Just before teenage Samuel’s mother died, she told him to go to the Brazilian town of Candeia, to find his estranged family and light a candle at the feet of the statue of St. Anthony. When Samuel arrives in the dilapidated town, circumstances lead him to take up residence in the statue’s head, long separated from its body. Inside the head, Samuel hears voices of women praying to the saint for husbands . . . and a mysterious voice singing sad but lovely songs. Playing matchmaker helps Samuel revitalize the town (and earn a tidy profit), but as happy couples flock to the church, secrets from the past begin to weigh on the present. Why did Candeia become all but a ghost town? Why isn’t St. Anthony’s head attached to his body? Who is the mysterious singer, and why does she sing such sad songs? Like the advice Samuel gives out in the name of the saint, Samuel’s mother’s last requests have implications far beyond their surface meanings.

This slim YA novel exemplifies the best of magical realism—as it should. Brazilian author Socorro Acioli had the opportunity to workshop the manuscript that would become The Head of the Saint with renowned Latin American author Gabriel García Márquez. If you like Márquez's work—or more contemporary multigenerational tales with a touch of magic (like Leslye Walton’s The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender)—you’ll also like The Head of the Saint.

Jill Ratzan matches readers with books in a small library in southeastern Pennsylvania.

Julia knows more than anyone that things don’t always go as planned. She wasn’t supposed to be the one Jessup captured in the woods. When Julia and Liv are attacked, Julia refuses to allow Liv to be abducted. She saves her and unintentionally takes her place.

A year later, when Julia starts having PTSD flashbacks, she logs keywords, thoughts and bits of remembered events in her notebook. Her psychiatrist wants to hypnotize her, but she’s figuring things out herself, with research, investigative journaling and the understanding that only friendship brings. Liv also hasn’t been the same since after the woods, even though Julia was the one held captive.

And then, inconceivably, more tragedy: A dead teenager is discovered in the same wild patch, where locals go to escape reality, the place Julia fears above all else. A TV reporter focuses her coverage on failed police procedure and charges probation officers with accountability for this new body and for Julia’s attack. The town is a circus, yet things get even stranger.

Superbly written for a young adult audience, After the Woods is darkly alluring, a compelling read with mystery, romance, drama and twists. Psychological explorations and questions of motivation drive character growth: Why does an abductor pull a knife, tie hands and refuse to let go? Why does a girl reach out to a complete stranger? What are these compulsions?

This well-paced mystery will compel readers to read hungrily, quickly, in pursuit of answers to these many questions.

When his father died five years ago, Parker Santé lost his ability to speak. He’s not that interested in talking to anyone, anyway. Instead, he spends most days loitering in hotel lobbies, picking the occasional pocket and filling journals with stories—until one afternoon at the Palace Hotel, when he steals a wad of cash from a silver-haired girl who claims to be 246 years old. When mysterious Zelda catches him in the act and offers to strike a deal, Parker begins to see that there might be some things in life worth paying attention to.

Tommy Wallach offers a sweet coming-of-age novel about a young man learning to overcome loss. Presented as a comically long college application essay, Parker’s narrative is brash and appropriately childish, yet attentive and at times profound. Though the framing device is a bit far-fetched, and Zelda leans a bit too far toward Manic Pixie Dream Girl, there’s a lot to love about the poignant, lighthearted Thanks for the Trouble.

This article was originally published in the March 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Enveloping us in the tropical forests and cacao farms of Africa, The Bitter Side of Sweet keenly inspires empathy in readers through a tale of abusive child labor and the resilience of the human spirit.

When 15-year-old Amadou and his 8-year-old brother, Seydou, left their home in Mali to harvest cacao plants in Ivory Coast, they assumed they would return after a season. But working as child slaves for the past two years has broken their bodies and their spirits. That is, until 13-year-old Khadija, the first girl they’ve ever seen on the farm, bursts into their lives with such ferocity that Amadou nicknames her “the wildcat.” 

Khadija attempts to escape on her first day, and when she’s caught, Amadou is blamed and beaten for it. But when Seydou is severely injured in the fields, Khadija keeps him alive after Amadou is dragged back to harvest. Amadou finally realizes the masters don’t care about his brother—they only care about his ability to work for them—and so he sets in motion a desperate plan for escape.

Tara Sullivan’s latest novel is heart-wrenching, with the power to leave a bitter taste of memory with every bite of chocolate.

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 March 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

BookPage Teen Top Pick, March 2016

Painful family secrets may be at the heart of the latest novel by British author Jenny Downham, but families change and grow over time, and there is peace and healing just within reach. 

