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A blend of horror, mystery, and thriller with a sprinkling of romance, Two Sides to Every Murder by Danielle Valentine will appeal to a wide variety of readers. Set in New York, the novel features Olivia D’Angeli and Reagan Karl. Both sixteen-year-olds have an origin story anchored at Camp Lost Lake, a youth camp owned by the D’Angeli family. Tired of running, Reagan is determined to solve the murder that has her mother in hiding. She and her best friend, Jack, are determined to exonerate Reagan’s mother Lori Knight, aka Lauren Karl, so that Reagan can live a normal life free from the accusations thatRead More →

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Anyone wishing for a Halloween thriller will likely find it in The Last Girls Standing by Jennifer Dugan. With this horror story, Dugan creates Charlene Addison Barnes, aka Cherry, and Sloan Thomas, two survivors of a mass murder at Camp Money Springs where they had taken summer jobs as camp counsellors. Able to diffuse tension with a single sentence, Cherry survives the killing spree of a “save the Earth” cult with her memory intact. However, like a rabbit in a snare, Sloan is caught in a time loop in her head. Although Sloan wants to study social work and save the world, her perfect plansRead More →

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In: Multicultural (YA), Realistic Fiction (YA), Romance (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
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If books need labels, Café con Lychee by Emery Lee would be a romantic comedy that showcases queer interracial love between two people of color. Labels are suggestive of a category and, as such, provide a cognitive short-cut. Yet, labels also invite critical thinking. So, while Lee’s book does indeed feature two gay young men—one Japanese/Chinese, the other Puerto Rican—it dives deeper, emerging as a book about the universal experience of looking for acceptance and how fear makes people do terrible things. An openly gay boy, Theo Mori is a talented cook and soccer athlete. Even though his friends see him as confident, smart, andRead More →

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With his novel All That’s Left in the World, Erik J. Brown tells a post-apocalyptic story. It features “a gay guy, a broken straight boy, a cartography genius with PTSD, a seventy-year-old woman with a shotgun fighting zoo animals” (264), and a host of not-so-supportive others with an occasional kind character thrown in. There’s also a white supremacists commune, lest we forget the corrupting forces of racism, greed, and power. After a super-flu virus has nearly wiped out the American population, Andrew sets out from Connecticut on foot to find other survivors. Near Philadelphia, he is caught in a bear trap and staggers into aRead More →