The last thing Emily Bird remembers is the party. It should have been just another networking event to connect prep-school students with internships and Ivy League acceptances, especially within the elite Washington, D.C., African-American community. But when Bird wakes up days later in a hospital room, she knows she’s forgotten something important about that night. That feeling is further reinforced when mysterious messages begin hinting that she knows a secret about a deadly terrorist-linked flu virus that’s recently reached pandemic proportions.

With her house quarantined and her high-profile parents vanished, Bird and her friend Marella try to uncover the truth within a network of lies. But a dangerous spy from a secret organization is also on the prowl, hoping to discover Bird’s missing memory before she can use it to unmask what may be a worldwide conspiracy.

Like the best young adult dystopias, a just-futuristic apocalyptic setting perfectly complements the protagonist’s personal identity struggles. Is she the meek and obedient Emily or the independent, powerful Bird? Which of her highly cultivated friendships are just alliances, and which are real? Does she have the courage to break up with Paul, the boy her parents expect her to date, in favor of Coffee, whose passion for organic chemistry extends to making his own designer drugs? How can she navigate a society where her race is constantly working against her? And what’s the point of planning for the future when the world might end at any moment? Love Is the Drug is a suspenseful, empowering and emotionally honest read.

Jill Ratzan reviews for School Library Journal and works as a school librarian at a small independent school in New Jersey.

Zac knows all the statistics about his leukemia—the survival rate, the chance the cancer will return even if his new bone marrow gives him a temporary clean bill of health. But he’s still hopeful he can get back to his old life after months in solitary with only his mother for company—his mother, and the faceless girl fighting her own battle next door.

Mia is angry—angry she has cancer, angry the treatment makes her so sick, angry her doctors and mother don’t seem to understand she just wants the treatment to be done so she can get back to her friends. The only one who seems to understand, even a little bit, is the boy in the other room. He knows nothing about her except that a sore ankle led to her cancer diagnosis. He calls her lucky—she has good odds.

Then Zac goes home to try to regain his pre-cancer life, and Mia goes home with so much less than she ever dreamed. Inevitably they end up together again—Zac desperate to help, and Mia desperate to run from everything.

It’s almost impossible for a book about two teens fighting cancer to escape a comparison to The Fault in Our Stars, and on a very surface level the two books share DNA: sick teens falling in love, sometimes angry, sometimes hopeful, sometimes resigned. What Zac and Mia does best, however, is capture the feelings of loneliness and isolation. Mia’s need to pretend her cancer doesn’t exist separates her from her friends even as she interacts with them online, and when the reality of her illness catches up with her she finds it impossible to connect with her former friends, who have nothing heavier than a zit weighing on their minds.

Zac and Mia is much more than a book about illness; it's a book about learning to trust a person, and trusting they can care about you when you feel completely unlovable.

Molly Horan has her MFA in writing for children and young adults from The New School.

Lily Proctor has had enough of the real world. Sure, her hometown of Salem, Massachusetts, might have an interesting history, but she’s tired of her best friend Tristan’s romantic wanderings, her mother’s public outbursts and, most of all, the perpetual fevers and allergic reactions that keep her from having a life. So when an otherworldy voice offers to transport her to a place where she can be powerful and strong, Lily readily agrees.

Soon she finds herself in an alternate Salem, where a ruling coven of witches led by an alternate version of herself is terrorizing an indigenous population, especially those who dare to practice science. In this world Lily’s unexplained fevers are actually a sign of her unparalleled abilities as a Crucible, a witch who can convert raw materials into heat and energy. With the help of an alternate version of Tristan and his two companions, Lily needs to learn to wield her abilities quickly—before warring factions destroy both this world and her own.

Teens who love magic-fueled romances set against a backdrop of courtly politics, with hints of historical fiction and scientific ethics, will finish Trial by Fire eagerly awaiting the remaining books in the Worldwalker trilogy. But slow pacing, poor world-building and heavy borrowing from Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials books (in the form of daemon-like “willstones”) interfere with the full potential of the intriguing premise. Still, readers looking for an escape from their own real world will find it in this genre-blending YA tale.

Jill Ratzan reviews for School Library Journal and works as a school librarian at a small independent school in New Jersey. She learned most of what she knows about YA literature from her terrific graduate students.

Thirteen-year-old twins Noah and Jude are so close, they “smush,” pushing themselves together, shoulder to shoulder, exactly as they did in utero. Noah is dreamy and artistic, while his sister Jude is fearless and popular. When their mother announces that both twins should attend CSA, a nearby fine arts high school, Noah is elated, but Jude is less than enthusiastic, as she fears that Noah’s talent far outweighs her own. Three years later, Jude is now attending CSA, but Noah was not accepted. The once-fierce love between the twins has morphed into fierce hatred.

The narration alternates between the perspectives of 13-year-old Noah and 16-year-old Jude, and the twins unwittingly move in tandem despite their estrangement. They both do something unforgivable. They both fall in love. Nelson provides just enough pieces of past and future but withholds some delightful twists for the end. This is a beautifully written story.

