Nothing, by Janne Teller

When their classmate Pierre Anthon quits school, announcing that "nothing matters," his classmates in 7A are initially amused. But as Pierre takes up residence in a tree and starts mocking them for continuing to go to school and continuing to insist that their lives are meaningless, the students become obsessed with proving him wrong. Their method is to assemble a pile of "meaning" (items which are valuable to each of the children). And while the task starts out innocently enough, it escalates into cruelty and sadism. And yet still the meaning of meaning remains elusive.

Read literally, the book is disturbing and unpleasant, delighting in imperiling children and animals in the horrible way that Scandinavians seem to enjoy in literature and art much more than the rest of the world. Anyone with a weak stomach or low tolerance for cruelty will probably want to steer clear. However, take the story as a parable and it becomes more interesting and thought-provoking, but still not really YA. The search for meaning will of course be understandable to all ages, but the jadedness of the way it is presented reads more like an adult novel.

This is not a novel for interesting characters as everything is passively narrated from a single perspective and all of the characters are symbolic anyway. And it's not a novel for story since that too is simply an extended analogy and the action cannot be taken seriously. In the end, this is more of a book for discussions (ironically enough, about what it all "means") which, if we believe Pierre, simply brings us back to the book's title.

Out of My Mind, by Sharon M. Draper

Fifth-grader Melody has a photographic memory and is incredibly smart, but no one knows it. She has cerebral palsy and is unable to speak. For years, people around her assumed that she was as dumb as she appeared. Until she gets a computer that helps her form sentences, she's been limited to a very small vocabulary of words on a tray chart, which hardly persuaded them otherwise. The only exceptions were her parents, a care-giving neighbor, and a few isolated teachers.

This may all change for her this year when she is granted the opportunity to compete in a national Whiz Kids contest. Despite the reservations (and outright prejudice) of her peers and teacher, she reveals a strong talent. But the struggle to be accepted by her classmates is far more important to Melody and may be the one thing she can't quite pull off, no matter how many quiz questions she can ace.

Draper has crafted an easily understood story about disability, pride, and struggle that will appeal to young readers. I got a little tired of the two-dimensional portrayals (the bad people are downright mean and evil, while the good ones are perfect), but one assumes that Draper was aiming down for her audience. Melody is a notable exception to this oversimplification and her complex feelings and struggle for peer acceptance is universally relatable. It's not all puppies and roses at the end, but you'll find it hard to suppress a cheer for her nonetheless.

Compromised, by Heidi Ayarbe

Maya and her father have managed to get by. He always has a trick or a game, and Maya has sheltered herself in that comfort and in the world of the science documentaries and the scientific method. Living from one con to another, he's taken care of her. But when the Law catches up with Dad, Maya becomes a ward of the State of Nevada. Finding out quickly what that means (cruel orphanages, neglectful case workers, and scary foster homes), Maya decides to flee with a fellow orphan Nicole. Maya has found out that she may have an aunt (the sister of her long-dead mother), but given the source of this information (her father), it may just be one final con job. However, that doesn't dissuade her and Nicole from running to Boise to find out where this aunt may be.

What results is an unusual road trip story. Between Maya's obsession with the epistemological method and Nicole's more bizarre obsession with the Mob, we have the requisite odd couple dynamics. Joining them eventually is a troubled young boy with Tourrette's Syndrome. But what starts out as a simple quest to find lost family heads fast towards tragedy and death.

An engrossing but disturbing novel about at-risk teens. The story is definitely too intense for younger readers, but mature ones will find themselves locked in in anticipation of how it will end up. To get there, you will have to travel through vivid scenes of drug use, sexual violence, disease, death, abuse, and more than a little petty crime. But in a story like this, moral compasses are largely irrelevant. The ending is satisfactory, but definitely bittersweet. This is not the realm of the happy ending.

