The Gregorys are one of those families that can do no wrong—literally. Rulers of their community, this wealthy family presides over local institutions like the Hawthorne Lake Country Club, and if family members sometimes run afoul of the law, then the law has a tendency to look the other way. But when the body of popular Willa Ames-Rowan (a champion swimmer) is pulled from the lake at the country club, and when golden boy James Gregory is likely the last person to see her alive, four of Willa’s friends and acquaintances can’t look the other way any longer.

Willa’s friends Sloane and Lina, Willa’s intense sister Madge and Club newcomer (and outsider) Rose each have their own motives for trying to solve Willa’s death and unseat the Gregory dynasty. But this well-funded group (whose relationships with each other range from tense to barely tolerant) will stop at nothing to get their revenge. The novel, divided into four sections—each one from the point of view of one of the girls—unfolds at a rapid clip, leaving readers feeling at times disoriented, unsettled, swept up in the girls’ mission just as they are. As the pieces of the puzzle come together, however, readers will start to understand not only what happened that fateful night but also what compels each girl to declare “war” on the Gregory family—and perhaps to start a new trend in vigilante justice elsewhere, too.

This Is W.A.R. illustrates what can happen when four girls with enough motivation (and enough money) unite behind a common cause: uncovering the truth.

Sixteen-year-old Katie Green is a displaced American orphan who moves in with her aunt in Japan. Homesick and grief-stricken, Katie struggles to adjust to a foreign culture and language while trying to navigate the social hierarchy of a Japanese high school. Then Katie meets Yuu Tomohiro, an enigmatic senior boy with a bad reputation. Tomo warns her to keep away, but she can’t resist him, especially when she begins to suspect that makes drawings that move.

Tomo reveals to Katie that he is descended from the Kami, Japanese gods with great supernatural powers, and this allows his drawings to come to life and cause destruction. And somehow Katie is connected to the Kami as well. When she’s around Tomo, the ink reacts to her in unimaginable ways. The power to create moving illustrations can have disastrous consequences in the wrong hands, and Katie and Tomo soon find themselves running from the Japanese mob. As they fall passionately in love, their relationship seems doomed. When Katie has an opportunity to return home, she questions whether to return to safety or to stay in Japan with Tomo and face the dark world of the Kami.

At first, Ink reads a lot like Twilight. Katie, like Bella Swan, is a girl far from home who meets a brooding boy who warns her that he’s dangerous and she should stay away from him. However, the Japanese setting and intriguing mythology make this novel a standout. Amanda Sun, who lived in Japan as an exchange student, grounds her readers in an authentic Japan and even uses Japanese vocabulary in context. Katie doesn’t just have a cell phone—she has a keitai. The first in a series, Ink will draw in fans for its setting first, romance second.

Many YA books tackle the topic of teens with eating disorders and body image issues. Some, like Skinny by Donna Cooner, include insistent internal voices that whisper damaging thoughts to their hosts. Others, like Nothing by Robin Friedman and Purge by Sarah Darer Littman, portray teen boys struggling with anorexia and bulimia. But none combine these elements in quite the same way as Lois Metzger’s A Trick of the Light.

Who is this oddly persuasive voice that’s telling Mike to ignore his best friend and hang out with a strange, too-thin girl instead? Why does the voice encourage Mike to set aside his interest in stop-motion animation and focus entirely on the size and shape of his body? And who could ignore a voice that promises a more exciting life than one spent picking up the pieces left by a depressed mother and an absent father?

Speaking in a simple, hypnotic style, this unnamed voice distorts logic and warps perceptions, offering Mike the illusion of strength and discipline while pulling him further and further into the depths of anorexia. Will Mike eventually succumb to the voice’s unattainable goals? Or will he somehow find a way to silence the very speaker who’s been telling—and controlling—the story all along?

The unusual point of view is reminiscent of the otherworldly and disembodied narrators of The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and Every Day by David Levithan. However, unlike those more reliable narrators, the voice in A Trick of the Light is manipulative and deceitful, drawing readers into Mike’s head and forcing them to decide for themselves what’s true and what’s twisted. Don’t be misled by the book’s small size: This slim volume packs a big emotional punch.

“Even to the strangers, I am strange,” remarks 13-year-old Habo, short for Dhahabo, which means “golden” in his home country of Tanzania. The teen never feels the warmth suggested by his special name, given to him for his light appearance due to albinism, but is instead an outcast in his world. With a father who abandoned the family after Habo’s birth, a mother who rarely touches him and an embarrassed brother who encourages taunting, Habo has spent most of his life alone.

