After the End, by Amy Plum

For all of her life until now, Juneau has believed that a great war wiped out civilization thirty years ago.  She and her clan, living in a remote part of Alaska, are nearly the only survivors of an apocalypse.  Aside from occasional unwanted run-ins with brigands and raiders, there is no one else left.  Then, a surprise attack destroys her village and her people are abducted and taken away.  She alone must find them and she sets off in a search, using clairvoyance and other magic she has learned to locate them.

As she sets out, she immediately makes a shocking discovery:  the world was not in fact destroyed.  Civilization is very much still there.  Why would the adults on her tribe lie to her?  There's no one to ask, but it seems tied up to their recent abduction.  Meanwhile, she is definitely being hunted.  In fact, as she quickly learns, there are two separate groups looking for her.  With the help of a spoiled young man named Miles (with a secret agenda of his own), she seeks to find her people in this strange (and very alive) world, while evading the hunters.

An odd adventure, with both realistic and supernatural elements mixed in.  In general, the story worked.  I was less taken by Plum's research - it is fairly obvious that the author has spent little if any time in the settings of the story as her descriptions sound like they were cribbed off of websites and she makes some pretty big geographical errors.  Somewhat more frustrating is the cliffhanger ending which basically lets us know that this the first of an unannounced series.  Don't expect any sort of wrap up as the book stops abruptly without an ending.

Being Sloane Jacobs, by Lauren Morrill

Two girls with identical first and last names decide to swap places while attending summer camp in Montreal.  Sloane Emily Jacobs is the daughter of a US senator, who has just betrayed her.  Her helicopter mother meanwhile is forcing her back into a career in figure skating that Sloane no longer wants to pursue.  Sloane Devon Jacobs is from the other side of the tracks.  Her goal is to score a hockey scholarship to get into college and escape her alcoholic mother and distant father, but she's choking on the rink and afraid that she doesn't have what it takes.  When the two girls cross paths, they bond over their envy of the other's life.

On a dare, they decide to switch roles -- with Sloane Emily ending up at a summer hockey camp and Sloane Devon at an elite figure skating training program.  While they both can skate, they are essentially fish out of water and a great deal of the first part of the book traces their struggle to survive in their new environments.  There's the expected set-backs, but ultimately the overcoming of this adversity to succeed (and to learn something about themselves to take back with them).  Romance, as expected, also pops up and complicates things.

No major surprises here, albeit a unique setting (Montreal).  Morrill tries to add some weight to the story with the family troubles, but neither the alcoholic mother nor the philandering father really get pursued.  Most of the adversity, for that matter, is played through pretty fast.  The pacing is a bit too glib to get hung up on character growth or literary pretension.  Classify this as a summer read.

Like No Other, by Una LaMarche

Devorah and Jaxon both live in Crown Heights, but they couldn't be more different.  Devorah is a young Lubavitch Hasid while Jaxon is West Indian.  Their worlds are completely separated.  But one night, during a hurricane, they end up stuck together in an elevator.  This chance encounter changes their lives, opening up a view of each others' worlds that draws them together.  And thus, they fall in love despite the insurmountable barriers to them even seeing each other.

On one side, this can be seen as a modern retelling of Romeo and Juliet.  LaMarche has carved out a splendid look at what happens when two strong-minded young people resist their community's notions of what the future is supposed to bring.  However, there is more going on here.  For Devorah, there is an important question of her ability to choose a future that may not involve marriage at all (and not just with whom she socializes).  And while Jaxon is pleasant enough, the glue of this story is really Devorah, as she explores the danger of rejecting traditional boundaries while still embracing her faith. 

The novel, in the end, becomes a cross between the meeting-of-two-worlds of The Geography of You and Me and a far more serious dash of Eishes Chayil's Hush (it certainly seems to offend the same audience!).  Where it differs from both is that it is far more thoughtful and less sensationalist.  Anyone expecting to find a bad guy here will be quite surprised by the ending!

