Someone To Love, by Melissa de la Cruz

Since the day that Liv was rejected by her boyfriend for being too fat, she has struggled to gain control of her weight.  She's fasted and purged, starved herself and used laxatives.  And more than anything, she's hid it from her friends and family.  Life as the daughter of an up and coming gubernatorial candidate is full of pressure and fears of public exposure, but the secrets she is hiding are slowly killing her.

Full of lots of partying and alcohol, just to add to the poor life choices depicted throughout, this turns into something of a slog to get through.  While Liv is described as an exceptional girl, we don't see many of her strengths.  We're told that she does well in school, but she spends far more time obsessing about a useless boyfriend than she does about mastering her classes.

But the greatest disappointment of the story is the last section of the book, where Liv turns her life around.  Her recovery is a straightforward process and mostly consists of people lining up to apologize for being so mean to her.  There's little indication of any struggle towards recovery.  Instead, it seems like an easy road.  That's disappointing as, after having to endure hundreds of pages of her complaints and self-delusion, there's no real confronting her own role in her situation.  She makes some small protests that she played a small part in all of this but the focus is on everyone else behaving better. The book ends with her committing herself to loving herself, but there's rarely been much doubt that that is where her heart is. 

Every Time You Go Away, by Abigail Johnson

Ethan has grown up with a mother who has struggled with drug addiction.  She'll periodically hit the bottom and then commit to sorting out her life, but eventually succumb to the drugs after a while.  Each time she's gone into rehab, she's left Ethan with her parents.  But in the intervening years, Ethan has gone through hell trying to keep things together and take care of his Mom.

When he's at his grandparents, his closest friend is Rebecca, the girl next door.  They've confided to each other and the last time they saw each other, those feeling spilled over into a romance of sorts.  But then he went away and he didn't return for four years, without any communication at all..  

In those intervening four years, Rebecca's life came apart.  A car accident took the life of her father and put her permanently in a wheel chair.  Her mother, wracked with grief and unable to forgive her daughter, has distanced herself, abandoning Rebecca.  So, when Ethan returns, it's almost a godsend to her to have her old confidant back.  But the reality of Ethan can't match the fantasies that Rebecca has fostered all of these years.  He has issues of his own to deal with.  When he learns that his Mom has skipped out on rehab and disappeared, he is determined to find her whatever the cost might be to him or to Rebecca.

A powerful story about parental neglect and the process of reconciliation and healing.  Ethan and Rebecca's pain is so visceral and their struggles to cope with their own demons while finding some space to open their hearts to each other so heartbreaking that this is a hard read.  It took for a while to get through the story, but that was no fault of the writing. It's simply a story that slows you down as there is so much going on with these complex characters.

It's difficult to imagine a happy ending for this story that would feel realistic and Johnson doesn't attempt to deliver one.  Instead, the characters get to be honest with each other and make decisions about what that means for their futures.  There's some hope offered in all this, but no joyful reunion or lasting amends.  Sometimes, you're not meant to live happily ever after, just to move forward.

Imagine Us Happy, by Jennifer Yu

Ostensibly a story about the way that depression wrecks relationships, this is a teen romance that isn't.  As the narrator explains in the beginning, "I don't want to disappoint anyone in search of a happy ending. I'll say it from the start: this isn't that kind of story." to prove the point in an original twist, the novel starts off with the end of the romance -- the final fight.  With the matter of whether these two teens will find true love settled before the story even begins, we are left with an extended autopsy instead. 

Stella not only suffers from depression, but also from a neglectful father and a clinging mother.  The parents use Stella as a weapon to launch at each other -- each accusing the other of being the worse parent.  Traumatized by her parents' behavior, Stella seeks comfort where she can and stumbles across moody intellectual Kevin at a party.  When Kevin isn't drowning himself in existential literature or contemplating doom and gloom, he practices self-harm -- a behavior that he too weaponizes against Stella, but claiming that she bears some responsibility for it.  Barely into the relationship, Kevin's nasty side appears as he launches into abusive jealous tirades against Stella's friendships with other boys.  Stella, desperate to keep the one thing she feels is "safe" puts up with Kevin's abuse. You get the picture.  It all ends (at the start of the novel) when Stella accepts that she can't help Kevin and needs to just let him go. 

Like Sarah Dessen's Dreamland, it is pretty obvious from the beginning that Kevin is manipulative and Stella is manipulatable.  Between her depression and low self-esteem and the poor parental exemplars, she's completely unequipped to deal with Kevin's head games.  Any sane person would run far far away from him, but Stella is easily sucked in.

The light in this otherwise grueling story, is the authenticity of the characters and the insights they shed on themselves.  Stella, her mother, and their friends all seem enlightened (not that it halts the corrosiveness of their relationships).  The males (Kevin and Stella's Dad), however, are pretty useless. Whether those insights would actually make a difference seems unlikely given that the type of people who fall into these toxic relationships generally don't accept advice from others.

