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The Crown’s Game is a story about a woman named Vika, who has to decide between honor or love. She has a duty to her country to win the Crown’s Game, but she also wants to experience love and life. Vika encounters Pasha and Nikolai, who will have a great impact on the decision that will affect the rest of her life. Vika will soon know the meaning of love through the encounters that she has with Nikolai and Pasha as the games continues. The Crown’s Game reveals that magic can be found in all forms of the characters whether is performed or felt. AsRead More →

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With a recent surplus of fantasy novels for young adult readers, it’s rare for one to be completely unique. Catherine Egan’s Julia Vanishes manages to stand on its own, both delightful and surprising, while building a one-of-a-kind, magical world. The story focuses on Julia, currently serving as a housemaid for the wealthy Mrs. Och’s household. Julia serves tea and cleans sheets, but in actuality, she’s really a spy. After her mother was killed in a government raid against witches, Julia and her brother were taken in by Esme, the leading lady of crime. From Esme’s troop of criminals, Julia’s perfected the arts of thieving andRead More →

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Just as an apple, cut and cored, cannot be put back together, Nella Sabatini–a young Italian Catholic girl–feels undone, confused, and incomplete.  Restless with desire for things her parents cannot afford, for popularity that evades her, and for a sense of peace and quiet that is in short supply with a houseful of “barbarian brothers” and a grandmother who is demanding and grumpy, “ancient and ignorant,” Nella aches for answers to life’s toughest questions and difficult dilemmas.  With happy moments so ephemeral, she wishes, “If only you could store up happiness. . . . Dig a happiness hole, or keep a happiness piggy bank, savingRead More →

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What will you do for fame or goal fulfillment?  Presenting such a question may cause readers to reflect on the formula for success: hard work plus “discipline, control, and steely determination” (3).  But ambition can derail common sense, and we are all buffeted by the whims of circumstances that can cause us to react in unforeseen ways. Alyson Noël explores this “how far will you go” question in Unrivaled: A Beautiful Idols Novel released in May.  The main player in this novel isn’t an adolescent but an adult named Ira Redman, the überconnected night club czar of Los Angeles, California, and the sperm donor/father ofRead More →

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Strong-willed and filled with questions as a child, Clara Hartel loves time spent with her dad, who promises, “You’ll never be lost as long as I’m here” (99).  Having already lost her mother to thyroid cancer, Clara requires reassurance that she will not be completely abandoned.  So, when her father dies suddenly from a heart attack, eight-year-old Clara no longer feels safe and secure. Devastated by her father’s death, Clara figuratively confines herself in a glass coffin, like that remembered from the bedtime story of Snow White.  Psychologically shut away from the outside world, Clara goes through the motions of life, where sounds are muffled,Read More →

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Willa Parker’s life is becoming one all about “should’s” and “supposed to’s” and it’s all her mother’s fault. Willa is a junior in High School, not exactly happy with her spot at the Freak Table, but she’s also not complaining. She’s content with her social standing and the life that she’s built with her dad in the small town of What Cheer, Iowa. Her mother, living in Paris after deserting Willa as a child, has other plans for her, though. These plans involve Willa having to move to the East Coast to attend the uber-exclusive Pembroke Prep, leaving her friends and her father behind toRead More →

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Similar to Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech, The Way Back to You by Michelle Andreani and Mindi Scott uses a road trip as a metaphor for the journey survivors take as they learn how to cope with death and loss. After sixteen-year-old Ashlyn Montiel dies in a freakish bicycle accident in Bend, Oregon, her boyfriend—Kyle Ocie, a baseball player who doesn’t believe in the afterlife—and her best friend—sassy, smart, cheerleader Claudia Marlowe—have difficulty overcoming the shock of having Ashlyn ripped from their lives.  Realizing they will never be with her again not only affects how the two live; the idea of going on withoutRead More →

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Seventeen year old JT Barnett is gay, but that’s not how he defines himself. He’s known from a young age that he likes boys and hasn’t really had any problems coming to terms with it; it’s just a part of who he is. No, for JT, his main struggle in life is with his own confidence. JT has a great best friend, Heather, and a loving boyfriend, Seth, but he’s plagued by doubts about his uninterested parents and his above average body weight. JT has love and support, but he’s looking for a way out. There’s no way that he’s going to end up workingRead More →

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At the end of her sophomore year, Summer Everett will travel to France to visit her father, a famous but somewhat flaky artist.  She will be spending her sixteenth birthday away from all that is familiar in Hudsonville, New York, where her mom is a philosophy professor.  In Provence, she anticipates a summer of possibility, inundated with wild surprises, maybe even her first kiss.  But without the abundant confidence and curvy figure of her BFF, Ruby Singh, Summer is plagued with uncertainty.  In fact, Summer’s favorite question is what if: What if I answer my cell phone before I board the plane for France? OrRead More →