Teens

What labels define you? Which boxes contain you? No middle ground. No grey. Keep it simple. Describe yourself with categories. Binaries. Either-ors. Extremes.

Once you tell me, do I know you?

Or do you want to say, "Wait, that's not really me. I'm much more complicated and nuanced than that. Those are mere ideas. I'm a person."?

This is the story of two teens who didn't fit nicely into categories. For a short while in 2013-4, they were media sensations. The media loves extremes. All the outsiders kept their definitions of the two simple, imposed their preferred categories, saw only ideas

If you don't close your mouth, a fly will fly in, and then you'll have to swallow a spider to catch the fly, and then a cat to catch the spider, and then a dog to catch the cat, and then a goat to catch the dog, and then a cow to catch the goat, and then a horse to catch the cow, and then a lost soul to catch the horse.

Enchanting. Atmospheric. Mysterious. (a lost soul to catch the horse) Lush. Gritty. Suspenseful. There are so many good words I can think of to describe the beguiling collection of words that is this book. Dark. Mature. Sensual.

Wait for a sign.
If the lights go out

A powerful book about the tough and gritty existence on the edge of the border, where everyone dreams of better lives that are only available to a very few through even fewer routes.

I'm old enough to remember when there was some kind of order here; the cartel ruled everyone, and that was that. No one controls these streets anymore. Now it's just anarchy; total and all-out war between all-comers. It's Hell, plain and simple, and that's funny because you know what they say--"Even the Devil is scared of living in Juarez." But not me. It doesn't matter where you go; you have to die somewhere

I'm not a fan of gruesome, graphic, gory horror; however, I'm a big fan of stories that are dark. Atmospheric. Disquieting. Plumbing the depths of the human psyche. Some of those stories are creepy dark. Some of them are deliciously dark. The Hazel Wood is gritty dark.

Alice has spent her life haunted by a collection of dark fairy tales famously authored by her grandmother. Haunted, and hounded. Always on the run, in one way or another, with her rootless mother. A loving, fiercely protective mother who has always been fully open and honest about everything. Except for one topic: Alice's

Wonderfully exciting action that maintains just the right amount of suspense and energy from start to finish. At heart, this is a heist story; it just happens to be set in a universe of wonder: under the adrenaline are fascinating world-building and intriguing characters--of all shapes and sizes, far beyond human. And lurking somewhere in the background are enthralling science fiction considerations that keep simmering into awareness. It's not just action, but intelligent action. With excellently adept, unobtrusive writing. This is a universe I hope to visit again soon.

Zen Starling is a

Will knows one way to grieve, dictated by the rules passed down for generations: no crying; no snitching; always get revenge. His uncle and father have already been victim to the cyclic system created by these rules, and last night his brother joined them. Will is desperately heartbroken, so he follows the one path given him by the rules: he grabs his brother's gun and heads for the elevator.

And that's where his story takes an unexpected turn. He has to go down seven floors, and the elevator stops at each of them to let on another passenger. Each passenger is someone dead from Will's life

Well, that was cheerful and uplifting.

Er, no, that's not quite right. More like bleak, biting, and darkly satirical.

And far too real.

Though science fiction set in a near future, this is all about living at the lowest levels of the global economy, subject to extremes of imperialism, inequality, ethnocentrism, co-option, and poverty. It's an exploration of the dark sides of economic and cultural power. It's just that in this case it's the humans of Earth who have been colonized.

"You think you're so great," says Chloe. "You're no one, Adam. You're nothing."

I laugh politely. "No, Chlo

I despised cheerleaders when I was a teenager. They were the ones who bullied my outcast friends and me. They were so—well—cheery. Didn't they notice that the world all around us is falling apart? I’m much older and somewhat wiser now, so I understand that it’s dumb to assume that all members of a group of people are the same. I comprehend that just because the particular cheerleaders I knew in high school were mean doesn't mean that all cheerleaders are mean. I mean, I try to stay open-minded. Still, cheerleaders. Blech. How superficial, boring, and dumb.  

Needless to say, I never noticed

Having never experienced life in a rehab center I cannot speak to the authenticity or veracity of the setting Benjamin Alire Sáenz creates in, Last Night I Sang To The Monster. 18 year-old Zach is an alcoholic who comes out of a black out in a treatment center with no memory of how he got there. I can say the novel is populated by memorable characters who are engaged in emotionally resonant relationships in a visceral setting. And in those respects, Sáenz has succeeded in crafting a very effective and moving novel. While not all aspects of the novel work perfectly, it is clear that Sáenz has

Hurricane Harvey in the news raises the relevance of this novel to a category five. The fact that we're bringing Julie Murphy--one of the best contemporary realistic fiction authors in the country--to town for a Meet the Author visit means you must put this book on your radar. I listened to the audio version. It's fantastic. The narrator is a perfect fit for Ramona's voice. Ramona is a high school senior living with her overworked and underpaid father and her nineteen-year-old pregnant sister in a too-small trailer in Eulogy, Mississippi, right off the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. When Ramona

What a wonderfully original and twisty concoction this is.

