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I haven’t laughed out loud when reading a book in a long time – last time was Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian.  This time the laughs sprang from the smart, funny, wise-cracking voice of Scott Hudson, the main character in David Lubar’s Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie. Scott tries to tell himself a lie “nothing’s going to change” a whole lot in this book.  But, starting high school, losing and gaining friends, figuring out who he is and what is important to him, as well as coming to terms with the fact that his mom is pregnant, eventually bring him to the realization that “flux rox.”  To copeRead More →

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The first book in a trilogy, Magic or Madness, by Australian author Justine Larbalestier, is the mesmerizing story of 15-year-old Reason Cansino, who has lived with her mother in the Australian bush on the run from her grandmother her whole life. When her mother goes insane, Reason is sent to live with her grandmother, whom her mother has taught her to believe is an evil witch. Once in Sydney, Reason must decipher the mixed messages she received from her mother growing up about the magic her grandmother practiced, and the neat, seemingly normal picture her grandmother presents to her. When she discovers a secret key and a long-dead catRead More →

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Lombardo’s Law, by Ellen Wittlinger, is a poignant, funny novel about the confusion of adolescence. 15 year old Justine is quiet, bright and an observer in her own life.  When a family moves in across the street, her mother hopes she’ll make life long friends with the 15 year old girl, Heather. Instead of feeling comfortable with the out-going, popular girl, Justine is drawn to Heather’s younger brother, 13 year old Mike, whose sense of humor and personality are a much closer match to Justine’s. Justine and Mike find a kinship in independent and foreign films, which leads them to write and film their own movie, a teen-parody onRead More →

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In Peadar O’Guilin’s first full length novel, The Inferior, “survival of the fittest” is taken to an entirely new meaning and readers should be prepared  for a gripping story about characters who must do whatever it takes to survive.  The story focuses on a young man, Stopmouth, and his tribe of humans who know of no other life than the daily battle to survive. To live, they must hunt rival species, or negotiate live flesh-trade with non-human species to maintain a precarious peace. And for Stopmouth, considered slowwitted because of his stutter, the future looks especially bleak. Their cruel world is not all as it seems however, and on theRead More →

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“Popularity is a state of mind. Feel nerdy. Think uncool thoughts. It also helps to use the word vaginal a lot.” Sugar Magnolia Dempsey, the daughter of free spirit “hippie” parents is moving once again, this time from her home in Portland to Austin, Texas. Broken hearted, she leaves behind friends and a boyfriend, “Maggie” vows that this time she will go out of her way to become the most unpopular student at Lakewood High School.  Arriving in Austin, she launches Operation Avoid Friends (OAF) deciding  that she is not going to fit in and will do anything to prevent people from liking her. FromRead More →

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Darkhenge by Catherine Fisher, opens on the hills above Avebury, England, famous for its prehistoric stone henges.  Rob, a talented teenage artist, sees his family disintegrating as his younger sister lies in a coma. Looking for an outlet to escape the grief and guilt he feels, he takes a job with a local archaeological dig where a new and mysterious henge has been discovered. Having spent his life surrounded by the mythology of stone circles, Rob initially pays little attention to the bizarre events that surround the dig until he realizes that this new revelation and the mystifying people attracted to it are somehow related to his sister. The novel plays outRead More →

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Madapple, the debut novel by Christina Meldrum, is a spellbinding exploration of the correlations among nature, religion, mythology and the human condition.  Meldrum weaves a complex story, full of mystery, about a sixteen-year-old girl, Aslaug. Raised in an isolated and restrictive environment by her eccentric Danish mother, Aslaug learns languages, botany, mythology and science, but very little about the outside world. When her mother dies suddenly under mysterious circumstances, Aslaug leaves home in search of her absent father, but instead finds her estranged aunt and cousins, who run a Pentecostal church in a nearby town. As dark family secrets are revealed, including the mystery of Aslaug’s birth, the tension inRead More →

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Perfect You by Elizabeth Scott is the story of Kate, and how her life is falling apart. Her father quit his job to buy and operate a Perfect You vitamin booth. Kate is forced to work at this both after school, causing severe irreversible damage. Add the fact that her best friends is no longer speaking to her, and Kate has absolutely nothing positive going on in her life. Enter Will. Amazing, so out-of-her-league Will. Kate cannot stop thinking about him, and when he starts paying more attention to her, she thinks it is to good to be true. But the more he tries toRead More →

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Ninth Grade Slays by Heather Brewer is an excellent follow up to her first novel, Eighth Grade Bites. Vladimir Tod is a vampire, but he’s also half human, the first of his kind. He lives on blood bags his aunt brings home from the hospital. He doesn’t feed off the source, humans. Vlad has just come out of an extremely eventful eighth grade year. Apparently, there is an entire community of vampires outside his little town of Bathory. But as for his start of high school, strange things are about to happen. Not only does Vlad have to deal with bullies and talking to theRead More →