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Dylan, a junior at a rough, south-side Oklahoma City high school, who doesn’t figure he’ll amount to much, is the butt of jokes at school because of his weight, and with only a couple friends and no hopes of getting a girlfriend, seems an unlikely hero, even in his own life.  When he discovers the body of a classmate in a dumpster behind the school, Dylan gets a taste of popularity; too bad it only lasts a day or two.  Realizing that his life is nothing more than “a zero in the scheme of the universe” (28), Dylan decides that what he needs is toRead More →

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“Forgetting who you are is so much more complicated that simply forgetting your name. It’s also forgetting your dreams. Your aspirations. What makes you happy. What you pray you’ll never have to live without. It’s meeting yourself for the first time, and not being sure of your first impressions.” (8)  There’s only one thing you can count on in a world without memories, and that’s your heart.  The feelings that flood you, the warmth or the chill that envelopes you, that’s the only barometer you have when nothing else makes sense. Learning that you must let it guide you to those you can trust andRead More →

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“Altering identity, altering reality” – in general, we believe that a few times in life a person is given the chance to do just that: moving to a new town where no one knows you; going off to college, especially if you choose a school where few (if any) of your high school friends are going; when you start a new job; or when you travel.  And the transformative power of travel is at the core of Gayle Forman’s latest, Just One Day.  As Gayle herself wrote in the letter to booksellers that accompanied the ARC: “sometimes on the road, the most amazing, frustrating, eye-opening, terrifying, bewilderingRead More →

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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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Lexi is a sixteen year old girl with a…yes, you guessed it, great personality! Yet, it doesn’t stop there. Lexi is determined to prove to her family and friends that she is more than a great personality. She is an average teenager who is trying to conquer independence, high school, and family drama. Lexi is known as the “girl with the great personality” in her high school. She doesn’t go out on dates, wear makeup, or dress particularly fashionable. Why waste time participating in the beauty pageant known as high school? When her friend Benny dares her to wear makeup and dress up at school,Read 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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Christina Diaz Gonzalez‘s second novel, A Thunderous Whisper, brings us to Guernica, Spain.  Here we meet 12 year old Ani, a quiet, insignificant whisper of a girl who lives on the periphery of society, daughter of a sardine seller.  Ani’s father has gone to the front lines of the Spanish Civil War to fight against General Franco’s forces, hoping to protect the Basque homeland from impending seizure.  Left with her cold-hearted, harsh mother, Ani’s life has never felt more bleak and lonely. Then she meets a boy, Mathias, who is spirited, sure of himself, and interested in being her friend.  Mathias is new to Guernica and heRead More →

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Tyler is caught between the girl he has and the girl he wants. Since the very first day of freshman year, he’s been completely, head-over-heels in love with beautiful, wounded, and enigmatic Becky.  He yearns for her, creates endless stories about who he believes she is and the perfect romance they’d have if she would just notice him, and goes through his high school days telling himself that it’s enough to be be her only friend.  And since winter break of freshman year, he’s been in a comfortable, all-too-easy, autopilot relationship with Syd.  Syd is smart, mature, and for reasons Tyler can’t explain, into him.Read More →

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That Time I Joined the Circus by J. J. Howard isn’t a typical runaway story but it is one rich in circus sounds and sensations.  The author’s obsession with music is obvious in the lyrical headnotes to each chapter and in the many allusions that occur in the text—making this a book for music lovers and for those who live their lives with their own sound track or play list. Although the circus plays a role in Howard’s text, this is really Xandra Ryan’s story—her disparate identity is obvious in her many names: Lexi, Alex, and even X.  Feeling like Doormat Girl who only getsRead More →