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Maximum racing is dangerous; one out of ten cars doesn’t make it to the finish line.  But race car driver Cassica Hayle is fast, flighty, and full of fierce life.  Possessing an addictive, restle ss energy and delighted by chaos and speed, Cassica craves life in the fast lane and wants to escape Coppermouth,  a barely surviving, backwater town where the stars at night are actually “restless orbital weapons moving steadily, left over from the Omniwar”(30) when death machines  “destroyed whole cities with lances of fire from space” (31). Now, in Coppermouth ,  people die from dust lung, a respiratory affliction resulting from dust blowingRead More →

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With pollutants and poisons pouring into the earth and air, the humans aren’t so easy to befriend by the faery folk whose hesitation is warranted since their very existence depends on clean air, soil, and water.  Still, LilyDark, who will be crowned the new heir to the throne, is determined to proclaim peace.  In One Blood Ruby, a sequel to Seven Black Diamonds, Melissa Marr continues the saga of the seven half-fae, half-human beings, that the Queen of Blood and Rage has converted into weapons to advance her cause. But the cessation of war turns out to be far more dangerous than any of theRead More →

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Some books engender an anger and a disgust so intense that readers want to reach inside the pages to yank an abuser right out of a child’s life.  A List of Cages by Robin Roe is one of those books.  Julian Harlow’s Uncle Russell joins Dave Pelzer’s mother from the A Child Called It trilogy and Liam’s father from King of the Screwups by K. L. Going as characters with diseased brains. Having lost his parents in a tragic accident, Julian is orphaned and spends some time in a foster home before his Uncle Russell takes him in.  However, Russell is unfit for parenting, abusingRead More →

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Everyone loves a good ‘whodunit,’ and the most famous of them all are the gruesome murders of Jack the Ripper. Occurring in 1888, Jack the Ripper committed a string of murders so gruesome that “no one, not even the most criminally insane would attempt” (291). In Kerri Maniscalco’s debut novel, the first Young Adult acquisition under James Patterson’s new children’s imprint, she explores the adventures of Audrey Rose Wadsworth, a girl with the knowledge and determination to find the killer who alludes all. Audrey Rose is a young woman in high society, but she is not the typical young socialite. After her mother’s death yearsRead More →

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Resembling a collection of short stories with the clever and mischievous sixteen-year-old witch, Kendra Hilferty as a unifying character, Beheld by Alex Flinn does some serious genre-blending and blurring.  Part fairy tale, part historical fiction, part romance, and part mystery, Beheld—with its heroes, struggles, and allegories—reveals insight into what it means to be human while conveying its layered theme and multiple morals. The main plot thread features Kendra’s search for James Brandon, her beloved soulmate.  Four other stories run parallel to Kendra’s in that the characters also seek transformation through human relationships.  Ann Putnam’s story, which brought back memories of reading The Crucible by ArthurRead More →

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Written with an imagery-rich style and set in Tampere, Finland, As Red As Blood is a mystery, the first book in a trilogy by Salla Simukka featuring Lumikki Andersson.  Prinsessa Lumisirkku ja kääpiöt (Princess Snow-bunting and the Dwarfs) was the original title for the fairy tale “Snow White” in Finland, and Lumikki, like her fairytale namesake, is pursued by bullies who wish her dead.  The violence, torture, and subjugation of this bullying, which began in elementary school, has hardened Lumikki into an independent and pragmatic survivalist.  The physical similarities, however, don’t match the brown-haired Lumikki, who likes her “coffee black and strong, facts straight up, and an apartmentRead More →

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Her brother Nolan is dead, her parents are divorced, her aunt Joan is a “hurricane,” and Mel Hannigan has one of many versions of bipolar disorder, but some things you just don’t tell the world.  In the same spirit with which Terry Spencer Hesser skillfully and credibly illustrates obsessive compulsive disorder in Kissing Doorknobs  and Mark Haddon writes about life for someone coping with autism in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Eric Lindstrom shares his honest and informative novel,  A Tragic Kind of Wonderful.  Books like these, with realistic representations of people who experience mental health issues, can help readers notRead More →

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Set in Manhattan, New York, with scenes from Santa Monica, California, History Is All You Left Me by Adam Silvera is a deeply unsettling but important book about the total nightmare of life after losing a loved one.  Although th e book features more references to sex than some readers might find necessary, the book captures how love and heartbreak can turn someone crazy and suspicious and how the death of a loved one can make us “the worst kind of alive” (139), a life after death zombie without a brain, heart, light, or direction. Griffin Jennings, a seventeen-year-old with a fixation for even numbersRead More →

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It starts with a Ouija board. Maria and Lily, roommates and girlfriends at the prestigious Acheron Academy, buy the board for fun, but after it moving on it’s own, strange shadows on the walls, and a fallen chandelier, their lives begin to change…for the worse. Billed as a story of revenge, Robin Talley’s As I Descended is a riveting retelling of Shakespeare’s Macbeth for a modern audience. At Acheron, Delilah Dufrey is the queen. She’s ranked first in the Senior class, captain of the soccer team, and she’s the “unanimously elected homecoming queen” (33). She’s also the first in line for the Cawdor Kingsley FoundationRead More →