Seventeen-year-old Echo is human, but the feathered Avicen are her only family. Ten years ago, the Ala, leader of the Avicen, caught her pickpocketing in the New York Public Library and, rather than punish the small child, took her under her magical wing. When the centuries-old war between the Avicen and the Drakharin—scaled descendants of dragons—suddenly heats up, Echo is eager to prove her loyalty by tracking down the legendary firebird. If she is successful, she will end the violence and bring peace to the two warring tribes. But her mission is not as clear-cut as it seems, and along the way Echo comes to question everything she once believed.

Catnip for fans of Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments series, Melissa Grey’s debut novel (the first in a promising trilogy) weaves a strong coming-of-age tale into a beautifully rendered urban fantasy. Sassy Echo’s no-nonsense attitude and hard edges are tempered by her very realistic teenaged insecurities (which mostly revolve around boys and belonging). The supporting characters—friends and foes alike, all as vividly developed as Echo—also toe that line between fantastical warrior and emotional human as they navigate the Avicen- and Drakharin-run streets of New York, Strasbourg, Paris, London and Kyoto. Echo’s quest is full of action, self-discovery and even a little romance, and leads to an epic climax of feathers and flames that will have young audiences clamoring for the sequel.

The Martial Empire is an ancient, Rome-like civilization where the military rules with unwavering violence. Two heroic characters occupy the heart of this tale: Laia, a member of the oppressed Scholar class, and Elias, an elite soldier on the brim of desertion.

Laia’s parents died fighting for the Resistance, a now-fractured rebel group. After her grandparents are murdered and her brother is arrested, Laia seeks help from the Resistance, but their help comes with a price. If they are to save her brother from execution, Laia must pose as a slave to spy on the Commandant, the military academy’s ruthless leader—but doing so puts Laia at risk for rape, disfigurement and death.

Elias is the Commandant’s son and one of the academy’s best soldiers. Hours after graduation, Elias plans to escape the military—but he and his best friend are unwillingly entered into a competition to choose the Empire’s next ruler. When Elias meets Laia, he’s immediately attracted to the slave girl and puts his own life at risk to protect her. Elias dreams of freedom, and Laia wants to save the only family she has left, but together they will change the fate of an empire.

Like Suzanne Collins with the Hunger Games series, debut author Sabaa Tahir doesn’t write around the violence, which may be too extreme for some readers. The Commandant’s cruelty has no limits, and children are often the targets. Laia and Elias’ risky close calls will give readers heart palpitations. Be warned: An Ember in the Ashes ends on a cliffhanger, but with all the buzz surrounding this page-turning novel, including publication in more than 20 countries and snapped-up movie rights, a sequel is most likely in the works.

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

Romy Grey’s story could be any girl’s—your girlfriend, your daughter, your best friend. When she wakes up on the side of the road, her shirt unbuttoned, words written in lipstick on her stomach, dirt in her nails and no recollection of how she got there, her world is turned upside down. The last she can remember, she was at the party of senior year. And so begins one of the most powerful, heartbreaking and emotionally charged stories about rape, interracial relationships and friendship.

Romy and her former best friend Penny had a falling out junior year, leaving Penny as the most popular girl in school and Romy as the outcast. Both Romy and Penny go missing the same night, but when Romy is found, she is accused of wasting everyone’s time and diminishing the search for Penny at the most crucial of times.

Enter the Turner family, one of the most influential in town: Sheriff Turner; his wife, Helen, owner of Grebe Auto Supplies; and their two sons, Alek and Kellan. Alek is Penny’s boyfriend, but Kellan remains a mystery—until a fateful conversation between Penny and Romy that occurs before they go missing.

Author Courtney Summers intricately weaves mystery, lies and heartbreak throughout this powerful novel. Readers will pull for Romy, rooting for her to speak and for her voice to be heard. Reminiscent of Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, All the Rage grabs hold and won’t let go. Romy’s story is violent in nature and language, but there is no other way to convey the hurt, anger and heartwrenching emotional and psychological issues that she faces. This is a beautiful story that speaks to all women, particularly teenage girls and their mothers.

