the other kids are similarly useful, from little sister Rain to their geeky neighbor Del.  And even grandma has some depth on her.  It's less easy to see much in Apple and Rain's mum, but that may be the point -- being so blinded by wishful thinking, they can't see their mother's flaws.

Goodbye Stranger, by Rebecca Stead

Bridge, Tab, and Emily are best friends who never fight, but when Em starts trading photographs of herself with a boy, her friends become worried about her.  Meanwhile, Sherm is struggling with dealing with his grandfather, who has moved out on grandma.  And Sherm and Bridge are toying with starting a relationship of their own.  And Bridge still occasionally has trouble coping with the aftermath of a horrible accident she was in when she was eight.  And through it all, a mysterious older girl is hiding out at a coffee shop, afraid to be seen now that she's been completely humiliated.

This mash-up is basically the story that Stead is telling in her latest novel Goodbye Stranger, which explores concepts of friendship.  It's a difficult story to track and I'm never a fan of that sort of thing.  Individual characters are compelling, but jumping around so often when the relationships between them are less than clear is frustrating.  By the end, I had to sit back and just let the story take me where it wanted to go, but I didn't really follow it and that left me feeling distant from the novel.  In sum, it's pretty, but hard to invest in.  I'm reminded of Lynne Rae Perkins' Criss Cross, a similarly hyped YA novel that I found nearly unreadable (Goodbye Stranger, however, is better written!).

Love, Lucas, by Chantele Sedgwick

After Oakley's brother dies from bone cancer, she and her Mom go to live with her Aunt Jo on the California beach for a few months.  Oakley grieves for her brother and spends her days reading a journal that he left for her.  But she also starts to rebuild her life and meets Carson, a local surfer.  Carson helps her to escape from her grief and naturally enough she falls hard for him.  But is it too soon to be entering a romantic relationship?  And what happens when Oakley and her mother return home?

Decent, but not terribly surprising, romance (with the exception of a big plot twist towards the end that provides the dramatic climax that Sedgwick seemed to be struggling with creating).  The ending is not a complete cheat, but I would have been happier with something less abrupt and more organic to the overall story.  And that pretty much sums up my take on the novel overall: nothing terrible, but nothing really outstanding either.  I didn't find myself sucked into any of the characters or their traumas (and the dead brother's journal is surprisingly ineffective!), but I was content to keep reading and following their travails.

Complete non-sequitur:  I loved the gratuitous mention of both barnacles and (twice!) Phase Ten.

Cut Both Ways, by Carrie Mesrobian

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Dark Shimmer, by Donna Jo Napoli

In this retelling of Snow White, set in medieval Venice, tortured Dolce flees her home after her mother dies and is befriended by little Bianca and Bianca's father Marin.  Dolce, raised by dwarfs, has always seen herself as some sort of giant monster and is astonished to discover that she is actually normal-sized!  For his part, Marin adores Dolce and brings her home.  Living with him and Bianca, Dolce is no longer treated as an oddity.  Marin marries her and Dolce settles.  But she is not at peace. Instead, she becomes obsessed with freeing the dwarfs of Venice, who are kept in servitude for the amusement of the nobility.  To buy their freedom, Dolce creates little mirrors, made of the clearest glass and backed with tin and quicksilver.  That the quicksilver is toxic, she knows, but her obsession to free more people makes her reckless in handling it and leads her into madness.

Another beautifully researched historical novels from Napoli, who does them so well and also does some of the most sophisticated retellings of myths and fables.  That's a potent combination in this novel.  There's all sorts of lovely detail here (from the science of mirror making and glass blowing to the social mores of the Venetians).  And Napoli's re-imagining of the fairy tale and her refusal to fall on to magic in any way (she adeptly provides plausible explanations for everything from the poison apple to the glass coffin to the Prince's rescue) is enchanting.

However, I found this storytelling itself hard going.  The beginning was fairly slow and it's only half-way through that the story of Snow White became recognizable.  This is also the point in the story where our heroine becomes the villain -- a twist which is awkward in its unexpectedness.  Having invested rather heavily in Dolce, it is asking a lot of the reader to accept her transformation.  It makes her more sympathetic, to be certain, but should fairy tales really have sympathetic villains?

Infinite In Between, by Carolyn Mackler

On their first day of high school, five freshmen are put together in the same orientation group.  As an icebreaker activity, they write letters to themselves with a plan to read them together when they graduate in four years.  They then embark on their lives and this novel traces the paths of these kids (and their friends) through high school.

Ambitious and, unfortunately, too much so!  With five characters and their supporting players, there isn't much time to spend on any one of them.  Covering four years, there's quite a lot to keep track of.  The result is a story where each chapter (averaged 3-4 pages!) just starts to get interesting before we're jumping to the next character or month and moving on.  It's thin, superficial, and ultimately not very interesting.  I like Mackler as a YA writer, but this is too much and, even at nearly 500 pages, she can't really deliver a story that gels with so much going on.

Your Voice Is All I Hear, by Leah Scheier

April was obsessed with Jonah before they had even met (she scoped him out before he showed up for his first day at their school).  And, much to her surprise, he's just as taken by her.  Their romance kicks off beautifully, but something isn't quite right.  At first, it's just little quirks that she easily ignores and explains away, but his behavior becomes more and more erratic until he has to be committed to an inpatient psych facility.

He is diagnosed with schizophrenia and, as he struggles with the sickness, April is urged by her parents, friends, and even Jonah himself to let him go.  They are too young and she shouldn't be wasting her life on him, April is told.  But Jonah is the first great thing that has happened to her and she simply cannot abandon him.

