YA Fiction Reviews

Dress Coded

Transition from elementary school to middle school has got to be one of the hardest changes a person’s got to endure–boys and girls maturing at different rates, childhood friendships evolving or ending and new ones being formed, and new anxieties… Read More ›

The Voting Booth

Too bad I didn’t discover this book sooner (its publication date was July 2020) so that I could have pushed it as a voter’s primer for YA readers and in particular for senior students voting for their first time. It… Read More ›

midnight sun

Here we have the 658-page retelling of the first part of the Twilight saga, told from Edward Cullen’s point of view. Fans will remember that the author had started work on this a long time ago but reportedly someone prematurely… Read More ›

burn our bodies down

Seventeen-year-old Margot Nielsen lives with one crazy mother in a sparsely-furnished upstairs apartment over an abandoned storefront in tiny Calhoun, Nebraska. Life is dreary. She has no friends and her relationship with her mother is fraught with emotional booby-traps that… Read More ›

The Black Kids

Set in Los Angeles in the year 1992–the year LA erupted into violence after the brutal beating of Rodney King by four LAPD officers–this story traces the evolution of senior Ashley Bennett, her friends, and her family as they confront… Read More ›

The Mall

Set in New Jersey in 1991, this novel’s action is almost entirely confined to the local mall. This is a clever idea, and the author surprisingly is able to realize it nicely. Cassie Worthy is a new high school graduate… Read More ›