Long Road to the Circus, by Betsy Bird (ill by David Small)

No one ever truly leaves Burr Oak, Michigan, but twelve year-old Suzy means to make a good try of it.  She has a great role model in the form of an eccentric retired circus performer, the mysterious Madame Marantette.  Madame left Burr Oak and, while she returned after retiring, Suzy figures she knows a thing or two about how to see the world.  However, she has to figure out a way to ask the woman.

Suzy's opportunity comes when she notices that her uncle keeps slipping away early in the morning.  Suzy sneaks out of the house and follows him all the way to Madame's house.  Uncle Fred, it turns out, has been helping train Madame's horses and taking care of a flock of ostriches that she owns.  Suzy's never seen an ostrich before but soon she's smitten by them.  Gaucho, the feistiest bird in the flock, is being trained to pull a surrey alongside a horse.  It's an impossible task and Fred has been struggling. Suzy insists on helping him by learning to ride Gaucho for herself!

Suzy knows plenty about horses, but ostriches are an entirely different thing.  And with a lot of trial and a lot more error, Suzy steadfastly pursues her task with the hopes that if she can master Gaucho she could earn a ticket to join the circus and leave Burr Oak.

Set in the 1920s, this charming story features lots of humor and plenty of adventure.  It also is an unusually innocent book.  Aside from breaking some family rules (and being punished for doing so), there's hardly anything for even the most anxious parent to object to. Suzy's family may strike modern children as being overly strict, but Suzy is clever and knows how to bend the rules to get what she wants in the end.

Suzy is also not much of an intellectual, but instead relies on a lot of horse sense and instinct, and just stubbornly holding on to what she wants.  One of the lessons she learns in this book is that sometimes you do have to let go and having the wisdom to know when is a big part of growing up.  Charming illustrations enliven the text and a fascinating appendix describes the real people who inspired the story.

Dog Star, by Megan Shepherd

Inspired by the tragic and true story of Laika, the first living creature from Earth in space, we get this middle school novel told in alternating chapters by Laika and Nina, the girl who grew to love Laika before she was sent on a one-way ticket to the stars.

Laika is a stray, a "cold dog" in her words.  Very much unlike the "warm dogs" who have warm house to live in and food to eat.  Instead, Laika must survive on scraps and her street smarts to get by.  But a careless lapse leads to her capture and enrollment in a program to train canines to undergo the rigor of space travel.  She excels at it despite her distrust of human and other dogs.

Nina is a proverbial "cold girl" whose very best friend has abandoned her by defecting along with her family to America.  because of the family's betrayal, Nina is told that she must denounce her friend in order to protect her own family.  She struggles with the idea and is horrified to find the things that are being said about her friend.  Confused by the way her fellow students and teachers are betraying their ideals, she seeks solace in the presence of animals and bonds with Laika. The two grow close and, when Nina discovers that Laika won't be able to return from her trip, Nina becomes convinced that she must do something to save her best friend.

One can question the wisdom of writing a children's book about a girl and her slated-for-death best friend.  The true story of Laika is one that sits uncomfortably in history and there will be many people who would simply never read this book on principle.  Shepherd makes this much worse in two ways:  by developing a strong emotional story between the girl and the dog and by telling half the story through Laika's voice.  The chapters told from Laika's trusting point of view -- including her final moments on the rocket -- take a rather strong stomach (or severe detachment) to read.  Shepherd makes the argument in her afterward that the story, while tragic, needs to be told because of Laika'a major contribution to science and the nobility of her sacrifice, but one might counter that argument by pointing out that Laika never actually chose to make the sacrifice so what we are basically witnessing is a living creature being murdered.

Setting those ethical questions aside, the story felt uneven.  The story of Laika and Nina opening up to each other was lovely, but the political elements of the story are half-heartedly developed.  The bullying at school is poorly explained.  An over the top attempt at last minute sabotage rings untrue and largely undermines the emotional seriousness of the story.  One almost wishes that these diversions had been skipped altogether.