Heart wrenching stuff, as one would expect.  I loved April and the way we really got in her head.  She's brutally honest with herself, which wasn't terribly realistic but more fulfilling from a dramatic perspective.  She always knew when she was screwing up, even as she did so.  And I loved Scheier's sensitive and authentic description of Jonah's suffering.  The resulting dynamic between the two of them was captivating and hard to watch at the same time.  As a result, this is a difficult book to get through because you really feel for these kids and the nearly impossible situation they are in.

I was less taken with the narrative, which kept jumping about.  Scheier focused on particular dramatic moments, often without sufficient transition or foreshadowing and I felt like I was being dragged through the story.  It felt like April was telling the story in retrospect years later and just glossing over details -- a realistic approach, perhaps, but not very good storytelling.

Don't Fail Me Now, by Una LaMarche

With their mom in jail again, it falls on Michelle to take care of her younger sister and brother.  But the kids are running out of places to stay and the means to take care of themselves.  Her younger sister is being bullied at school and her younger brother is about to be expelled.  Michelle's job won't pay their bills and she's too young to gain custody anyway.

In the midst of her despair, Leah and her stepbrother show up.  They couldn't be any more different from Michelle and her siblings (wealthy, white, and privileged), but Leah and Michelle share one thing in a common:  they have the same father.  And now their dad is dying and has asked the girls to leave Baltimore and come out to California so he can see them.  This unlikely pair, with their siblings, set off on an illicit cross-country road trip full of widened horizons and adventures.

Ostensibly, a typical road trip-and-getting to know you adventure, Don't Fail Me Now is an outstanding example of the subgenre.  Strong characters who are fun and interesting move this story along.  I'm not a fan of YA that put kids in danger, but LaMarche is gentle with these kids and they mostly muddle through on their limited resources (one might even accuse her of soft-pedaling their hardships!).  A lot more could probably have been done with the underplayed class and racial differences, but that was not the story the author wanted to tell.  In general, it was pretty enjoyable.

All the Rage, by Courtney Summers

Everyone in town knows the Turners.  Power neatly resides with whoever is allied with them.  So, when Romy and her family falls out with the Turners, it's pretty much open season.  The older Turner boy rapes Romy, but rather than elicit sympathy, Romy is accused of fabricating the story and she is subjected to another sexual assault a few weeks later.  The second attack is not so easily written off by the town, because another girl has disappeared at the same time.

None of which matters to Romy.  She has no will to fight the town and she seeks refuge in a job out of town and a boy she meets there.  All she wants is to keep that world separate from the one back home.  But doing so is getting more and more difficult.


A gruesome and unpleasant story that combines a suffering and sympathetic protagonist against some heavy baddies.  It also has a lot of ambitions, building a story on the important subject of rape culture, but it stretches credulity along the way and relies on thinly drawn villains and poorly explained motives.

The blurb for the book claims that the author is trying to show how silence is "inflicted upon young women" but it is not that simple (even in this story where Summers has stacked the deck against Romy).  I have no problems believing that a rape victim would be reluctant to go public and that she would not want to deal with a law enforcement force that is this blatantly corrupt.  But when she is unwilling to talk to anyone at all (including a mother with whom she apparently has a good relationship), one has to acknowledge that some of this silence is self-imposed.  And rather than explore that idea, the story leaves a huge void that leaves us wondering why Romy doesn't speak (and not why others try to silence her).

Furthermore, it all seems terribly exploitative.  Rather than give Romy a chance to gain a voice or to heal, we're just shown again and again how helpless and ineffectual she is.  There is enough injustice in the world and sexual violence is cruel enough in itself to provide ample drama for a decent story.  Inventing a character who does everything she can to hurt herself just seems cruel and mean.  To me, it seemed like Summers just wanted to amp the trauma and drag out the story.  What I learned is that when you're hurting and need help, you should spurn every offer you receive (that is, if you want to make the story "shocking").

The Accident Season, by Moira Fowley-Doyle

Cara is searching for a girl in her class named Elsie that no one seems to remember.  Elsie, however, seems to show up in every photograph that Cara owns and Cara wants to know why.  It is also the beginning of the "accident season" when Cara and the members of her family are subject to an unusual rash of accidents that always seem to strike them in October.  Undeterred by falling bridges and collapsing bookshelves, Cara goes ahead with her plans for a Halloween party at an abandoned house, which somehow seems to evoke the spirit of Elsie.

A really strange paranormal story.  I liked the way it was heading (even if I didn't understand every scene) but it got steadily weirder and weirder.  By the end, it simply ceased to make sense and lost me entirely.  Perhaps I didn't give it the attention it deserved, but once lost in the plot, I lost interest in the story.  Nice writing but a story that went from poetic and lyrical to ridiculous and illogical.  Skip it.

Fair Coin, by E. C. Myers

Crazy things are happening to Ephraim.  His mother has ended up in the hospital from an overdose, after trying to kill herself because she believes that he's just been killed by a bus!  In the belongings of the dead person (who does look a lot like Ephraim) is a strange coin. With a little trial and error, Ephraim discovers that the coin appears to grant wishes, sending Ephraim into alternate realities where his dreams come true.  But with each wish granted, unexpected side effects start occurring and Ephraim (along with his best friend Nathan) find themselves in deeper and deeper trouble.

What starts off like a series of Sliders episodes, morphs about half-way through into darker territory when the guns appear and people start dying.  It also gets bogged down around that point by long explanations of what is going on.  A little exposition is a good thing, but my attention and patience lagged as the adventure became a physics lesson.  So, an uneven story.  Ephraim and his love interest make an unlikely (but eventually pleasing) pair but, by the end, I had really lost interest in their fate.  Like Mary Shelley (one of the characters) kept begging, just shoot the bad guy and get this over with!