Stepping Off, by Jordan Sonnenblick

Fatefully, when Jesse was young, his parents bought a place in Pennsylvania in order to get away from NYC in the summers. In the neighborhood there were two girls of his age as well -- Ava and Chloe -- and they became close summer friends.  They never bothered to stay in touch during the year and they safely knew that they were friends and nothing more. But maintaining the friendship has grown harder as they have grown older.  Jesse fantasizes about going out with Ava, but knows she doesn't care for him in that way.

The summer of 2019 (between their sophomore and junior years) begins fortuitously with the three of them taking a ceremonial leap off of a nearby bridge together as part of a local rite of passage. But it is also a summer when they will take much riskier leaps together.  By the end of the summer, Jesse and Chloe find themselves together, but neither one knows what it means and things are left hanging.

Back home during the fall, Jesse's parents are separating and when he reaches out to Chloe for support, she doesn't answer.  So, he turns to Ava and things start developing between them.  Or do they?  It would seem that the friendships are changing, but the more they do so, they more a sense of dread develops that they are losing each other.  And then in March, everything changes as the world shuts down for Covid.

The arrival of Covid is interesting but not really organic to the story.  And the book loses its focus as Sonnenblick shifts the story to the challenges that the three of them face trying to sort out their feelings in isolation (not that any of it seems to stop them from spending a lot of time in close proximity). For that reason and others, there really isn't anything essential about the Covid Pandemic to the plot and it is actually distracting.  I’ve been waiting for a good historical YA set during the Pandemic.  This might have been it, but the first 2/3 of the novel isn’t about Covid and thus the story isn’t either.
 
I still loved the characters, their near misses and misunderstandings, and the anxieties about the changing nature of their friendships are topics that are all handled well.

Dispatches From Parts Unknown, by Bryan Bliss

Julie and her mother have lived without her Dad for three years.  And while the death still affects them, life goes on.  Julie goes to the Mall and gets two Orange Juliuses and her best friend Max who works there never asks any questions about the extra one.  It might be for herself, or for her Dad, or for her constant companion, a professional wrestler named The Masked Man that no one except she can see.

In comparison, the rest of the story makes sense.  Like her favorite teacher's decision to put Julie on the prom committee to help get her out more.  Or the way that a popular extrovert Bri would latch on to her and fall in love with Max the Orange Julius guy.  Or the way that two skaters (God and Legs) would commandeer the prom committee and convince the school to embrace a Top Gun (the original version) - themed prom.  Or that Julie would find herself actually going to the prom with Legs as her date in the end.  Somehow, all of these non-sequiturs add up to a story about moving on from your grief.

The book is quirky and weird and funny, but surprisingly slow.  With so many storylines (few of which actually resolve), it is hard to say what the story really is about.  The invisible pro wrestler is a cute idea but doesn't really add much to the story and quickly becomes repetitive and dull.  Almost everything else simply peters out (prom is anti-climactic, a wrestling match in the Mall which ought to be the climax gets cut off at the end suddenly).  It's an original story, but weird and unique does not make for compelling reading.

We Shall Be Monsters, by Alyssa Wees

An atmospheric parable about three generations of women, told in alternating chapter by Gemma and her mother Virginia, that involves a witch, a man-eating beast, a curse, and an enchanted forest in rural Michigan.  It's one of those stories where the girl is warned by her mother to not venture into the woods, but she does so anyway.  Bad things happen.  Cut to next chapter and the whole thing repeats with the next generation.

But the story here is only a small part of the novel.  Behind the magic and the monsters lies two mother and daughter relationships with much more everyday magic and drama.  It's a story, for example, where cutting your mother open and eating her heart can be both literal and figurative.  And that fuzzy elision between reality and fantasy leads to some fantastic prose that feels deep and meaningful.

The story's complexity, vast cast, unclear direction, and jumpy narrative makes the book hard to read.  I did so very slowly, but I was left with a clear sense that I would only understand the story through re-reading it a few more times.  That's too much like work and the tale simply didn't interest me enough to put in the time.  A hard pass on this for me due to its demanding storytelling, even though I enjoyed the beauty of the writing.

The Fragile Ordinary, by Samantha Young

Comet has lived a private bookish life almost all the way through high school.  She has friends but keeps them at arm's length.  She and her parents barely talk.  She's terribly lonely and she just counts the days until she'll graduate and go to college somewhere far far away.

But then she meets Tobias, a boy with a bad attitude who hangs out with a bad crowd.  She'd ignore him, but he has a spark that intrigues her and he turns out to be smarter and nicer than he appears.  Soon, as always happens in the world of YA, she is swept away and spreading her wings.  That is, until they are riven apart by forces outside their control.

The novel never quite worked for me.  It's not the hackneyed plot, for that particular crime would condemn a thousand YA romances.  It's not the characters -- who are wondrously diverse and intriguing.  It's the storytelling, which is surprisingly clunky and wooden.  The story meanders with frequent surprises along the lines of "oh, and by the way, there is this character who I have never mentioned in the first 200 pages who is suddenly the central focus of the story" or "remember that subplot I labored over at the beginning? never mind, I've just resolved it in a page." In other words, real interest killers.  

