Deborah Hopkinson

Lexi and Taylor have been best friends since kindergarten, and even if Taylor is rich and has the best clothes and haircut, Lexi knows she has something even more desirable: a beautiful face.

During their fifteenth summer, Lexi’s life is changed forever when she goes through the windshield of a car driven by Taylor’s brother. Lexi’s shattered world and ruined features are bad enough, but even worse is her memory of what happened just before the accident, when Taylor betrayed their friendship and Lexi’s trust.

Lexi wishes she could break every mirror in the world. Without her best friend for support, she is lost. When high school starts in the fall, Lexi refuses to leave her room and can’t talk to her parents—especially her mother, who is disappointed that Lexi will never be a beauty queen.

Lexi gets no sympathy from her older sister, Ruthie, who has never been popular or pretty. Instead, Ruthie challenges her little sister: “If you hate your life so much, stop wallowing and change it. Change yourself. No one’s going to do it for you.”

Slowly, with help from Ruthie and a boy named Theo, who has also had to cope with a terrible loss, Lexi does just that. Instead of beauty pageants, she takes up a hobby she could never have imagined. At a time when popularity and self-worth are closely tied to appearances, Lexi is forced to see the world—and herself—with new eyes.

My Life in Black and White is a satisfying journey of discovery. And, thanks to Natasha Friend’s wonderful prose, it’s a journey that readers will be glad to take with her.

There’s nothing like the simple, delectable pleasure of getting lost in a book on a summer’s day—as author Huntley Fitzpatrick understands. Her debut novel, My Life Next Door, follows Samantha Reed during her 17th summer, when she falls for the most unlikely candidate imaginable: the boy next door.

Samantha lives in a coastal Connecticut town with her mother and older sister, Tracy, in a house so pristine her mother has been known to vacuum behind the girls as they walk out the door in the morning. It’s quiet, clean and, Samantha must admit, a bit boring and lonely.

No wonder she’s been watching the large, boisterous family next door for years. Her mother has forbidden Samantha from playing with the Garretts, but despite the scattered toys, unkempt lawn and Mrs. Garrett’s habit of breastfeeding yet another new baby, something about their messy life appeals to her.

Then she meets Jase Garrett and everything changes. Samantha is drawn into Jase’s life and grows comfortable with the entire family. When something terrible and unexpected happens, Samantha faces a heartbreaking decision that tests her love for her family and her own sense of right and wrong.

Samantha and Jase embark on their romance not in a vacuum, but as real teens who balance family responsibilities, work, worries about friends and questions about their futures. Fitzpatrick, a mother of six, captures the magic of family and love in this impressive debut.

Dystopia, fantasy and science fiction crowd the YA shelves these days, but Code Name Verity, Elizabeth Wein’s astonishing new World War II novel, is a reminder of the power historical fiction can have in the hands of an accomplished author. Set in Great Britain and occupied France both before and during the war, Code Name Verity is a complex story of friendship and courage.

As the novel opens, “Verity” has been captured by the Gestapo behind enemy lines. “I wanted to be heroic and I pretended I was,” she begins. We soon learn that she has made a deal with her captor to write down every last detail she knows. As she pens her story, he will return her clothes, piece by piece. In exchange, he will get wireless codes, details about airfields in Great Britain and Verity’s own story.

And what a story it is: Writing on whatever paper is given to her, Verity tells the story of her friendship with Maddie Brodatt, who, as a female pilot in the Air Transport Auxiliary, brought Verity to France. As in the tale of Scheherazade, Verity’s captor appreciates her rich storytelling, but in the end he does not hold the power to determine her fate. In the second part of the book, Maddie takes up the suspenseful tale, while the action builds to an unforgettable encounter between the two friends.

Elizabeth Wein is a pilot herself, and her passion for flying and the details of piloting and caring for a small plane add depth and authenticity to this complex, thoroughly researched novel. She also includes a historical note and a bibliography.

As we have learned with books like The Hunger Games, “YA” and “middle grade” may be convenient labels, but they don’t limit the audience for good books. Yes, we can call Code Name Verity a young adult book. But this sophisticated and compelling novel is likely to find a home on the shelves of teens and adults alike.

“Who would have guessed that four minutes could change everything?”

For Hadley Sullivan, heading from JFK to London as a reluctant bridesmaid in her father’s (second) wedding to a woman she hasn’t met, four minutes means she misses her flight. It means that she may not make it to the ceremony in time. Most of all, it means being rebooked on the next flight and sitting next to a boy named Oliver, a Yale freshman headed home to London.

Jennifer E. Smith’s delightful new novel, The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight, takes place over a period of just 24 hours. And while the eventual outcome of the teens’ chance encounter is never in doubt, Smith’s insightful chronicling of Hadley’s emotional life brings a power and sensitivity to this story of first love.

Hadley is dreading the plane ride (she suffers from claustrophobia) and, even more, the wedding itself. She hasn’t recovered from her father’s abrupt departure, and doesn’t believe his story that he wasn’t looking for love when he became a visiting professor in England. And even though her mother has rebuilt her life and is seeing someone new, Hadley refuses to trust her mom’s recovery, or her philosophical view that things turned out for the best.

But then Hadley meets Oliver, and experiences “a kind of unfamiliar electricity at the nearness of him.” After the long night flight together, and an unexpected turn of events the next day in London, Hadley comes to new realizations about her family, and about love itself. “The idea that their paths might have just as easily not crossed leaves her breathless . . . and she can’t help marveling at the sheer randomness of it all.”