Where People Like Us Live, by Patricia Cumbie

Libby and her family have moved a lot.  Whenever her Dad's job has dried up, the family pulls stakes and they relocate.  Now, they've come to "Rubberville" (a.k.a. Racine WI).  But during this final summer before High School, things are different.  Her father's pulled into a strike and the family has to scrimp to get by.  Her brother and sister are striking out into new territory.  And Libby has made her first real friend, Angie -- a girl with a troubled past and a dangerous secret.  And when Libby figures out with is going on with Angie, she realizes she is going to have to decide between saving her friend or protecting the friendship.

A well-written novel aimed really at an adult audience (full as it is with life-changing secrets and the frustrations of adults).  This is classic character-centric work -- the people are vivid and the action quite languid.  That slow pacing allows us to savor each person we meet but there isn't much to take away from the story.  And not really much effort to tie it together.

A Year Without Mom, by Dasha Tolstikova

In 1991, Russian middle schooler Dasha is struggling with typical middle school problems:  friends who are drifting away, passing exams, and a boy she has a crush on.  Her greatest desire is to get accepted to a prestigious high school.  The world is changing in other ways, as the Soviet Union comes to an end and the Russian Federation emerges as an independent state.   But the greatest trauma of all is that Dasha has to deal with these problems without her mother, who has gone away to a graduate school in the United States to study advertising.

Told in a graphic novel drawn in a style that betrays Tolstikova's love of the Russian absurdists, A Year Without Mom tells a simple but genuine story of growing up in a time of change.



And now for the full disclosure....

I met Dasha's mother Natasha when she came to the University of Illinois to study advertising during the "year without mom" and met Dasha herself the following summer when I visited the family in Moscow in 1992 (somewhere around page 152 in this novel).  I, of course, knew nothing of the dramas of her life (for me, she was a schoolgirl with an impressive knowledge of The Beatles), but I grew to know her mother and grandparents quite well in the years that followed.  And I took this picture of Dasha in her family's kitchen that summer:

What You Left Behind, by Jessica Verdi

After his girlfriend dies of cancer, Ryden can't stop blaming himself for her death.  After all, he got her pregnant and it was the pregnancy that killed her (she had been receiving treatment for cancer and had to stop chemo during the pregnancy).  Now he a single Dad and sucking at the job. And his old dreams of getting an athletic scholarship seem to be slipping away.  But somehow, he's going to figure this whole thing out (fatherhood, the scholarship, and school), keep his old friends, and make a few new ones.  And then he starts discovering his late girlfriend's journals and finds out the horrible truth about why she really died.

I liked the premise and I (mostly) liked Ryden -- he's got a lot of facets and he's generally quite sympathetic. But the whole blaming himself thing fell flat, as did the really harsh criticism he takes from his friends.  The story was melodramatic enough without all the whining from Ryden.  There were also a number of throwaway subplots (the girlfriends' parents, Ryden's ex-girlfriend Shoshanna) that did nothing at all.  In sum, the novel needed a red pen and a focus.  It also needed to be shortened and given a lot more punch -- the secret truth that is supposed to devastate our hero is painfully obvious to the reader long in advance.

Longbow Girl, by Linda Davies

Brave and resourceful fifteen year-old Merry Owen discovers an ancient book on their property in Wales.  The book is valuable and the sale of it could save her family's ancestral home from the clutches of the bank and their greedy neighbors, the de Courcy's.  But the book is far more than a valuable artifact, as Merry and her friend James discovers, as it leads them on a time traveling adventure to the sixteenth century and the fulfillment of Merry's destiny.

Wales, longbows, and ponies!  What's not to like?  The story dragged in the beginning while stuck in modern day, but as soon as we find our way back to Renaissance Wales, I was hooked in to the adventure!  Fast paced and the total page turner, I needed to know how it would turn out.  It helps to be an archery fan, but after Hunger Games, who isn't a sucker for an adolescent girl with a bow?  Merry was intelligent, extremely resourceful and just plain kick ass.  (It didn't hurt that the author knows her archery and the descriptions were technically accurate)

I was less taken with the love interest, which fell flat.  There was supposed to be the traditional star-crossed lovers thing going on (poor girl, rich boy), but it never really clicked.  In fact, James seemed like a wimp compared to Merry! But English writers don't tend to write very convincing teen romances, so no surprise there! 

Overall, I enjoyed this lively adventure, which reminded me of Michael Crichton's Timeline or a good Stargate episode.  It mixed some decent history, a compelling heroine, and an addictive story.  There's more installments in the works so if you like reading intelligent stories about female Welsh archers who kick butt, you're in luck!


[Disclosure;  I received an Advanced Reviewer's Copy of the book from the publisher in exchange for an unbiased review.  The book is slated for release on February 23, 2016]

Forever for a Year, by B. T. Gottfred

Told in train of consciousness and alternating viewpoints, Forever for a Year traces Carolina and Trevor falling in love and the various dramas of this first romance of ninth-graders.  From the initial ecstasy of finding out that their feelings are reciprocated to experimentation with alcohol and sex to the betrayals and fallings out, every emotion is tracked in painstaking (and painful) detail.

Neither character is particularly deep and Gottfred does a particularly astute job of portraying the contradictions and randomness of the characters' thoughts -- this is both a strength and a weakness.  Far too often, I've criticized YA books for creating artificially mature-sounding narrators.  But one can take this too far in the other direction and there's a limit to how much waffling and melodrama one can take.  Worse, both of them have a tendency to become repetitive, which makes the 420-odd pages of this novel excruciating at times.  The lack of depth in their thoughts also does not endear them to the reader.  Carolina in particular can be grating (although Trevor's whining got on my nerves as well).  It's an interesting experiment, but I think I'll return to my overly erudite protagonists.