I've liked Young's other books but this was just painful.

The Notes, by Catherine Con Morse

Claire Wu, a junior at a performing arts high school, wonders if she has what it takes.  Is she a good enough pianist to make it into a conservatory in two years?  Is she Asian enough to be accepted into the school's exclusive Asian Student Association?  Is she attractive enough to get the attention of senior Rocky Wong, the school's best pianist?

A new teacher, Dr. Li, thinks so and she inspires Claire to take risks.  She gets Claire a job as the accompanist for the dance recital, she assigns her harder pieces, and she makes her come in for extra practices.  Rocky and her other fellow students make fun of Claire for being a teacher's pet.  Rocky warns her that it isn't worth it to throw away her life trying to please this new and mercurial teacher.  But Claire likes Dr. Li and wants to prove she is good enough. 

Then things take a sinister turn.  Someone starts leaving notes lying around for Claire, warning her that Dr. Li is hurting her, that Dr. Li is using her, that Claire is wasting her time, and so on.  The messages grow threatening as the time of their piano showcase approaches and Claire is left wondering who is trying to hurt her?  And is she the real target or is it the new teacher?

A thriller with an engaging cast of characters and beautiful attention to detail, but an unevenly paced story.  The first two-thirds of the novel rolls out this story of threatening notes, backgrounded by the engaging mystery of Dr. Li's past and Claire's on-and-off relationship with Rocky.  But then that mystery of the anonymous messages is quickly resolved and a new issue is unveiled -- one involving the mental health of the notes' author.  This essentially new story is quickly run through with no development, completely changing the mood of the piece.  Character's personalities change, new motivations appear, and things that were so important in the first half fade from people's minds.  Worst of all, the story grows sketchy and the tempo speeds up dramatically.  This second part is not a bad story, but it's really not the same tale. 

Everything Within and In Between, by Nikki Barthelmess

One day, Ri discovers a letter under her grandmother's mattress written to her from her mother -- a mother that her grandmother claims has disappeared.  This is just one of the many lies in Ri's life from her controlling grandmother. 

Despite the fact that Grandmother is Mexican-American and Ri is half Latinx, her grandmother has never allowed her to learn Spanish.  Forging a permission slip to switch to Spanish class at school, Ri is determined to learn Spanish, become more familiar with her cultural roots, and find her mother.  And while she manages to do these things, it doesn't work out as she has planned and Ri has to come to terms with the realities of her family.  While that search for her mother doesn't quite work out, she does manage to connect with her heritage despite her grandmother's interference.

The novel raises some good points about discrimination in the Mexican community towards lighter skin colors, general racism, and classism.  The tone can get fairly preachy, but Ri makes an articulate and principled stand against her classmates who tolerate racially-motivated microaggressions. She stands up against classist behavior, especially when it is coupled with racism. While the story also brings up alcoholism and drug abuse, it handles these less convincingly.  But overall, my chief complaint with this story is how repetitive and slow the pace is.  A less-than-convincing change of heart by grandma saves the day so the story ends on a happy note, but it feels over convenient and unsatisfactory.

Beasts and Beauty, by Soman Chainani

It is the purpose of fairy tales to be told and retold in ways that fit the times, and the idea that there is an "original" one is a fallacy. Adaptations, most notably the ones wrought by Disney, serve their purpose. So, when one encounters a new version, it is an invitation to explore universal themes once again but through the author's lens.  A clever example is always welcome and Chainani's is particularly fascinating.  Taking twelve very familiar stories and deconstructing them to highlight the forgotten and neglected elements makes us rethink what we thought we knew.

Telling the story of Cinderella through the eyes of the mouse, taking on Peter Pan through the life of Wendy after she grows up and Peter no longer wants her, understanding that the wolf is just a horny teenage boy hounding Little Red Riding Hood -- these force us out of the comfortable narrative, setting us apart from stories we think we know.  The retellings are all very dark, finding some of the most horrid moments of the Grimms' versions and flipping them.  In the thee versions, Hansel and Gretel are actually saved by the witch in the forest, sleeping beauty is a young man in denial abut his homosexuality, the Little Mermaid is called out for being shallow and immature, and the Beauty cares only about riding herself of the Beast so she can enjoy the library and its many books in peace.  Happily ever after comes with a price that we've never paid attention to before.  Yet for as far away from the "original" stories we know these go, the more lovingly they seem to embrace their source material.

Beautifully written with pleasing illustrations, this is a solid set of classic tales, worthy of being reread again and again.

A Wolf Called Wander, by Rosanne Parry

Living in his pack, Swift dreams of one day gaining dominance over his littermates.  Leaving the pack never enters his mind -- it is his only world.  In these mountains, he is at home  Mother, father, and a good supply of elk to dine on is all he can imagine needing.  But when a rival pack attacks and annihilates his family and takes their land and hunting grounds, Swift is forced to flee.  Traveling in search of a new home, he must feed and defend himself against wolves and other predators.  And while he survives, it is a very lonely journey.

