High-school junior Del Rainey can’t get back from family vacation fast enough, having heard from his best friend Qwan that Kiera Westing is now a free woman since she broke up with her boyfriend Colossus. Del has been secretly in… Read More ›
YA Romance
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 ›
Agnes at the End of the World
Agnes is a teenager living with her younger sister Beth and other even-younger siblings in a crowded mobile home in Red Creek, a fundamentalist Christian settlement in the desert Southwest modeled somewhat after that described in Carolyn Jessop’s memoir ESCAPED…. Read More ›
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
So here’s the long-anticipated prequel to the Hunger Games trilogy. Coriolanus Snow is in his final year at the elitist Academy, training ground for future leaders of Panem. He is fortunate to be there because although he is charming, intelligent… Read More ›
This Is How I Lied
Eve is a 15-yr-old girl living with her mother Charlotte and 13-year-old sister Nola in small-town Grotto, Iowa. They don’t have much. Her mother works but doesn’t bring in a lot, and she is one cranky, self-centered mom. Like in… Read More ›
American Royals
Author Katharine McGee had a clever idea for this book, imagining that George Washington did NOT decline to be made king after the American Revolution but instead founded an American dynasty. Fast forward to today, where we have the House… Read More ›
The Children’s Bible: A Novel
The bare bones of this story: Eve/Evie is a high school girl with a 9-year-old brother, Jack. Her family goes in with several other families of long-friendship-duration to rent a large, historic estate on the East Coast for a summer… Read More ›
crave
Grace Foster is a high school girl living in San Diego whose parents die suddenly. She is shipped off to a remote part of Alaska where her Uncle Finn runs a boarding school and her cousin Macy is a student…. Read More ›
They Went Left
In August 1942 Zofia Lederman and her family, who are among the remaining Jews in the Polish town of Sosnowiec, report to the local soccer stadium, where they are sorted into two groups, one headed for death camps and the… Read More ›
Before You Buy YA 