Consider, for instance, the ruler of the strange, intentionally insular realm in which the story takes place. Kept alive by magic for centuries, his life is fueled by justifiable paranoia about assassination attempts, so much so that he has decided sleep is too great a risk. Instead, he has learned to let the two hemispheres of his brain alternate shifts slumbering, so that only one half of his body is ever active at a time. One eye is coldly rational and verbal; one eye is abstract and intuitive. Remember that if the Grand Steward's

People deal with grief, fear, anger, and other difficult emotions in many ways. One of those ways is humor. That's Mara. Her telling of her story is hilarious. With a cynical, skeptical, acerbic, over-the-top wit of the best social-commentary-humorists, she shares how she spent her senior year of high school dealing with the very real possibility that she might just spontaneously combust.

I didn’t really count Perry myself, but that still made this my fifth time. I’d seen more of these than anyone. I’d forgotten that. As much as this was a shared experience, I was the reigning champ of

This offers a complex, rigidly hierarchical society and a protagonist stuck right in the middle of it, with plenty of tense action resulting.

Before the story begins, Jessamy's life has been rigidly dull. Her military father is a common man from the ruling race who has climbed as high in the social order as his station allows. Her mother is his faithful companion from the conquered race--which would normally be a dirty secret to sweep under the rug--but she and her four daughters have lived such impeccably perfect, honorable lives that his household is allowed a bottom rung on the noble

This is a book of ideas. A slight character story overlaid on a world of big ideas. Amusingly sad; sadly amusing. Consider, for instance, its beginning:

Sexual Responsibility is boring.

It isn't Ms. Brody's fault. She's a good teacher. She switches channels at appropriate moments, tases students who need tasing--zizzz-ZAAPPP!--and she only once got stuck in the garbage can beside her teaching station. She was a teeny bit weepy that day, but no drunker than normal . . .

Zoe lives in a near future world where capitalism and corporatism have run amok. In school, we learn not only Sexual

What had she just done? She had obediently opened a door and stepped through into blackness, without even knowing if there was a floor on the other side.

Why, oh why, haven't I read more books by Frances Hardinge? I loved the first book of hers I read years ago, thoroughly enjoyed another, and have seen how well reviewed everything she writes is. Now this one has convinced me I simply must find a way to read them all.

In spite of everything, there was real pleasure in the thought of her lie sending tremors through Vane, knocking her enemies off balance. She was filled with pride and a

This consists of four stories--"quarters," Sedgwick calls them--from four different eras. Each is a compelling, haunting meditation on human nature. Each has horror undertones, confronts suffering and misery. Each is distinct in style, tone, setting, and action. Each involves philosophical musings about the meaning of spirals in the way of Jungian archetypes (universal, archaic patterns and images that derive from the collective unconscious and are the psychic counterpart of instinct; Wikipedia).

There is the girl who watches as her prehistoric hunter-gatherer tribe is ambushed and hunted by

Told mostly in reverse order, But I Love Him chronicles the relationship between Anna and Connor. The reader is introduced to Anna, a high school senior, who has spent the past year focused on Connor, and has slowly given up the people and things that were important to her prior to meeting him.

Through Anna’s accounts of her interactions with Connor and people in their lives, the reader gets a sense of the conflicted feelings Anna has toward him. The story being told from end to beginning is similar to viewing a mess being picked up—it starts off as a disaster, but piece by piece, things get

If you knew the world was going to end, but you had the power to stop it, would you?

A Man Said to the Universe

A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”

~ Stephen Crane

Does an ant's life matter to you when you step on it?

Does your life matter to the universe when it steps on you?

Henry certainly doesn't think so. He doesn't think anyone's life matters. And he sees no reason to push the button that would save the world from destruction. Our lives are as meaningless as ants' lives

In Zeroes we were introduced to a group of teens with unusual, mostly subtle superpowers who find themselves in an increasing amount of trouble with both drug dealers and the police, using the very powers that got them into trouble in the first place to get them out again. I liked the novel a lot, so when I found out about the sequel, I was very excited.

My excitement was not misplaced. Like Zeroes, Swarm gets into the action quickly, but unlike the first book, we don't need to get to know the main characters, so the plot moves even faster, the tension ratcheted up. It's also nice to see the

Now, as I read it all over again, I wonder . . .

They call that literary analysis, Stella, and I'm not particularly good at it. My job is to write. Your job is to figure out the deep stuff.

And there is deep stuff going on here, isn't there? For the love of Luna, I hope so.

Oh, there is. There definitely is deep stuff going on here. You know because you feel it. Sometimes, though, feelings are hard to pinpoint. Hard to analyze. That's how this is. It doesn't necessarily need the literary analysis because it creates a depth of feeling not dependent on explicit definition.

