Nick was driving the car with her sister, Dara, when they crashed. Months later, Nick (short for Nicole) cannot remember how it happened. All she knows is that the accident irreparably severed their once-close sisterly bond.

Nick’s best guy friend, Parker, has also been unreachable. But when Nick starts working at the local semi-decrepit amusement park called FanLand, she discovers that Parker also works there. Gradually, their friendship starts to seem normal. At the same time, a local girl, Madeline Snow, goes missing. This adds a spooky element to an already uneasy story, as Nick discovers clues that may link Dara with Madeline’s fate.

Readers unfamiliar with author Lauren Oliver’s deft hand may feel there is too much going on: Both Nick and Dara narrate sections before and after the accident, with a jumbled timeline often clarified only by date. At the same time, an “online” commentary traces the investigation of Madeline’s disappearance. However, a patient reading is rewarded with a big twist at the end. This is recommended for fans of the psychological intrigue in E. Lockhart’s We Were Liars.

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.

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

Jo Knowles’ new novel was apparently inspired by a real-life incident in which the author and her family were given the finger by another driver, even though he was in the wrong. This episode prompted her to think about the aggression, power and even hatred implied by this small gesture.

Read Between the Lines is a series of linked short stories set over the course of a single day. Each chapter focuses on the private life of a student—from cheerleaders and bullies to those they overlook or prey upon—and includes “the finger” in some way. Each can be read and appreciated in isolation, but readers will enjoy piecing together the stories and the accompanying relationships.

The novel’s most profound revelations belong to the final chapter, when one of their teachers shares her own secret stories: “Just like there is more to her than what they see, there is more inside each one of them.” It’s a message that may inspire readers to consider the lives of strangers before rushing to pass judgment—or flipping the bird.

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

It takes a special talent for an author to tap into the mind of a character who is radically different from himself, and first-time novelist David Arnold has uncannily captured the voice of a 16-year-old girl with beauty and style in Mosquitoland.

Mary Iris Malone (or, as she prefers, “Mim”) is an unhappy teenager for many reasons: divorced parents, new stepmother Kathy, no friends at her new school. She is angry with her father for leaving her mother, for making her move from Ohio to Mississippi and for marrying a woman Mim finds ridiculous. When she overhears a conversation about how her mother isn’t feeling well, Mim decides that she needs to go back to Cleveland and see her mom. Without telling anyone, she hops on a Greyhound bus. Although her stepmother keeps calling her, Mim is sure that Kathy is the reason she hasn’t heard from her mom and so she refuses to answer. Mim’s journey is fraught with peril and rife with self-discovery as she questions her own sanity and the trustworthiness of everyone she meets.

Arnold’s prose is delicious as he peels back each of Mim’s layers on her long ride. The characters she encounters along the way and her internal thoughts about life, love, friendships and survival are pitch perfect. As with any teenager, Mim struggles with personal angst, but she is as open to possibilities as she is to the open road.

RELATED CONTENT: Read a Q&A with Arnold for Mosquitoland.

Jennifer Bruer Kitchel is the librarian for a Pre-K through eighth level Catholic school.

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

Almost 15, Adam Ross has outgrown his pants and fallen in love with Robyn Plummer all in the same week. Combine that with navigating his divorced parents, his needy-yet-adorable stepbrother, his mother’s hoarding and his own Obsessive-compulsive disorder, and Adam can hardly imagine what a “normal” high school experience would be like. In fact, as all of these things converge, Adam might just be in over his head.

The Governor General's Award-winning novel by Canadian author Teresa Toten is a breathtaking portrayal of the anxiety, confusion and yearning for community that will be familiar to teenage readers—and, for that matter, readers of any age. In this younger, softer Silver Linings Playbook, Adam works hard to be a superhero, protecting his stepbrother and his mother and playing Batman to his newfound love, Robyn. His sheer determination is equal parts inspiring and heartbreaking.

The complex, richly developed teen characters in this novel are all coping with various degrees of OCD, and Toten treats the subject with admirable deftness. At no point is the disorder reduced to a stereotype or to an object of pity. It’s an obstacle and another serious complication in an already-complicated stage of life, but it never defines the characters or becomes the novel’s central focus. Instead, the core of the story is the struggle Adam and his group face to understand themselves and each other, and to navigate their roles in new friendships, evolving families and first loves.