The Cost of All Things, by Maggie Lehrman

What if the hardships of adolescence could be assuaged by magic?  In this alternate reality tale, four teenagers struggle with the normal traumas of youth but hire "hekamists" to cast spells to relieve them of the consequences.  Kay gets a "hook" to keep her two best friends close to her forever.  Ari gets her memories of her dead boyfriend erased so she doesn't have to deal with the grief.  With the only immediate cost a matter of paying for the spells, solving problems with magic seems easy. 

But there are always consequences.  The magic itself comes with side effects that have complicated ramifications.  As spells fly around, a solution for one person becomes a problem for others.  And then there is the unknown of the human mind and heart -- the unpredictability of life itself, which even the strongest magic cannot make safe.

A nuanced novel that works on many layers.  Obviously, the magic makes this a fantasy, but I would decline to classify this in YA Fantasy since it is really about the nature of human interaction and the inherent impossibility of protecting hearts from pain and uncertainty.  It is also about the way that well-meaning efforts to protect others will tragically hurt them far more.  In the end, it is about accepting that living and loving is risky and that there is no magic potion to help with that.

Every Last Word, by Tamara Ireland Stone

Samantha struggles to hide her obsessive compulsive disorder from her friends (a fiercely competitive group of popular girls).  But when a shy girl at school introduces Sam to a secret poetry society, the association (along with her friend's encouragement) cause Sam to transcend her condition and consider alternatives to the way she's been living her life.  But she still lives in fear of what will happen when people discover she isn't normal.

A touching story about struggling with mental illness that takes a surprising turn towards the end that amps up the stakes of the story dramatically.  The poetry (and the secret poetry society) seemed a bit gratuitous to me, but the story overall was moving.  Samantha is an intriguing and sympathetic protagonist.  The romance with AJ was a bit forced, but is ultimately touching on its own.  In general, the characters in this personality-driven story are effective and memorable (and even the "mean girls" elicit some sympathy!).

I, Emma Freke, by Elizabeth Atkinson

At nearly six feet tall, Emma literally stands out from the others at the age of twelve.  Combined with her awkward name, she's had terrible trouble fitting in.  And when her Mom tells her she doesn't have to go to school anymore, she's overjoyed.  But Emma's mother has a habit of messing things up and Emma soon finds herself in a ton of trouble.  This is the way things usually go for her!

When the summer arrives, Emma receives an invitation to attend a Freke family reunion.  She's stunned.  She's never met her father and knows nothing about his family.  And from what she can tell, the Frekes are totally organized and responsible people (the complete opposite of her mother!).  So, with a bit of adventure, she heads to Wisconsin for a weekend with her father's folks -- seeking to find out more about the rest of her family.

A sweet tween read with some predictable messages about family and finding oneself.  Along the way, Emma has some pretty fun adventures.  But up until the end, she also experiences a lot of neglect.  I realize that adult absentmindedness is a popular trope in tween reads, but it always seems a bit mean to leave small children in a lurch and fending for themselves.  That Emma is able to persevere shows her fierce independence, but seems unnecessary to telling a good story.  That twitch aside, the book is full of many lively characters and made for a brisk read.

Like It Never Happened, by Emily Adrian

Rebecca and her four friends make up the "Essential Five" -- a group of high school juniors who get all the best parts in their school's plays.  They work hard and bond over their talents and dedication. Together, they decide to form a pact to stand together and never date each other.  But it's a promise made to be broken and, once broken, petty jealousies and ancient rumors resurface with devastating impact.  Meanwhile, back home, Rebecca must deal with her estranged older sister's reappearance after many years.

I have a strong mixed reaction to this novel.  There's a lot going on here and the subplot about the sister never quite gelled with the rest of the story.  Other subplots (like Rebecca's reputation and even her romance with Charlie) hung loosely.  The story seemed cluttered and busy.  On the other hand, I really like Adrian's ability to create a story without a clean resolution.  As well as can be imagined, the good guys carry the day, but the real truth remains buried in the end (all pointing to the protagonists' reluctance in the end to let it all out).  That complexity and nuance leaves this story with a novel tension that seemed brilliant in the end.

In a similar way, there were so many characters in this story and little time to effectively develop them all, but here Adrian's ability to distill the important contribution that each one is to make to this story creates a pleasing tapestry.  I might be able to forgo an extraneous teacher or the older sister's girlfriend, but no one really seemed superfluous.  And in the amazing web of conspiracy and denial that the story tells, everyone has their particular critical part to play.

The Summer of Chasing Mermaids, by Sarah Ockler

After a boating accident, Elyse flees her native island of Tobago for the cold north of coastal Oregon.  She's lost her ability to speak, which is a tragedy for a lively Caribbean girl who had a bright singing future in front of her.  In Oregon, she befriends Christian, a boy with a dream of winning a boat race (and saving his town) and his younger brother Sebastian, who dreams of mermaids -- both boys suffer in the silence imposed by their tyrannical father.  Collectively, of course, they find their voices during a summer of healing and rebirth.

Ockler has crafted a complex story that worked best for me when it was its most down-to-Earth, dealing with the boy, the race, and the conflict with the father.  But there's a lot more to the novel -- memories of Tobago, mermaid lore, mysticism tied to the ocean, as well as a lot of character back story.  Some of this was hard to follow and I found the book really hard to get into at first.

What I really did like was Elyse's strong character.  While she wasn't always good at expressing herself (especially with the men in her life), she was great at standing up for herself and what she wanted.  The romance that develops between her and Christian was particularly hot, in no small part thanks to that agency she exhibits.

The Night We Said Yes, by Lauren Gibaldi

Falling in love is often a story of regrets.  This story traces that well-worn path with a novel approach.  It tells the story of two evenings in parallel.  The earlier one where Ella and Matt first met and the second one when they were reunited a year later.  We learn along the ways that, halfway through the year, Matt mysteriously disappeared.  Learning why he did so is an interesting part of the present-day track.  The novel, however, shifts us back and forth between past and present to do something far more interesting:  show how the two of them have remained the same and how they have changed as a result of their relationship and the separation.