Let's Get Lost, by Adi Alsaid

Leila, while on an immense road trip north to see the Aurora Borealis, chances upon four different young people.  There's Hudson, about to start his studies in medicine.  Then, there's an angry and lost Bree, who's running away from the only home she has left.  While fleeing, she is still desperate to find a way to stop running.  Elliott, obsessed with romantic comedies, presents a different challenge.  He has just ruined his prom by attempting to generate a picture-perfect moment with his best friend by (unsuccessfully) confessing his love to her.  Leila helps him make the night right.  And then there's Sonia, afraid to acknowledge in public that she's dating again less than a year after the untimely demise of her first love.  And finally, of course, there's Leila's own story (about why she's making this trip in the first place).

The ultimate result is five peripherally related short stories.  Most of them are about loss and finding love again, and this is the theme that ties everything together.  While that is a decent theme and these are good stories, they are a bit repetitive, and the message too heavily hit.  That said, I liked the overall structure, which seemed different and a bit unique for YA.

The Half Life of Molly Pierce, by Katrina Leno

For most of her life, Molly has experienced episodes which she has blacked out and afterwards cannot remember what has occurred for a period of time.  As far as she knows, no one else has noticed because she's always managed to care for herself.  This changes after Molly is involved in a terrifying auto accident, where a victim (whom she has never met before) recognizes her but calls her by an entirely different name. 

It quickly becomes apparent that there is an entire group of people who know her, but under a different name, and solely from the time periods when she has blacked out.  Stranger still, no one seems to be surprised from this finding.  But no one will explain to her why this is so.

A complicated and, at times, tricky plot to follow.  The pace is perfect for the story and the mystery unravels at a satisfying pace.  The characters are a bit hard to engage with, but this is a plot-driven story.  Leno makes some effort to round out the character of Molly, but to be blunt no one really cares if she is a bad friend or a kind older sister.  We simply want to know what the heck is going on!  And that need to figure out this story is what will keep you flipping pages.

I Love I Hate I Miss My Sister, by Amelie Sarn

Two teenage girls of Algerian descent, growing up in France.  The younger one Djelila is brave and fearless.  She wears tight jeans and makeup to school, plays basketball, smokes with her friends, and bristles at the patriarchal restrictions of her family's culture.  The older one Sohane takes a different path.  In her last year of high school, Sohane decides that she'll start wearing a headscarf as a statement of freedom and self-respect.  Her decision to wear a head covering in school violates French law and causes her to be expelled from school.  Djelila is outraged at the treatment of her sister, but far worse awaits her when she is murdered for her apostasy a week later by a neighbor.

Translated from French, this short novel packs quite a punch of political issues, showing how religious freedom is ultimately more complicated than civil society understands.  It's easy as an American to see the hypocrisy in the French approach to secularization, but even that outrage oversimplifies the complexity of the issue.  Instead, Sarn brilliantly shows the yearning for self and agency through these two sisters.  Along the way, she also tackles the complex feelings of love and jealousy that the two girls experience towards each other.

Thirty Sunsets, by Christine Hurley Deriso

On the eve of her family's annual month-long beach vacation, Forrest discovers that her mother has invited Olivia (her older brother's psycho bulimic girlfriend) to join them.  Worse still, she's going to have to share a room with her!  All that Forrest wants is to have a normal summer -- meet a cute guy on the beach and have a first kiss, sort out why her brother has gotten so weird, and maybe lose Olivia in a riptide along the way.  What Forrest gets, however, is completely unexpected:  a summer of revelations (about family, her brother, and herself).

I liked Deriso's great sense of family dynamics and her ear for language in complex scenes.  I was less thrilled by her taste for melodrama and piling on crisis upon crisis.  This story features a rape, an attempted sexual assault, an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, an abusive mother, alcoholism, and even a death.  Deriso doesn't have much patience for storytelling, so rather than focus on her strengths in character building she resorts to action and violence.  This ultimately makes the book exhausting and thin, and wastes some lovely and interesting characters.

My Faire Lady, by Laura Wettersten

In this fairly basic story of summer romance, we get a bit of a twist in the setting (a Ren Faire) but a tale which pretty much follows an expected trajectory.  Rowena, recovering from being cheated on by her boyfriend, jumps at the opportunity to spend the summer working away from home at a local Ren Faire.  There, she is blown away by the pageantry and the friendly community that provides it.  Quickly, she sets off in hot pursuit of a sexy knight but discovers that her real true love is waiting in the wings for her to realize it.

