Ariel Kaplan’s We Regret to Inform You is a compelling novel about every highly motivated college applicant’s worst nightmare. High school senior Mischa Abramavicius should have had it made. She goes to a tony prep school on scholarship where she’s a star student. But when college acceptances start rolling in and her classmates are accepted to places like Harvard and Princeton, Mischa gets nothing but rejections. She doesn’t even get into her safety school, Paul Revere University.

Shocked and ashamed to tell her single mother, Mischa visits Revere’s admissions office and discovers that her transcript has been altered. But her original transcript is in order, leading Mischa to realize that something fishy is going on. With help from her best friend, Nate, and a group of hacker girls who call themselves the Ophelia Syndicate, Mischa begins to dig deeper.

As unlikely as this all sounds, Kaplan makes everything seem believable with the help of her wisecracking yet thoughtful narrator. Without any college acceptances, Mischa begins to question her very identity. But as she gets to the bottom of her application disaster, she also re-examines her dreams, goals and all-consuming pursuit of success.

We Regret to Inform You is an entertaining look at the college admissions rat race that includes crime, a cover-up and plenty of heart and soul.

This article was originally published in the September 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Sisters Rumi and Lea are going to make music together forever. Rumi plays piano, Lea plays guitar, and together they write lyrics. That is, until Lea dies in a car crash and Rumi is sent to live with her Aunty Ani in Hawaii.

Rumi spends the first few weeks of her summer pondering impossible questions: Why did her mother abandon her with a relative she hardly knows? Is Rumi just like her absent father, scared of commitment and bound to abandon everyone she loves? Why does she feel so physically attracted to Aunty Ani’s teenage neighbor, Kai, even though she doesn’t have any desire to touch or kiss him? And how can she ever write, perform or even hear music again, when she’ll always have to experience it without her sister?

Akemi Dawn Bowman’s Summer Bird Blue is a story of healing. As Kai gradually coaxes Rumi back into a world of friends, summer jobs and days at the beach, Aunty Ani’s other neighbor, the grumpy Mr. Watanabe, provides an unexpected haven. Hawaii’s geography, food and language (Hawaiian Pidgin) are authentically researched and lovingly portrayed. Bowman, author of the William C. Morris YA Debut Award finalist Starfish, once again offers a diverse, sensitive and hopeful portrayal of a teen simultaneously struggling with questions of personal identity and difficult external circumstances.

This article was originally published in the September 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

With his brilliant debut, Darius the Great Is Not Okay, Adib Khorram has given us one of the most compelling and humorous teen narrators in recent memory.

Darius Kellner is half Persian, half white and constantly out of his depth. With no friends, a penchant for “dietary indiscretions” and a titanic sense of insufficiency, Darius is not OK.

When his Iranian grandfather gets sick, the family jumps aboard a plane to Iran, and Darius finds a whole new world waiting for him—along with all his same old problems. With more knowledge of Klingon than Farsi, Darius once again finds himself on the outside looking in. But after a lifetime of playing the odd man out, Darius finds his first true friend—and perhaps his first true love—and begins to accept that not being OK might be OK after all.

With a host of perfectly imperfect characters and more “Star Trek” and J.R.R. Tolkien references than you’ll likely find outside of a Comic-Con, Khorram takes on a host of weighty topics with uncanny lightness and care. Whether depicting Darius’ depression, his budding romance or his struggle to unravel his cultural, familial and sexual identities, Khorram approaches his narrative with a rare mix of humor, respect and deep sympathy.

Equally entertaining and endearing, Darius the Great Is Not Okay is a must-read if you’ve ever felt out of place or insufficient.

This article was originally published in the September 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Kit Frick’s debut YA novel, See All the Stars, is part love story, part thriller, part coming-of-age story—and definitely a book to be devoured all in one sitting. Frick, who is also a poet and poetry editor, has a love of words (and, as she puts it, “putting complicated characters in impossible situations”) that is clearly on display in this story about the relationships among four high school students.

Ellory, the narrator, begins the story in June following her sophomore year. She calls it “then.” Then, she was best friends with Bex, Jenni and Ret. To Ellory, her friends are the stars and planets of the solar system. Ret is the bright center sun, and Ellory sees herself as “the moon, dark and cold without the sun’s light. Ellory Holland—constant satellite.” So, when Ret wants to go to a party, Ellory follows. At the party, she meets and falls in love with Matthias Cole—a beautiful but complex boy with plenty of secrets.

See All the Stars shifts between these past events and now—Ellory’s senior year. Now, Ellory is attemping to brave out the school year by hiding in metalwork class and trying to focus on her dream of going to art school in Portland.

Frick deftly keeps the suspense and mystery of what happened “then” just out of reach until the very end, when the pieces fall into place and we can see all the stars—and understand the full nature of the gulf between then and now. Frick’s debut will especially be a treat for fans of E. Lockhart’s We Were Liars.

Evie has never fit in. The local fisherfolk scorn her as uppity because her two best friends, Prince Nik and Anna, have royal blood in their veins. But even with her friends, Evie feels like an outsider—and not because she lacks a royal title. Evie has a secret: She’s a witch.

Evie’s sense of estrangement only increases when she challenges Anna to a race, and Anna drowns in the rough ocean waves. Awash in grief, shame and uncertainty, there is nothing in the world Evie wants more than for her friend to be back beside her, breathing and alive.