I liked the literary device, which while slightly gimmicky, became a beautiful way of telling a story that is a lot about fond memories and nostalgia.  It was a very effective way to provide backstory to a romantic story with a lot of regret packed in.  It works best in the beginning, but wears out as the relationship matures in both timeframes.  By the point that we know what is going to happen to them (in the present, in particular), the flashbacks lose their urgency and I tired of them.  But I still think it was an effective approach.

Emmy & Oliver, by Robin Benway

Ten years ago, Emmy and Oliver were next door neighbors and good friends.  But then Oliver was abducted by his estranged father and he disappeared.  In the aftermath, Oliver's mother remarried and raised two new children.  Emmy's parents, traumatized by their neighbor's loss, grew protective of their only child.  And Emmy was left wondering what had happened to her friend and, as she grew older, also wondering how she was ever going to spread her wings within her parents' tight confines.  Then, one day, during Emmy's senior year, Oliver comes home....

The set up is a bit melodramatic and the ending exploits some of that potential, but overall the book is a lot more thoughtful than one would expect.  The strength of Benway's storytelling is in realizing that both Emmy and Oliver have compelling stories to tell, which are interrelated but different enough to make the reading interesting.    I enjoyed the process that the kids went through, though, growing an understanding of what the ten year gap meant to them.  But the book didn't really seem to me to reach its potential.  Having recognized the potential of the material, Benway doesn't seem to know where to take it.  Lots of great ideas are introduced, but simply lie there.  And, as often is the case in YA, the parents, who fill the usual antagonist roles here, are underutilized and perfunctory.

45 Pounds (More or Less), by K. A. Barson

Ann has tried plenty of diets, but they never seem to stick.  Whatever weight she loses, she manages to put back on.  But this time will be different.  Her aunt is getting married and Ann is committed to the idea of losing 45 pounds before the wedding, so she can fit in a decent dress.

What emerges is a story about Ann's relationship with food, how it serves as a surrogate for love, how it defines not only her health but her self-image, and all of the ways that popular culture both shames the overweight while also encouraging people to over indulge.  Along the way, Barson shoehorns in messages about anorexia and other eating disorders, and examines how even young children are susceptible to unhealthy messages about eating.  It's a lot to fit into a book and the results can at times become preachy.  That's a bit of a shame since Ann makes a very appealing protagonist and her struggles are easy to relate to.

I'll Meet You There, by Heather Demetrios

Out in the California dessert, there isn't much to keep a kid in town, unless they have no way out.  Skyler's got a full ride at an art school in San Francisco, so she's definitely getting out.  But when her Mom takes a nosedive, loses her job, and crawls inside a bottle, Skyler realizes that she's getting sucked in herself and wonders if she's about to lose her dream.

Josh has just returned from Afghanistan with a little less swagger and missing half a leg.  Before he left, he was someone that Skyler would have avoided, but he's changed and there's something that draws her to him.  It's a volatile combination:  a girl and a boy both angry at what fate has dealt to them.  But together, they just might be able to forge a relationship that could save them both.

A well-written story of damaged humans finding each other and using their love to rebuild.  I have no qualms with the writing or the character building.  These are complex people who felt very real.  The novel is, however, an incredibly dreary story and a bit of a slog to get through.  Bluntly, their lives suck and that's sort of the point.  And the little victories they attain won't lift you very much.  So, be prepared to be very depressed!  That doesn't make this a bad book, but it should make you pause before you decide to read this for fun.

Immaculate, by Katelyn Detweiler

When Mina starts experiencing all of the symptoms of pregnancy, she rules out that possibility without a second thought and assumes that she's developed some sort of rare sickness.  While her perfect boyfriend Nate would certainly have liked it if they had done it, she's definitely still a virgin.  But as it turns out, she is pregnant.

Coming to terms with her new situation is challenging, but nothing compared to the humiliation and frustration of trying to explain what happened (or rather, what didn't happen) to her friends and family.  Nate and even her father reject her and she becomes a target for mockery and derision from her peers.  And then things start escalating as her story goes viral and spins out of control.  Complete strangers both attack and embrace her as either a liar or a living saint.  Through it all, Mina herself struggles with trying to atone for something she did not do and at the same time accept her new role as a mother-to-be.

The book has both strengths and weaknesses, but ultimately fails to deliver on its promise.  In particular, Detweiler struggles with the dramatic element of her story.  She never quite explains the motive of the antagonists and it is obvious that the entire thread seems uncomfortable to her.  Another weakness is much exploration of philosophical implications of the premise.  What does it mean to be the carrier of a spontaneous pregnancy?  Detweiler brings this stuff up, but doesn't explore it and doesn't appear to have much to say about faith or accepting Divine Grace.  Detweiler skirts the religious element, which seems odd given the story and the book's title.

The strong parts of the novel (and the places I really enjoyed) were in Mina's growth as an impending mother.  And while a story about maternity can easily grow saccharine, it is handled well here.  In the end, it seems that this novel might have just worked better as a simple teen pregnancy story without all the baggage and promise that the idea of a contemporary immaculate conception raises.  Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of where that more complex story can lead us, but it will take a more complex book than the author has created here.

Even When You Lie To Me, by Jessica Alcott

Charlie hasn't had much experience with boys and has limited herself to superficial crushes on her teachers.  But in her senior year, she develops strong feelings for her young English teacher.  And, as far as she (and almost everyone else around them) can see, he shares at least some of those feelings.  What develops between them is a very awkward dance of passion and denial, painstakingly dissected over the school year.