When Habo’s family is faced with losing their meager farm, they head to their Auntie’s house in Mwanza. Upon their arrival, Habo quickly learns that this superstitious city is dangerous for a zeruzeru (literally, “zero-zero”) or person with albinism. Witch doctors hunt people like Habo to kill them and sell their body parts to those who believe they bring good luck. If Habo can reach the city of Dar es Salaam, where albino ministers of parliament serve, he may finally find a place to feel at ease. But first he must outrun an evil poacher who will stop at nothing to track and kill him. Their heart-stopping chase across cities leaves readers with Habo’s palpable fear until the final pages.

In a riveting teen novel, a Tanzanian boy with albinism searches for a place to belong.

In Golden Boy, first-time author Tara Sullivan brings to light this lesser-known and growing human rights problem, which occurs in several East African nations where the rate of albinism is higher than in other parts of the world. In telling the story, Sullivan sprinkles in phrases from Habo’s native language and facts about people with albinism, including their poor eyesight and increased susceptibility to skin cancer. She bases the harrowing account on actual events and shows how strange notions of good luck cross all socioeconomic levels.

Sullivan offers hope, too, through a blind sculptor who “sees” Habo’s true spirit and encourages his self-esteem. An author’s note and other resources provide more information on the teen’s plight, in the hope that Habo’s story will move many readers to take action.

Jennifer Bradbury’s ambitious new novel takes place in 1947 in the Indian city of Jalandhar, near the modern border with Pakistan, just before India is divided into two separate religious states. While the time and place may be unfamiliar to many teen readers, the dramatic, intertwining stories of the three young people at the heart of this story are sure to draw them in.

Tariq, a Muslim, would rather not go with his family to start a new life in Pakistan. Instead, he dreams of an education abroad at Oxford. Tariq finds himself increasingly at odds with his old friends, who try to engage him in acts of violent protest against the Sikhs. As Tariq struggles to keep hold of his future, his hopes are fueled when he goes to work for a British cartographer sent to India to establish the new borders. Tariq is sure that with Mr. Darnsley’s help, he can get to England.

Also in the cartographer’s household is the beautiful Anupreet, a Sikh, who has already been the victim of the increasing violence brought about by political turmoil. Anupreet and the cartographer’s daughter, Margaret, form a tentative friendship despite their differences. As the political tensions around them escalate, these three young people face intensely personal choices that will affect their lives—and one another.

Today’s teens may hear about disputes between Pakistan and India without having a sense of the historical context. In A Moment Comes, Bradbury shines a light on a complex time in history while telling a riveting story about the choices that sometimes determine our lives. Readers can almost feel the humidity, taste the delicious food and feast their eyes, as Margaret does, on beautiful silks in the marketplace. It’s a journey well worth taking.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Jennifer Bradbury for A Moment Comes.

Half Lives is a smart adventure story, but it’s also perilously full of potential spoilers, so let’s step lightly, shall we? At 17, Icie’s biggest problem in life is that her boyfriend just broke up with her via text message. When she gets a 911 text from her folks, she knows it’s serious—one is highly placed in the federal government and the other is a nuclear physicist—but the crisis that greets her at home changes her life forever. She’s given a crude map, a money belt and instructions to get to an unmarked bunker outside Las Vegas and await further orders.

Icie’s journey and what happens at the bunker are just half of the story. Generations later, a society led by teens lives on the mountain where the bunker was, and it’s clear that Icie has left them a legacy of some sort. The way these stories intertwine and reveal information about what happened—and the consequences—keeps Half Lives suspenseful until the very end.

Author Sara Grant toggles back and forth between the present and the distant future, and while there are complex love stories in each world, the real meat of the novel is in how things change—or fail to change—over time. Much of this comes through in Grant’s use of language: Icie likes to create new compound words in hopes they’ll catch on, and it’s a pleasure and an ongoing surprise to see where they turn up and how definitions evolve. A few songs on an old iPod become a hymnal of sorts, and “Facebook” takes on a whole new meaning.

This isn’t dystopian fiction, but fans of the genre will appreciate the dark humor and complex future created here, which offers up several “a-ha” moments when past and future reveal themselves. Half Lives is tough and scary, but ultimately a story of bravery and hope.

No matter how hard he tries, Danny can’t get over the fact that after years of battling cancer, his mom died mere weeks before his high school graduation, the one date she’d been trying to hold on for. With his dad killed in a car accident when he was a kid, his big sister in China trying to rediscover her roots and the summer between high school and college stretching out before him, Danny almost resigns himself to three months in his big empty house, grieving for his mom and obsessing over the girl that got away.