Amber, Vee and Orianna aren’t necessarily the girls next door. Well, they might have been at one time, but now these teens find their lives inextricably linked through the common denominator of Aurora Hills Secure Juvenile Detention Center.

Amber’s doing time for killing her stepfather; Vee is an aspiring, yet tormented, ballet dancer; and Orianna is the curious link that binds them. As Amber notes, “Each of us had our own monster, distinct to us.” And indeed, the girls must deal with their own demons as well as those of the other inmates who share their dismal fate. Author Nova Ren Suma uses highly refined and eloquent prose to unveil—slowly—how these tragic lives intersect, as each girl's alternating story dips back and forth through time.

Unexplained phenomena, dark back stories, bloody flashbacks, creepy characters and a shocking denouement are enough to keep the sinister suspense going, much to the thrill of today’s YA readers. The female characters are well drawn, compelling and complex, and things aren’t always as they seem, but sharp readers will want to unravel their complicated connections.

Suma shares in the book’s publicity materials that “this book haunted me like one of the ghosts found in its pages.” The Walls Around Us will certainly haunt readers as well, but the journey will be well worth the scares. This is an intense, hypnotic and absorbing read. A movie can’t be far behind.

Note to self: Don’t forget to log out of your personal email on a public computer. That’s the lesson 16-year-old Simon Spier learns the hard way after a high school classmate reads his emails to his secret, anonymous boyfriend, Blue. Simon hasn’t come out to his friends or family, and now he feels pressured to keep this fact, as well as the identity of Blue, a secret. 

Moments of teen life, drama and angst are well drawn by debut novelist Becky Albertalli, a clinical psychologist who previously worked with gender-nonconforming children. Her insights are spot on, from the dialogue to the raw emotions Simon and Blue experience. As the book alternates between daily life and the emails between Simon and Blue, readers are immediately and magnetically pulled into this story of coming out, being true to oneself and challenging the societal status quo, or the “homo sapiens agenda,” as Simon refers to it. 

Topical relevance aside, this book stands in the YA canon as an outstanding book about teens coming of age, where several of the characters just happen to be gay.

This article was originally published in the April 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In this sprawling, emotionally enrapturing and mostly autobiographical tale, a talented lad comes of age in the harsh shadows of Northern England’s shipyards.

Dominic Hall was born in a hovel along the River Tyne in the 1960s. His severe father is still embittered from fighting in World War II, and his kind mother always wanted more for her sweet boy. Readers get key glimpses of Dominic’s growth and maturation over more than a decade as he befriends the two most disparate people his age in town—the artistic, free-spirited Holly Stroud and the tormented, reckless Vincent McAlinden. Dominic, a weaver of words, can’t help but be drawn to Holly’s self-expression and caring—but he can’t seem to suppress the darkness that attracts him to the wildness of Vincent’s uninhibited and dangerous life. When these two worlds inevitably collide, he is faced with making choices no one would ever want to make.

British author David Almond is an immensely gifted storyteller and a receiver of a Hans Christian Andersen Award, a Carnegie Medal and a host of other honors. The Tightrope Walkers is perhaps his most personal work, with so many similarities between the author and Dominic that fiction and reality become indistinguishable from one another. Almond’s phenomenal, philosophical writing balances well with his incisive clarity and arresting narration, making it immensely relatable.

Justin Barisich is a freelancer, satirist, poet and performer living in Atlanta. More of his writing can be found at littlewritingman.com.

This article was originally published in the April 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

BookPage Teen Top Pick, April 2015

I promised myself I would write this whole review of Susan Juby’s latest novel without using the word “quirky.” There’s so much more to the author of Alice, I Think than just her knack for writing about eccentric characters and borderline outlandish situations. There is plenty of both in Juby’s latest, but that’s hardly the whole story.