Inspired by the story of OR-7, a wolf that was tracked taking a 1000 mile epic journey across the Pacific Northwest to find a new home, this novel is told in first person as an attempt to understand how wolves think.  And while that idea may be a fantasy, Parry fills the narrative with plenty of observed actual behavior to make the story plausible.  Stuffed full of descriptions of pack hierarchy, hunting techniques and preferences, and even a tender courtship that a Klingon might appreciate, the story educates as it entertains. Gorgeous realistic art fills almost every page, guiding the reader through a perilous and alien landscape.

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.

The Sister Pact, by Stacie Ramey

Allie and Leah made a pact to be together in life and in death.  It was the only way they felt they could survive the battleground that their parents laid out in their home.  So, when Leah commits suicide and Allie fails to follow her, Allie is left with grief and guilt.  At the end, when it mattered most, Allie wasn't there for her sister and now she must pay the price.  Faced on her own with a father (who, in failing to control his one daughter, now seeks to gain mastery over the survivor) and a helpless mother drowning herself in sedatives, Allie has trouble finding allies.  Her boyfriend is unsure how to help and wary of opening up, especially as Allie is also flirting with Max, a player who just wants to use her but provides relief from her pain.  And then an angel appears in the guise of the school's drug dealer, who turns out to know more about Leah than Allie does herself.

A story about secrets in a very toxic family, littered with lots of drug abuse and suicidal ideation.  It's not a cheery tale.  I tolerated its very slow and miserable grind because of the familiarity of the characters and their dynamics.  Still, this might well not be your taste in entertainment and the emotional abuse is quite triggering, making this a book that I frequently had to take breaks from.  The story, of course, hinges on Allie and she's suitably nuanced and complex, defying easy solutions and in the end achieving a level of peace that, while rushed, felt satisfactory and believable.  You're not going to find much sense that her war has been won, but at least these soldiers have survived their battle.

Deep Water, by Jamie Sumner

Right before Tully's mother left them, she promised to help Tully train to swim a twelve-mile marathon across Lake Tahoe.  Now that she's gone, Tully knows how to grab her Mom's attention so that maybe just maybe she can get her Mom to come home.  With the help of her bestfriend, she's going to secretly do it on her own and become the youngest person to successfully complete the swim.  Along the way, she fights cold water and bad weather, but the hardest obstacle of all is her own mind and the thoughts that spring up inside it.

Told in verse, this spare story of a six-hour swim across the lake becomes much more:  Tully's confrontation with her feelings about her mother's abandonment about how Tully will move on.  It doesn't steer into any particularly novel territory and the verse itself is not particularly adventurous (except for a few clever pieces that take advantage of some fancy typography).  Still, it's a pleasant enough story and a brisk read.

Mascot, by Charles Waters and Traci Sorell

Ms. Williams's eighth grade honors English class gets assigned the topic of debating their school's traditional mascot -- an Indian brave.  But the classroom debate pro and con quickly bursts out into the wider school community as the students find that they and their families have legitimate feelings about whether such a mascot is appropriate at their school.  Told in verse, six children -- representing a variety of racial, ethnic, and economic backgrounds -- discuss what the issue means to them and play an active part in a movement to change the mascot.

This is one of those cases where verse works against the story.  There are complicated issues at play here and the verse structure causes the authors to gloss over them.  We get soundbites, but no real depth of understanding.  So, for example, native-American Callie finds lots of research on the psychological damage caused by racist mascots, but we're provided with no details.  We're introduced to Sean's love of tradition and the importance of the mascot as a rallying point for his family's otherwise miserable existence. But again, without detail we are forced to conclude that the family is just poor and ignorant.  

So, I found the book frustrating and unenlightening.  It may raise the awareness of young readers to the importance of the issue, but it won't help them navigate the real world of the political debates and the motivations behind them that surround any attempt to change things.

Always the Almost, by Edward Underhill

Miles is plagued by the thought that he is not enough.  As a trans boy, Miles feels he's not enough of a boy and knows he was not happy as a girl.  He'd like to win back his ex-boyfriend Shane, but Shane isn't interested in guys.  To Miles, this feels more like a rejection of him, and that he is not enough to be worthy of love.  It doesn't help that, on the verge of a new round of piano competitions, Miles' teacher keeps telling him that he needs to figure out who he is and that until he does he will never be a great pianist.  Perhaps, Miles isn't enough of a musician either?

Then Miles meets a boy named Eric who gets his pronouns right and likes Miles however he sees himself.  And while Miles still aches to get back together with Shane, everything is much easier with Eric.  Is Miles going to figure out who he wants to love and who he wants to be? Will he win his piano competition?  Well, you'll just have to read it to find out!

Underhill does a great job with his main character.  Miles starts off annoyingly shallow and insensitive to others, but his understanding of himself is complex and nuanced.  It's not that he doubts that he's a boy so much as he struggles with what that in fact means to him.  And his behavior -- which overwhelmingly reads as feminine (with its socially-sensitive, intuitive, and emotional instincts) -- feels authentic for a newly-transitioned boy.  That's a subtlety that authors rarely capture.  I also enjoyed watching Miles grow as a person, becoming better at negotiating his relationships and losing much of that initial insensitivity.