Bliss Adair and the First Rule of Knitting, by Jean Mills

The first rule of knitting is "don't look too far ahead" and for Bliss that has been as good of a rule for life as any.  Keeping her head down and letting things happen as they will won't make her a hero but it keeps her out of a lot of trouble.  

So, she plays thing safe.  She has a crush on Taz Fenwick's "perfect proportions" that seems unlikely to ever be consummated, which is just as well since she's still a bit afraid of boys. She has a small group of friends. She helps her parents out at the family's yarn shop, helping people fix their knitting mistakes.  Her two loves --  math and knitting -- provide comforting boundaries.

Two things shake up that comfortable world.  First, the arrival of the pregnant girl (the granddaughter of a customer) challenges Bliss to accept that some problems are out of her league. But it is accidentally eavesdropping of a conversation between a classmate's mother and her lover that presents a quandary for Bliss.  Should she tell her friend about the infidelity or is it kinder to mind her own business?  And do the rules change when the friend becomes a romantic interest?

Interspersed with lots of knitting references, this novel gently explores Bliss's growing awareness of life's imperfections.  At times perhaps unrealistically mature, Bliss still has enough room for growth to teach the us a few things.  The positive supportive atmosphere of the story and the realistically unresolved ending leaves the reader a satisfactory conclusion.

Check & Mate, by Ali Hazelwood

Of all the books I've reviewed in the past year, this one has probably had the most buzz of any of them.  Aside from the fact that Hazelwood is an accomplished author of adult romance, is it worth the hype?  In short, not really.  It's a charming YA romance with rather mature sentiments, but it breaks no new ground and suffers from shockingly thin research.  (OK, I will forever hold a grudge against any author who places her action on the Penn State campus, but claims that it is located in Philadelphia! -- page 76)

Mallory was once an up and coming chess whiz until she quit playing at fourteen, due to some painful events surrounding her father's death.  Ever since then, she's been trying to get as far away from chess as she can.  But the sport won't leave her alone and she gets aggressively recruited by a chess school to come and be a fellow for a year.  When she loses her existing job as a car mechanic (!) and faces the reality that she's the sole breadwinner for her sick mother and two younger sisters and has no means of paying the bills, she agrees reluctantly to take the offer.

The boy is Nolan, the world's current #1 rated player.  Of course, he's a sullen bad boy with a reputation and gloriously single (as is Mallory).  In a sport which is notorious for having a poor work-life balance, the two of them have an amazing amount of time to hang out.  They take advantage of this by studiously avoiding falling into each other's arms (until of course they do).  But anyone looking for sex will be saddened to learn that in this novel there are far more cases of the f-word being spoken aloud than being performed.

All that mockery aside, the story is entertaining and while I don't believe for a minute that either Mallory or Nolan know how to play chess (or car mechanics), I really enjoyed reading the book.  It moved fast, had funny moments, and contained a delightful cast of characters.  Most importantly, there's some wonderful things said about the sexual discrimination that plagues professional chess, although the point gets beaten to death.  The sisters got on my nerves, but I think that was intentional and it furthers the plot.  As for the things that most drive me nuts (the worthless mother, Mallory's self-pity, and the author's affection for contemporary youth culture references), they can be put aside and the book enjoyed.

Briar Girls, by Rebecca Kim Wells

Lena has spent her life wearing gloves and avoiding close contact with others.  Thanks to a curse from a witch, she is unable to touch people without killing them.  And given that sort of power, she's also had to maintain a low profile to avoid attracting too much attention.  After an unfortunate accident, her father has moved them to a remote community on the edge of a vast forest called the Silence -- a place that people who enter never return from.  And one night, she is tempted to enter it herself by a mysterious girl named Miranda.  

Miranda promises that she can help Lena break the curse in exchange for Lena's help in helping bring down an evil tyrant who holds sway over the city of Gather deep within the Silence -- a feat which requires killing or setting free a sleeping princess protected within a castle surrounded by impenetrable briars. But it quickly becomes apparent that Miranda is not telling the truth and, as various adventures unfold, she's far from unique.  Just about everyone in this story has hidden agendas and is hiding something.  Lena has to figure out who to trust and often must take temporary advantage from unreliable allies.