I actually liked the story. I don't think it had much deep meaning and I certainly didn't find much uplifting material here, but Ayarbe writes a taut suspenseful story that had me turning pages eagerly. Life on the streets is definitely not glorified but Ayarbe avoids becoming exploitative at the same time. Instead, I felt the genuine respect that she had towards her characters and the dignity of them that she wanted to portray. They are certainly very vivid kids with personalities and quirks that you'll remember long after finishing the last page.

It is a downer to read, however, so you may want to turn to something light and funny when you're through.

Gimme A Call, by Sarah Mlynowski

Reflecting on the painful end to her high school romance with Bryan, Devi wishes that she could go back in time and warn her 14 year-old self to stay away from him in the first place. If she had, maybe she would have spent more time with her friends (instead of losing them all) and even doing better in school. In the midst of that thought, she accidentally drops her cell phone into the Mall's wishing pool. When she manages to fish it out, it no longer works like normal. Now, it calls herself -- three and a half years younger!

So, if you could speak to your younger self, how would you use the power to change your future through the past? What changes would be for the better and what would simply complicate your life? And, in the end, with such a power would you ever be satisfied with what you had become?

It's a fascinating premise and delivered with great pacing and a good sense of humor. In many of her books, Mlynowski has had a lot of fun crossing supernatural events and fantasy with common teen angst, and this particular book delivers a fun adventure with some great life lessons. It's all very thought-provoking, yet overall fun. For being basic escapism, this novel still manages to pack in some substance. I enjoyed it and suspect you will too!

God Is In the Pancakes, by Robin Epstein

Assisted suicide is a pretty unusual topic for a YA book, so this is already off to a notable start....

When her father moves out on his family, Grace becomes disillusioned and bitter about the subject of romance. The fact that her sister's boyfriend is two-timing her doesn't help matters much either. But her perspective starts to change when she takes a job as a candy striper at an old age home and meets a man dying of Lou Gehrig's Disease. At first, he serves as an obvious surrogate father figure, but when he begs her to help him die, things take a more serious turn.

She struggles with what to do about his request, especially as she gets to know the man's family. But she has other issues with which to deal: helping her sister confront her boyfriend, wrestling with whether she wants to reconnect with her estranged father, and dealing with a romantic entanglement of her own.

For its originality and its sensitivity, I liked the main plot of the story (the assisted suicide), but the rest of the story seemed less well-developed. I got the fact that Epstein was tying all of the subplots together with the themes of love and loyalty (with each story illustrating a different perspective of the themes), but the subplots are tired cliches (awkward boyfriend, jealous sister, absent father). Only the elderly couple struggling to end their relationship in dignity and Grace's wonderment at observing it seemed fresh and new. In many ways, the story would have benefitted from a trimming.

Lucky, by Rachel Vail

Phoebe considers herself to be pretty lucky: she's beautiful, popular, and rich. So, it comes naturally to her to plan, with her best friend Kirstyn, the world's greatest middle school graduation party. But then things start to go badly. Her mother loses her job. Credit cards start to get declined. Her parents start having hushed conversations. Worst of all, her parents inform her that she'll have to cancel the party -- an act which would mean embarrassment in front of her entire class. All of which probably makes Phoebe look like a spoiled brat (and she is accused of being so on several occasions) but the issues are actually more complicated.

As one would expect, facing the dilemma of how to save face (and even protect her family's reputation) makes Phoebe evaluate her values and friendships. And she makes some startling discoveries that will take even the reader by surprise. In the end, it all is wrapped up neatly, but not before a carefully-engineered climax has the tears flowing.

The engineering of the conclusion says a lot about the book and the writer. Vail is a great writer with a list of successful books to her credit and she certainly knows how to craft a story. While certainly not as vacuous as some novels out in the mass market, this will still appeal to casual "Summer" readers. It sets no major literary milestones, but it is an enjoyable book with more than a few thought-provoking thoughts and heart-warming moments.