When a letter comes from the caretaker of his family’s apartment in Japan, asking what he’d like to do with his mom's leftover medication, Danny is puzzled, thinking she should have taken it all on her last trip. Desperate to figure out the meaning of the spare pills, wanting to know more about the last few months his mother spent without him and needing to get some space from his best-friend-turned-ex-girlfriend who’s suddenly dropping by after a year of ignoring him, Danny books a one-way ticket to Japan.

Daisy Whitney’s novel covers many emotional bases—grief, loneliness, betrayal, hope—and she captures them all incredibly well. Even as Danny tries to make sense of his mother’s final visit to Japan, he's always aware there might not be any logic behind it, that cracking the puzzle is a way to distract himself but may not give him peace. At the same time, he holds out hope that he can get back together with the girl that broke his heart when she dumped him the previous summer, but when she reaches out, he can’t bring himself to reach back, protecting his heart from more damage.

The book’s biggest strength is its unpredictability. The bulk of the novel is spent trying to unravel a specific mystery, yet Danny’s most shocking discovery has nothing to do with his mother. Likewise, Danny’s friendship with his apartment's caretaker’s daughter doesn’t rely on the promise of romance, which is refreshing from a YA novel.

When You Were Here is an engrossing book that draws readers in by being a window to a different culture and leaving its big questions unanswered until the last minute.

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

The ghost of Jacob Grimm has been wandering the earth since 1863, searching for his beloved dead brother—and the other half of the famous fairy-tale-writing duo—Wilhelm. The endless search is what keeps Jacob from leaving the Zwischenraum, the ghost realm, and brings him to the door of 15-year-old Jeremy Johnson Johnson, an outcast in the backwards town of Never Better. Jeremy is the only one who can hear Jacob, and the Brother Grimm quickly becomes the boy’s only friend and protector. And Jeremy can use all the help he can get: His father is a heartbroken shut-in and the bank is ready to foreclose on their home.

Then one day Ginger, the town spitfire, takes a real interest in Jeremy. She invites him to the bakery where the locals claim the Prince Cakes are like a love potion. One bite and suddenly Ginger can't stay away from Jeremy. Is it a budding friendship or a magic spell? Either way, she's determined to help him save his home. But Jeremy needs more than Ginger's help, as an evil lurks in Never Better, and it's coming straight for Jeremy Johnson Johnson.

Far Far Away is an incredibly imaginative modern fairy tale told through the first-person narration of the ghost of Jacob Grimm. In rich language, Tom McNeal intricately weaves the collected tales of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm into Jeremy’s unusual world, thus giving readers the impetus to research the history of these dark fairy tales, far more than any Disney movie could. Suspenseful with a sinister villain, Far Far Away is equally heartwarming as it is scary.

In his newest young adult novel, Bennett Madison tries his hand at emotionally wrestling with a nebulous pack of beautiful, land-bound mermaids. The plot of September Girls progresses slowly—mimicking the passing of the summer in which it takes place—gradually revealing the legend of the cursed mermaids stranded on an obscure beach off the Atlantic coast. Seventeen-year-old Sam finds himself falling for one of these mysterious girls, and his attraction pulls him deeper into their secrets until the book’s sudden ending.

As someone who once described himself as “an open and enthusiastic gay,” Madison’s characterization of virginal, heterosexual Sam is relatable, though somewhat stereotypical. While it may be true that most teenaged boys can’t get sex off their brains, it doesn’t always make for the most interesting of overriding character traits. Nonetheless, the depictions of young flirtation and sexual frustration are right on point and may be the truest imitations of it I’ve read yet, regardless of sexual orientation.

Toying with the extremes of realistic fiction, Madison employs the old adage of “perspective is reality” to unearth the meaning of love, loss and masculinity in a land that may not even really exist, and by the closing chapter, leaves us trying to find the humanity in the mythical. To this end, the narrative device of switching back and forth between the voice of Sam and the ancient, echoed voice of the mermaid collective was intriguing. However, if those two main voices had varied a bit more, used vulgarities more artfully and with less frequency, and had fleshed out further the mythology of the mermaids, this dual perspective could have been even more engrossing for the reader.

Jude is the youngest of the four Hernandez sisters. She has lived her life in the shadows of her older sisters, but she has also learned a lot of important and wonderful lessons from them. One lesson they won’t let her forget is to never get involved with a Vargas brother. Two of her sisters were left heartbroken by Vargas boys, so the girls don’t want Jude to fall victim to a boy from that family.

Jude tries to keep her promise, but when her beloved father becomes ill, she wants to refurbish his vintage motorcycle as a way to show him how much she loves him and to help him capture some memories. To accomplish this, she has to enlist the help of Emilio Vargas, the youngest brother of the two young men who broke her sisters’ hearts. 