Featuring dragons, wolves, blood magic, curses, prophecy, and the rather enigmatic Silence itself, Briar Girls is a densely written, fast-paced fantasy adventure.  It sacrifices a great deal of character development in the process.  For while we get a chance in the beginning to meet Lena and to develop her rebellious and largely disobedient personality, most of the other characters are underdeveloped.  A sexual encounter between Lena and a boy named Alaric is sweet but strangely clinical.  A professed love with Miranda goes largely unconsummated, but does feature some brief moments of jealousy that suggest at feelings that are never quite allowed to develop.  As far as side characters, most of all I enjoyed the dragons, who were delightfully sadistic (as well as being snobby epicureans).  A story like this lives and dies on the action and the world building, both of which are stellar so any flaws in the characters can be overlooked safely.

All That's Left in the World, by Erik J. Brown

In the wake of a global flu pandemic that has killed the vast majority of the human race, pockets of survivors attempt to eke out a living by scavenging for supplies.  Sixteen year-old Andrew is heading south when he has the misfortune to get caught in a bear trap.  He stumbles his way across a remote cabin, where its lone survivor Jamie is holed up.  Jamie helps Andrew recover and an awkward friendship develops between them -- awkward because Jamie's gay and attracted to straight Andrew.  

But before any sort of romance can develop, the two boys are forced to flee when more hostile invaders arrive on the scene.  The two of them set out roughly following Andrew's original plan, heading south to the remains of Washington DC.  And when things don't work out, they then go down to Florida, encountering both friend and foe.  Along the way, they find vivid examples of how different choices have fared for the varied survivors.

While the writing is decent and the characters well-developed, the author really struggled to come up with a story.  The bulk of the novel is just a series of encounters with strangers stringed together.  Some go well and some go poorly, but they don't add up to a story and do get very repetitive.  The overall goal of the trip, which might have formed a true plot, keeps shifting.  It feels like Brown just fell in love with the idea of a post-apocalyptic survival story between two (maybe) gay boys.  However, even the romance is not really consummated and notably lacking in any heat. 

In the author's notes at the end, Brown attests that the story's similarities to recent events is largely coincidental.  It was originally drafted in 2015 (and thus predates COVID) but it's hard not to draw parallels.

Love & Resistance, by Kara H. L. Chen

Combining Olivia's love of history and political science with her shrewd observations about high school cliques and her struggles for popularity (or at least acceptance), Love & Resistance imagines a secret society of nerds.  The so-called NerdNet plot a revolution to overthrow the social hierarchy of their school.  Dominated by popular social influencer Mitzi, Plainfield High is portrayed as a totalitarian dictatorship, in which a small power elite brutally suppress all forms of dissent.  Olivia wants to change that and she and her group (with some help from the drama club and the local poetry scene) try to wrest control and rebuild a more egalitarian school.  

None of this plays out realistically, but it's a whole lot of fun and all in service to a good cause:  addressing bullying and racism.  At first, Olivia and her friends are all focused on getting revenge and striking back, but as those strategies largely fail, they make the important realization that the best way to confront power is to render it irrelevant.  A society based on fear and conformity can't survive when its values are ignored.  Chen never draws the analogy out to anything greater than Olivia's school, but the novel's epilogue all but connects the dots to a challenge to our larger society.

The character building seemed weak to me and the love stories lacked much fizz, but I enjoyed the story --in the beginning because it was fun and then in the end because it had a lot of useful advice for young people who find themselves too wrapped up in social media and trying to please everyone around them.

Fault Lines, by Nora Shalaway Carpenter

Viv has a reputation in her small West Virginia town of being difficult and unfriendly.  But while she's carrying a grudge against some of her peers, her real anger is directed against the fracking and pipeline companies that are tearing up the area.  When her hunting stand literally explodes from under her, she knows that the culprit is the local fracking operation, although she can't prove it.  So when she finds out that her Dad is about to cave in and sell land rights to a pipeline company, she becomes determined to take the company down.

