1) "Dreamland" by Robert L. Anderson
Reality blurs into nightmare when a dream-walking girl breaks all the rules to help the boy she loves.
Dea and her mother never stay in one place for very long. The sleepy town of Fielding, Indiana, they live in now doesn’t offer anything noteworthy other than their own existence within it. Dea and her mother can walk through other people’s dreams. In fact, not walking for long periods of time can cause their health to decline radically. Her mother has only three rules: never intervene in another person’s dream, never walk the same person’s dream more than once, and never, ever be seen. If she disobeys, her mother warns, monsters will find her. Dea plays along until the arrival of an attractive new neighbor, Connor; and she becomes obsessed with walking his dreams as often as she can. But Connor harbors his own monsters he’s been hiding from, monsters Dea quickly realizes are now her problem as well. Their relationship builds at a steady but slow clip. The story soars only when tensions rise and Dea must exit reality to walk deeper into the unknown, dark realm of dreams. The sights and secrets she finds there are breathtaking to behold and more inspiring than the romance. Readers will wish she’d dived down the rabbit hole sooner.
Anderson creates a spellbinding landscape but then leaves it achingly underexplored. (Fantasy. 14 & up)
2) "Finding Audrey" by Sophie Kinsella
Audrey, 14, is on a long, slow upswing from disabling anxiety disorders that resulted from the vicious abuse of bullies at school.
Under the guidance of thoughtful Dr. Sarah, Audrey begins to deal with her inability to make eye contact—or even to leave the house—by crafting videos of her quirky, near-farcical family, a nifty narrative device that especially shows off her “twitchy” mom. Audrey's brother Frank is determined to win an online gaming championship with his team, in spite of their mom's frenetic attempts to remake the family based on newspaper advice—which, sadly for Frank, includes giving up computers. Complicating this is the fact that Frank's team includes sensitive Linus, who delicately, tenderly navigates Audrey's vividly portrayed roadblocks. As their relationship blossoms, Audrey gains both strength and courage. The counterpoint of absurd humor against Audrey's uncertain progress toward healing, graphically depicted in her appealing and slightly ironic first-person voice, is compelling. Since the nature of the bullying is never fully revealed, it can readily represent the experiences of other victims. It's only as the narrative approaches its conclusion that the true source of the dysfunction in Audrey's family is revealed: all of them have become victims in myriad ways.
An outstanding tragicomedy that gently explores mental illness, the lasting effects of bullying, and the power of friends and loving family to help in the healing. (Fiction. 12-18)
3) "Scripted" by Maya Rock
Not all is blissful on Bliss Island, where a whole community lives in a reality show dystopia decades after a world war.
Nettie lives with her mother, knowing she’s a Character and on camera most of the time, as is everyone on the island, born into a reality show that has run for a century. Nettie is in serious trouble: Her ratings are down, and she’s in danger of being cut, thereby becoming one of the missing Patriots. The armed, collective Authority immediately remove anyone cut and forbid the remaining Characters from ever acknowledging that person's existence. When her friend Belle disappears, however, the girl’s brother, Scoop, can’t forget. Meanwhile, Nettie's best friend breaks up with Callen, Nettie’s next-door neighbor and secret heartthrob, and her producer suggests she can improve her ratings by flirting with Callen. Things go well. However, Media1, the production company that controls not only their lives, but even the weather on the island, begins to demand more. Nettie knows she can’t refuse, but she also works with Scoop to discover what happens to the so-called Patriots. Rock effectively contrasts the pretty unreality of the Characters’ lives with the looming discovery of their true fates. Issues of privacy and freedom dominate the deceptive glamour as Nettie struggles to make a firm decision about what to do with her own life.
An effective, suspenseful dystopia for a wide audience. (Dystopian romance. 12-18)
4) "Dating Down" by Stefanie Lyons
A teen falls into a damaging romance.
“I will call him X,” says Sam about her narrative choice not to name this story’s boy, “for the number of times I plunged into self-destruction.” She meets X at the coffeehouse where he works. He’s lanky, and he’s also 22 to her 17; he “wants to ride his Vespa / through the coffee fields of Columbia.” Sam’s a painter and projects an undeserved bohemian-artist image onto X. When he mentions desiring a media empire like Hugh Hefner’s—not the naked girls, he adds, just the empire—Sam doesn’t bat an eye. X’s heady allure pulls her headlong out of her world of SAT prep, presided over by a pearl-wearing stepmother and a father who cares only about his reputation as an aspiring politician. The real X lies and cheats. He’s a drug user and a dealer; the Vespas he drives are stolen. Sam does drugs with him, steals her stepmother’s diamond earrings and gives them to a random fellow partier. “Is this what love is? / A jerky jagged jumpy ride?” The nonuniformity of Lyons’ prose poems, which continually shift form and style, employing choppiness, odd spacing and fast beats (“Meet a guy / butterflies // then come lies / systemized”), among other devices, matches Sam’s lack of grounding. Give this to Ellen Hopkins fans.
