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Readers who enjoy dystopian literature, especially the variety presented in books like The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins or 1984 by George Orwell, will likely take pleasure in book one of The Torch Keeper series by Steven Dos Santos.  In this new world, benign terms like incentives, recruits, and shelved mask unspeakable malignancy for an Establishment that is focused on genetic engineering and on manufacturing biological weapons. The Culling features Lucian Spark, a sixteen-year-old boy who lives in The Parish, a community formed after Earth was destroyed by the Ash Wars.  Life in The Parish is ruled by The Establishment, which has very strictRead More →

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I like the surprise of not reading the jacket flap before I read a book – cover, title, and maybe a familiar author – are all I know going in.  It’s a little game I like to play to let the story, whatever it may be, unfold and take me wherever it wants to go. So when I started Ned Vizzini’s The Other Normals, I expected a realistic fiction story about a possibly disaffected, alienated teen guy who liked to play role playing games.  Pretty safe bet and I was proved right – at first.  15 year old Perry Eckert is what his mother painfullyRead More →

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I’ll admit, it took me two readings to get into Gina Linko‘s Flutter.  The first time through I just couldn’t connect with the story, the characters, or the premise.  So I took a break from it and after coming back to it recently, find that the second pass yielded a somewhat more interesting story and perhaps a more patient, attentive reader.  Which is fitting, in a way, since 17 year old Emery has spent her entire life revisiting a past or discovering a yet-as-lived future, when she “flutters” away from reality into a seizure-induced alternate state.  While she finds a calmness and peace in herRead More →

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Readers of science fiction or dystopian literature like Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy will likely find fascination in Alaya Dawn Johnson’s inaugural young adult novel, The Summer Prince.  For her story’s setting, Johnson has created Palmares Três, a dream city which rose from the ruins of a world ravaged by plague, war, and destruction.  The city is governed mostly by women since men have done so much to destroy the world with their war games and power plays.  To keep the world from ever dying again, the Queen of Palmares Três creates a composite of the best that the previous world had to offer,Read More →

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Book One in the Three Doors Trilogy by Emily Rodda, The Golden Door, tells the story of three brothers: Dirk, Sholto, and Rye who are residents of Southwall, a community in the city of Weld governed and over-regulated by a suspicious Warden. Eighteen-year-old Dirk is brave and determined if not a bit of a conspiracy theorist who thinks the Warden is up to no good.  Sholto is equally determined but dark and cynical, although the thirst for knowledge glows in him.  As an apprentice Healer, he tends to seek out peace. Rye, the youngest, is cautious, perceptive, and pragmatic. Their home, previously a place of peaceRead More →

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For a thrilling, fast-paced, and action-packed paranormal adventure, Mark  Frost’s  Book One in The Paladin Prophecy series is a must read.  In a class with books like Robert Ludlum’s Jason Bourne novels, The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, and The Maze Runner by James Dashner, Frost’s book explores how disaster wakes up the system. The story features 15-year-old Will West who lives a quiet, contained, and invisible life to ensure he remains mediocre and under the radar of powerful forces who might exploit his true talent.  For him, school is a daily drone, “Novocain for the brain” (4), until Dr. Robbins shows up and offersRead More →

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David Levithan‘s latest, Every Day, is an interesting exploration of identity. The 16 year old main character, A, has awoken every day in a different body.  At first, it seemed normal, and only around age 5-6 did the strangeness of A’s life without continuity begin to be bothersome.  After accepting the reality of this existence, A developed coping mechanisms to be able to determine the basic details of the life and body of the day and be able to function without causing too much chaos or change in the host body’s life.   Since A has been a boy and a girl, every race andRead More →

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Readers who like plots that revolve around danger and destiny and who enjoyed the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan will likely find Tera Lynn Childs’ trilogy riveting.  The major difference in the two text sets is the genders of the protagonists and the prominent roles played by mythological monsters—like the manticore, harpies, or Gegenees giant, rather than just gods and goddesses. The second book in Childs’ series, Sweet Shadows, which features Greer, Gretchen, and Grace—the Key Generation—tells the story of the shadow life of the triplet sisters and their mythological legacy.  The diversity of the three girls represents a Pythagorean balance—appropriate for this trinityRead More →

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After the accident that takes his girlfriend Viv’s life, all that seventeen-year-old Camden Pike sees in life are the holes.  He struggles so much with the emptiness of Viv’s absence that he doesn’t remember how to get out of bed, live his life, or breathe—all of this emotional angst is exacerbated by his workaholic attorney mother and his absent father.  And appointments with his psychologist Dr. Summers aren’t making much progress since Cam is convinced that he has nothing left to live for.  After all, Cam and Viv were living under the philosophy: Who needs football or cheerleading, who needs friends, and who needs popularity whenRead More →