The story is sweet but a little hard to believe.  What parent would let their teen daughter waltz off for an unsupervised summer at a Ren Faire (sheer luck and some attentive grown-ups seem to save Ro from bigger trouble that probably would have come her way).  And everyone is just a little too sweet and friendly for words (even the bad guys are a bit comic and harmless).  To me, this made the book seem like it was pitched for a pretty young audience, but with underage drinking and multiple veiled allusions to sex, I'm not really sure. I couldn't tell if this was for middle readers, YA, or NA (one review I read claimed it was for "all ages" -- but perhaps it was really for none?).

Fat Boy vs the Cheerleaders, by Geoff Herbach

Gabe has a love-hate relationship with the school's pop machine.  It certainly isn't helping his waistline.  On a good day, he can limit himself to only three bottle of Code Red.  But even though he has a bit of addiction to sugary carbonated drinks, the good news is that the proceeds at least benefit the band program.  A small comfort when the popular kids are making fun of your weight.

But then, the price goes up unannounced.  When Gabe goes to complain, he discovers something even more shocking: the proceeds from the machine have been diverted to a new program for the cheerleaders.  Summer band camp has been cancelled and the entire band program is in jeopardy.  In response, Gabe rallies the other band "geekers" to make a stand and defend the music program and their own self-respect.

A strange and fairly random story that delights in the sort of coarse razzing language that YA writers believe belong in "boy" books (and which always does a nice job of driving me towards the books with pink covers instead!).  There's plenty of frenetic activity and little troubling character development to interfere with it.  That would be fine, but most of the action is recounted by Gabe after the fact in the form of a one-sided interrogation.  This device drags things out and artificially builds up the suspense as important plot points are conveniently omitted until later to extend the story.  In sum, a pretty annoying read with a silly plot.

On the Road to Find Out, by Rachel Toor

Alice is an ace at getting good grades.  She's easily beat out all of the competition at school. But when her application for early decision at Yale is rejected, she has to do a reality check.  Outside of academics, her life is unbalanced.  Aside from her best friend (who's really more like her Mom's adopted favorite daughter) and her pet rat Walter, Alice doesn't really have anyone who understands her.  And when she has a falling out with her friend and a tragedy strikes at home, she realizes just how tenuous her situation is.

It is therefore something of a godsend that she discovers cross-country running around this time.  Having never done it before, a New Year's resolution to start doesn't go terribly well.  But Alice is persistent and determined to find something she can excel at, even if she really isn't sure what she wants.

I went through a lot of opinions about this book as I read it.  At times, I found it unfocused.  I wasn't really sure what it was supposed to be about (love for a rat, reconciling with mother, a search for meaning, etc.).  The story seemed to change more than the character.  Unhelpfully, Alice can be a terribly inconsistent character.  For such an insightful and intelligent narrator, she seemed far too capable of being clueless and boneheaded.  It's a character flaw that's supposed to be endearing, but it just seemed implausible and more like a lazy bit of writing.  But by the end, it seemed to hit its stride and it goes out on a high note, so I'll give it a qualified endorsement.

The Geography of You and Me, by Jennifer E. Smith

The night the lights go out all over the Northeast, Lucy and Owen find themselves stuck in a stalled elevator in their Manhattan apartment.  Once rescued, they decide to spend the evening together.  The city -- without electricity -- has become magical, a surprisingly friendly town where you can even see the stars from Central Park.

Afterwards, they move on -- Owen and his father move out west, while Lucy and her parents relocate to Edinburgh and then to London.  Long distance relationships are hard (especially when you're not really sure what the nature of the relationship is in the first place), but the friendship born that night survives and they stay in touch through postcards and occasional emails.

I loved the characters (so full of hope and anxiety).  I loved the settings (so many familiar places from New York to Seattle to Edinburgh, and just enough detail to make them seem authentic without overdoing things).  But most of all, I loved the sheer beauty of the story -- a simple romance to be sure, but a captivating one based on honesty and believability.  I might have gotten a bit annoyed towards the end when Smith drags everything out a bit more, but I forgave her as soon as I got to the pay-off.

