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Everything We Never Said by Sloan Harlow tells a poignant story about domestic violence and the impacts of unmanaged anger. Harlow’s novel features Ella Graham, a senior at North Davis High School in Georgia. She is a living ghost girl after losing her best friend, Hayley Miller, in a car accident. Because Ella had been driving and had consumed a single beer, she blames herself for the accident and the loss of her friend. As Ella struggles to go on with her life, she finds solace in Hayley’s former boyfriend, Sawyer Hawkins, who is similarly suffering. Having also loved Hayley, Sawyer knows Ella’s pain. AsRead More →

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Thirteen-year-old Autumn Bird loves running, so when Connor Herlihy, an athletic, smart, and popular seventh grade boy, brags that he can beat anyone in a foot race but Autumn beats him, she quits the track team. Trading her shorts and sweats for high-rise jeans and heels and makeup, Autumn is welcomed into the popular crowd. On her way to a weekend party, Autumn encounters Cody Stouffer crouched under a hedge near her home, hiding and in pain. A victim of both physical and emotional violence, Cody has run-away from one of the poorest neighborhoods where “people just like him crammed their whole lives—pots and pans,Read More →

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Jamie Jo Hoang writes about intergenerational trauma in her book My Father, the Panda Killer. Her focus is on the perilous journeys out of conflict that many took during the Vietnam War Era. Hoang tells her story with alternating perspectives—that of Phúc, who was born into wartime during the Vietnam War and that of Jane, Phúc’s daughter. As Jane struggles to understand her father’s anger and abuse, she searches for the source in memories, in family stories, and in history. Readers learn that Phúc’s soul lives in the rings of the Banyan tree where he escapes to play his bamboo flute. When he is 11,Read More →

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With their book The Agathas, Kathleen Glasgow and Liz Lawson present a spectacular mystery with a multitude of rich allusions to Agatha Christie. Told from the point of view of both Iris Adams and Alice Ogilvie, the novel is set in Castle Cove, California, a cozy coastal town where a person is either the served or the server and where the town seems curse with missing girls. Iris, who prefers to fly under-the-radar and has a “keep-to-myself-policy,” resents people like Alice–those who walk around like they live in a golden bubble. But after Alice stole an idea from one of her favorite mystery stories, disappearedRead More →

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Readers of Kim Johnson and Angie Thomas will likely enjoy Kneel by Candace Buford. Set in Monroe, Louisiana, Kneel follows the story of the Jackson Jaguars high school football team and their two star players: Marion LaSalle and Russell Boudreaux. Football is the two athletes’ ticket out of Monroe and out of poverty. Marion is possibly the best quarterback in Louisiana, and Russell is a regionally ranked tight end. For both, their bodies are their greatest assets. Although Russell is no slouch in the classroom, the field is the only place where Marion is on top. However, that is taken from him when he isRead More →

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Leighton Barnes is a reader, an aspiring journalist, and an intense individual who has her dreams set on attending journalism school at New York University.  That dream will enable her to escape Auburn, Pennsylvania, and her home, where she lives amidst tension-induced anger and domestic violence.  If she leaves to attend college, however, Leighton wonders who will keep her sisters—Campbell, age 13 and Juniper, age 9—safe from their abusive father?  Although Jesse Barnes always apologizes and is nice otherwise; that behavior doesn’t excuse his terrible side.  However, since he’s not evil, just broken, he’s harder to hate. Because of her father’s mercurial nature, Leighton isRead More →