In Jude’s attempts to connect with her father, who is fading away by the day, she finds herself drawn to Emilio. Her sisters were right about Vargas boys being irresistible, but were they right about them all being heartbreakers? While Jude’s focus may be on doing something wonderful for her father, her attention is also drawn—quite magnetically—to Emilio.

With grippingly realistic portrayals of family relationships, Sarah Ockler manages to create vivid characters that jump off of the page and move in with the reader. The love between Jude and her father, as he succumbs to the dementia of Alzheimer’s, is moving and painful. Her relationship with her sisters is sweet, but their control over her is frustrating.

The Book of Broken Hearts is a story of loves: between father and daughter, between sisters, between a young woman and man finding true love. This poignant story will stay with readers long after the book is finished.

Emily Booth Masters reviews from Nashville, Tennessee.

In June 1867, 17-year-old Verity Boone returns to live with her father in her hometown of Catawissa, Pennsylvania. Sent away to relatives as a 2-year-old, Verity is used to a bustling, friendly household filled with children—so different from her father’s silent home.

Still, Verity will not be with her father and his stern housekeeper for long; she has come home to meet her future husband. She accepted Nathaniel McClure’s proposal based on their correspondence and the glimpses of his personality through the gifts he sent— especially the book of sonnets by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Verity isn’t expecting to feel awkward with Nate, or to meet a handsome young physician’s assistant who makes her laugh.

And then there is the mystery of her mother’s death 15 years before. Verity is shocked to find that both her mother and aunt by marriage are buried in graves that lie inside ornate iron cages, but outside the hallowed ground of the cemetery. Both young women died on the same day, and no one seems to know anything about the mysterious illness that struck them. Are the cages there because the women were accused of witchcraft, or could it have something to do with rumors of long-lost gold, stashed away during the Revolutionary War?

Verity believes the answer must exist in the memories of townspeople or hidden in her mother’s journals. But as her investigations lead her deeper into the past, she finds herself face-to-face with present-day danger.

Author Dianne Salerni once found two real caged graves in the town of Catawissa. Although she never found out why the graves were caged, she was inspired to create this appealing romantic mystery. But who knows? Perhaps, like Verity, the author might still discover an answer to the riddle.

It’s the summer between high school graduation and the start of college, and Emaline longs for a transformative summer, the kind she imagines many tourists encounter when they visit her small beachfront community of Colby, North Carolina. But it seems hard to have that kind of wild, crazy and carefree summer when her days are filled with handing out towels and checking in renters for the several properties managed by her family’s realty company.

Just when Emaline is convinced that this summer will be just like every other—except for her impending departure to a nearby state university at summer’s end—everything changes. She and her longtime boyfriend, Luke, have hit a rough patch in their relationship. Her birth father—with whom Emaline had a cordial relationship up until a recent betrayal—shows up in Colby with Emaline’s 10-year-old half brother, Benji, in tow. And one of the summer renters, Theo, who is in town from New York to assist with a documentary film project, seems to offer Emaline the kind of different, glamorous, romantic summer she thought she always wanted.

Sarah Dessen is an expert at depicting young women on the verge of big changes, either in their family lives or in their romantic relationships. She also excels at tying story to place, in this case the fictional community of Colby, which has been the setting for several of her novels (readers will appreciate cameo appearances by several of Dessen’s previous characters here). In Emaline’s story, this link between setting and character is particularly strong, as she gradually realizes that she can discover her own identity apart from the place that has always defined her. The Moon and More is the perfect summer read, full of steamy days, romantic nights and life-changing possibilities.

Astrid Krieger has pretty much everything she needs to be happy: a rocket ship prototype on her parents’ estate to live in, good looks, money to burn and a grandfather who both loves her and can be counted on to bail her out of a jam (even the kinds of jams that require diplomatic immunity). So she’s more than a little upset when her latest shenanigan lands her in—horror of horrors—public school. Not that she had a choice in the matter; her expulsion from the Bristol Academy sealed the deal. Astrid may be a Firecracker, but she’s no match for the kids at Cadorette High.

Author David Iserson’s writing background is in film and television (“SNL,” “New Girl”), and his debut novel benefits from his ability to frame a comic scene for maximum laughs. When Astrid makes two very left-of-popular friends, her observations of one’s birthday party—which includes her sort-of-boyfriend’s attempt to get the nonexistent crowd dancing to an iPod full of French horn music—are priceless: “It was a depressing party. I’m sure there have been memorial services for school buses crashing into puppy stores with more celebration.”

Astrid has some lessons to learn about life, love, school dances, fake friends and the penalties for arson, but for every touching moment there are big laughs, foul language and new, strange characters to meet. If there’s a lot to keep track of, it’s all smart, fantastical fun. Firecracker will start your summer reading off with—it has to be said—a bang.