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When Beatrice, aka Robot Girl, moves to a new town and meets Jonah, aka Ghost Boy, they form an unexpected friendship. Jonah is a loner who hasn’t made a new friend (or much of an impression on anyone) since the third grade–but he might make the exception for Bea. Bea describes herself as Robot Girl (except for the made-out-of-metal part). As this quirky tale unfolds,  Bea and Jonah bond through honest conversations, shared escapades, and late night calls into an “old-timer radio show.” As their friendship grows, Bea learns about Jonah’s history and their relationship becomes more meaningful than either of them ever expected. ThisRead More →

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Ever since he was 10 years old and filled with The Holy Ghost, Little Texas has been a born-again, Evangelical preacher, doing God’s holy work on Earth, bringing souls to the Lord and healing people through his mysterious touch.  The trouble is, Ronald Earl, Little Texas that is, is now nearly 16 and starting to grapple with his own doubts, insecurities and bodily needs.  He’s still a vessel for the Lord’s power when he’s on stage testifying and preaching, but in the off hours as the ministry that’s built around him travels from one small Southern town to the next, Ronald Earl is plagued byRead More →

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When Abbey’s best friend Kristen vanishes at the bridge near Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, she refuses to accept that Kristen is dead. As rumors fly that her death was no accident, Abbey goes through the motions of grief, including attending her best friend’s funeral, where she meets Caspian, a mysterious and handsome stranger that keeps popping into her life. As the story unfolds, Abbey quickly realizes that the truth can be a fickle friend, challenging everything she thought she knew about her best friend, the boy she is quickly falling for, and even herself. One of the most unique features of Jessica Verday’s The Hollow isRead More →

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What’s the next big romance now that Bella, Edward and Jacob have found their eternal happy ending?  Will it be a werewolf whose loved and craved a human girl?  Another vampire? Zombies?  In Becca Fitzpatrick’s hush, hush, due from Simon & Schuster in October 2009 (moved up from a Jan 2010 release), our star-crossed lovers are Nora and fallen angel, Patch. To begin with, I love the cover of this book.  In looking for the next tormented bad boy yearning to be good for the sake of his one true love, fallen angels seem like a great choice.  After all, they’re characters whose desires, needsRead More →

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Shiver is the perfect title for Maggie Stiefvater’s romance due out from Scholastic in August 2009.  In the literal sense, of course, because it’s the cold that forces Sam into wolf form and pulls him away from his one true love, Grace. But in the figurative sense as well because both Sam & Grace, and readers, will shiver throughout this book with delight, anticipation, yearning, fear and delicious sexual tension.   Grace is a 17 year old girl who yearns for something other than her middle class existence – escape; passion; an uninhibited life – something embodied in the wolves she watches every winter in the woods behindRead More →

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In: On the Edge, Romance (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
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The Answer: “I have a secret. And everyone knows it. But no one talks about it, at least not out in the open. That makes it a very modern secret, like knowing your favorite celebrity has some weird eccentricity or other, or professional athletes do it for money, or politicians don’t actually have your best interests at heart.” So begins Daniel Bradford’s, aka Sprout‘s, answer to the question, posed for the Kansas statewide essay contest.  16 year old Sprout’s got lots of potential material in his life to use as inspiration: his mom died of cancer when he was 12; his dad’s a deeply depressedRead More →

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Dade Hamilton has just graduated from an Iowa high school and he has 3 months ahead of him before leaving for college in Michigan.  His secret relationship with the popular football player Pablo is coming to an end, he wrestles with coming out to his parents and friends, and he watches as his parents’ marriage unravels before him. He just wants to make it through one final summer in suburban wasteland and then start over in the Fall.  But then he meets mysterious, gorgeous Alex Kincaid – who ignites things in Dade he wasn’t expecting: real love, truth, self-respect and hope. The Vast Fields of OrdinaryRead More →

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Julie Anne Peters’ newest novel, RAGE: A Love Story, will be out from Random House (Knopf) in September 2009.  It’s the intense, gritty, gripping story of a powerful first love that tears at your soul. In the last few weeks leading up to high school graduation, Johanna finds herself tutoring a hulking, creepy guy, Robbie, as a favor to a favorite teacher. Spending time with him after school, she learns some potentially scary, life-threatening secrets about him.  But what she soon discovers is that her time with Robbie has a surprise benefit – access to his sister, Reeve, the girl Johanna has been in intensely loveRead More →

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In Skunk Girl, 11th grader Nina Khan feels trapped between 2 cultures: middle America and her Pakistani-Muslim heritage. She’s got all the usual high school troubles: cliques, friends starting to drift apart because of interests in boys, academic pressures, body/self esteem issues, and a crush on a really hot guy; and if that weren’t hard enough, she’s got the expectations left at school from her “supernerd” older sister, restrictions on who she can hang out with, traditional/conservative parents, andof course being the only Asian student in the school.  Nina feels bound and constrained by her parents’ traditional values, unsure about her own feelings, and reluctantRead More →