BookPage Teen Top Pick, November 2017

Fifteen-year-old Will Holloman is, indeed, a hollow man (as suggested by his last name). His older brother, Shawn, has been shot and killed, and Will’s sadness over Shawn’s absence is like a tooth that has been ripped out, and his tongue keeps slipping “into the new empty space, / where you know / a tooth supposed to be / but ain’t no more.” Now Will intends to follow the three rules of the street: no crying, no snitching, get revenge. He’s going to play by the rules, which “weren’t meant to be broken. / They were meant for the broken / to follow.” With his brother’s gun in the waistband of his jeans, he heads to his building’s elevator. And here, acclaimed author Jason Reynolds’ brilliant new novel-in-verse (recently nominated for a National Book Award) becomes a ghost story—a gritty, streetwise A Christmas Carol.

As the elevator descends, different ghosts of shootings past—each connected to Will in sometimes surprising ways—enter the carriage. They share experiences, question him and challenge his motives. It’s a long way down from the eighth floor to the lobby, but it only takes seven floors, 60 seconds and six ghosts to make him question his quest for revenge. Reynolds’ elegant verse begs to be read aloud, and teachers will want to discuss what Will might have taken away from each ghostly visit. An ambiguous ending prompts further questions: What, if anything, has Will learned? Is he destined to be just another “block boy” looking to off somebody?

This article was originally published in the November 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Being adopted has never been an issue for 16-year-old Grace. But when she becomes pregnant, gives birth on the same night her ex-boyfriend is crowned homecoming king, and then gives up the baby for adoption, Grace decides to find her own birth mother. What she finds instead in Robin Benway’s National Book Award finalist, Far from the Tree, are a younger sister, Maya, who’s also adopted, and an older brother, Joaquin, who’s spent his whole life in and out of foster care homes.

Alternating chapters from the siblings’ different perspectives reveal their painfully realistic ups and downs. Grace is reluctant to talk about her baby (who has left a painful void) and the way her classmates now taunt her. Maya is open about being gay, but she’s not sure how to handle her adoptive mother’s alcoholism or if she’s less of a family member compared to Lauren, her adoptive parents’ biological child. And having never experienced the stability of a family, Joaquin can’t explain why he’s hesitant to let his current, loving foster parents adopt him.

As these three siblings connect, they also form even stronger relationships with their loved ones at home and create a larger circle to call family. Their sophisticated stories show that while there’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to family, all families can be messy, complicated—and fiercely devoted. Readers will find themselves crying and cheering along with these resilient teens.

What if the British Empire had never diminished in power or scope? What if Queen Victoria’s heirs had looked outside Western Europe for mates, as a calculated bid to cement their dominion? In That Inevitable Victorian Thing, E.K. Johnston imagines a near-future world based on that alternative historical premise, and the result is a delightful mashup of tradition and technology.

It’s debut season, and Helena is about to have her coming-out party, which means that a month of formal parties and dances in Toronto will culminate with logging in to the Computer, which analyzes her DNA and recommends genetically compatible mates. Helena has long suspected that regardless of the Computer’s recommendation, she’d make a love match with her childhood friend, August.

At one of those fancy balls, Helena and August meet Margaret, another debutante visiting from England. Little do they know that Margaret Sandwich is actually none other than Victoria-Margaret, heir to the throne and the Empire. Margaret is eager to have one summer of living like a normal person before taking up the mantle of the monarchy.

Johnston’s imagined world is utterly original, one in which Victorian decorum and religiosity blend with cutting-edge science, and the ethnic diversity and open exploration of sexual identities makes the novel feel contemporary. One senses right up until the surprising ending that Johnston had a really great time creating this world—and one suspects that readers will have an equally enjoyable time inhabiting it.

The small town of Prescott, Oregon, has a dark history of assault that it likes to keep hidden. But in The Nowhere Girls, three young women have had enough of the predators roaming the halls of their high school.

Grace Salter, Rosina Suarez and Erin DeLillo sit at what everybody in the Prescott High lunchroom knows is the weirdo table. Grace is the new girl who just moved to town because her preacher mom is too liberal and radical. Rosina is the queer, punk girl in a conservative, Mexican-American family. And Erin, though a genius, deals with the social struggles of her extreme Asperger’s every single day.

Together, they anonymously organize the Nowhere Girls in order to push back against the overt sexism, victim blaming, slut shaming and outright rape culture running rampant at Prescott. Their first move: withholding sex of any kind from the boys at their school. And as the Nowhere Girls continue to meet and grow in numbers, they begin to find strength in their own voices, take control of their own bodies and discover that they are far stronger and more capable than they’d ever been allowed to imagine.