Like most student-teacher romances, this is a tragedy and can only end badly.  But, even if the book fulfills some expectations, Alcott takes this story of passion and restraint in some very new directions.  First of all, there is an intense focus on Charlie's maturing sexual desire, not in a pornographic sense that we are more used to in popular culture, but in a way that is more authentic and grown-up.  There's some pretty explicit fantasizing and masturbation scenes in this book that will titillate younger readers and open some eyes.  But the purpose and focus of all this is to describe the full breadth of desire and take the story beyond some schoolgirl crush.  Secondly, there's a lot of depth to the adult characters as well.  Some readers may not be able to relate to how frank and open the discussions between teachers and students are in this novel, but I can remember moments of unguarded conversation like this in my own school.  And, in the way I always like, adults are portrayed with the same faults and anxieties as the kids.  Finally, the novel ends on a really special note that surprised and delighted me.  This is a story which you know is going to end wistfully, but the conclusion (which could easily have become a strung-out epilogue) packs a major punch and stayed true to the overall sense of the story.

This is an insightful novel but also a very mature book and many readers (adults included) will be uncomfortable with both the subject matter and the writing itself.  I'd actually place it in the New Adult (NA) genre, not so much because of the explicit sexual nature of the book but because of the serious and honest treatment of those sex scenes.

Ship of Dolls, by Shirley Parenteau

An exchange of "friendship dolls" between Japan and the United States has been announced to promote international peace and understanding, and Lexie's class in Portland has raised the money to purchase a doll to send.  She's a beautiful doll and Lexie longs to hold her, but even more exciting is the contest that has been announced.  The students are challenged to write a letter to accompany the doll and the winner will get a paid trip to San Francisco to see the send-off of the dolls.  This is especially important for Lexie because San Francisco is where her mother is living now.  Lexie hopes that by going down to see her mother, she can get her Mom to take her back so she no longer has to live in Oregon with her grandparents.

The exchange of the dolls is a historical fact that was also the setting of one of my favorite books (The Friendship Doll, by Kirby Larson) which focuses on the story of the dolls that Japan sent to the United States in return.  It's fascinating material for novelization and it's interesting how very different these two books are.  Larson's book is a rather metaphysical book that attributes all sorts of magic to the dolls, while Parenteau's book is fairly firmly set in reality.

There's a great deal of sentimentality and wholesomeness to this book that might make the jaded reader wince (this book will upset far fewer adults than the ones I've been reading recently!).  Lexie is a creature of her time (the 1920s), dutifully following expectations and living within her grandmother's strict conservative expectations.  But she is also a deceptively strong and empowered girl.  She makes quite a few poor choices, but she realizes her mistakes and is haunted by her conscience.  And even when she would love nothing better than to hurt people who have hurt her, she is able to put aside her desire for vengeance and do what must be done.  Certainly, her decision late in the story to give her most treasured possession away to someone who needs it more is heartbreaking and heartwarming.  Throughout the story, we see Lexie fearlessly stand up for herself and eventually make the right choices in the end.

Infandous, by Elana K. Arnold

Sephora and her mother are very close. As Seph explains it, given how little else she has in her life, they'd be "broke" otherwise.  Seph spends the summer between her Junior and Senior year drifting between summer school and hanging on the beach with friends.  But things are changing:  her Mom is seeing a guy barely older than Seph and Seph herself has had a brief hook up with an older guy that she'd rather just forget.  And while all of this may seem fairly trivial stuff, there are epic undercurrents to this story that will leave you shocked.

This is the sort of novel which is guaranteed to upset sensitive parents.   Between the profanity, sex, and drug use in the first dozen pages, this is a book begging to be banned.  The intensity of the subject matter seems inappropriate for a book targeted at teens.  But as a novel about a teenager living through a micro tragedy, it's a powerful read.

Arnold intersperses Seph's story with some less-familiar tellings of myths and fairy tales (focusing on the gorier and sexually-violent elements).  The intent is not so much a feminist retelling, but simply to highlight the extremely dangerous world that these stories portray.  As Seph herself says at one point, the whole empowerment project feeling "belittling." There is a weak attempt to tie these interludes into the main story by claiming that Seph has developed an interest in myths and stories, but it felt like a stretch.  However, it made for good reading and it also opened a plausible, but entirely unexpected and brutal twist at the end.

There is also the wonderful daughter-mother dynamic between Seph and her mother.  While we don't get much opportunity to hear her mother's voice, Seph's adoration is undeniable -- a mixture of need, jealousy, and protectiveness that she waxes eloquently about.  I loved the complexity and the opportunity to hear an expression of child-parent relationship that moved beyond frustration and anger.  And the one-sided exploration of that relationship made its pathos all the more strong.

Extraordinary Means, by Robyn Schneider

In the not-so-distant future, a new drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis has developed and reached epidemic proportions.  Without a means to treat the disease, society has turned back to the sanatorium approach.  Lane, obsessed with boosting his SAT scores and getting into Stanford, finds it hard to adjust to Latham House, his new home.  And the change of regimen (rest and relaxation) grates against everything he's strived for.  But unless he stops working so hard, the disease will kill him.  Sadie, on the other hand, has been stuck at this place for so long that she can no longer imagine life outside its walls.  

Faced with an incurable disease, a society that pities and fears them, and a longing for a normal life, this novel explores a wide array of issues, both emotional and ethical.  And it also finds time to explore a touching and rewarding romance between two young people united by the same threat to their survival, coping with it in very different ways.

The result is utterly stunning.  Dying teens as subject matter is of course going to be heartbreaking literary material, but in the hands of an excellent writer, you can do amazing things with it.  The obvious reference point is John Green's philosophical and witty The Fault In Our Stars and Schneider dutifully acknowledges the debt.  However, this book is quite different.  Schneider's interest is in the social/emotional effects of incurable disease:  how society treats the sufferers as well as how they respond to that treatment.  And her interest is not just literary.  Schneider holds a degree in medical ethics from UPenn and this informs fairly lucid discussions in the story of topics ranging from alternative therapy to the prioritization of treatment.  The result is an intelligent novel that brings up a lot of deep thoughts.  That it places all of this amid vivid characters, a touching friendship, and a heartbreaking story is a bonus.  The result is haunting and memorable.

