In We Are Okay, author Nina LaCour (Everything Leads to You) tells a story more of absence than presence, looking with calm directness at grief and betrayal and the ways they can multiply outward. It’s a beautiful, devastating piece of art.

Marin is in school in New York, quietly living a new life and trying to leave behind the life she ran from. Her lonely Christmas break is interrupted by a visit from her best friend (and now ex-girlfriend), Mabel. The truth about the event that caused Marin to leave San Francisco with only what she held in her hands comes out slowly, and her grief in the face of it is cavernous. But notice the details LaCour shines a light on: the perfect yellow bowls Marin bought at a pottery shop, the potted plant thriving and in need of a larger container. If her existence now is sparse, it is not without color, or life.

The title hints at a happy ending, but the journey toward it passes through some of the darkest corners of the heart. Be prepared to be gutted—and grateful. We Are Okay is an extraordinary work by an author who keeps redefining and elevating her genre. Readers are lucky to have it.

This article was originally published in the February 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

“And this makes me wonder if a black girl’s life is only about being stitched together and coming undone, being stitched together and coming undone.” The latest novel from Renée Watson captures the poignant story of a black teenage girl struggling to navigate a world that doesn’t appear to accept her.

Jade Butler lives in an impoverished area of Portland, Oregon, and is raised by a single mother who works tirelessly so that Jade can attend a prestigious private high school. There, Jade is given lots of opportunities, such as free SAT prep classes and tutoring jobs. When Jade is invited to participate in a mentorship program for African-American girls, she is disappointed. She’s tired of being selected for programs where the only criteria is being black and poor. She just wants to be nominated for the study abroad trip to Costa Rica, but it’s difficult to refuse these opportunities when so much is riding on her success.

Piecing Me Together is a beautifully written story told through the first-person narration of a girl who, despite being smart, strong and artistic, still feels like she has to overcome her race, gender and socio-economic status. This has as much to do with the actions of the adults in her life—as well intentioned as they may be—as it does with the undercurrent of racism and classism. There’s a lot to unpack here, and readers will finish the story with more questions than answers—a testament to the novel’s complexity and nuance.

Kimberly Giarratano is the author of Grunge Gods and Graveyards, a young adult paranormal mystery.

This article was originally published in the February 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Mixed-race Mary B. Addison has lived in a group home since her release from “baby jail,” where she was held for six years. The other girls are like Mary—convicted of violent crimes—but she is the one they call “psycho.” Mary committed the most heinous crime of the group: When she was 9 years old, she killed the white baby her mother was babysitting. Allegedly.

Mary wants the opportunity to rebuild her life unfettered by her reputation. She is extremely smart, and wants to go to college and be a teacher. But because of the nature of her crime, many doors are closed to her. She can’t attend regular public school, and a career that would put her in contact with children is out of the question. Now that she has a loving boyfriend and a baby on the way, it’s even more important that she convince her mother to tell the whole truth about that night. But Momma isn’t trustworthy, and Mary is reluctant to divulge details.

With Mary’s first-person narration interspersed with excerpts from true crime books about her case and transcripts of interviews with detectives and doctors, Tiffany D. Jackson’s debut novel unfolds in meticulously layered detail. Mary and Momma are fascinating characters at the center of a sophisticated and morally complex plot. Though the unsettling outcome may disturb some readers, Allegedly is a mind-boggling story sure to entertain young thriller enthusiasts.

This article was originally published in the February 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Ilse Stern knows in her heart that everything will start this autumn. She’s hoping for a date with Hermann Rød, the handsome boy who lives across the hall. But for a Jewish teenage girl in Oslo, Norway, in 1942, fate has something other than a night at the cinema in mind. What starts with hateful words scrawled on windows of her father's tailoring shop soon escalates into the mass arrests, forced labor and death camps of Nazi-controlled Europe.

Shifting between five different points of view, author Marianne Kaurin tells a multifaceted story. There’s Hermann, pretending to apprentice for an artist while secretly helping smuggle Jews to safety in Sweden; their neighbor, a taxi driver who finds that his work for the Nazis is increasingly challenging his sense of morality; Ilse’s devoted father; Ilse’s scared but ever-practical older sister; and Ilse herself. Between them, they demonstrate the intersecting stories of Holocaust-era resistance fighters, bystanders and victims—as well as those who managed to survive through pure luck.

Like many Holocaust books, Almost Autumn doesn’t flinch at showing the harsh realities of life and death in and around Hitler’s concentration camps. Despite errors in her descriptions of Jewish practices and a plot and format that fail to stand out in a saturated genre, Kaurin composes her difficult story with sensitivity and balance. Inspired by her family’s experiences during the Second World War, she shines a light on a dark historical time.