The Truth Commission is (supposedly) a book-length work of creative nonfiction, submitted as part of Normandy Pale’s Spring Special Project at Green Pastures, a prestigious art high school in a small Vancouver town. Normandy starts off by telling the story of how she and her two best friends prompted (or cajoled, or outright pushed) their classmates to tell the truth about themselves.

But all this compulsive truth-telling has Normandy wondering whether it’s time to tell the truth about her own family: Her older sister Keira, Green Pastures’ most notable alum, has built a wildly successful career on a series of graphic novels portraying Keira as a heroine and Normandy and her parents as grotesque losers—and, in many ways, serving as a self-fulfilling prophecy for their real life.

For Normandy, it is a frightening but essential process to force her family to confront the realities of Keira’s brand of “truth”-telling and the damage it has inflicted. Along the way, readers get a lively course in storytelling, the ethics of producing art and how (not) to write creative nonfiction, all delivered in Normandy’s hilarious, heartfelt and (yes) brilliantly quirky voice.

This article was originally published in the April 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Beautiful and rich, 17-year-old Grace Fontaine can charm her way into the midst of any high school clique. But Grace makes friends only to betray them. Her family—Mom, Dad and older brother Parker—comprise a team of con artists, infiltrating the inner circles of the wealthy only to steal their millions. When one job is complete, off they go to a new location, a new mark and a new masquerade.

This time, the Fontaines have arrived in tony Playa Hermanos, a California neighborhood located on a small peninsula. Grace’s role is to befriend Logan Fairchild, teenage son of wealthy Warren Fairchild. Grace, already weary of the endless cons, breaks the Fontaine’s cardinal rule by making real friends at her new school, as well as by falling for the goodhearted Logan. Her family’s downfall is foreshadowed in Grace’s introduction, but there are still surprises in this suspenseful tale of cat and mouse.

Zink, author of The Prophecy of Sisters series, creates an intriguing backstory for Grace and her criminally inclined family. Grace and Parker adopted by the Fontaines in their early adolescence, after each had spent years in foster care. As the story concludes, questions about their past and future remain unresolved. Could there be more adventures to come? A fine blend of teen drama and high-end deception, this novel should appeal to fans of Ally Carter’s Heist Society or Mary Elizabeth Summer’s Trust Me, I’m Lying.

Diane Colson works at the Nashville Public Library. She has long been active in the American Library Association's Young Adult Library Association (YALSA), serving on selection committees such as the Morris Award, the Alex Award and the Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults Award.

In Beth Kephart’s One Thing Stolen, the beauty and history of one of the world’s great cities and the confusion and fear caused by a rare brain disorder combine to produce a fresh, unexpected story.

Seventeen-year-old Nadia Cara and her family are in Florence for her father’s research on the massive 1966 Arno River flood. But something is wrong: For months, her ability to speak has been slipping away. She compulsively steals random objects and weaves strange, beautiful nests out of them. She can’t even find comfort in her new friendship with a mysterious boy named Benedetto, because no one else has seen him. Incapable of expressing her fears or explaining her actions, Nadia is trapped within her untrustworthy mind.

While less plot-driven than most young adult fiction and more focused on the power and limitations of language, One Thing Stolen will entrance readers through the excellently portrayed bond between Nadia and her best friend, Maggie, as well as the lingering question of Benedetto’s existence and the fascinating setting. Kephart captures Florence using all five senses, from the smells of the leather shops to the birdsong in a church courtyard. And like Kephart’s other young adult titles, such as Small Damages and Going Over, the music of language itself propels readers onward.

One Thing Stolen explores themes of destruction and rejuvenation, emphasizing the possibilities and hope found in disaster. This is a unique and engrossing exploration of how characters deal with the pain and beauty of the real world.

