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Violet is moody, brilliant, forceful and a visionary; Claire is light, airy, dreamy and innocent. These two are drawn together from the first pages of Francesca Lia Block’s  Violet & Claire. First we meet 17 year old Violet, whose wealthy life in Beverly Hills is boring, empty and consumed with classic films.  Her narrative starts off as the rantings of a spoiled angry teen, but soon we see the artistic, driven young woman underneath the Goth look.  She’s searching for a material for the screenplay she is writing and when she notices Claire at school, she believes she’s found her star.  Violet’s intensity saturates her portion of the storyRead More →

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In: Multicultural (YA), On the Edge, Young Adult Book Reviews
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Matt de la Pena’s third book, We Were Here, will be released from Random House in October 2009, and with it, his writing skill and storytelling art has reached a higher level of excellence.  Rich, exquisitely detailed, thoughtful and thought-provoking, this powerful book will reach readers in their heart of hearts and grab ahold. Miguel’s the smartest kid in Juvi.  His cellmate, Rondell, can’t even read.  When he gets to the group home where he’s been sentenced for a year, Miguel decides all the guys there are posers and weaklings, and he certainly isn’t going to rap with the goofy, surfer-dude in charge of theRead More →

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In: Mystery & Suspense (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
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One thing that I like about the Peter Abrahams’ mysteries I’ve read, Reality Check included, is that it’s regular people noticing things  who solve the mysteries around them; they’re not detectives, they aren’t Nancy Drew types; they just start paying attention and piecing both obvious and not-so-obvious things together until they figure it all out. The every-day guy in Reality Check (April 2009), is 17 year old Cody. He has 2 passions in life: being the QB for his high school football team and his smart, beautiful girlfriend Clea.  But as junior year starts, he loses both: football to a torn ACL and Clea toRead More →

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Eireann Corrigan’s novel in verse, Splintering, tells the story of a family whose suburban life is shattered after a home invasion.  While visiting their oldest daughter, Mimi, in the city after her husband left her, a man, high on drugs, breaks into the house.  Dad has a heart attack while fighting him off, brother Jeremy flees to the basement, and mom, 15 year old daughter Paulie and Mimi retreat upstairs until the man breaks down the door and attacks them.  Fortunately, no one dies, but the aftermath unravels the family as each of them deal with the event in their own tortured way. Fierce, angry Paulie and her olderRead More →

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In: Romance (YA), Supernatural & Horror (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
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What’s the next big romance now that Bella, Edward and Jacob have found their eternal happy ending?  Will it be a werewolf whose loved and craved a human girl?  Another vampire? Zombies?  In Becca Fitzpatrick’s hush, hush, due from Simon & Schuster in October 2009 (moved up from a Jan 2010 release), our star-crossed lovers are Nora and fallen angel, Patch. To begin with, I love the cover of this book.  In looking for the next tormented bad boy yearning to be good for the sake of his one true love, fallen angels seem like a great choice.  After all, they’re characters whose desires, needsRead More →

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In: Middle Grade Reviews, Supernatural & Horror, Supernatural & Horror (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
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Leander Watts’ novel, Beautiful City of the Dead, reminds me of those amazing albums where great bands use their songs to tell a complex, multi-dimensional story.  Each classic song stands alone, brilliant and enchanting, but when interwoven with the others on the album, makes something deeper, wider and more powerful as the listener lets him/her-self be enveloped in the band’s vision. Of course this interpretation isn’t highly original, since on the surface the story is about a teenage “ghost metal” band – four friends who come together through their music and find meaning and power in their awkward teenage years.  But the way Watts weaves a supernatural, other-wordly elements into theRead More →

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Edward Bloor’s Crusader is the kind of book I love: engaging plot; exquisitely drawn, realistic characters; and a thought-provoking story where both the characters and a patient reader grow and come to new realizations by the end of the book. When we first meet Roberta Ritter, a 15-year old girl who works, for free, in her family’s virtual reality mall arcade, she’s not much more than a oddball doormat. She’s observant and thoughtful, but also very naive and young for her age.  She tells everyone (and believes) that her mother died 7 years before of a heart attack and since then, Roberta really hasn’t grown up much. Read More →

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In: Action & Adventure, Action & Adventure (YA), Middle Grade Reviews, Young Adult Book Reviews
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Action, adventure, mythology and high-tech crime are packed into Stephen Cole’s Thieves Like Us.  The first book in an explosive series, Thieves Like Us, introduces us to a crew of brilliant teens whose skill and ambition are harnessed by a criminal mastermind, Coldheart, making them an almost unstoppable band of high-end thieves.  First we meet Jonah Wish, an ultra-talented computer programmer as he’s serving the second month of a year-long incarceration for illegal computer hacking and multi-million dollar theft.  Jonah’s as surprised as the reader when a commotion breaks out in the jail and he’s spirited away by some well-trained, technologically savvy teens to aRead More →

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15-year old Zeeta’s life with her free-spirited mother, Layla, is anything but normal. Every year Layla picks another country she wants to live in  – this summer they’re in Ecuador, while Zeeta longs for a “normal” life in the American suburbs. Zeeta makes friends with vendors at the town market and begs them to think of upstanding, “normal” men to set up with Layla. There, Zeeta meets Wendell who was born nearby, but adopted by an American family. His one wish is to find his birth parents, and Zeeta agrees to help him. Their quest takes them to an idealized indigenous village, through jungles, crystalRead More →