Jill Ratzan matches readers with books in a small library in southeastern Pennsylvania.

After a traumatic year off, Lily’s return to her swanky Manhattan high school has been far from easy. Most of her friends still blame her for what happened, and the rest treat her with the lightest of kid gloves. The only person who isn’t treating Lily like a pariah is Dari, the artistic new student with a troubled past. Their attraction is immediate and intense, but can it survive a tumultuous year of drama and tragedy?

Playwright Kara Lee Corthron’s first novel is at once a touching romance and a poignant coming-of-age story that’s deeply in tune with the harsh realities many teenagers and young adults face today. From sexual assault to domestic abuse to systemic racism, Lily and Dari encounter obstacles that no teen should have to face, but all too many do. Corthron tells their story with just the right mix of whimsy, grace and gravitas, treating her protagonists and the flawed adults in their lives with the utmost respect. Lily and Dari’s journey is inspirational, and despite how deeply the deck is stacked against them, they gather the courage to move forward in the best way they can.

The Truth of Right Now is not a lighthearted read, but it’s an important page-turner for young readers growing up in today’s America.

This article was originally published in the January 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Despite the title, this engaging mystery from debut author Chelsea Sedoti isn’t about the popular, enviable Lizzie, but about 17-year-old Hawthorn Creely, the lonely outcast who becomes obsessed with Lizzie’s disappearance. Hawthorn has always been a loner. Her sarcasm, dry wit and occasional rudeness have left her with only one friend, and even that relationship hangs by a thread. So when Lizzie is reported missing, Hawthorn inserts herself into Lizzie’s old life by taking over Lizzie’s former job and hanging out with Enzo, Lizzie’s sulky artist boyfriend. As Hawthorn and Enzo connect over Lizzie, Hawthorn is enlivened by her new adventures, but they come at the expense of a tragedy.

Hawthorn is one of the most relatable characters in recent young adult literature. Her unhappiness stems from her inability to connect to people her own age and her subsequent boredom. She lives mostly in her own head, choosing to find magic in movies, books and her imagination rather than the world around her. 

This mystery is less about finding a missing girl as it is about finding happiness and purpose in a complex, often contradictory world.

Kimberly Giarratano is the author of Grunge Gods and Graveyards, a young adult paranormal mystery.

This article was originally published in the January 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Will Porter is blind and has been since birth. At 16, he’s making his first foray into a mainstream school, but using what he learned at the school for the blind doesn’t stop him from making mistakes, including almost sitting on someone in the cafeteria. That someone is Nick, who—along with academic quiz team members Ion and Whitford—quickly befriends Will. Will also meets Cecily, the fourth member of the academic quiz team, in his journalism class. Will is drawn to Cecily, but there’s something about her appearance that Will’s friends aren’t telling him, and it will come to the surface when he undergoes experimental surgery that allows him to see for the first time.

But before Will learns of this secret, he must acclimate to life as a sighted person. Debut novelist (and Paralympian) Josh Sundquist illuminates this surprising and frustrating process with profound insight: It’s like learning a language when you don’t know what language is. When Will first awakes from the surgery, his eyes are bandaged shut, but he immediately senses a difference in the darkness. To Will, this new darkness is a sound, a thundering noise in his brain that he wishes would go away. Upon first opening his eyes, his brain is flooded with so much visual stimuli that he becomes dizzy and sick.

Best suited for older teens, Love and First Sight will leave readers questioning the definition of beauty and thankful for the gift of eyesight.

This article was originally published in the January 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Reagan started martial arts training at the age of 4. At 10, she was shooting high-powered assault rifles. As the daughter of two Black Angels, Reagan is destined to join the elite, top-secret group of international operatives. As Kristen Orlando’s novel begins, Reagan and her parents narrowly escape the attack of a hit man, forcing them to abandon their home and, not for the first time, start anew with fresh identities. Now 17, Reagan is tiring of these abrupt relocations. She likes living in their current location, where an adorable JROTC student named Luke lives next door. 

But this pleasant life may already be compromised. Reagan has spotted a school janitor who stares at her a bit too intensely and a gray van that shows up a bit too frequently. It could be Reagan’s own amped sense of anxiety that has her on edge, but for a girl trained to kill, paranoia is a learned necessity. 

This action-packed suspense novel is the first in a new series that features a kick-ass female protagonist whose training regimen and smoldering love interest rival that of Divergent’s Tris Prior. The lightness of the contemporary high school setting is offset by an undercurrent of grisly violence, and Reagan’s tortured contemplation of her own future offers a choice between the happiness of ordinary life and the darkness of the Black Angels legacy. A cliffhanger ending ensures a following of eager readers.

Diane Colson is the Library Director at City College in Gainesville, Florida.

This article was originally published in the January 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.