It’s 1932, and Sydney’s slum, nicknamed Razorhurst for the gangsters who wield knives instead of guns, is run by two major crime lords: Mr. Davidson and Gloriana Nelson. Despite the mobs’ truce, no one is truly safe from the violence that disrupts the neighborhood, especially Kelpie, a homeless orphan who depends on the help of ghosts for her daily survival. After a spiteful spirit sends Kelpie into a notorious boarding house, she runs into Dymphna Campbell, Gloriana Nelson’s most valuable girl, who is standing over the dead body of Dymphna’s boyfriend. Dymphna’s been keeping secrets: Not only can she ghosts, too, but she and her boyfriend were conspiring to kill both crime bosses and rule over Razorhurst. Now Dymphna, with Kelpie in tow, is on the run. Unfortunately, she doesn’t know who is out to get her and whom she can trust.

Razorhurst is a dark read filled with violence and poverty. Every character, from a cook to a nuisance ghost, is given the full treatment in brief chapters that are interspersed throughout the central narrative. Unfortunately, this is at the expense of the plot, and the pacing suffers for it. Even the ghosts, while an intriguing hook, only serve to bring Kelpie and Dymphna together. Their back stories, although interesting, are not integral to the plot. Readers may overlook these weaknesses to enjoy Justine Larbalestier’s powerful, descriptive prose.

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

A smell of cologne wafts through the air. A frame inexplicably falls from the wall. All these unexplained events, including seeing her dead brother, are beginning to haunt Lex. Is she going crazy? Or is she just trying to reconnect with Tyler, her younger brother who recently took his own life?

The guarded Lex has been meeting with a therapist, who is trying to convince her to write down her thoughts. It doesn’t help that Lex’s mother believes her own life is over, or that Lex’s absentee father may be, in part anyway, responsible for Tyler’s suicide. Grief is tricky business, especially in the wake of an unexpected tragedy and especially for a teenager from an already dysfunctional family. But facing her grief is the only way Lex can go on—and to convince her mother to go on as well.

This well-plotted novel includes some masterful plot turns and mysterious happenings that impact Lex’s breakthroughs and road to recovery. Alternating between Lex’s cathartic journal entries, her all-too-real dreams of Tyler and her day-to-day dealings with her friends and boyfriend, this is an authentic look at the struggles a teen might face when life comes at her from all angles. But it also shows triumph when Lex is able to face her demons, connect the dots of her brother’s tragic last days and help her mom in the process.

It may be nothing like her previous teen novels in the Unearthly trilogy, but The Last Time We Say Goodbye shows Cynthia Hand's impressive skill at connecting with a teen audience.

Creek View is a blink town—as in, if you blink when driving down California Highway 99, you miss it. Skylar cannot wait to leave it behind. Just three more months, and she’ll be at school in San Francisco. In the meantime, Skylar will continue working at the quirky, rundown Paradise Motel and struggling to get her unemployed mother back on her feet.

As summer begins, former Paradise co-worker Josh Mitchell returns from Afghanistan. Josh proves to be a huge distraction for Sky, although she isn’t sure if it’s because she pities him or because she gets lost in his beautiful eyes. Their romance is tentative, and readers learn from brief but powerful interjecting chapters that Josh is suffering deeply from his war experiences. He is wracked with shame, guilt and a curious longing to return to battle, where life at least made sense. Skylar interprets Josh’s skittishness as rejection; why would he want to be with the inexperienced girl living in a sad trailer with her mess of a mother?

Author Heather Demetrios creates two realistic characters poised at turning points in their lives. By overcoming the disappointments and betrayals of past experience and learning to trust again, they find the resilience they need to move on. As in her earlier realistic fiction novel, Something Real, Demetrios tackles headline issues through individual stories rich with characterization. Like Trish Doller’s Something Like Normal, this book is a study of young people redefining their place in the world.

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.

Gayle Forman, whose previous books include If I Stay and Just One Day, specializes not only in three-word titles but also in novels that combine emotional intensity with moral complexity. I Was Here opens with a gut-wrenching wallop as Cody relates the suicide email she received from her best friend, Meg.

Meg always admired Cody’s strength, and Cody admired Meg’s fearlessness and originality. But the girls have grown apart since high school graduation. Meg escaped to college in the big city, and Cody’s still living with her mom, cleaning houses for a living and quietly flunking out of community college. Their emails grow increasingly sporadic until they stop altogether—that is, until that final email marking the end of Meg’s life and the beginning of agonizing questions about why this vivacious young woman would choose to die. Tasked by Meg’s parents with the unenviable job of cleaning out their daughter’s apartment, Cody encounters computer files that hint at a bigger, darker story surrounding Meg’s suicide.