We Are All Made of Molecules, by Susin Nielsen

Coming together as a blended family doesn't come easily for Stewart and Ashley.  He's a brilliant, but socially awkward boy building a electric bike and missing his late mother.  She's a fashionista with limited academic skill and a latent anger against her father who has recently come out of the closet.  But while the two of them are antagonistic from the start, they can come together when they have to, in order to stand up for what is right.

A charming story of the many ways that families and friends can support each other.  I disliked the rather cruel way in the story that Ashley's needs were shortchanged and her intellect belittled while Stewart's social ineptitude is frequent glossed over.  However, in general, the novel has some good messages about the need to stand up against bullying. 

There are other things that stand out in this book.  As usual, I appreciate the attempt to show both the strengths and flaws of the adults alongside the kids (it isn't just the kids who bicker -- the grownups are equally as skilled).  And, as much as this is a message book, the sermon is not heavy handed, giving us a good story as well.

Alex As Well, by Alyssa Brugman

Alex struggles with sexual identity.  While she's been raised as a boy, she's never felt that way (even if she has a shrunken "noodle" to prove it).  And when she decides to go off her meds and enroll herself at a girls' school without her parents' knowledge, she takes a brave step out.  Her parents violently disapprove of her decision and they have a number of angry intercations that culminates in Alex's decision to move out.  Meanwhile, she finds it is just as hard to be a girl as it was to be a boy, although she also finds allies in her changes.

An interesting look at an intersex child.  Brugman struggles a bit with how to present the story, trying both an internal dialogue between Alex's masculine and feminine sides and interspersing her mother's exasperated online confidences about her struggles to understand her child.  The latter is painful reading as the mother is incredibly self-centered and abusive.  And it also distracts us from the more important story of Alex's own growth.  That there will be people who will hurt Alex, we can be fairly certain, but seeing so much of it really adds little to the story itself (after all, I imagine that Alex can do a pretty decent job of hurting herself without her parents' help).  A subplot about a fashion modeling career seemed similarly off-topic.  I think the novel would have been strengthened by simply focusing on Alex herself as she discovers how to interact with her peers and become the person she wants to be.

P.S. I Still Love You, by Jenny Han

In this sequel to To All the Boys I Loved Before, Lara Jean finds herself in a real relationship with Peter, but despite their promises to tell each other the truth and not hurt each other, the relationship is rocky.  He can't seem to keep his ex-girlfriend away and Lara Jean herself is tempted by a reunion with her old heartthrob John.  Both of them suspect the other of infidelity.  Lara's getting plenty of advice from the ladies at the nursing home and her younger sister, but she misses her Mom.  After having spent so much time thinking about love, she is surprised to find that the real thing is so impossibly complex.

A cluttered, less focused, and weaker follow-up to one of my favorite Jenny Han books.  In general, Han does a wonderful job exploring not only themes of romance but also of friendship and of familial ties.  All that is present here, but it so much more awkwardly assembled.  She's put in a whole bunch of subplots (cyberbullying, an elder sister's absence, a party for the nursing home residents, getting Dad to start dating again, etc.) and little of it fits together.  The writing, usually so brilliant, is sloppy (and sloppily edited) (howlers include a metal box which "has eroded from the rain and snow and dirt" that the protagonist "wash[es] in the sink so it gleams again"). The ending is even more annoying, doing a last minute flip that contradicts much of the rest of the story -- the worst sort of surprise ending.  All of this is shocking given Han's excellent prior track record and even the strong start of this novel.

Conversion, by Katherine Howe

Colleen is a whisker away from becoming valedictorian at St Joan's Academy in Danvers, but the competition is pretty intense.  That is, until her classmates start exhibiting strange medical symptoms (tics, hair loss, coughing up pins, etc.).  Panic grips the school as a variety of increasingly implausible explanations are floated for what is happening.  The reality, however, is that no one is really sure.  More and more girls start to fall ill to the symptoms and a media circus develops.  Told in parallel with the story of the Salem Witch Trials, Howe attempts to provide an explanation for both the current events and that historical moment of mass hysteria.

An interesting premise where Howe, inspired by a real-life outbreak of mysterious symptoms at a private school in 2012, combined that story with her knowledge of Salem's unfortunate events, to create a novel about the intense emotional pressures that girls face around graduation.  I found that to be a clever concept and the storytelling to be exquisite.  I'm less of a fan of the actual story, but that is because the subject matter has always seemed distasteful to me.  The combination of egocentricity, prejudice, and sheer spiritual vacuum that is exhibited at Salem holds about as much appeal as a slasher movie for me.  But the story works and I certainly finished the book.

Galgorithm, by Aaron Karo

Shane has figured out how to get a girl to like you (be different, notice her, tell her, and -- if all else fails -- say something nice about her eyelashes).  And he's developed a secret "galgorithm" that proves his ideas scientifically work.  Or at least that's what he tells his classmates who seek out his advice in getting girls who are entirely out of their league to like them.  Shane is in such demand that even the teachers are looking to him for advice.  Yet, Shane himself doesn't seem to have anyone in his life, except for his best friend Jak who he's known since they were babies.  But she's just a friend, right?