While the supporting characters are not as interesting as Miles, they do exist in a rather complex dynamic that will feel relatable to teens and painful to adult to reminisce about.  Underhill has a good sense of the insecurities of the adolescent mind.  On the other hand, the lack of any straight characters -- while fashionable in contemporary YA -- feels less authentic.

This is a well written romance that presents a strong and sympathetic trans character in a meaningful and realistic relationship.

The Lake House, by Sarah Beth Durst

Three girls are dropped off at summer camp in a remote part of Maine.  While they don't know one another yet, Claire, Reyva, and Mariana each have unique things to overcome and they are looking forward to attending the camp that their parents all insist is life transforming.  But when they are dropped off, they find that the entire camp has been burned to the ground with no immediate sign of what happened to the staff and the other campers.  Instead, they find a dead body.

Unable to return to the mainland, and with no means to communicate, the girls have to figure out how to survive.  Being suburban girls, they have little to no outdoors experience and working out food, water, and shelter becomes a matter of trial and error -- a terrifying thought when there is a killer is there with them.  And that's before they find that there is a much worse adversary out there!

Needing a distraction from politics, I could have embraced an intellectual classic, but I grabbed for a trashy survival/horror novel instead.  It wasn't nearly as bad as I expected it to be.  Yes, there were plot holes and some really stretched logic in the storyline, but the tension was kept at a high level and the story was full of irresistable cliffhangers.  For anyone who likes clever characters, it was engrossing to watch the girls MacGyver their way out of their problems.  But maybe more to the point, each of the girls were interesting and sympathetic.  They had very distinct personalities, strengths, and weaknesses.  It helped that they didn't snipe at each other but instead worked together to get through it.

The story itself has a wonderful dramatic arc that allows each of the girls to have a moment to grow and be tested.  That I cared about their ability to face those fears was startling to me for a book that I had assumed would be a mindless scream fest.

Chaos Theory, by Nic Stone

A story of two young people with an incredible amount of emotional baggage who fall into an ill-advised relationship.

Shelbi suffers from a bipolar disorder that sends her into extreme bouts of depression.  While medication helps, keeping her head down and out of any relationship is the best course.  But she can't help herself with Andy, who seems nice and sensitive, even if the first time she meets him it is due to him drunk dialing her.

Andy wants to be a good guy and, after Shelbi explains her issues, he promises he can be trustworthy.  However, that's hard to do as he's dealing with the recent death of his baby sister and a somewhat more shocking loss (which is not revealed at first).  His recourse to his problems is to escape into the bottle.  Shelbi recognizes the risks, but she still wants to believe Andy when he promises it is all under control.  It isn't and when Andy falls off the wagon one time too many and hurts Shelbi, things fall entirely apart.

A brisk, fast-moving story that feels authentic and addresses emotional health issues.  The writing, however, lacks clarity at times and Stone has an excessive supply of melodrama to toss in from time to time when the story lags.  The characters are strong and really make the story.  Despite their faults, Andy and Shelbi are both sympathetic protagonists, but one wishes the adults had been a bit faster on their toes in keeping their children on the rails.  A lot of well-meaning denial causes a lot of unnecessary pain (and some learning experiences).

I Kick and I Fly, by Ruchira Gupta

A gripping story of an Indian girl named Heera who lives in a red-light district in Bihar.  Raised with the understanding that when she reaches puberty her father or brother will pimp her out, Heera wants more in life than to be a prostitute.  But faced with bullying at school and the hostility of her father, receiving an education seems like an impossible dream.

Things change when she starts to study kung fu through a local program for endangered girls.  She excels at the sport and gains confidence.  However, the more she becomes determined to break free, the harder the forces arrayed against her try to keep her down.  Several times, her martial arts skills actually save her life.  Featuring unapologetically explicit depictions of child prostitution and international sex trafficking, the compelling story is impossible to forget.

The author, an Emmy winner for her documentary about the same subject, has created a very digestible novel for young adults.  The strength of the story is it veracity.  While names are changed, every hero and villain in the story is based on a real person.  The storytelling leans towards the melodramatic and the events depicted are conveniently coincidental (probably for the purposes of compressing the storyline), but this helps move everything along at a fine pace.  While an upsetting read, the novel balances its grim depictions and its urgent calls for reform with glimmers of hope that provide what is ultimately an inspiring conclusion.

The Ghost of Us, by James L. Sutter

Cara has spent years trying to live down the infamy of a sexting mistake by hosting a YouTube channel about ghost hunting.  Accompanied by her Christian friend Holly, she's searching for evidence of the existence of ghosts.  So, when she stumbles across a real one -- Aiden, a kid in her school who was killed in an accident last year -- she finally has something that can make her famous and get her out of her deadend town.  

Aiden's ghost, however, has goals of his own.  He wants Cara to ask his sister Meredith to the Senior Prom to raise her out of a year of depression and mourning.  Cara agrees to help out and (against the advice of her friend Holly) starts romancing Meredith.  While initially she does this as part of a deal to be able to use Aiden for her channel, she finds herself falling for Meredith for real.  But what will happen when Meredith learns the truth?