Thrilling and introspective, I Was Here will prompt readers to reflect profoundly on their own friendships.

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

African-American twins Maya and Nikki and their neighbor Essence have always had their lives completely planned. They’ll date the right boys, attend historically black all-female Spelman College and be best friends forever. 

But as their senior year starts, their surety gets shaky. Nikki appreciates the freshness and variety that gentrification has brought to their neighborhood, but Maya resents the lack of local black-owned businesses. Essence and her perpetually drunk mother move across town, and a wealthy white family—including a cute boy and his racially ignorant sister—move in. As student council president, Maya finds herself constantly at odds with the new Richmond High principal, an outsider whose vision for the school doesn’t match that of many students. As the year progresses, the three friends find that relationships can evolve, goals can shift and the past can help inform the present as well as the future.

There’s never been a better time for author Renée Watson’s YA debut. Narrator Maya is perceptive, whether participating in an ongoing hallway-postering campaign or explaining why a celebration of “tolerance” shouldn’t replace Black History Month. A single racial slur appears in a particularly tense moment, but otherwise this is a gentle yet powerful reflection on choices, changes and contemporary African-American teenage identity.

RELATED CONTENT: Read a Q&A with Watson about This Side of Home. 

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

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

BookPage Teen Top Pick, February 2015

If you discover a magical world through some kind of portal, that’s one thing. Wardrobes and rabbit holes make it easy to believe you’ve left the real world behind. But what if you live in a normal house with normal-enough parents and attend school with other normal kids, and something starts to change, to twist even as you go about your daily life? That would be a bit harder to accept.

Sarah’s life had only a tinge of the weird: Her parents fought a lot; her mother wasn’t very affectionate; and they moved more often than the average family, or at least for no good reason that Sarah could see. The night her mother leaves for good, however, is the final push that changes everything. Sarah’s father seems to fall apart and ends up taking her to live with grandparents she didn’t even know she had. It’s just a long drive in a car—no special doors or portals needed—but the world is definitely different.

As Sarah comes to acknowledge that things are not what they seem—that her father is not falling apart so much as changing into a beast, that her grandfather already is one and that her grandmother’s anger is a powerful thing—she decides to find out the truth about this magic, this curse, this story of love and revenge. Her determination to remain human through it all is the heart of this wonderful, compelling story. Beastkeeper is highly recommended for lovers of fairy tales with a twist.

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

Laura Rose Wagner’s debut novel tells the heartfelt, gritty story of a girl living through the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Sixteen-year-old Magdalie and her cousin, Nadine, are like sisters, both raised by Nadine’s mother, who dies in the quake. The boredom, poverty and filth of the makeshift refugee camp are made bearable by the girls’ friendship, but then Nadine’s father procures an American visa, and she moves to Miami. Nadine promises to send for Magda, but as the months drag on, Magda stops expecting a reunion and must rediscover her connection to the people and opportunities that remain in Haiti.

Hold Tight, Don’t Let Go is an excellent choice for readers searching for a diverse narrative. Wagner worked in Haiti for three years, including the year of the earthquake. She is sensitive to reductive and sensationalist portrayals of Haiti, and she tackles these issues in a particularly compelling moment between Magda and an American photographer. There is darkness, anger and despair in what Magda endures, and Wagner is harsh when she needs to be, depicting the hazards faced by young women through moments that are difficult to read. With a realistic balance between righteous anger and sardonic humor, Wagner produces an empathetic and enlightening portrait of a teen’s life in Haiti.

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

Marcus Sedgwick’s latest offering is the perfect book for readers who are still pondering the multiple paths in his Printz Award-winning Midwinterblood and are seeking something new to captivate and astound them.

The Ghosts of Heaven is divided into four parts, which might be four different stories or four parts of the same story. In settings as varied as a prehistoric cave, a gossipy village, an insane asylum on the cusp of modernity and a spaceship en route to other worlds, readers meet a series of eager but flawed characters. A girl yearns to make her mark with charcoal and powder; a teenage herbalist is helpless to stop the accusations of witchcraft that surround her; a doctor’s fears are echoed in his patients; and a space sentinel faces decisions that might affect all of eternity. The four stories are linked through a motif of spirals and helixes, geometric shapes that carry mathematical, artistic and spiritual significance.

Sedgwick advises readers that the four stories can be read in any of 24 different combinations. Like the spirals that follow humanity through space and time, readers of this unusual novel will find themselves turning in apparent circles, yet always ending up in a slightly different place from where they started.

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

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