Desire and delusion conspire so that when a mysterious girl shows up on Evie’s doorstep, looking very much like Anna and bearing the strikingly similar name of Annemette, Evie is convinced her friend has returned. Evie’s confidence cannot be shaken, even when she learns Annemette is a mermaid.

Annemette has just four days to gain a kiss of true love from Prince Nik, or she will dissolve back into the ocean like sea foam. Sounds familiar, right? But Annemette is not the pure-hearted Little Mermaid we know so well, and she is harboring secrets of her own.

Journalist Sarah Henning’s compulsively readable reimagining of The Little Mermaid is a cleverly plotted tale of love, loss and revenge. While familiarity with either Hans Christian Anderson’s original or the Disney adaptation will add layers of meaning and pleasure, you need not be a Little Mermaid fan to enjoy Sea Witch.

Five years ago, in a sleepy Long Island town, five cheerleaders died within one month’s time. Two were killed in a car accident, two were murdered and one killed herself. Tragic coincidence or a planned attack? That’s what 16-year-old Monica Rayburn is trying to uncover. Her sister, Jen, was the cheerleader who died by suicide.

And on the anniversary of the girls’ deaths, Monica feels like her own life is unraveling. She’s recovering from an abortion, and the man she had been sleeping with is now a coach at her high school. But when she learns that her police officer stepfather is hiding crucial evidence regarding the murders, she begins to wonder if the wrong person went down for the crime.

When Monica discovers Jen’s old cellphone locked in her stepfather’s desk drawer, she begins an investigation of her own. Just as Monica fiercely guards her secrets, so did the cheerleaders. But which secret got them killed?

Unanswered questions and lingering doubts regarding Jen’s death propel Monica to follow all leads like a seasoned private investigator, but she still juggles typical teen concerns such as dance team, friend squabbles and an understandably tense home life. Author Kara Thomas (The Darkest Corners) is adept at crafting satisfyingly dark YA thrillers. While the cover art feels campy, the story within is packed with complex characters, tightly plotted threads and last-page twists. Readers won’t be disappointed.

“Heretics are usually true believers. The only thing more dangerous than someone who doesn’t care about the rules is someone who does—and wants to break them anyway.”

So begins 16-year-old Michael’s introduction to a secret underground club at St. Clare’s—his exclusive new Catholic school—known as Heretics Anonymous. Michael’s career-driven father has recently uprooted the family yet again—thus breaking his promise to Michael and his younger sister, Sophia—and has insisted on sending Michael to St. Clare’s for his junior year. As an avowed atheist, Michael has a bumpy start at the school as he tries to navigate Catholic traditions, but he fits in well with the other misfits in the club: a Jewish kid, a Wiccan and a girl named Lucy who wants to become a Catholic priest.

At first, Heretics Anonymous meetings serve as a place for the teens to complain about St. Clare’s restrictive rules. But at Michael’s urging, the club begins to take on an activist role. The Heretics secretly interrupt the annual abstinence assembly with a video that contains facts about sexual health, and later they encourage their fellow students to creatively interpret the school’s dress code.

The Heretics’ high jinks provide Michael with a distraction from his home life: His father is perpetually away on business, and when he is home, he and Michael are constantly at odds, and his mother’s attempts to keep her family together grate on Michael. In the meantime, the Heretics attend their share of awkward teen parties, and Michael and Lucy begin to act on their simmering attraction to one another.

But soon the club starts to get out of hand. At what point do the Heretics’ protests do more harm than good? And has Michael been drawing the wrong conclusions about his father all along?

Debut author Katie Henry writes with a deep respect for the religious beliefs her characters simultaneously adore and eschew. Lucy’s devotion to a tradition that will never meet her expectations is particularly sensitively drawn. Pick up this funny yet thoughtful young adult novel if you’re ready to question your own assumptions about family, friendship and faith.

This article was originally published in the August 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

BookPage Teen Top Pick, August 2018

If you ask me, there’s no better time to read a good old-fashioned survival story than at the height of summer, when long, lazy days and warm nights might make readers long for some heart-pounding humans-versus-wilderness drama.

Kate Alice Marshall’s I Am Still Alive certainly fits the bill, though there’s really nothing old-fashioned about it, since its themes and structures are boldly contemporary. The novel’s first half is divided into alternating sections titled “Before” and “After,” as 16-year-old Jess Cooper recounts how and why she came to live in a remote area of Canada with her estranged father, and how she’s been surviving in the days since his sudden murder and the destruction of everything that had been keeping her small family alive in this beautiful but unforgiving place.

By the time these two timelines merge midway through the novel, readers are bound to be thoroughly invested in Jess’ survival, made even more harrowing due to a painful disability that forces Jess to work twice as hard—and be at least twice as smart—as someone with two fully functioning legs. I Am Still Alive is full of the kinds of backcountry details that will intrigue fans of Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet and its ilk, from finding and killing food to making shelter, and there’s plenty of high-stakes conflict with humans and animals alike. But Marshall’s thrilling tale is also a deeply moving story about coming to terms with imperfections (both in oneself and in others) and about finding true resourcefulness and inner strength.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with Kate Alice Marshall about I Am Still Alive.
 

This article was originally published in the August 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.