High school seniors Peter, Anita, Andy and Eliza—aka the jock, Miss Perfect, the slacker and Miss Promiscuous—join forces in this apocalyptic debut. Peter is a popular basketball player dealing with feelings for Eliza, despite having a girlfriend. Anita seems to have the perfect life, including great grades, but has a lot to hide when it comes to her family life. Andy is skateboarding through high school, getting high and slacking off. And then there’s Eliza—beautiful, mysterious photographer Eliza. She too comes with her own baggage, including an estranged mother and dying father.

Told in alternating chapters between the four main characters, We All Looked Up takes the reader on a typical teen journey, but with a twist. Wallach transforms a high school drama into realistic science fiction, as we discover that Ardor, an asteroid, is scheduled to hit Earth (specifically Seattle, where our characters live) in eight weeks. With this threat looming, each teen must come to terms with their lives as they are now—and to make crucial decisions, despite not knowing if they will live to see the consequences.

Debut author Tommy Wallach successfully gets into the head of each character, nailing their individual attitudes, ideals about sex and abundant use of foul language and recreational drugs. Despite its slow-paced beginning, this exciting debut picks up speed the closer Ardor comes to the Earth. This book is recommended for older teens, but any reader may find a piece of themselves in these characters.

YA novels have been written in the form of letters, diary entries, text messages . . . and now, in a long-anticipated follow-up to John Green and David Levithan’s collaboration Will Grayson, Will Grayson, the script of a musical theater production. In Green and Levithan’s original book, the 16-year-old openly gay, bodily large and ironically named “Tiny” Cooper writes and directs a musical, which fans now have the chance to read in its entirety.

Scenes vary from the outright hilarious (the requisite pun-filled locker room scene) to the amusingly ironic (a literal parade of ex-boyfriends) to the contemplative (Tiny’s father’s struggle with—and ultimate decision to—join him for a Mother-Daughter fashion show). The text, composed predominately of rhymed verse, includes lots of allusions to other musicals, insightful advice about love (a breakup means “you must rearrange your heart / It might feel like the end of the world / but it’s the beginning of your art”) and exactly the sort of easy acceptance that characterizes David Levithan’s work (“You’re gay? / Next you’re gonna tell me the sky is blue / that you use girl shampoo / that critics don't appreciate Blink-182”).

Levithan has accomplished something truly special in this confection of a book. Although its format is its most obviously unique feature, what ultimately stands out is its mixture of over-the-top silliness and deep emotional honesty. Unlike in Levithan’s groundbreaking Boy Meets Boy, there’s no apologetic half-fantasy component here: Hold Me Closer demonstrates loudly and gloriously that contemporary gay-centered YA lit no longer needs such literary crutches to succeed.

Jill Ratzan teaches research rudiments in central New Jersey. She learned most of what she knows about YA lit from her terrific grad students.

Set in the secretive and mysterious Midwestern town of Bone Gap, author and professor Laura Ruby’s eighth novel captures the darkness and light of a small town where seemingly magical occurrences ensnare its citizens.

Bone Gap creates a world unto itself, in which readers slowly unpeel the disparate but simultaneously interconnected stories of the townsfolk who call it home. We hear from such voices as weird high-school senior Finn O’Sullivan—better known as “Moonface” by the townies for his tendency to space out—who is able to read people and offer intimate, uncanny insights into their quiet lives. Sean, Finn’s paramedic older brother and town heartthrob, is loved by nearly all of Bone Gap, even if they choose to acknowledge only part of his story. The brothers live in a sort of hovering stasis with the rest of Bone Gap until the gorgeous, damaged and strong-willed Roza wanders into town and changes everything. But when she is suddenly abducted by an unknown man, and Finn, the only witness, is unable to identify her abductor, all the cracks in Bone Gap start to widen, revealing the truths behind this idyllic small-town life.

Ruby flexes her narrative muscles with Bone Gap, blending mystery, romance and magical realism. Her mixing of styles mirrors the lives of her characters, with parts and pieces of different experiences making up only part of the story’s whole.

Justin Barisich is a freelancer, satirist, poet and performer living in Atlanta. More of his writing can be found at littlewritingman.com.

This article was originally published in the March 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.