This article was originally published in the September 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

After her father buys a cemetery and relocates their family inland from their idyllic California seaside home, 15-year-old Leigh finds not only that she’s a good fit for the after-death industry, but also that it gives her some comfort. Her older sister’s cancer just went into remission, her artistic mother would rather be back by the ocean, and Leigh’s still grieving for the best friend she recently lost. When Leigh discovers a secret in the cemetery, her grief turns to guilt. She refuses to take on any new friends, not even the cool home-schooled girl whose family provides flowers for the cemetery.

Author Jennifer Longo, who, like Leigh, sold burial plots after her father bought a cemetery, infuses her quirky debut with dark humor and a touch of magical thinking. While Leigh’s family members spin in their own set of problems, there is one person who understands her: Dario, the gravedigger who recently crossed the Mexican border. Through their tender, realistic friendship, Leigh learns the different ways Mexicans honor their departed. With help, she may find a way to let death go and life in.

This article was originally published in the September 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

BookPage Teen Top Pick, September 2014

Set near the San Francisquito Canyon in Los Angeles County, 100 Sideways Miles is the coming-of-age tale of one teen who learns to live with the tragedies and oddities of his life using his own unique type of mathematical coping.

Finn Easton is 16 years old, suffers from sporadic epileptic seizures, and is the inspiration for the main character in his father’s best-selling novel The Lazarus Door—though his father vehemently denies it. Finn lost his mother in a freak accident that involved a truck, which was carrying a dead horse destined for the knackery, overturning on a bridge and spilling its cargo onto Finn and his mother, who were idly climbing in the creek below.

Ever since that tragic day, Finn has been calculating time by way of space. Believing that the distance between things is far more important than the time between them, Finn figures time in miles rather than minutes, as they are easier for him to mentally grasp whenever he comes back from “blanking out” during one of his seizures. And when Julia Bishop, the intriguing new girl in town and Finn’s first crush, finds him passed out on his den floor in a puddle of his own urine, he wants nothing more than to distance himself from her. But Julia has enjoyed sharing Finn’s time and space, and she is determined to invade both so that he can understand true closeness.

100 Sideways Miles is Andrew Smith’s ninth young adult novel, and it’s filled with the type of offbeat hilarity and superbly memorable characters found in his previous books, such as Winger and Grasshopper Jungle. Finn’s honest, natural voice reveals a young man learning to handle health issues, death and unwanted attention during a time when every action and reaction is measured by its social significance.

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 September 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Art and life are both equally intense for high school junior Addison Stone. When her art teachers arrange for her to leave her small town and spend the summer immersed in the New York City art world, no one expects that the whirlwind of city life will eclipse her senior year . . . or that the following summer, her body will be found in the East River under mysterious circumstances.

Author Adele Griffin, under the guise of Addison’s biographer, tells this story through a pastiche of newspaper articles, “interviews” with important figures in Addison’s life and dozens of images, including both photographs of and artwork (supposedly) by the teenage art superstar. This discontinuous format is the perfect match for Addison’s intense but disjointed personality and work style. Through the voices of friends, boyfriends, parents, teachers and others—and occasionally Addison’s own words via emails and other documents—Griffin presents readers with overlapping perspectives on Addison’s frenetic life of gallery openings, parties and performance art . . . and the doubt and self-destructive tendencies lurking beneath her fierce creativity. References to Snapchat and e-cigarettes ground the story firmly in contemporary times, while issues like living with roommates versus moving in with significant others place it on the border between YA lit and the emerging category of “new adult” fiction.

Multifaceted and thoroughly postmodern, The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone will appeal to teens and 20-somethings who love art, celebrity and forming their own conclusions.

Jill Ratzan reviews for School Library Journal and works as a school librarian at a small independent school in New Jersey. She learned most of what she knows about YA literature from her terrific graduate students.

Crisscrossing the American landscape, Let’s Get Lost is an insider’s view of one girl’s epic journey to witness the Northern Lights and the stories of the lives she selflessly changes along the way.

Our sneak peek into Leila’s adventures begins with her car tune-up in Vicksburg, Mississippi, where she meets Hudson, the auto mechanic’s son. Their attraction is instant, but when their short fling turns from sweet to sour, she resumes her journey north without exchanging phone numbers. As we meet new people along Leila’s wandering road trip, we jump feet-first into their trials while getting only elusive snippets of Leila’s story. She reveals a bit about the curious scar on her neck to hitchhiking Bree near Kansas City; a few vague truths from her less-than-perfect love life to Elliot in Minneapolis; and shares her “I’ve been there, too” strength in Hope, British Columbia, with guilt-stricken Sonia, who’s found new love so soon after a large loss. But it’s not until Leila is in Fairbanks, Alaska, and lying under the Northern Lights that we learn the true reason for her life-affirming excursion.

Adi Alsaid weaves together the distant and disparate stories of his multiple characters, using Leila as the bright red thread to sew the patchwork quilt of their lives. The final product is beautiful, moving—and nothing like it would have been if kept separate.

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 August 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.