The Truth About Alice, by Jennifer Mathieu

Everyone knows that Alice is a slut.  She slept with two guys within the same hour at a party.  She even was responsible for one of those boy's death a few days later when she sexted him while he was trying to drive his truck.  So what that folks haven't been nice to her?  And so what that people have sometimes exaggerated the things she's done when they re-tell the rumors?  The graffiti in the girls' bathroom?  And the casting out and shunning?  She deserved all of it!

However, the truth is a slippery thing.  As four of Alice's peers recount their stories and admit their small contributions and omissions, a somewhat simpler yet more damning story is revealed.  And it is all the more shocking for its plausibility.

A well-written and ultimately icky story about bullying and the role that adolescent insecurity plays in it.  It's a story that is calculated to make you mad.  While there are acts of courage and decency in the story, the overall message is of how pride, vanity, and arrogance will trump the truth.  Mathieu makes no attempt to whitewash and the result is an ugly (but very honest) story about the near destruction of a human being a mob.  Almost certainly the book is on its way to becoming a book discussion subject!

We Are the Goldens, by Dana Reinhardt

Nell and her older sister Layla have always been inseparable, at least, that is, in Nell's mind.  Going to separate schools, it's been only too easy to explain away any distance between them.  So when Nell starts at City Day as a freshman, she is certain that she and her sister (a junior) will bond tightly.  On her first day, Nell is surprised to learn that Layla has a secret life.  And when Nell learns what the secret is, she is torn between loyalty to Layla and her conviction to do the right thing.  Meanwhile, she's making her own mistakes and torn over her feelings for her best friend Felix.

Written in the heart-aching pleas of an extended letter directly to her older sister, Nell's story early on sets a high expectation of tragedy and heartbreak.  Unfortunately, this particular expedition into pathos didn't gel as well for me as her earlier fraternal take, The Things A Brother Knows.  It hurts that the material is not all that original and that the storyline is cluttered with subplots.  The story felt more like a novella that Reinhardt has stretched out with other stories that were peripheral at best.

Yet, there is no denying the strength and beauty of Reinhardt's writing.  Her ability to drop emotional bombshells with seeming ease makes this a pleasure to read.  And while I very rarely quote from the books I read, I can't help but quote a passage (from page 184) that knocked the wind out of me for its amazing insight into the pain of adolescent transition:

"It's suited Mom and Dad best to think of us as smart and mature young women with good sense who make good choices so that they could wrap themselves up in their own lives and fall asleep a little on the job of being our parents.  All these years, Layla, we've tried to make things easy on them.  We go back and forth, back and forth, smart and mature, building a bridge between two lives and crossing it over and over again.  You know I've always hated being called a baby, but I started to wish it were true.  The baby of whom nothing is asked or expected.

"I wanted to go to them, to tell them, to put them in charge, but I didn't know how.  I was afraid to cause that earthquake."

Love and Other Foreign Words, by Erin McCahan

A precocious student, Josie has skipped a few years of school, but her social skills haven't necessarily kept up with her academic advancement.  To cope with her challenges, she's learned to speak everyone's "language" (student-teacher, her sisters, her parents, etc.).  But when Josie's sister Kate brings home a fiance, Josie is dumbfounded.  He's just obviously wrong for Kate and Josie cannot imagine what she sees in him.  Worse, the new couple have taken to communicating in a new language that Josie finds she doesn't understand -- a realization that leads to the even bigger bombshell that Josie really doesn't understand "love" at all.

For a story about language and communication, it is a good thing that McCahan excels with dialogue in this rather chatty book. Unfortunately, she is less successful with telling her story.  There are some pretty obvious directions that the story will go (reconciliation being the obvious consistent solution in all cases), but there isn't much in the first 200 pages of the book to give any indication of where McCahan intends to go.

It didn't help that I failed to gain much sympathy for Josie or Kate.  For much of the book, they were just plain mean to each other.  And, while I know full well how siblings can be, it's hard for me to believe that the parents wouldn't have more effectively stepped in.  Finally, there's that silly infatuation that Josie has over Denis DeYoung -- excuse me?!  Gag!