Turbulent love via turbulent poems. (Verse fiction. 14-18)
5) "The One Thing" by Marci Lyn Curtis
Maggie, who became blind after contracting bacterial meningitis six months earlier, experiences a magical cure. Sort of.
After meeting with the probation officer following a prank she pulled at her new school, Merchant's School for the Blind, Maggie meets bighearted, straight-shooting, mile-a-minute-talking 10-year-old Ben Milton. Shockingly, she can see Ben, and the novelty of Maggie’s temporarily returned sight makes her go along with it when Ben invites her home with him. Coincidentally, Ben's older brother, Mason, turns out to be the teenage lead singer of the Loose Cannons, Maggie's favorite band, and he is certain Maggie is faking both her blindness and her interest in Ben to get close to him. Although Maggie has been spending most of her post-meningitis life pushing away friends and family and finding reasons to ditch her orientation and mobility specialist, the relationship Maggie builds with the Miltons sparks change. Maggie's voice is sharp and quick-witted, and Ben's persistent exuberance provides an excellent foil. Although discovering a mystical cure for a disability is an overused, usually offensive trope, this book's conclusion points toward accepting disability rather than hoping to vanquish it. The payoff here is not just the inevitable romance, but also Maggie's strengthened relationships with friends, family, and herself.
Funny, sweet, and hopeful. (Fiction. 12-18)
6) "Bleeding Earth" by Kaitlin Ward
“Bones Found to Be of Human Origin, Blood Beginning to Fester.” In the spirit of M.T. Anderson’s Thirsty (1997), Ward’s apocalyptic novel will have readers checking the ground beneath their feet after each turn of the page.
Readers meet Lea, a confident teenage girl who just wants to hang out with her friends and spend quality time with her new girlfriend, Aracely. But when the Earth begins to ooze blood and other body parts, Lea’s hometown becomes a war zone, with citizens fighting over fresh water and food rations, and Lea becomes ever more concerned with her dwindling faith in humanity, her declining mental state, and the blood that won’t stop rising. To her family and close friends, Lea’s sexuality is largely a nonissue, which is refreshing (and sensible, considering the impending apocalypse); furthermore, readers looking for the next LGBT heroine will love Lea’s strong-willed attitude. The frightful moments are craftily deployed, creeping up and startling readers when they’re least expecting it. And the government PSAs regarding the blood that punctuate Lea’s narration are enough to panic even the most fearless of readers, their commonplace mundanity highlighting the freakishness.
Grisly and sickening (but in the best way possible), the novel more than delivers on its promise of the macabre for lovers of horror, and curious readers will close the book with countless questions about religion, science, and human nature. (Horror. 13 & up)
7) "Dreamfire" by Kit Alloway
Joshlyn is expert at entering and resolving others’ nightmares, but there’s a new and forceful evil plaguing the Dream world that even she can’t beat.
Dream walkers can die within others’ nightmares, but without their intervention, the balance between the Dream and the World will be disrupted with disastrous consequences. Josh comes from a long line of dream walkers, but she carries with her the responsibility of her boyfriend’s death. So when she’s assigned an apprentice, Will, on her 17th birthday, she balks at the responsibility and intimacy. Will proves to be a worthy partner, however, when a pair of evil, trench-coated men with completely black eyes and carrying gas masks invades the Dream universe, rendering dreamers comatose in both realms. As the plot deepens, Will and Josh barely have time to pay attention to their growing fondness for each other. It becomes increasingly clear that Josh’s role in the battle is her ultimate destiny as these black-eyed creatures cross the veil into the waking World. Alloway explores the complexities of dream-walking politics in detail, with the result that worldbuilding feels laborious rather than organic. Between this and a plethora of characters, the plot drags, but the nightmare vignettes are rivetingly chilling.
A dark and exciting paranormal adventure that will keep patient genre fans up late. (Paranormal romance. 13-18)
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