Seventeen-year-old Katie first meets her grandmother, Mary, in the hospital. Mary suffers from dementia, and her husband recently died from a massive heart attack. Despite being estranged from Mary for years, Katie’s mother, Caroline, is Mary’s emergency contact. When Caroline must return to work, Katie becomes the main caregiver for Mary, and she quickly realizes that her grandmother’s memories are deteriorating before her eyes. However, the more Mary and Katie interact and take risks together, the more Mary’s memories return, resulting in long-buried family secrets coming to the surface. As Katie struggles with her identity and Mary struggles with her memories, these stories unravel, exposing revelations about all three generations of women.

Downham delivers an engrossing and emotional novel, complete with a thread of historical fiction that employs Mary’s flashbacks as the backdrop to the story. With tremendous finesse, Downham pulls readers into the mind of someone suffering from Alzheimer’s, a place where memories quickly fall out of reach. The story is fluid, perfectly paced and can be easily read in one sitting. This is a heartfelt book that sensitively and honestly reveals family issues, and it’s one that teens won’t want to miss.

This article was originally published in the March 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In many books, especially fantasy novels, one of the best parts of the reading experience is the chance to pore over detailed maps of real or imagined places, from Middle-earth to Oz. In her debut novel, Heidi Heilig takes things a step further and places maps squarely at the center of her plot.

Nix’s father, Slate, is a Navigator, skilled at traveling through time and space—and even in between historical and mythological versions of the world—by steering his ship, the Temptation, between maps. Nix and her father have traveled from medieval Scandinavia to modern-day New York City, all as part of Slate’s quest to find the ultimate map: the one that will take him back to Hawaii in 1868, the last place and time he saw Nix’s mother alive.

Slate takes more and more risks as he comes closer to his goal, blinded by romanticism and opium until he’s unable to see the truth—that someone else who knows about Navigation may, in fact, be using Slate’s desires for their own ends.

The world Heilig has built is a creative blend of actual history and fantasy elements grounded in ancient and modern myths. Her novel is simultaneously an adventure story, a love triangle and a meditation on big topics like the idea of home and the tension between fate and free will. The good news is that The Girl from Everywhere is just the first part of a duology, so readers will be able to accompany Nix on another journey. 

The Russell family is splitting up. Dad, never home much anyway, is moving out for good. The eldest daughter, Jan, is headed away for her first year at Brown. So now it’s just Mom, pretty and headstrong 15-year-old Melanie and gorgeous but oblivious 16-year-old Erika. The two sisters are not friends, but on Halloween, they both attend a party with highly spiked punch. Melanie gets so wasted that she’s barely aware of coming on to Gerald, a friend who has worshipped Melanie for years. For his part, Gerald is so thrilled by Melanie’s sexual advances that he fails to notice that she’s passed out before the end. Erika is there when Melanie is found stretched out on the floor, undressed from the waist down.

Claire Needell’s debut novel explores the definition of rape through Melanie’s story: Is it rape if Melanie was too drunk to remember having sex, much less give consent? Despite the urgency of this topic, it gets a bit buried amid subplots concerning Jan’s relationship with her boyfriend, the eccentricities of Jan’s college roommate, Erika’s quirky naiveté and too-frequent analyses of each sister’s temperament. The numerous viewpoints seem to dilute the central issue rather than reveal its complexity.

Nevertheless, readers who are interested in timely issues, such as those explored in the novels by Jennifer Brown or Ellen Hopkins, will be intrigued by the important questions raised here. An author’s note further clarifies the definition of rape.

Diane Colson is the Library Director at City College in Gainesville, Florida.

It seems so simple at birth: boy or girl. But genitalia don’t indicate whether the boy will fall in love with other boys, or whether the girl will grow to identify as a boy who loves girls. In Symptoms of Being Human, Riley’s biological gender is never revealed to the reader, even though Riley’s innermost feelings are revealed through Riley’s blog. Following a psychiatrist’s advice, Riley uses the blog and its growing popularity as an effective tool to help withstand the stress of a new school and Riley’s congressman father’s run for re-election. Through this online platform, Riley pours out reflections on gender fluidity (“It’s like a compass in my chest . . . the needle moves between masculine and feminine.”) and dreams of acceptance. In contrast to the positive reception that Riley finds online, school is torture, and Riley’s penchant for gender-neutral clothes attracts the worst bullies. 

Through the acceptance of a LGBTQ support group and Riley’s blog, author Jeff Garvin’s groundbreaking novel packs in as much advice for genderqueer teens as possible. The most important message may be that it is acceptable to live outside the gender binary. In his author’s note, Garvin provides resources to help teens struggling with gender identity issues, as well as the often-attendant anxiety and depression.

Diane Colson is the Library Director at City College in Gainesville, Florida.

This article was originally published in the February 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.