Heather Seggel

At just 14 years old, Celia Door has turned Dark. Not goth or emo, but withdrawn into herself, clad in black and focused solely on getting back at the kids who pushed her over the edge. Befriending a cool new guy at school helps to broaden her horizons, but when he gets entangled in her scheme, it looks like she might lose everything. Will The Sweet Revenge of Celia Door be worth it?

Author Karen Finneyfrock works magic on the page here. We get glimpses of the real Celia, an earnest, slightly nerdy poet, and we can see she’s not cut out for vengeance or darkness. Flashbacks to her mistreatment by classmates are unsparing, though, and it’s easy to understand why she wants so badly to even the score. Celia’s parents are divorcing and think her acting out is a response to them, which leaves her even more alone.

New BFF Drake is a delight, just finding his way in the world and looking for order amid the chaos. His reliance on a kooky self-help book to aid in his coming-out process is both hilarious and poignant. When Celia sticks up for Drake and he drops to one knee and proposes friendship, she thinks: “I didn’t say anything at first because I wanted to see how long those words could hang in the air. Best friend. Best friend. Best friend.”

Readers will like Celia and pull for her to learn that being true to herself is the sweetest revenge of all.

The French Quarter of New Orleans is no place for a child. Josie Moraine, the daughter of a prostitute, grew up there and made her own way by cleaning the brothel and working in a bookstore. She’s 17 now and ready to make a better name for herself, which means getting away from her past. When a murder ties all the strands of her life in knots, will Josie make it Out of the Easy in one piece?

Author Ruta Sepetys (Between Shades of Gray) sets her story in 1950 and decorates it with both glamour and grime. The city’s nightlife is decadent, but morning finds the streets littered with broken glass, Mardi Gras beads and bottles. Josie cleans up after nights of revelry, finding a high heel here, a cufflink there, and delivers them to madam Willie Woodley, whose brusque manner belies a genuine love for this tough, smart girl.

There are many supporting players here: mechanic Jesse and Josie’s best friend Patrick, either of whom may be a potential suitor; the working girls who’ve watched Josie grow up; and Cokie, Willie’s driver and right-hand man, who wants to help Josie escape and get an education. Through all the plot twists, Josie’s desire to better herself and maintain a moral center in a place where that’s decidedly unfashionable keeps us in her corner.

Out of the Easy has a mystery at its center, but in many ways it’s a book about family and how the ones you’re born to aren’t necessarily your true tribe. Rough-edged and glamorous by turns, this is a wild ride worth taking.

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Read a Q&A with Ruta Sepetys for Out of the Easy.

Rachel's older brother Micah has gone missing. She's been keeping his secrets for so long that telling her parents about his drug addiction now seems beside the point. When a stranger sends her an email, warning her that her brother’s in danger, Rachel asks Micah's friend and bandmate Tyler for help. They set out to search for him, finding clues and complications along the way.

Out of Reach is author Carrie Arcos' first novel, and she bravely turns conventional expectations upside-down. Rachel and Tyler search for Micah but also get distracted by crushing on each other. We meet Micah through flashbacks and can see how Rachel's guilt stems from how close the brother and sister once were before drugs and deception pulled them apart. Despite pulling no punches about the destruction caused by meth addiction, Arcos never reduces characters to caricature; there's humanity under every surface story.

The journey is the destination in this novel, and it's full of grimy Southern California coastal towns, surfers, drug dealers and gang-bangers. Arcos uses details to sketch Micah's life, as when Rachel finds a room where he'd been staying: “I sat down on the bed and opened the bag, dumping the contents onto the floor: a pair of jeans, three socks, a guitar pick, a black cap, a broken pair of sunglasses, and The Hobbit. Of all my books, he'd stolen that one. I hadn't even noticed.”

Some readers may wish for a neater conclusion, but the open-ended resolution feels like a new beginning for Rachel. Out of Reach is unconventional, edgy and raw, and a fine first novel.

Monstrous Beauty combines horror, romance and fantasy in an affecting and creepy tale. In 1872, a mermaid named Syrenka falls in love with the naturalist who has been sketching her. Trading her tail for life on land is not as easy as she'd hoped, and the consequences of her decision pay forward for more than a century. In the present day, Hester, all of 17 and certain she's doomed to a life alone due to a family curse, meets a beautiful stranger who seems to be the answer to her prayers. Funny how wrong first impressions can turn out to be.

Author Elizabeth Fama (Overboard) gives Monstrous Beauty style and punch. For a book aimed at readers 12 and up, the violence (including a graphic sexual assault) comes as a shock, but it raises the stakes for all the humans, mermaids and other creatures involved in the unfolding story. After two episodes that would put most of us out of commission for a week, the hits just keep on coming: “Before she could react, [Hester] was tackled to the ground and being clawed and punched by a raving madwoman.” But when Hester sees that her future isn't etched in stone after all, her insecurities give way to a plucky willingness to try anything.

Modern day crashes into late-19th-century morals when the story looks back at the town's church, which condemns things they can't understand (kind of forgivable in the case of mermaids, but still). The Puritan attitudes fire up the tension between good versus evil, giving the book's finale more oomph. Not that it needs it! Monstrous Beauty packs a serious, sexy wallop.

Fingerprints of You opens on Lemon’s 17th birthday, which her mom, Stella, is celebrating by getting herself a new tattoo. After a lifetime of being dragged from place to place in the wake of Stella’s bad decisions inspired by bad men, Lemon wants to differentiate herself from the mother she sees as “made of metal and glass.” Lacking a better role model, she does so by hooking up with her mom’s tattoo artist and ending up pregnant.

Author Kristen-Paige Madonia brings poetry to the down-but-not-out Stella and Lemon. When Lemon rides a bus cross-country in search of her absentee dad, she can finally loosen up and explore an age-appropriate romance (ironic belly bump notwithstanding). Lemon’s first impressions of San Francisco’s Mission District include “the smells of marinara and car fumes and something dank and wet seeping from the street drains,” along with the many small kindnesses from neighbors in an overwhelming landscape. Those little lessons pay forward into Lemon’s budding relationship with her dad and help her forge some peace with Stella.

At its heart, Fingerprints of You is the tale of Lemon’s liberation from a too-young adulthood and her emancipation back into youth. At the beginning of the book Stella jokes that she chose the name “Lemon” because her daughter was bitter; later she admits to being drawn to it because, “That yellow looked like hope to me.” Lemon’s trip is a tough one, but by the end she’s found a new path that owes as much to the hardships she’s seen as to her mother’s once-invisible but nevertheless enduring love.