A rather clever supernatural romance that has a lot to say about self-acceptance, as well as some wise words about friendships and familial bonds.  The pacing is off and things get compressed at the end, but Sutton has created very full characters who interact nicely.  Sutton manages the rare feat of being a male author who can cross the gender divide and create authentic female characters.  The writing is witty and the story is lively and fun.

Unbecoming, by Seema Yasmin

In this nearly-fictional YA dystopian novel, Texas is imagined as a place that has outlawed and criminalized all abortions.  Even hormonal drugs and basic medical supplies (like the gel for ultrasounds) are carefully monitored and regulated.  Some activity is even a capital offense, creating a state of fear.  But in the midst of all that danger, a system of undercover mobile clinics still struggle to make OB-GYN services available, including birth control, IVF, and abortion.  Working against them are not only the police, but gangs of armed vigilantes trying to track down the renegades at all cost.  Nearly fiction or maybe not fictional enough?

Laylah and Noor are two Muslim teens who have taken it upon themselves to produce a guide for their fellow Texas teens about what to do if you find out that you're pregnant and want to terminate it.  Noor is a diehard journalist with a conviction to getting her facts right and keeping the guide relevant and up-to-date.  That's a particular challenge when the people who are providing services are constantly on the move and trying to stay hidden.  Laylah is the scientific mind with plans to enter a pre-med program and become an OB-GYN.  So when she discovers that she is pregnant, she is afraid of what the pregnancy will do to her career plans.  Suddenly, the guide is even more important to her and her fact checking work takes on a personal urgency.

For a book vying for Most Likely to Be Banned From Your School Library, the novel disappoints.  A great premise and a strong start get quickly bogged down in a series of poorly paced adventures as Laylah struggles to find a source for medications for her abortion.  Whether it's to create dramatic tension or to simply pad out the story, everything is s t r e t c h e d out and made entirely more complicated than it needs to be.  As the story progressed, I great more and more annoyed at the digressions.  This is topped off towards the end by a very powerful but largely unrelated story that packs a punch but serves to suck the energy out of the climax.  We get feels and a lot of deep thoughts but no decent release of the dramatic tension of the main plot.  

It's a gutsy book with a lot to say and occasional laugh-out-loud moments, but overall poor storytelling.

Six More Months of June, by Daisy Garrison

Caplan and Mina have been next door neighbors and best friends through their school years.  Mina is shy and withdrawn, an outcast at school.  Caplan is popular and dating the school's Queen Bee Hollis.  But there has always been some sort of connection between Caplan and Mina that no one can explain (but people assume that it is some sort of crush).  But now, approaching the end of high school, Caplan is forced to face some uncomfortable truths about his feelings for Mina when she starts dating his best friend Quinn.  And as things explode emotionally around them and the curtain closes on their childhoods, a reckoning comes to all.

A beautifully written story that has all of the tropes but none of the expected endings.  The biggest surprise is Hollis who, far from being some uber-popular bitch, ends up being the nicest person of all.  Yet each of the other main characters (Caplan, Mina, and Quinn) manage to surprise with their independent non-stereotypical actions.  The book is littered with favorite scenes and fulls of brilliant quotes and one suspects that Garrison has spent her lifetime collecting favorite anecdotes to stuff into this first novel.

Anecdote packing, unfortunately, is also the weakness of the book.  For while the book is an exquisitely exposition upon the cusp of adulthood, it is bereft of an actual story.  The plot boils down to "four kids graduate and realize that they love each other in ways that transcend romantic or sexual feelings" and that's basically it.  You'll want to read it very slowly and carefully to suck out all the goodness, but in the end there isn't much substance here -- no deep meaning, no emotional climax -- just a sense of young people (through the author) making fantastic observations about life and growing up.

On the Bright Side, by Anna Sortino

For Ellie, living at a boarding school for deaf students was a godsend, helping her come out and thrive.  So, when the school closes and she's forced to come home and finish her senior year at home, it's hard to adjust to being the only deaf student at the public high school. And it's never been easy with her family.  Her parents are less than understanding about her needs and subconsciously favor her (hearing) older sister.  She can't wait until she graduates so she can get away from everything and everybody.

After a pretty rough introduction on her first day of school, the counselor arranges for chronic overachiever Jackson to help show Ellie around.  Ellie resents Jackson's enthusiasm despite his earnest (albeit awkward) attempts to ingratiate himself to her.  However, being a romance, it just takes some time and few more awkward incidents for the two of them to find each other and connect.  And along the way, we explore the many difficulties of building a relationship between a hearing person and a deaf one.

But there's more to the story.  Jackson has been experiencing random loss of motor control and sensation, and bouts of vertigo and nausea.  After some misdignosis and a harrowing scene where Ellie has to rescue him, the doctors eventually determine that Jackson has Multiple Sclerosis.  Faced with such a complex and terrifying condition, Jackson has to work through his shock, grief, and anger.  Ellie tries to help him, but it's a lot for a young love to take on.  Never mind that she has her own issues with her family to deal with.