Dex and his mother have recently moved to the area so Mom can work on the pipelines.  Drowning in medical bills, this is the first real job that she's had in years.  So while Dex isn't entirely unfamiliar with the environmental damage that fracking causes, his family has different priorities.  In any case, what happens here is of little concern to him.  He's signing up for the Army.  His mother doesn't approve, but he knows that serving will get him out of his mom's hair, give him an income, and send him to college.

The two of them, in sum, should have no reason to connect.  Viv hates what Dex's mom does for a living.  Dex, with his eyes set on the Army, has already checked out.  But as two outsiders, they become attracted to each other and eventually form an alliance to stand up for themselves and their beliefs.

Despite the attention paid to the environmental devastation being caused in West Virginia (and the author's loving depictions of the natural beauty of Appalachia), this is not solely a screed for environmentalism.  Rather, it is a tale of two young people emerging from their shells.  Viv and Dex both come from families dealing with loss (Viv's mother is dead and Dex's father is a struggling alcoholic whom was kicked out of the house).  As a result, their single-parent households fail to provide much of a role model for moving forward.  That they each do so is ultimately quite satisfying.

Every Bird a Prince, by Jenn Reese

Seventh grader Eren isn't thrilled that her mother has started dating a creepy lawyer.  And she's even less thrilled about the idea of dating herself, but her friends are all picking out crushes so they can all have partners for the dance.  Facing the pressure to be a good friend and social pressure to have a date, she picks popular soccer star Alex and her friends set the two of them up.  Eren has more than enough anxieties and doubts about herself, but trying to be romantic with Alex just surfaces more of them.  She doesn't feel that way about him and the more she tries, the less she enjoys being around him.

Seeming unrelated, things start to change for her when she rescues a bird in the woods.  He's a prince and he wants to reward her for her bravery and kindness by making Eren his champion.  What does a bird's champion do?  They fight "frost fangs" -- wolf-like creatures that feed on people's insecurities.  

It turns out that these frost fangs have been waging a war and the birds have been the sole defense, but their strength is diminishing.  If no one does anything, the frost fangs will take over and humanity will be lost to its insecurities.  This being a middle reader, everything will fall on Erne, Alex, and a few of their friends to save the world (or at least their school).  The showdown takes place at the school dance, where Eren must first overcome her own fears and anxieties and then convince her peers to do likewise.

I found it a clever fantasy novel with some heavy-handed messages about building up self-confidence and learning to turn off voices of doubt in your head.  There's some messy stuff about whether Erne is "aromantic" or simply not ready for romantic relationships -- given her age, in my opinion, the difference is unimportant and distracting. The far stronger message is that everyone has doubts about themselves, but it is important to not let them paralyze you from living your life and standing up for what you believe in.  It's not a new message, but the packaging here is quite clever and the story is memorable.

Hot Dutch Daydream, by Kristy Boyce

Borrowing some characters from her previous novel, Hot British Boyfriend and repurposing that story's key ingredients, this light surprisingly chaste romance takes an American girl to Europe for a summer of tourism and love.  Originality is less important than a well-paced story that delivers endorphins on a steady drip.

Sage has landed herself an ultra prestigious internship with Dr. Reese, a leading oncologist, at her research laboratory in Amsterdam.  She'll have to take care of the doctor's three-year-old son during the day and do a lot of drudge work, but in exchange, she'll get to attend a conference in Berlin and make a lot of connections.  There's just one catch:  she must stay away from Dr. Reese's gorgeous eighteen year-old son, Ryland.  You already know how this is going to turn out....

Ryland and Sage spend the summer going from hatred to reluctant coworkers to secret lovers (although the relationship doesn't move much further along than furtive kissing).  Along the way, they visit all of the sites, including two of my favorites:  the Zoo and the Kattenkabinet (Amsterdam's museum of feline art).  There's tastings of all the local culinary favorites and even a (slightly ridiculous) drop in at a coffee shop.