Billed as a book for John Green fans, Karo has some of the funny attitude of Green, but lacks the insight and the depth of that author.  The story moves briskly, but Karo is entirely too self-conscious about the potentially offensive nature of his material and refuses to play it for full comedic effect.  And rather than run with it (and apologize later), he bends over backwards to show that Shane is really a Good Guy.  That he may be, but it makes him look like a bit of a wuss (as Shane himself notes, you should never run around and apologize all the time -- perhaps Karo should have taken his character's advice?).  There's a lot of romantic tension between Shane and Jak, but you kind of expect them to work through it at the end so you don't hold your breath a lot.  And the teachers are pretty dopey for what tries hard to be a smart comedy (hint:  awkward teachers are not funny!).  In the end, the story couldn't really ever get serious enough to talk about what makes relationships work and it refused to go over the top and make the whole thing funny.

The Secrets We Keep, by Trisha Leaver

Ella has never managed to be popular like her identical twin sister Maddy.  Instead, she has quietly enjoyed being an artist, hanging out with her friend Josh, and avoiding Maddy's mean friends.   But Ella's resented Maddy's sense of entitlement and the love which their parents seem to lavish so easily on Maddy.  Then, one tragic night, there is a car accident and Maddy is killed.  Ella, however, is mistaken for her sister and people assume it was Ella that died.  Seeing the grief pouring out for her sister, Ella decides to swap identities and pretend to be Maddy.  Doing so becomes much harder than Ella ever imagined.

Leaver goes through great pains to explain how the story is even remotely plausible, but I think that misses the point.  While this novel is a fairly pedestrian high school drama, full of mean girls and jealous plots, it has a more interesting parallel track.  In this higher story, Ella's struggle to be her sister becomes a means to grieve for her, moving beyond both her childhood love and her adolescent jealousy to achieve a mature acceptance.  Seen in this light, the story (while still predictable) is quite clever and original.

Tell Me Again How A Crush Should Feel, by Sara Farizon

In Farizan's first novel (If You Could Be Mine), she explored a lesbian romance in Iran.  It was an exercise that was deeply colored by politics and history, in which the romance itself got fairly smothered, in my opinion by the fact it was placed in such an exotic and hostile setting.  Now she's brought it home.  This new novel features Leila, a teenage Iranian-American living in Boston, attending an elite private school, and struggling with her own identity.  The change of setting makes a world of difference, and it allows us to now focus on Leila herself.

She knows that she likes girls and is fairly convinced that this is not a temporary phase, but she struggles with coming out for fear of how her friends and family will react.  Her father, in particular, is quite conservative and she has observed how other gay Iranian-Americans were treated by the emigrant community when they announced their sexual identity.  The arrival of a very exotic foreign student at her school adds urgency to the matter and also gives Leila some additional problems.

I found the book both amusing and touching.  Leila has a great sense of humor and there are lots of fun moments through the book.  This in no way detracts from the seriousness of her concerns or the struggles she goes through, but rather keeps things light and draws us to her.  The characters, in general, are largely portrayed in a way that makes them sympathetic and familiar, whether it is neglected friends or anxious parents.  Aside from the sheer evil of the bullying Saskia (and even she can elicit some sympathy!), these are characters with whom we can relate.

When You Leave, by Monica Ropal

Cass has trust issues, so when the cute football player at her new school starts showing an interest in her, she has a hard time believing he's for real.  After all, she's just an angry skateboarder from the wrong part of town.  Their relationship, however, blooms into something special and she appears to be turning over a new leaf...until he is murdered.  Worse than the shock of losing him is the fact that one of her friends (Gav) is accused of being the murderer.  Cass becomes obsessed with clearing Gav's name and finding the real killer.  But can she conduct the search on her own?  Or must she somehow find the strength to trust others?

This is a surprisingly effective story and I can easily call it one of the best novels of 2015.  I was hooked from the beginning by one of the grittier and more interesting romances I had read in a long time.  So I was pretty ticked off when the guy got murdered.  But Ropal has a lot of skills in her pocket and, out of that crucial plot twist, she produces one of this year's most memorable heroines.  Cass is no shrinking violet and she has a dedication and bravery completely unknown to YA.  All of the characters are strong, in fact, and there is a refreshing bluntness to the way that they interact with each other. I particularly liked the development of Cass and her silent friend Mattie's relationship that will have many readers scratching their heads.

Ropal doesn't waste time with the misunderstandings that so many writers use to drag a story out.  This is a story that instead continually puts out and just as steadily surprises.  And it does hurt to have a female character that can fight off the bad guys without a big bad boyfriend to defend her.  These are coarse characters and the story isn't pretty, but the storytelling is compelling.

Saint Anything, by Sarah Dessen

In comparison with her vibrant, risk-taking older brother, Sidney has lurked in the shadows.  When he goes too far and ends up in jail after injuring a boy, Sidney finds she still can't escape from behind his shadow.  Mom has grown obsessed with staying in contact with him and doesn't see how things are falling apart for Sidney.  To compensate, Sidney changes schools, makes new friends, and even find a new romance, but the inability of her family to confront the reality of their star son in jail continues to tear them apart.

A bit darker than Dessen's more recent novels and notably better than most of them.  Dessen is, as always, a great writer, but she has grown complacent in the last decade or so as she has found a successful formula and stuck to it.  Too often, her stories become tired rehashes of the old romantic boy-helps-girl-open-up chestnut.  To this work's credit, the romance doesn't even kick in until page 251.

In this one, she tries try to expand a bit, but it's mostly back into territory she explored in her earlier novel, Dreamland -- girl is unable to seek help from grownups and so suffers until she finally gets brave enough to ask for help.  So, we're basically waiting for that moment to arrive.  At the same time, not much else actually happens and there's a real pacing problem.  So much so that the last ten or so pages of the book is a massive epilogue in which all the loose ends get wrapped in retrospect (i.e., rather than actually showing us the resolution, we get told how it all ended).  This is pretty unsatisfactory, but after 400 pages of build-up, Dessen probably needed to close down the story.  I wish she had started that wind-down about 200 pages earlier!