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Maria Padian’s new novel Out of Nowhere captures the truth of the adage that the only thing constant in life is change.  Padian’s protagonist, high school senior and soccer team captain Tom Bouchard, experiences the futility of one’s efforts at controlling outcomes.  He discovers how even a simple action or choice can have far-reaching repercussions and realizes that luck can “curl up next to you one minute, then bite you the next” (275). Enniston,Maine, provides the backdrop for this novel that explores these issues, as well as the contemporary topic of cultural collisions.  Tom’s quiet hometown becomes the home to an influx of Somalian refugeesRead More →

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Four teens who inexplicably survive the “end of the world”, brought together seemly by random chance who each have an undiscovered power and a deeply hidden pain, who together can set the teetering, ravaged city of Los Angeles (and perhaps the whole world) back on its axis . . . Icons by Margaret Stohl?  Not even close, actually.  Instead, this tale of destruction, survival, and the power of love comes from Francesca Lia Block and is as different in tone, imagery, and execution as day from night.   In Love in the Time of Global Warming (August 2013), Block again crafts a story wherein herRead More →

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In Anna Jarzab’s book Tandem, Book One in the Many-Worlds Trilogy, readers will find some of the spirit of Libba Bray’s Going Bovine–which features multiple scientific and literary allusions–and some of the wonderings of Alisa Valdes’ The Temptation–which invites questions about parallel universes and presents a paranormal romance.  Given those qualities, a convoluted plot, and characters like Sasha Lawson, Princess Juliana, and secret agent Thomas Mayhew who invite connection and whose stories involve intrigue, this science-fiction romance provides tremendous reader appeal. Tired of her arranged and orchestrated life in the United Commonwealth of Columbia—of being a pawn in someone else’s game—Juliana decides she wants a normalRead More →

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In Foul Trouble, veteran sports journalist and best-selling novelist, John Feinstein, takes an unflinching look at the cut-throat process of collegiate recruiting top student talent.  Feinstein pulls back the curtain to reveal a shadow world that is rarely seen by the general sports fan and it’s not a very pretty:  a subculture packed with unscrupulous people who latch onto these young athletes hoping to make millions on the kids’ talents; high stakes ultimatums and heavy amounts of pressure to go with the “highest bidder” even if its against NCAA rules and one’s own better judgment; and a dizzy array of media attention, drugs, swag, andRead More →

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When people drive by an accident, or a house fire, or some other horror that routinely befalls our fellow human beings, we’re compelled to look. To stare. To seek out signs of lost normalcy, the life that was, the people as they were “before.”  It’s an uncontrollable urge to peer in, despite the fact that we’re aware of the suffering and pain wrapped up in the debris.  Andrew Smith‘s The Marbury Lens is one of those horrors that you can’t look away from, no matter how much you want to, no matter how gruesome the detail, no matter the pain twisting in your gut asRead More →

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She doesn’t know her name. She doesn’t know where she is. All she knows is that her fingernails have been removed, she has been physically attacked, and she’s a prisoner to two men. Before she can open her eyes, she hears the men discussing how they are going to “finish her off because she knows too much”. This action packed novel follows a girl who is unaware of her entire life. She has lost all her memories and is on the run from a group of men who want to kill her. Even going to the cops has gotten her in trouble. She has beenRead More →

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I’m not sure what to say about Matt de la Pena’s The Living.  I’ve been wrestling with how to review this book for a couple of weeks now and I still haven’t really found a place to start.  The blurb on the back of the ARC says “genre-bending” and I think that’s the best I can come up with too; that’s not because I wasn’t engaged by the story, didn’t care about the characters, and wasn’t thinking about Shy and his unbelievable 8 days long after I closed the back cover, it’s just that The Living is . . . different. Shy’s taken a jobRead More →

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Sixteen-year-old Agnes Mochrie, aka Canny, stars as the protagonist in Elizabeth Knox’s new fantasy novel Mortal Fire.  This novel is set in 1959 in Southland, the same locale as the famous Dreamhunter Duet.  Canny, a Pacific Islander who attends Castlereagh Tech, is a math genius and the star of the school’s math team—a gender marvel for the time period.  But then, much about Canny is a marvel—from her massive, impassive, and queenly mother who presides over Canny’s life like an unexploded bomb to Canny’s admirable loyalty to her polio afflicted friend Marli. Readers are certain about the depth of Knox’s book early in, when Canny’sRead More →

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In a barren and dusty world, 17 year old Banyan is a tree builder.  Using metal, twinkle lights and other junk, he creates forests like there used to be more than a century ago, before The Darkness, before the locust plagues.  Barely surviving, Banyan travels from town to town working for rich people who want to recapture something of a world that no longer exists.  Before he disappeared, Banyan’s father was a master tree builder and he passed on an art with scrap that makes Banyan’s forests really something to see. Working for some “rich freaks”, Banyan unexpectedly meets a strange woman with a remarkable tattooRead More →