On the whole, there was nothing particularly objectionable about the book, but it felt like a pale imitation of its predecessor.  Sage is not nearly as interesting as Emmie from that book, lacking the compelling backstory which made rooting for Emmie more rewarding.  Sage, in contrast, is a grind with a serious work-life imbalance.  If you haven't read Hot British Boyfriend, start there and then pick this one up afterwards and see if you agree that we might have been better off with a one-and-done.

A Far Wilder Magic, by Allison Saft

Every year or so, the hala makes its appearance.  Fox-like, it lurks in the woods causing increasing amount of damage to its surroundings until the Halfmoon Hunt commences.  There, during the hunt, the best marksmen partner with the strongest alchemists to create a weapon that can match the hala's power.  Many fail and die (there hasn't been a confirmed kill in over 200 years) and the Halfmoon Hunt itself has taken on a tremendous symbolic, religious, and political value for society.

Margaret's mother was obsessed with finding the hala because she believed it was the key ingredient for making the Philosopher's Stone (from which in turn she could gain immortality and omnipotence).  She was so obsessed in her search that she abandoned her daughter to search for the beast.  And in her absence, the hala has come to Margaret instead.  Once Margaret knows it is nearby, Margaret is obsessed in her own way to slay the creature, not for the glory it will bring her but the opportunity to win back her mother's affection by delivering her mother the remains for her potions.

Wesley isn't an alchemist but he hopes to be so one day.  Searching for a teacher, he shows up on Margaret's doorstep looking for her mother.  Instead, the two of them team up to enter the Hunt.  Aside from the fact that Wes still knows very little about alchemy, there is resistance from the authorities to their participation in the hunt.  Wes is a poor Banva and practices the minority Sumic faith.  As opposed to the majority Katharists, Sumics don't even support the hunt, believing that the hala is a sacred creation of God.  Margaret is a Yu'adir, which is even worse.  For the elite (personified by the mayor's bigoted son, Jaime), the idea that a Banvish Sumic and Yu'adir could defeat Katharist is an abomination.  The Katharists will do anything to prevent this from ever happening.

The resulting novel contains a complex and immersive world that summons up themes of religious intolerance, racism, and classism, as well as a complicated system of alchemy.  I enjoyed that complexity and the many ways that the book subtly brings up its real world paralels.  The Katharists and the Sumics are a mishmash of largely Christian theologies, but the Yu'adir are unequivocally Jewish.  Even the slurs made against Margaret are right out of anti-Semitic screeds.  The Banvish and the discrimination against them similarly resemble Irish immigrants in the United States.  Wesley dreams of a career in politics, changing the status quo in much the same way that Irish politician did in the twentieth century.  The calls to action against Katharist primacy would be described as "woke" by American conservatives.

And, as if all that world building is not enough, there are the various subplots that fill out the story:  Margaret's heartbreaking struggle with her mother, Wes's battle with dyslexia, and the unanswered question of what the hala actually is.  And, of course, there is the predictable steamy romance with Wes, which features several tasteful but entirely unambiguous sex scenes.  The novel ends with a very satisfying consummation (in both the emotional and physical sense) of their relationship.  The hunt is less satisfactorily resolved in a great rush at the end.

Larkin on the Shore, by Jean Mills

Trying to cope with her mother's descent into opioid addiction and a traumatic encounter at school, Larkin ends up bruised and drunk in a hospital emergency room.  In the aftermath, Larkin's father decides to send her away to spend the summer with her grandmother in a small coastal village in Nova Scotia.  There, she contemplates the virtues of ending her life (poetically, by attempting to swim to PEI) while her grandmother patiently pushes her towards finding hope through making new friends and helping set up a café.

While well-written, the pacing is slow and the themes could easily have been further developed.  We're never exactly clear what happened to Larkin back at her school,  Meanwhile, the mother and her story doesn't really move beyond a brief recollection (and an even briefer dialog). Mills does a fine job in showing us how sad and depressed Larkin is and in capturing her panic attacks.  However, lacking the context deprives us of much of the punch or the necessary reader empathy to make it be something dramatic.