How to Steal A Car, by Pete Hautman

A friend asked me while I was reading this book, "It's not an instruction manual, is it?" Not really. It's ostensibly a work of fiction, but the moral vacuum in which it is written (combined with the details which it describes) left me wondering what the author's intent really was.

It's a story about Kelleigh and her decision to start stealing cars. Step by step, we see how a whim becomes a prank, and blows up into a criminal career. Told in first-person past tense, the tone is more of a confessional, which implies a bit about how you would expect the book to end. Surprisingly, it doesn't wrap up so neatly.

When it comes to YA books that deal with crime, I have a pretty hardcore viewpoint that they need to end badly (for the criminal). But aside from a small amount of lip service to the idea that what she is doing might just be wrong, this story never really gets to the idea that crime does not pay. So, the ultimate message is that it is dangerous but fun to steal cars. And I'm not sure about what is the value of that position.

It also seems that Hautman avoided the issue by filling up the book with too much other stuff. From the unimportant fact that Kelleigh is color blind to the red herring that Kelleigh's Dad is having an affair, the story is awfully busy with subplots that neither are resolved nor related back to the main plot (would it have been so hard to have her - because of her colorblindness - steal the wrong car or run a red light?). With the affair thing, I suppose that we're trying to set up a justification for Kelleigh's behavior, but it's a pretty lame one and we certainly never connect the dots. What a mess!

The Beautiful Between, by Alyssa B. Sheinmel

In Connelly's mind, her high school is some sort of fairy tale feudal state. The nobility sashay around, barely noticing the commoners like herself. But then one day Prince Charming (in the form of her classmate Jeremy) does take notice and sits with her at lunch. Ostensibly, he only wants to get help on his vocabulary for the SATs (and he offers physics tutoring in exchange), but something else is up.

He lets slip that he knows how her father died -- a statement which shocks Connelly for two reasons: first of all, because she has never told anyone that her father was dead (instead, she has maintained a lie for years that her parents were just divorced), but more importantly she is surprised because even she does not know what caused his death. This is because, even after thirteen years, her mother won't tell her.

The truth of the matter is that Jeremy is struggling with an impending loss of his own. He hopes that somehow Connelly can help him cope with his problems. Between Connolly's grief for a father long passed and Jeremy's fear of the future, the two of them find an uncommon bond and form an unusual friendship.

This is truly an amazing book and probably one of the best books I have read so far from 2010. Connelly is an insightful and observant narrator -- wise beyond her years, but not distractingly so. She's eminently sympathetic as well. I found that I totally got her and really felt like she was a kindred spirit. And yes, I don't know much about being an adolescent girl, but you don't have to in order to understand Connelly's anxiety and insecurity. These are far more universal feelings and she articulates them well. Sheinmel has a gorgeous writing style that articulates complex feelings in simple but beautiful prose.

I also liked the friendship that develops between Connelly and Jeremy. Rather than have them fall into a predictable romance, they become close friends. This is an unusual approach and, in the end, it is so much more powerful than a romantic relationship would have been.

Finally, the relationship between Connelly and her mother is both realistic and painful. Both of them are hurting and it takes some effort to overcome the barriers they have erected in the years since Connelly's father's death. While this part is less original, it is still powerfully written and highly effective.

I have no issues with wholeheartedly recommending this book. It will totally blow you away!

Nothing Like You, by Lauren Strasnick

Holly knows that there is no future in her relationship with Paul. For one thing, he's way out of her league. For another, he's got a girlfriend (the equally fantastic Saskia). But when Paul makes the moves on her, she finds it hard to resist and she'll do anything to hold on to that feeling. The relationship that starts with no future becomes a serious danger to her other friendships as she finds it harder to hide what is going on from her best friend Nils and as she grows closer to Saskia. But even though she knows it is wrong, she continues to fall in deeper and deeper.