Borrowing from the ancient Greek play Lysistrata, author Amy Reed crafts a powerful, moving and nuanced set of characters who experience the same abuse that far too many girls suffer. Reed’s The Nowhere Girls shows readers the power each woman possesses—and she lets her characters serve as examples of how young people can take care of each other while simultaneously demanding and effecting real change in their communities.

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 October 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

BookPage Teen Top Pick, October 2017

It’s a regular summer’s day for Adam Thorn. It begins with picking up gardening supplies for his mother (even though his brother, Marty, ran over her chrysanthemums). Later, he’s off to run with his cross-country team, and then he clocks in at what he calls the Evil International Mega-Conglomerate warehouse. After that it’s a brief stop to see his best friend, Angela, followed by his boyfriend, Linus. That evening, Adam helps at his preacher father’s evangelical church and ends the night at a going-away party for Enzo, an ex for whom Adam still yearns.

Adam’s day alternates between the mundane and the extraordinary: Angela and Marty both have revelations to share; Linus needs more from Adam than his heart is ready to give; and Adam’s tenuous truce with his father may be coming to an end. But as Adam’s day progresses, so does someone else’s: that of a mysterious presence who might be the ghost of a murdered girl—or perhaps the embodiment of an ancient water queen. Adam’s story and that of the drowned spirit run parallel for a time, but when they overlap, both could find some kind of release.

Drawing inspiration from Judy Blume’s Forever . . . and Virginia Woolf’s classic circadian novel Mrs. Dalloway, this new novel from Carnegie Medal winning-author Patrick Ness features diverse characters, unique religious perspectives (Adam’s father’s strict rules don’t hold a monopoly on spirituality) and just enough honest talk about sex to make it a good choice for older teen readers.

This article was originally published in the October 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Difficult life choices lay ahead for one senior who holds onto deep secrets about her crush in bestselling author Jennifer L. Armentrout’s latest.

Lena Wise has mixed emotions about her friends splitting off and heading to various colleges after high school. She wants nothing more than to make the most of her senior year and the time she has left with all of them, especially Sebastian Harwell, her best friend and next-door neighbor. Lena and Sebastian have known each other since childhood, and she is secretly in love with him. During a summer outing to the lake, Sebastian and Lena innocently goof around, and their playful banter eventually leads to her giving him a peck on the lips. Sebastian, unfortunately, doesn’t return the kiss. A few days later, things seem to have blown over, and Sebastian invites her to come with him to a party, but the two get into a disagreement. What follows is not only unexpected but also throws Lena’s life off-kilter.

Although Armentrout opens with a bizarre scene and leans on some cliché dialogue, she steers the story back around and makes sure to lead readers to the crux of her plot. Through Lena’s first-person narration, Armentrout crafts a storyline that feels all too real. Without giving away any spoilers, Armentrout weaves several teen issues (crushes, sex, love and dysfunctional households) into her narrative that are sure to resonate with today’s youth. If There’s No Tomorrow is nothing less than a thought-provoking read, and Armentrout will keep readers hooked until the very end.

The timing could hardly be better. Readers looking for more Wonder Woman lore after the blockbuster summer movie will welcome Leigh Bardugo’s imaginative and witty interpretation.

In this coming-of-age novel, teenage Diana lives on the island of Themyscira, which is populated only by female Amazons. She is the daughter of Hippolyta, who created Diana from a clay pot. Diana is painfully aware that every other Amazon earned a place on the island through a noble mortal death and feels compelled to prove herself worthy. Her chance comes when she rescues a lone survivor from a ship explosion, a mixed-race teenage mortal named Alia Keralis.

Through an oracle, Diana discovers that Alia is a Warbringer, a descendent of Helen of Troy who is destined to bring absolute destruction. The only way to divert this tragedy is for Alia to bathe in “the spring where Helen rests” within the next two weeks. Diana accepts the quest. Alia, on the other hand, is wary of Diana’s formidable appearance and outlandish proposal. They arrive in New York, where Diana’s supermodel appearance, Amazonian strength and incongruous naivete form the basis for much of the 21st-century humor. Alia and Diana forge a bond of sisterhood that is tested as the two of them, along with Alia’s brother and her friends, make their way to Greece to locate Helen’s spring.

Fans of Bardugo’s Grisha series will be delighted with the action and romance in this story. Wonder Woman: Warbringer is the first novel in the highly anticipated DC Icons Series, which features popular superhero stories retold by bestselling authors.   

Diane Colson is a media specialist at a middle school in Gainesville, Florida.