A Time to Dance, by Vadma Venkatraman

Veda loves dancing and has talent in the Indian art of Bharatanatyam dance.  Her strength, flexibility, and dogged determination have given her the ability to strike amazing and difficult poses demonstrating immense technical proficiency.  She wins competitions and is justifiably proud of the achievements which have come from years of hard work.

Then an accident injures her, leading to the amputation of one of her feet.  Her once-supportive dance instructor tells her that her career is over, but she refuses to give up.  Instead, she focuses on rebuilding her strength and learning to use a prosthetic foot and picks up a new teacher.  From this new teacher and the inspiration of another dancer, she discovers an entirely different approach to dance which is focused more on spirituality than form.

A beautiful story that sheds light on an unfamiliar world of Indian dance and spirituality.  Veda is a great ambassador for the reader, providing us with a sympathetic heroine with a heart of gold.  She is both strong and virtuous and, in Venkatraman's gentle hand, she both rewards us and is rewarded.

I was less taken by the writing itself.  Venkatraman chose to write the novel in a pithy broken form that claims to be free verse, but which felt more like half-finished ideas.  The writing lacks the coherency of prose or the beauty of poetry, leaving us with words that seek to be poignant in their minimalism but that just look sketchy and rough.

Searching for Sky, by Jillian Cantor

For as long as Sky can remember, Island has been her world. Surrounded by endless Ocean, she and her friend River have survived on captured rabbits, fish, and berries.  Her mother and his father perished some time ago, so now it is only them.  But then, they are rescued and brought back to a world that Sky does not know or understand.  Sent to live with her maternal grandmother (who she doesn't remember) and separated from River, she has to learn entirely new survival skills.

Beautifully written, Cantor delights (perhaps a bit too enthusiastically at times) in contrasting the innocent life on Island with Sky and River's existence in California -- all a little Gods Must Be Crazy (but without the laughs)  Those contrasts and the process these two young people go through in acclimatizing to their new world could make for a stellar book on its own, but Cantor is not content to tell that tale. Instead, she throws in a lot of back story about Sky and River's parents belonging to a cult and a mass murder that implicates River -- all of which ultimately seems unnecessary. Thankfully, this extra stuff is more of a distraction than something to ruin this otherwise nice story of innocence lost.

I Kill the Mockingbird, by Paul Acampora

In the summer before they start high school, three friends decide to honor their late English teacher by hatching a plot to incite a mass movement for reading his favorite book -- Harper Lee's classic To Kill A Mockingbird.  The kids reason that if they can make the book seem controversial, they can artificially stir interest in it.  Learning that modern bookstore chains are incapable of tracking books that are mis-shelved, they trigger an artificial shortage by simply hiding copies of the books in every large bookstore in Connecticut. Their action inspires copy-cats nationwide and, before they know it, the whole thing has swung wildly out of control.

I liked the concept and eagerly dived into this short middle reader. The characters were smart and funny and I expected cleverness. But the book gets a bit too precious for my taste.  First of all, there's the very weird idea that To Kill A Mockingbird could go viral.  Weirder still, the way it is done (can you really manage in a few weeks to travel all over the state, misplace every copy of a book, and not get caught?).  Perhaps none of this matters and perhaps this absurdity is all supposed to be in fun, like a Kate DiCamillo book.  But it's really just silly and what is the point anyway?  There are a number of great opportunities to say something (about literature, growing up, romance, or even cancer) but Acampora just wants to be goofy and convince us that (since the book is about good literature) it must somehow be valuable intrinsically. But it never did it for me.

Pointe, by Brandy Colbert

Theo has struggled with an eating disorder and self-confidence issues since her first boyfriend disappeared on her and (barely two weeks later) her best friend Donovan was abducted.  Four years later, she's mostly recovered and well on her way to a professional ballet career.  But then Donovan suddenly returns and she's shocked to learn that her disappearing boyfriend was also her best friend's kidnapper!