While I'd like to be an optimist and hope that not everyone can personally relate to this story of betrayed friendships and infidelity in the halls of high school, I imagine that most of us have been there. It would be easy enough to despise Holly and her lack of will power (as well as her constant mistakes) but Strasnick does a fantastic job of making her believable and sympathetic (and the pure evilness of Paul makes this a bit easier as well). And she does it without resorting to some more obvious tactics. For example, the death of Holly's mother some months before the story opens would form a perfect justification of the lapses of judgment, but Strasnick never plays the cards that way. Holly's mistakes are truly her own.

Holly's (mostly) platonic relationship with Nils is a wonderful part of the story. On the one side, he perfectly illustrates the unevenness of the sexes in these romance games, but he also provides a nice foil for Holly. And the stresses and strains in their relationship share the authentic flavor of the rest of the story.

If I have any complaints, it is probably with the adult characters. Holly's father Jeff is definitely not checked in on his kid (probably because he is blinded by the loss of his wife, but it is never explained). Holly's drama teacher is a throwaway -- I kept expecting something profound to come from the relationship but it just never got there. Given the total lack of adult supervision going on here, I think that the grown-ups could have been left out altogether with little harm done.

A Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, by Brenda Woods

Nine tenth-grade students in an urban high school in Los Angeles are taking Ms Hart's creative writing class. To get them thinking about alternative concepts of fame, she gives them an assignment to imagine a world in which stars on Hollywood Boulevard are handed out for lots of reason (beyond just acting) and to describe what they might do to earn one. During the two week period in which they have in order to complete the assignment, the rough life of these kids frequently intervenes to color their perceptions on how to answer the question.

As a child of the suburbs, I generally prefer to read about kids growing up in the suburbs (or in rural areas). Also, books like this always seem a bit calculated to win acclaim from politically correct suburban librarians. My cynical mind sees marketing ploy, and Woods' array of awards reinforces rather than dispels those biases (I'm a fervent believer that the Coretta Scott King award was designed to ghettioize non-white literature to justify not considering books like this for a Prinz... but I digress).

While it is true that there is a bit of the usual static (tough kids, well-meaning liberal middle-class teacher, cue the "Stand By Me" music?), this book shines on its own merits. Woods has a great ear for dialog and the characters speak in an angst that sounds (to my privileged ears) like the real thing. With a very large cast of characters in a wafer-thin book, it would have been easy to create identical voices (or fall back into stereotypes), but the kids in this book really come forth as individuals, each one of them truly shining like a star.

The ending is a bit heavy-handed and pedantic (as if the author doesn't trust the reader to get the gravitas of the story without having it shoved down their throat), but I can indulge her a bit because I enjoyed the ways in which this book both met and exceeded my expectations.

Turtle in Paradise, by Jennifer L. Holm

In the midst of the Depression, eleven year-old Turtle and her mother struggle to get by. And so, when Mom finds work as a housekeeper for a woman who doesn't like children, Turtle gets shipped off to Key West to stay with her aunt and cousins. The children are surprisingly resourceful and have a number of adventures. For her part, Turtle learns to appreciate the joys and problems of large families. And the reader learns a lot about Key West in this much earlier era.

This nice gentle middle reader covers a little-known world of the Keys before they were a major tourist destination and when the place and times were a bit more innocent. I always have a soft spot for books that take me places I have never been, so I'll have to recommend this book on that basis alone.

But this book has much more going for it. The characters are vivid and interesting. Many of them break stereotypes (for example, who would have ever dreamed up a babysitting service run entirely -- to many humorous results -- by a gang of boys?). The inhabitants of the Keys are obvious quite quirky and Holm delights in showing them off to us (and we, in turn, delight in learning about them). A fascinating historical end note from the author explains how much of the story is based on fact and may make readers want to learn more. For actual young readers, the scenes where the children have to weather out a hurricane may be a bit scary.