100 Days of Sunlight, by Abbie Emmons

When an auto accident causes Tessa to lose her sight, the promise that the loss is probably temporary is small comfort.  She holes herself up in her room and cuts herself off from her friends.  Her grandparents decide to take things into their own hands and place an ad for a person to come help Tessa do things like dictation.  Tessa is enraged that they would do such a thing and when Weston shows up for the job, she takes her frustration out on him.  He isn't bothered, he's seen worse.

Weston is a double amputee -- the result of an untreated infection from an accident three years prior.  Through flashbacks, he describes the process he went through to come back, working through not only his disability but also his anger at his fate -- knowledge that he applies to Tessa's situation.  However, he has an advantage:  she doesn't know he's an amputee.

Over the next hundred days, through patience and stubborn persistence, Weston works through Tessa's barriers and gradually helps her deal with her blindness.  However, he knows that one day soon she'll get her sight back and then she'll see him as he truly is.  And he fears what she will do.

A terribly sweet and utterly gratuitous romance.  Weston is pretty much the Perfect Boy -- kind, considerate, generous, with just a small amount of naughtiness (he gets into fist fights).  He adores Tessa.  And of course, he has nothing better to do than dote on her for three months.  Needless to say, we know that his silly fears about her hating him when she sees his disability are nothing big, so we're flipping the pages waiting for that swoon-worthy happily-ever-after kiss.  And this is the kind of story that delivers just what the readers want.  In sum, pure unadulterated literary junk food.  Grab a pint of Ben & Jerry's or a package of Oreos and dig in!

The Land of Neverendings, by Kate Saunders

Three months after Emily's sister Holly has died, she is still processing the loss.  Her mother is always sad and Emily's friends are uncomfortable in her presence.  However, Emily is surprised to realize that the thing she feels the greatest sense of loss over is Bluey, Holly's teddy bear.  For while Bluey was definitely Holly's toy, Emily knows in her heart that if she could only confide to Bluey, everything would feel alright.  Unfortunately, they placed Bluey in the coffin when they buried Holly.

Amidst that longing for a lost toy and perhaps inspired by being cast in the lead for a school production of Alice, Emily stumbles across a portal to the world of Smockeroon, the land of the toys.  There she is presented with the entrancing idea that she could reconnect with Bluey (and perhaps even her own sister).  However, behind this opening between the "hardworld" and Smockeroon lies a sinister force -- a giant toad who wants to import all of the sadness of Emily's world into the world of toys, in an attempt to destroy the joy and happiness of that latter place.

In a very British way, this riff on CS Lewis and Lewis Carroll (with a unacknowledged debt to Pixar) explores the grieving of a child told through our relationship with toys and play.  The story is a bit chaotic and difficult to follow and the deeper themes will definitely fly over the heads of young readers.  Still, it's a clever book and it's nice to read something so sweet and innocent.  Entirely suitable for all ages.

If He Had Been With Me, by Laura Nowlin

Autumn and Finn grew up together as best friends and next door neighbors.  Their mothers always assumed that they would end up together as a couple.  But by the time high school begins, they aren't really talking to each other anymore.  Autumn has Jamie and Finn has found Sylvie.  They both couldn't be happier in their respective relationships.  But somehow all that shared history bring Autumn and Finn back to each in their times of need.  

Mapped out over four years of high school, Nowlin's lushly written novel captures the trials and drama of Autumn and Finn's development and their largely inevitable coming together.  While beautifully written, covering such a long expanse of time leads to a lot of jumping around and senior year is largely a blur in this retelling. Throughout, I struggled to understand where the story was really going.  Yes, there are plenty of indications along the way that Finn and Autumn really ought to be together, but the book is full of so much more than that (subplots ranging from a pregnancy to a divorce to drugs to sexual abuse) that I wondered what the point of the book really was.  It's all very pretty and well-told, but does one need to cram every single good idea into the same book?

All that is a minor complaint compared to my thoughts on the book's shocking ending.  I won't spoil the story for others, but I feel very strongly that Nowlin basically ruined the story for me in the last ten pages with an unnecessary, pointless, and completely out-of-the-blue plot twist that lacks any foundation.  I'd suggest stopping on page 381 because I'm  now left seriously wondering why I read those first 380 pages.

