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Despite his warm, friendly, and generous nature, junior Lawrence Barry is on the verge of expulsion for his actions at a diversity assembly at Meridian High School while stoned.  Because his father is a powerful attorney of the law firm Barry, Yu and Singh and because his counsellor Mr. Lunley believes Lawrence has potential and simply needs to channel his energies in more positive directions, the expulsion hearing is thwarted.   However, with his dad’s threat of Langdon Military Academy hanging over his head, with Mr. Lunley’s having recruited him for the Buddy Club, and with Principal Stone scrutinizing his every action, Lawrence has to reformRead More →

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What if poets, musicians, painters, and actors—who have art and talent in their blood—could use their craft to weave magic, much like the magic that scientists work with chemical reactions, cymatics, and other means to make the impossible suddenly appear possible?  This is only one of the questions that Destiny Soria explores in her debut book, Iron Cast.  Her plot and its conflicts make readers think more deeply to wonder why society is so eager to marginalize those who are different.  Although differences in socioeconomic circumstances, language, ethnicity, age, race, place, religion, exceptionality, gender, and health have potential to cause division, the world might be aRead More →

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The year is 2118 and New York City is home to the Tower, a skyscraper that spans dozens of blocks and has a total of one thousand floors, “the biggest structure on earth, a whole world unto itself” (7). Telling the sprawling story of five teenage tower dwellers of varying ages, genders, races, and tower levels, Katharine McGee intersects their lives into The Thousandth Floor, a drama worthy of comparison to television’s Gossip Girl or Pretty Little Liars. Avery Fuller is the wealthiest of the main cast, living on top of the world on the thousandth floor. It’s no secret to her friends that herRead More →

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Two young people, one twelve and the other only thirteen, aspire to change the world. Hobson Smythe is muir, an ordinary human from a remote settlement called Dusk where everything is “cold and dull, a tiny outpost smothered in snow and pine needles” (106).  Hazel Faeregine is mehrùn, a magical being who has lived her entire life sheltered from hardship in Impyria, where everything is “an explosion of colors and sound, swift riptides of people and money” (106).   Despite their different backgrounds, both Hob and Hazel wish to matter, to make a difference, and to fight the injustices they see. Hazel’s family has ruled theRead More →

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Like all good dystopian fiction, Frost by M. P. Kozlowsky begins with a social question that has currency and relevance and then exaggerates the answer to warn society of what could happen if we don’t take the appropriate actions or proceed with caution.  Kozlowsky’s plot revolves around wishes for everlasting life–for human immortality–and Dr. Alex Simmelfore has found an answer: Create a robot and download human consciousness to a chip that can be planted into the robot.  These improved robot beings will have human instinct, human thought, and human complexity combined with a body that won’t age, wear down, or succumb to illness. As readers will suspect,Read More →

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Had Molly Rosenberg known that middle school was going to be the high point in her life, she would have tried harder to enjoy it.  Now, she’s a freshman at Santa Monica High School in Southern California, and she’s friendless and living a life haunted by past mistakes and regrets.  Because she suffers from severe anxiety and panic attacks, her service dog Pixel coaxes her to breathe. But life wasn’t always like this.  Before everything changed, the Rosenbergs were a regular family who played Monopoly or snuggled under blankets to watch old movies together.  “After the awful thing that happened last winter” (47), Mom became addictedRead More →

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Joanna Gordon is a high school senior, who is looking forward to her last year with her best friend Dana. Joanna and Dana have experienced a lot together; both girls came out of the closet and have stuck by one another when faced with issues regarding their sexuality. Even Joanna’s father accepts who she is, which means a lot because he is an evangelist with his own radio show. However, Joanna is not the only woman in her dad’s life anymore. Elizabeth Gordon, or as Joanna likes to call her, “Three”, is her dad’s new wife. (She’s his third wife, hence her nickname.) Joanna does not mindRead More →

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Love isn’t all emotion; it is also biology and chemistry, and according to Krystal Sutherland in her debut novel, Our Chemical Hearts, “all love is equal in the brain” (287).  Like hunger and thirst, love drives us to act, and satisfying that craving becomes a goal.  Although we tend to identify love most often with euphoria, that is hardly the only emotion we feel when under its influence. Ecstasy, compassion, surprise, anxiety, anger, jealousy, and despair, all play a role as the brain releases chemicals like pheromones, dopamine, and serotonin. Sutherland’s seventeen-year-old protagonist, Henry Isaac Page experiences these emotions as he swings between highs and lows,Read More →

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In this rational, scientific age, can people still take the leaps of faith necessary to believe in miracles?  This is the question explored by James Patterson in his mystery-thriller Cradle and All in a fashion similar to that pursued by Dan Brown in books like The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons.  During a second coming of the dreaded disease polio, thought eradicated by Dr. Salk’s and the Sabin vaccine, people—mostly children—are dying or surviving with deformed limbs and crippled spines.  This unusual pandemic seems connected to the lives of two girls.  Kathleen Beavier, a seventeen-year-old with a model’s beauty and a Catholic girl’s innocence,Read More →