Fat Cat, by Robin Brande

Cat is a brilliant science student. She's just completed an internship on insects and is hoping to spin that work into an science fair award-winning project for Mr Fizer's honors class. But instead she gets assigned a topic in pre-historic hominins (early humans). She has no idea what to do with the topic until she gets an inspiration. Musing that prehistoric women are never depicted as fat (and as she's grown tired of her weight and body shape), she decides to copy their diet (or, at the very least, an organic diet) and see what effect it has on her.

The physical impact of switching to such a diet can certainly be expected to be major and over several months, she loses a good deal of weight. But what this does for her social life is completely unexpected by her. Boys are coming out of the woodwork and noticing her. Now, if she could only get her ex-friend (and now sworn enemy) Matt to leave her alone. After betraying her cruelly four years ago, he keeps acting as if they were friends!

In many ways, this is a charming story about how a concerted effort to change your life can be empowering. Cat is a mostly endearing character (see below) and her self-discovery is interesting to read about. No one is particularly deep, but Brande understands good dialog and realistic staging.

So, why my reticence and restraint in reviewing this book? Well, there are simply major issues with the characters. Cat's hatred towards Matt is so painfully and stubbornly adhered to that even a preschooler would recognize its unhealthy stupidity. It's hard to feel sympathy for a character who you know is behaving like an idiot. And a mean one to boot!

My Name Is Memory, by Ann Brashares

Best known for the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series, Ann Brashares ventures into strikingly different territory with this broadly-scoped story of reincarnation, revenge, and undying love.

In her final year of high school, Lucy feels strongly drawn to a loner named Daniel. But she never works up the nerve to even speak to him, until in a very awkward moment, they get the opportunity to confess their feelings. This potentially romantic moment goes very wrong when Daniel insists on calling her "Sophia" and doing so, for some reason not quite understood by her, scares her off. He flees away and Lucy, while initially relieved, becomes obsessed with finding him again.

There is a reason to this madness. They are both reincarnated souls. As it turns out, many people are, but Daniel is special: he remembers all of his previous lives. And he knows that he and Lucy have repeatedly been lovers in the past. Lucy, for her part, has no such memory but is open to the idea. Lucy slowly learns the truth and puts the pieces together. Will they be able to be together in this life and end a millennium of searching and loneliness?

Brashares is a good writer and her rather lengthy story manages to keep the reader's interest throughout. But I'd still have been happier with some more judicious editing (there is only so much angst and ponderous statements of endless love that one can take!). The tropes (love at first sight, love never dies, etc.) that fill the book are pretty traditional old material. But for lovers of romance novels, this pretty much has everything, including a little bit of action. And it hangs together well as Brashares paces everything beautifully. The book is pitched in such a way to appeal to all ages. The characters are young enough to make this YA, but old and mature enough to bring in adult readers.

The beautifully open ending (and a significant number of unresolved questions) invites the inevitable sequel. With its supernatural themes, this is Brashare's answer to the Twilight franchise. Who needs vampires, when you can be reincarnated instead?

I Now Pronounce You Someone Else, by Erin McCahan

Bronwen has always had trouble feeling wanted. She can't manage to communicate with her mother. Her stepfather, while nicer, has never wanted her (proof: when Bronwen was 13 years old, he promised that he would adopt her but then failed to do so without ever bothering to explain why). She's just about convinced that she was switched at birth and really belongs to another family.

In her senior year, she starts to date Jared and falls in love with both him and his warm family. Overwhelmed by their kindness, she doesn't hesitate a minute to accept when Jared proposes marriage to her. But as time passes and the wedding day approaches, Bronwen finds that marriage -- far from giving her a new family in which to develop -- will actually mean sublimating her individuality. She begins to wonder if it is really the right decision for her.