What develops seems like a classic (and predictable) drama where everything comes to a head at the same time:  she'll have to testify against her former boyfriend, publicly reveal her shame, probably pass out from her increasingly dangerous starvation routines, and audition for her professional dancing career -- all in rapid succession.  But what turned my opinion of this story from "predictable drama" to a pleasant surprise was an ending that completely shocked me.  Colbert goes for something completely different, with an ending that was so fitting and so much better than I expected.   It's easy to get jaded when you read hundreds of YA books, so when an author throws you a curve ball, it will make your day!

The other characters are largely forgettable (and easily confused with each other) so it's important that Theo carry this story.  That is hard as she is hardly sympathetic.  Frankly, she does a number of plain stupid things and does a similarly terrible job of sorting through her life (for example, her hesitation over testifying became increasingly implausible to me the more it was drawn out).  Yet, there's no denying that she pulls herself together in the end (and not, as I said above, in the expected fashion).

Notes from Ghost Town, by Kate Ellison

Nearly a year has passed since Olivia's mother confessed to killing Stern -- a piano prodigy who was also Olivia's boyfriend.  As the time of her mother's sentencing approaches, Olivia is angry and scared, and going a bit crazy.  Literally.  Olivia's suddenly gone color blind.  Her doctor can find no physical cause of the disorder and suggests it may be stress-induced.  This is no small matter.  Mom suffers from schizophrenia, which can be hereditary.  And perception disorders can be a symptom of the disease.

Worse still, Olivia has started to experience hallucinations that Stern is appearing before her.  Or are they really hallucinations?  He tells her that her mother is actually innocent, that she was framed, and that he is stuck in limbo until the injustice is corrected.  Olivia, he says, must figure out what really happened and rescue her mother before she is sentenced.  While none of this makes any sense to her, Olivia decides to act.

It's a little of a slow starter, but once the sleuthing begins, Ellison weaves a tight story of intrigue that still finds time for all levels of trust and betrayal, and even a small romance.  The ending wraps things up a bit too easily, but we go through enough to get to that happy ending that it is welcomed nonetheless.  The story's debt to Ghost is a bit obvious, but it's recast enough that younger readers won't mind that this is hardly original.

Say What You Will, by Cammie McGovern

Amy is the girl in a motorized scooter, a hand-held computer that talks for her, and half a body that won't work properly.  Matthew is the kid who taps the lockers when he walks down the hall, washes his hands repeatedly, and never goes out.  Neither of them really have any friends.

When Amy complains to her mother that having a grown-up health aide with her at school basically ensures that she'll never meet anyone, a plan is hatched to hire four "peer helpers" to work with her at school.  Matthew gets hired as one of those helpers.  It's an odd match-up and Amy's over-protective parents aren't thrilled to have Matthew (with his steadily worsening OCD) taking care of their daughter.  However, the two kids discover a special chemistry that transcends their usual public identity as "the girl with CP" and "the OCD boy." The result is a surprisingly touching story of two young people with a special relationship.

The strength of the book is the characters.  They can be stiff (McGovern struggles with Matthew in particular), but they are sympathetic and insightful.  Frustratingly prone to doing dumb things, this makes the reader root for them all the more.  Sales reps with limited imaginations have tried to bill this novel as Fault In Our Stars meets Eleanor & Park, but it really is none of the above.  The kids are not dying and they really aren't geeky nerds either.  They are, however, the only two young people who can see past each other's disabilities due to the sheer fact that they know what it is really like to be labeled.  Their relationship is frighteningly lovely and fragile in a way that grownups will appreciate, and it will break your heart.

The only criticism I have with the story is how long it was dragged out and how randomly the story weaves and dodges.  McGovern has a near-stubborn refusal to follow the usual predictable arc and the story that we begin with is hardly the one with which we end (to paraphrase the wisdom of Chekhov, the pistol in the first chapter is used in chapter three to dig up turnips!).  Yet, the completely unpredictable trajectory of the story is also its strength as it serves to underscore the truth that life goes in unpredictable directions.  Those looking for a definitive conclusion will be disappointed by the one chosen here.  In the end, the story doesn't end so much as slow down enough for the reader to leap off.