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The voices in Ry Burke’s head have been quiet for nearly nine years following the trauma he suffered in the Black Glade forest which grows beside his family’s farm. During this time, he and his family has been able to return to a resemblance of normalcy, escaping Marvin Burke, the abusive father Ry helped to put in prison. But, with the oncoming of a meteor shower, Ry hears the voices of his “friends” rising to the surface again just as his family is informed of an explosion at the nearby prison. As the meteors begin to fall and the threat of Marvin’s return looms, theRead More →

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17 year old Jack’s summer job, as a “nanny” for an 8 and 12 year old brother and sister, seems like it would be a cake walk.  He’ll be making really good money and all he has to do is hang out with a couple of kids for a couple months.  The major downside is that the kids live on an isolated island off the mainland that’s devoid of any modern connectivity; sure, they have generator-powered electricity, but there’s no phone, no wi-fi or internet, and the only connection to the outside world is the twice weekly ferry that passes by the island.  Willing toRead More →

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Acclaimed British novelist Catherine Fisher (Incarceron – The Times’ Children’s Book of the Year) is back this Fall with a new subtly woven, spooky Faust-inspired, fantasy, Darkwater. In the early twentieth century in a windswept British village on the sea, 16 year old Sarah Trevelyan would give anything to regain the power, prestige, and wealth her family held for generations but lost in the folly of a card game gone wrong.  Reduced to living with her family’s only remaining loyal servant, Sarah’s sickly and broken father sinks deeper into a wasting illness while she is forced to humble herself as a scullery maid at the localRead More →

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Libba Bray‘s latest series, The Diviners, combines popular culture favorites from Roaring Twenties of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire series to Showtime’s Dexter’s most recent season of a serial killer’s elaborate staged murders set to bring about the End of Days.  Throw in her trademark historical fiction and a dash of romance, and Bray’s new series is going to be a big hit. The first book in the series centers around spunky, smart and convention-fighting Evie.  She’s got too big of a personality for her small Ohio home town and at 17 has already crossed the conservative social lines one too many times. Sent to live inRead More →

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Readers who enjoy murder mysteries will encounter intrigue, secrecy, and surprises in McCormick Templeman’s new book, The Little Woods.  Set at St. Bede’s Academy, an upscale boarding school in California, the novel features 17 year old Calista Wood (Cally) who claims membership in the “dead family members and drunken moms” club.  A mid-year transfer student looking for opportunity, Cally escapes her dead end home life inPortland and undertakes the Cally Wood Social Integration Project, but she struggles to find solid footing among the hipster debutantes and sybaritic males; the catered breakfasts and competitive natures of these privileged, Yale and Harvard bound students are just notRead More →

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Just when you thought there was nothing else to imagine when it comes to dragons, out of nowhere comes Rachel Hartman‘s Seraphina.  This is a richly imagined, multifaceted, well-written tale bursting with unique ideas, intriguing characters (dragons and humans both), and a complex, riveting plot. At its heart, Seraphina is a book about belonging: “he did not know the truth of me, yet he perceived something true about me that no one else had ever noticed.  And in spite of that – or perhaps because of it – he believed me good, believed me worth taking seriously, and his belief, for one vertigious moment, madeRead More →

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Anna Waggener’s debut, Grim,  is an oddly befuddling, somewhat incomprehensible story that didn’t “come together” until about 150 pages into the book.  Switching between multiple points of view, jumping through time and space, and not giving any real explanation for much of anything, it took a lot of patience on my part to wait for that crucial “oh, now I understand” moment.  Erika, a mid-thirties divorced mother of 3 who’s unhappy with her life, is killed driving home from work on a dark stretch of highway; Rebecca, her reckless 18 year old daughter and Shawn, her straightlaced 16 year old son,  are wracked with griefRead More →

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In Sangu Mandanna‘s The Lost Girl, Eva is a fifteen year old girl living in London who has a life completely different than anyone she knows. She is an echo; a creation made by a group of individuals called the Weavers. She was created to prepare if her ‘other’, Amarra, were to die. Eva would take her place and continue to live Amarra’s life in India with only Amarra’s parents knowing she is an echo and not their true daughter. Eva looks identical to her ‘other’ and has been trained since birth to walk, talk, dress, and act like Amarra. Eva is convinced nothing willRead More →

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Will and the other 6 teens who were cured of their debilitating phobias in Patrick Carman’s Dark Eden have been reunited in the sequel, Dark Eden 2: Eve of Destruction.  Will and Marisa convince Ben, Kate, Alex, and Connor, who are all now suffering from “elderly” ailments like arthritis, dementia, and hearing loss, to join them in a trip back to Fort Eden after Will receives a letter from the hated Mrs. Goring.  Ostensibly offering them a new “cure”, this time for the problems ravaging their bodies, Mrs. Goring convinces the teens to descend into an abandoned missile silo below Fort Eden in search ofRead More →