This book, which is really about identity and finding oneself, seems oddly packaged. The book's title suggests a humorous book, while the blurb stresses her sense of being a changeling. Neither is really the point of the story. The tale is in fact rather sad and the ending almost tragic (although a lengthy prologue forces an eventual happy ending on to the story). The overall effect is cloying and difficult to follow. I spent the first half of the story trying to figure out where we were going with this girl. It is only after the proposal occurs that we figure out the point and by then it is pretty obvious where we will end up. Even with what should be a fairly interesting material, McCahan doesn't spin a very interesting tale. My sense is that the book is at least partly biographical, which may make it a cautionary tale, but the writing is very factual and lacks the lyricism that Bronwen's struggles call out for.

Every Little Thing in the World, by Nina de Gramont

After screwing up one time too many, Sydney's mother gives up on trying to control the girl and ships her off to her father. Dad has his own idea of what Sydney needs and decides to send her to Northern Ontario for a month-long Outward Bound canoe trip.

Sydney, however, has deeper problems: she's pregnant and doesn't know what to do about it. There are practical issues (where to find the money to pay for an abortion, whether to tell her parents, etc.) but she also simply doesn't know what she wants. In those weeks on the water, Sydney gains perspective about her life so far and about her relationships with others.

The story follows mostly familiar plotting and presents few surprises, but it is pleasing to read and well-written. Sydney's voice is far too mature for her age and sounds more as if she were writing the story in her adulthood with the wisdom of hindsight. This makes her thoughts insightful but unrealistically sober and clear-headed. Also, for allegedly being such a screw-up before the story begins, she makes almost no bad choices in the course of the novel, so that her bad-girl reputation seems unearned. This also makes the story a bit unbelievable.

Putting these concerns aside, the book makes fine summer reading. The characters are complex and interesting. I particularly like the youth-at-risk Mick, who proves both sympathetic and repulsive at the same time. Romantic relationships form and break with a stunningly realistic ease that rings true and also serves to underscore the plot of self-discovery.

The Extraordinary Secrets of April, May, & June, by Robin Benway

In this mixture of YA angst and supernatural powers, April, May, and June are three sisters (named after the months in which they were born - exactly 13 months apart) who are struggling with a new school after their forced move after their parents divorce. What makes them unusual are the powers that they have acquired (April can see the future, May can make herself invisible, and June can read other peoples' thoughts). At first these powers are simply useful tools for coping with school, but when April forsees a tragedy coming, the girls must band together to prevent it. Can they bond as sisters or will their jealousies and distrust doom them?

Of the two components, this book is much bigger on the YA angst (boy trouble, sister trouble, BF trouble, etc.) than it is about the supernatural. There are hints that the powers may be hereditary and there is some discussion about trying to tame the powers, but for the most part this book is really about boys and about sibling bonding. It would even be a bit fair to say that the entire supernatural powers thing probably could have been removed altogether and the story would still hang together. That doesn't mean that it's bad, but that it was unnecessary to add the magic. Perhaps, Benway left it undeveloped so there would be room for a sequel?

In any case, I'm always far more interested in human interaction than magic and I think that the relationship that these girls have is more interesting that the rest of their talents.

The Heart Is Not a Size, by Beth Kephart

One day Georgia finds a flyer posted on the wall calling for teen volunteers to go down to Anapra (a squatter's village outside of Juarez) to help build a bathhouse. For a reason that she cannot explain, Georgia feels strongly drawn to the opportunity and she talks her friend Riley into joining her. Living fairly privileged Main Line lives, neither girl knows truly what to expect. But while there is plenty of culture shock and the work is far more difficult than either one of them imagined, it is what the trip does to their friendship that is the most surprising.

Kephart writes beautiful dream-like prose. Her novels work best when there is a strong story to provide the framework for it. But in this book, she struggles with finding that story.

As she explains in her acknowledgments at the end of the book, she wrote this book as a response to her own actual trip to Anapra. It is thus no surprise that the parts of the story that describe the location and the people are particularly moving. Similarly, the emotions that Georgia feels are heartfelt and come across clearly. But the story upon which these sections are framed is sketchy and underdeveloped.