That's been

An enjoyable, magic-less fantasy that nicely balances worldbuilding, character development, and action.

Tequende is an isolated realm in the Nigh World (something like the Americas) that escaped conquest by the hungry invaders from the Far World (something like Europe), a peaceful little neutral kingdom on a high plateau surrounded by mountains. That isolated peace is ensured by the tradition of the legendary Queen's army. All first-born children inherit their parents' livelihoods; there are three broad guilds of professions, each with their own god and subculture. All second-born children

Don't be fooled by the opening battle scene and continuous conflict that drives the story into thinking this is a simple action book. It's tense and fast-paced, yes, but it is also full of moral, psychological, interpersonal, and political conflict. It is a book whose external action deeply considers complicated internal issues.

In my review of the first book in the series, I wrote: This is a gripping, thoughtful, powerful story, one deserving of many thoughtful readers interested in considering how a nation might very easily come apart as seen through the eyes of a young man during his

Penelope, Ephraim and Audrey have been friends forever, an inseparable threesome. But now that they are juniors in high school, things are changing. Penelope is devastated when for the first time ever, Eph and Audrey both ditch out on the fall festival. She is the only one of the three who has never been kissed, never had a romantic involvement. Audrey is expanding her social circle and encouraging Penelope to do the same, but Penelope doesn't want to. Change is hard. But it is also inevitable. As Penelope grudgingly begins to accept this, a new world opens up with new friends, a romantic

The Last Star is the final book of The Fifth Wave trilogy and picks up six weeks after the events of The Infinite Sea. After the Others, an alien race, sent four waves of death they killed seven billion people. The final wave of brainwashed humans will kill off the remaining survivors including Cassie, Sam, Ben, Megan, and Ringer. This installment is darker and more desperate than the preceding two books and unfolds from multiple perspectives which add dimension and depth to this portion of the story. Strong characters and a fast-paced plot drive this story making it impossible to put down

Jack Hurd lives with his parents on a small farm in Maine. One day in the winter of his 6th grade year, Joseph Brooks comes to live with them as a foster child. Joseph has been in trouble and spent time in a boy's group home, a juvenile detention center, and most recently a high security juvenile prison after allegedly trying to kill a teacher. He is only 14, but is the father of a newborn baby girl. He has never seen his daughter, but loves her and her mother dearly. He wants nothing more than to be a part of their lives. The adults in his life are making that impossible at this point and

This starts off deep, but maybe faux deep. Then it gets heavier and heavier. In the best possible way. It gets authentic. As Nanette digs deeper and deeper to find her authentic self.

I gather from what I've learned and read that everyone was insecure in high school, felt they didn't fit in and relate, that any popularity was based on falsity and pretense. Yet I can't shake the belief that I didn't fit in and relate more than my peers, that my views and values and aspirations were somehow different despite that insecurity. I really do believe I was different in a way that only a small

"I've always been a monster," begins the jacket flap of Drift & Dagger. Mal keeps that a secret, though. More openly, he's something of a cross between a pirate, thief, smuggler, archeologist, and bounty hunter. He is a world-traveling adventurer who specializes in acquiring and selling magical artifacts, often through underhanded means. He frequents ports and bazaars, black markets and bars, dense slums and dense jungles and everything in between. He's lived his teen years in underworlds across the world learning how to survive, and lives only for the present.

It's the middle of the

A few facts about Glory O’Brien:

• Her mother, Darla O’Brien, killed herself by sticking her head in an oven.
• It was on the letter “N” day at school
• Glory is the one who found her
• Darla was a photographer, Glory has followed in her mother’s footsteps
• Glory’s best friend is  Ellie, she lives on a hippie commune across the street
• Ellie has crabs from her boyfriend Rick
• Glory isn’t so sure she wants to be best friends with Ellie any more
• Glory and Ellie celebrate graduation by drinking a petrified bat Glory has named Max Black
• Max Black gifts them with the ability to see the past and

It's been a long time since a book has transported me so completely. Has taken me so deeply into myself that I become oblivious to the world around me and my head spins with disconnection when I try to regain awareness. Just me and the book, and nothing else. I started reading and was supposed to stop because life was still going on around me, but I didn't. I couldn't find my way back. So life moved on without me until I finished the book. Now I must figure out how to catch up, but that's okay. It was worth stopping at a special place for a while.

That's not entirely different than what

Richelle Mead, well-known for the Vampire Academy series has written a new book, The Glittering Court. While there are no vampires or werewolves in this new fantasy series, there is instead, Adelaide, Countess of Rothford.  Adelaide lives with her grandmother and has no source of income, leaving marriage her only choice. At least that's what her grandmother has told her.

The gentleman her grandmother has arranged for her to marry is the Barron of Ashby, Lionel Belshire. He owns two estates, farms barley and makes his house servants eat barley every morning to boost morale. He really hopes