It's a busy story with lots of issues (disability, prejudice, abuse, amongst others) that works surprisingly well and manages to bring up a lot about the experience of being hearing disabled.  It helps that the author is deaf and she draws heavily on her own life to bring in fascinating details (like the mistakes that beginners at ASL tend to make or the need to provide good lighting at parties where deaf people are attending) to fill out the story.  I enjoyed those little bits while appreciating a satisfying romance that, while not straying too far from form, still delivered an above average novel about two young people struggling with some major difficulties and overcoming them.  Eschewing an overly rosy ending, the story's issues and problems are addressed and we are left with a hopeful future for the two protagonists.

Unstuck, by Barbara Dee

Lyla has plans for a major fantasy novel.  The story's so complicated that she has trouble explaining it and it's going to take several books to cover the whole tale.  In other words, it will be truly epic!  At least, the story will be when she can get around to start writing it!  But there is background to research, geography to sort out (maybe she should draft out a map?), and a whole genealogy to draft out; to say nothing about coming up with names for all of the characters and places.  With all those distractions to figure out, it's understandable that she's struggled to put even a single sentence to paper.  And while she has a very supportive creative writing teacher, she really needs to get started!

Back home, her older sister seems to be suffering from a form of writer's block of her own.  She's supposed to be writing her application essays for college but hasn't gotten started.  Mom and Dad are going crazy nagging her and homelife has become unbearably tense.  Lyla wonders if any of the advice her teacher is giving her about writing could help her sister as well?  But Lyla is also confused by her sister's unwillingness to try.

Dee is really one of the best contemporary writers at capturing middle school mindsets.  Lyla has all of the awkward tween-ness of the age -- negotiating new school, new friends, and new avocations.  Rebelling against things she judges to be "babyish" while still struggling to understand the world to come, Lyla bravely experiments.

Dee's description of writer's block and real advice on how to work through it is a clever topic for a book, suitable for all writers, young and old.

The Wonderful Wishes of B, by Katherin Nolte

Ten year-old Bea has experienced a lot of pain lately and she has five wishes connected with those losses. She wishes her grandmother had not died, that her best friend had not moved away, that her Mom could keep her business afloat, that her Dad would visit, and that her grandma's old doll would come alive and become her little sister.  And, if nothing else, she wishes she could become like Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz and lose her heart so it would stop aching.

A new boy moves to town and convinces her that his own grandmother is a witch and can perform magic.  For the price of doing some things for the witch that Bea grows to regret, the woman is willing to grant Bea's wishes.  And while grandmother can't manage to grant all of the wishes, Bea's father does reappear with promises of his own to grant Bea's remaining wishes.  But in the end, Bea discovers that there is no magic fix for the losses we feel and that a heart is made for feeling the bad and the good.

A folksy middle reader featuring small bits of magic, adorable kitties, and plenty of friendly and quirky side characters.  While a few bad things happen, this is a light and safe story that manages to reach a predictable conclusion with a few  unexpected surprises along the way!

Emmett, by L C Rosen

Emmett is popular -- a fact that he attributes immodestly to how nice he is.  He's always thinking of other people's needs.  He's even taken it upon himself to help all of his friends find partners and he's overjoyed with planning ways in which his single friends can find each other.

He has no interest in finding a guy for himself.  He doesn't mind hooking up for sex, but getting into a committed relationship will inevitably lead to heartache and Emmett has no intention of getting hurt!  The human brain doesn't physically stop growing until you're twenty-five and so that's the earliest he'll be ready to find his life partner.

It's all very neat, but Emmett's perfect world is starting to come apart.  A string of matchmaking failures make Emmett question his skills.  And when he hurts some of his friends in the process, he doubts whether he is really as nice as he likes to to think he is.  But most grievous of all is the nagging doubt in his mind that maybe (just maybe) he would like to have a romance of his own.

I'm not sure that we need yet another adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma for the YA market (even if this version is the most flaming gay boy version to date), but my primary complaint is that I found it hard to really engage with the story.  Perhaps, because the characters really didn't seem like high schoolers, but rather more like college students.  You don't really get the feeling that Emmett and his friends live at home with their parents.  Their lives seem to mostly center around parties and flirting.  That's very Jane Austen, but it's not very American high school.  There's a fair amount of emortional drama, but not really any emotional depth and the result is more satire than romance.

Hunger, by Donna Jo Napoli

Life in the Irish countryside has alwatys been a bit precarious.  Lorraine and her family lease land from an English lord and subsist on the potatoes they grow, selling their grain harvest for income.  But when the crop fails in 1846, things start to look dire.  And in the year that follows, mass starvation leads to societal collapse.  

In the midst of the suffering, Lorraine befriends the naive but kind-hearted daughter of their lord named Susanna.  Miss Susannais a complicated character: arrogant, ignorant, and rude, but she nonetheless performs important acts oif charity that ultimately keep Lorraine alive.