The Kind of Friends We Used To Be, by Frances O'Roark Dowell

This sequel to The Secret Language of Girls picks up pretty much where the former left off. Kate and Marilyn are entering seventh grade. They've learned from the past year to not take their friendship for granted, but they still struggle with maintaining it. AS the girls slip further and further away from each other, they find their friendship based more upon nostalgia. Simultaneously, they find themselves drawn into new friendships with both girls and boys as they struggle to make the transition into adolescence.

Along with trying to keep the flame of their friendship burning, they also are carving out they sense of identity. Marilyn is sure that cheerleading and becoming popular are what she wants from life while Kate is drawn to a riot-grrl persona. But they find themselves constantly questioning their choices.

As before, the story is told in first-person alternating points of view, which allows us to get inside the girls' heads clearly. This brings the necessary immediacy, but it also exposes a flaw: the author's voice frequently imposes a level of self-realization that seems out of keeping with any person (let alone a typical tween). This is necessary to provide the poignant angst that the author is shooting for, but it also makes the story a bit less realistic.

The prior book was groundbreaking for its insights into the troubles of tweenhood, for the dexterous way of navigating the choppy seas of tween friendships, and for so respectfully tackling the painful transitions. For the target audience, it probably provided some consoling empathy. For older readers, it gave a painful reminder of a past best forgotten. The sequel doesn't really try to do more. With the exception of introducing the volatile territory of girl-boy friendships/jealousies into the mix, the sequel is basically more of the same. To many readers that is probably more than sufficient.

The draw of both books is the clear-eyed way that the author shows how very decent children, with capable moral compasses, can still hurt each other. That they are such good kids makes us sympathetic to them, and makes the hurting all that more difficult to observe.

Numbers, by Rachel Ward

In this unusual mixture of supernatural and hard gritty urban reality, Jem is the daughter of a heroine addict whose been kicked around her share of foster homes. Her biggest problem is not her difficult homelife but the fact that whenever she looks a person in the eye, she sees a date -- the date when that person will die. This terrible piece of knowledge has prevented her from making friends until she meets Spider - a trouble youth with his own baggage (not least of which is the date which Jemma sees when she looks at him -- only a few weeks away!). But everything skews dramatically off course when Jemma and Spider find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time (a fact that Jemma knows because every person she sees has the same date hanging over them -- today's date!).

This book is many things: a taut suspenseful story, supernaturalism with some nice religious commentary, and a story of two troubled youths who battle with themselves, with each other, and with a system that has given up on them. It's not an easy book to read. Given the high stakes that are riding on them, you'd rather they were more valiant, more mature, and more together, but that would not be realistic. Instead, Jemma and Spider are every bit the screw-ups that society has ordained them to be. The irony that society has already determined their future when it is Jemma who can actually predict the future is just one of the nice subtleties of this story. Refreshingly original!

For Keeps, by Natasha Friend

Sixteen years ago, Paul (the boy who got Josie's mother pregnant) moved away without a second thought. It was hard on her mother to raise Josie on her own, but it also brought mother and daughter very close together. All of that is thrown into jeapardy when they spot Paul's parents (Josie's grandparents) in a local grocery store and Josie learns that they have moved back into the area. This discovery sets off a chain of events that irrevocably changes their world and challenges everything Josie thought she understood about her mother, her father, and the nature of love itself.

On its face, this is fairly predictable YA fare and will not offer any major surprises, but Friend has a particularly strong talent with depicting complex familial interaction (as seen in her previous novels like Perfect). It's easy to find parallels to Gilmore Girls here but Josie and her mother Kate's relationship is far more realistic and nuanced. In a similar vein, Josie's relationship with her BFF Liv (and with Liv's Dads) is also refreshingly honest.

I randomly picked this up off the shelf at my local library, but I think it deserves a good buzz, so I'd recommend it to others.