Solimar: The Sword of the Monarchs, by Pam Munoz Ryan

Princess Solimar loves to watch the Monarch butterflies as they pass through on their annual migration.  This year, they have given her something in return:  the gift of prophecy.  In exchange for which, she must watch over the weaker butterflies and ensure that their travels this year go smoothly.

The gift comes at an awkward moment, when the king is absent and an attack from a neighboring kingdom threatens her home.  While she is only a child, as soon as the attacking king learns of her new powers, he wants to harness them for himself and he tries to detain her.  To prevent that from happening, Solimar flees the castle and tries to find her father so she can warn him.  She hopes that he'll find allies, beat back the attackers, and also save the butterflies.  An epic voyage through uncharted waterways awaits!

Like all of Ryan's other novels, this one has a distinctly Hispanic flavor and the setting is vaguely Mexican.  That is manifested mostly through terms, titles, and foods, but also the context (the attack occurs while Solimar is planning her quince).  I always enjoy this stylistic twist in her books although in this case it would have been nice to have a glossary at the back to help with less familiar terms.

More problematically, I didn't enjoy the story very much.  Unlike many of her novels, the stress here is on action.  Character development gets a very short shrift.  Solimar is supposed to go through a great transformation in her ordeal, but I didn't understand what it really was and I actually didn't care much either.  As for the action, it isn't well told, often requiring reading and re-reading passages to understand what is happening.  There's a lot going on and never a dull moment but it is hard to follow.  Definitely not in the same class as Ryan's Esperanza Rising or Becoming Naomi Leon.

Breda's Island, by Jessie Ann Foley

Thirteen year-old Breda has been caught one too many times stealing from others.  It's all petty stuff and mostly done for attention, but her mother, an undocumented Irish beautician, is at wit's end.  She decides that the best way to shape her daughter up is to send Breda to Ireland (a country where Breda's never been) to her grandfather (whom she's never met).  Predictably, the homecoming starts off rough but eventually Breda connects with the old man.  In the process, she sorts through her problems and gets her life back on track.  

As an overall story, there's nothing new here.  The rebellious teen and the crotchety old man straightening each other out is the worst form of trope -- a fantasy worth of a Hallmark show.   And the rural Irish setting is full of plenty of stereotypical blarney. But the book is full of surprises.

Breda has never had a father in the picture and returning to her mother's home gives her a chance to track him down.  Doing so dredges up a lot of buried grudges and anger.  It also causes her to stumble over the fact that her grandfather was also born out of wedlock.  And in his days, such children were abandoned to orphanages where they were subject to severe abuse.  His trauma is largely suppressed but played no small part is how he treated Breda's Mom (and thus Breda).  Coming to terms with Breda's feelings about the lack of a father means also dealing with her grandfather's legacy.  The result is a surprisingly complex story with pretty intense themes about family and abandonment, all of which might be a bit intense for middle readers but make for a surprisingly satisfying mature novel.

The Hunger Between Us, by Marina Scott

For 900 days during the height of World War II, the city of Leningrad was under siege and blockaded by the Nazis, trapping over two million people inside to slowly starve to death.  An unfathomable tragedy, the horror was compounded by Soviet corruption and incompetence.  The death toll from German bombings, famine, and disease is estimated at over a million lives.  No one who grew up in the Soviet Union after the Great Patriotic War could possibly not know the story (although the version told in Soviet schoolrooms was largely sanitized), but Westerners are usually ignorant of this historical event.  So, it was something of a surprise to find this piece of historical fiction in the Teen section of the library.

In is the summer of 1942, the siege has been in place for a year.  In that time, the weak have largely died off.  The survivors are the resourceful.  Liza is a survivor.  Through petty theft and deceit, she has managed to scour up enough food to keep living.  As the story begins, Liza is secretly burying her dead mother in order to prevent officials from discovering the death and taking away her Mom's ration card.  Liza's best friend Aka comes across her after the disposal of the body and tells Liza that she herself is going to go to the "Mansion" (the headquarters of the NKVD -- the secret police) to earn some food.  There's plenty of food for the officials and they are willing to share what they have with pretty young girls for a price.  Liza begs Aka not to go, but what alternatives are left?