Based entirely on historical fact, this is a story that won't exactly qualify as a pleasure read.  So while Napoli writes excellent historical fiction, but it's hard to imagine too many young people who would pick this book to read on the beach.  That's a shame as the book doesn't just serve as a historical account, but raises significant questions about how racism and ignorance affect the topic of immigration and of charity.

The Color of Sound, by Emily Barth Isler

Feeling burdened by her mother's expectations, violin prodigy Rosie declares that she's "on strike" for the forseeable future and not going to play.  Her furious mother punishes her by taking away her internet privileges but still holds out hope that Rosie will return to practicing.  Steaming at each other over the impasse, mother and daughter are forced have to cohabit as they visit Rosie's dying grandmother.

To get away from her family Rosie explores the property and runs across a peculiar girl her age.  Through some time travel magic, the girl turns out to be Rosie's own mother.  While Rosie frets a bit about impacting the future by interacting with her past-Mom, she is able to use the experience to learn why her mother is so controlling.  At a pivotal moment, she is also able to repair their relationship by solving a crisis in her young Mom's life.

A touching story of family regrets and legacies that is laser focused on being a Mother-Daughter Bookclub read (there are even discussion questions at the end of the book!).  I found myself getting annoyed by the way that mom's anxiety is portrayed and excused.  I also bristled at the heavy handed discussion about social interactions between children of different ages.  It felt like a kind of story that someone let Rosie's overbearing mother edit for appropriate content.  That made things safe, but not necessarily fun.

Those objections aside, I loved the magical time travel angle and the device of daughter teaching mother in the past (which of course was more famously done in Back to the Future).  I also enjoyed the fact that both Rosie and her mother have synthesia and hear music as color, an idea that has been explored in nother middle readers.

Break To You, by Neil Shusterman, Debra Young, and Michelle Knowlden

A series of bad choices in friends hands Adriana a seven month stretch in the Compass juvenile detention facility.  Allegedly based on novel approaches to rehabilitate young adults and avoid recidivism, Compass is really a morass of selfish and embittered adults who manipulate the children under their control for their own ends.  So much for the social critique element of this team-written novel.

The meat of the story though is an unusual romance.  Strictly segregated, boys and girls don't interact.  But when Adriana accidentally leaves her journal at the jail library, it is discovered by Jon, who reads and writes in it before leaving it for her.  The two develop a correspondance, clandestinely writing entries and leaving the book hidden on the shelves for the other to find later.  Soon, simply writing to each other is not enough and Adriana and Jon hatch a plan to find a way to meet face to face.  Doing so sets in motion a series of events with tragic consequences.

The story is gripping and briskly paced.  The characters are well developed and diverse, illustrating a variety of different incarceration experiences.  The adults are far less interesting, but do a good job of moving things forward.  The end, while unexpected, is satisfyingly open-ended.  I enjoyed the book, but I doubt it will do much more than entertain.  The authors bring up a number of flaws in the justice and corrections systems, but it is unlikely readers will make much of a connection between these one-dimensional baddies and the real world issues that exist.

The No-Girlfriend Rule, by Christen Randall

In the six years that Hollis and Chris have been dating, Hollis has been shut out of Chris's Friday night Secrets and Sorcery games.  That's because his group has a strict "no girlfriends allowed" rule -- a rule that Hollis is determined to chip away at.  It's not that Hollis particularly likes the misogynistic and homophobic group that Chris plays with, but she wants to be in Chris's life.  So, Hollis has been studying how to play and she's found a group of her own to play with to get better.

The new group is made up solely of young women, racially diverse, and representative of a variety of gender and sexual identities. The woman who runs the group is all about building a supportive and safe environment.   In a nutshell, it's everything Chris's group is not.  And when Hollis finds that she not only likes them better but also, for the first time in her life feels she has real friends, it causes her to question why she cares so much for Chris.  And while breaking up seems unthinkable, there's no denying that she is discovering that there's so much more to life than being some guy's girlfriend.

I was initially going to write this off as a fluffy romance set amidst table-top gamers, but it has a surprising amount of substance.  Dungeons and Dragons (and gamer culture as a whole) is notoriously misogynistic.  Randall takes some pretty easy shots at that at the start, but then she imagines what a campaign would be like if it wasn't and Hollis's group is a wonderful exploration of how one could play the game without succumbing to toxic masculinity.  I'm sure the discussion has been had in the gamersphere but I've never seen it in fiction before and it's eye-opening.

Beyond that is a really strong story of Hollis's growth from an anxious and dependent girlfriend, unable to see her own self-worth, to a young woman with contributions to make and a right to be loved.  It's hardly smooth sailing and she has a lot of very relatable struggles with doubt and insecurity, but the honesty of the portrayal makes the payoff at the end so much more moving.  She also has a very authentic struggle with her sexual identity when her heart leads her towards a girl in the group -- a search which is never fully resolved and feels very satisfactory being left as such.

Throw in a couple other topics like body images, clinical anxiety, and abusive relationships, and you get a lot of value for a story about girls and gaming.