When Aka fails to return later, Liza goes out of her mind with fear for what has happened and starts to search for the girl.  It's dangerous to poke at the lair of the NKVD and Liza's desperate search takes her in dangerous places where a combination of strong wits, sheer luck, and a bitter detremination to survive carry her through.  Along the way, she renews acquaintances with two boys she knew from school who have taken drastically different paths:  Luka (who hides underground and has abandoned his pride and humanity) and Maksim (who serves in the local constabulary and tries to enforce the law in the face of anarchy).  Both boys try to help Liza, but in the end she has to take her own path to confront horrible secrets about the depths to which people will sink.

As grim and troubling as its subject matter, The Hunger Between Us explores what lines can and cannot be crossed and what survival really means.  It's a brutal story populated with starvation and desperation.  Scenes of physical and sexual violence, numerous references to (off-page) rape, murder, and cannibalism feature prominently.  All of this, however, is just a setting for the very difficult decisions that Liza makes throughout the book.  And she's definitely no saint.  Her primary virtue is her ability to survive and by the end of the story she has plenty of faults to atone for.  But observing her story in its context forces the reader to consider what they would do in the same place and that proves devastating.  A powerful and memorable book and an unusual one of the genre.

Friends Like These, by Jennifer Lynn Alvarez

Jessica hates Tegan and the only reason she ever agreed to attend Tegan's end-of-the-summer party was because Jake convinced her to go.  Jake's blind to the fact that Tegan (who used to date Jake) wants him back and will do anything to get him.

At the party, Jake and Jessica get separated and, before Jessica can realize what is happening, someone is livestreaming hidden camera footage of Jake and Tegan kissing!  Worse, they have started to take off their clothes!  Utterly humiliated by her boyfriend's very public betrayal, Jessica flees the party vowing to have nothing further to do with Jake or Tegan.  But the next morning, Jake turns up covered in blood with no memory of his infidelity or of anything else that happened.  And Tegan has gone missing.

A rather steamy whodunnit that annoyed me the deeper I got into it. The characters spend a lot of time obfuscating the investigation, which drags everything out and more often than not puts them in a worse position.  There are odd priorities as well, with characters more concerned about statutory rape than homicide.  And finally a large part of the solution to the mystery relies upon information only introduced in the final forty pages of the book, which is frustrating for anyone trying to figure things out along the way.

The Rat Queen, by Pete Hautman

Annie's father is fond of telling her stories from the Old Country, fairy tales from faraway Litvania.  They are strange stories and always end up in rather unsatisfactory and unhappy ways.  No one else seems to have ever heard of Litvania, but Papa assures her that it very much exists.

When Annie turns ten, her father gives her a peculiar instruction.  Henceforth, whenever she does something she regrets, she must write it down on a slip of paper and stuff the paper into a hole in the floor.  By doing so, she will be assuaged of all guilt and regret.  She does so and is surprised to find that it works.  But there also seem to be curious side effects:  the neighborhood becomes infested with rats and Annie seems to have stopped growing.  After her father makes several mysterious trips back to Litvania, he announces that they must go back together and it is there that the Litvanian queen reveals all.

A dark and fairly sinister story with great depth and plenty of color, but whose actual story felt uneven and unengaging.  Litvania, while fictional, is a lovely amalgam of Latvian and Lithuanian culture (neither of which is commonly found in American literature).  The story is littered with the dark and macabre fairy tales of Litvania, which riff nicely on the original Grimms (i.e., non-Disneyfied) Tales.  The rats and the entire concept behind the "eater of sins" is fascinating.  This is a story whose concepts will stick with me for some time.  

It is thus a shame that the story is so lame.  For the first two hundred pages, it is terribly slow and it took me some fortitude (and most of a week) to plow ahead, but then everything speeds up at the end in seeming recklessness.  Either way, I found the reading more of a chore than a pleasure, no matter how much I enjoy the Baltic and folkloric references.