1) "Mosquitoland" by David Arnold
Encounters both dangerous and wonder-filled with fellow travelers prompt 16-year-old runaway Mim to scrutinize her perceptions about herself, her family and the world she inhabits.
Convinced that her father and stepmother are hiding secrets about her mother’s health and also frustrated by her father’s insistence that she take antipsychotic medication, Mim steals an emergency cash fund to travel 1,000 miles to her mother. Aboard the Greyhound bus, Mim’s inner monologues about other passengers reveal her snarky sense of superiority, which is alternately hilarious, cutting and full of bravado. But her self-imposed, disdainful isolation quickly dissolves in the aftermath of a harrowing accident. Completing her journey suddenly necessitates interacting with a motley set of fellow travelers. Mim’s father’s doubts about the stability of her perceptions feed a continual sense of tension as readers (and Mim herself) attempt to evaluate which of Mim’s conclusions about her fellow characters—both the seemingly charming and seemingly menacing—can be trusted. Arnold pens a stunning debut, showcasing a cast of dynamic characters whose individual struggles are real but not always fully explained, a perfect decision for a book whose timeline is brief. Ultimately, Mim revises moments from her own narrative, offering readers tantalizing glimpses of the adult Mim will eventually become and reminding readers that the end of the novel is not the end of Mim’s journey—or her story.
Mesmerizing. (Fiction. 14 & up)
2) "Made You Up" by Francesca Zappia
After her expulsion from private school for an act of mental-illness–induced vandalism, Alex, 17, begins her senior year at an Indiana public school with trepidation.
Bright and determined to get to college, Alex counts on meds to control her paranoid schizophrenia even if they can’t entirely eliminate the hallucinations that have plagued her for a decade; she relies on her part-time table-waiting job to help keep her occupied. Long before they know her history, bullies at her new school target Alex, but she’s got allies, too—notably Tucker, a classmate and co-worker, as well as the small community of students at school who, like her, must compensate for past misdeeds by doing community service. They sell tickets and snacks, set up seating and provide support for school sporting events. Alex and the group’s charismatic but troubled, possibly autistic leader, Miles, share a mutual attraction that might date back to their strange encounter in a supermarket years earlier, when Alex decided to set a tankful of lobsters free. This debut’s talented author creates interesting characters and a suspenseful plot to draw readers in, but eventually the narrative loses traction and, ultimately, its raison d’être in a nihilistic denouement likely to leave readers feeling manipulated if not just plain cheated. Also troubling is the reliance on toxic stereotypes of mental illness to generate suspense.
An intriguing but ultimately misbegotten project. (Fiction. 14-18)
3) "All the Bright Places" by Jennifer Niven
Two struggling teens develop an unlikely relationship in a moving exploration of grief, suicide and young love.
Violet, a writer and member of the popular crowd, has withdrawn from her friends and from school activities since her sister died in a car accident nine months earlier. Finch, known to his classmates as "Theodore Freak," is famously impulsive and eccentric. Following their meeting in the school bell tower, Finch makes it his mission to re-engage Violet with the world, partially through a school project that sends them to offbeat Indiana landmarks and partially through simple persistence. (Violet and Finch live, fortunately for all involved, in the sort of romantic universe where his throwing rocks at her window in the middle of the night comes off more charming than stalker-esque.) The teens alternate narration chapter by chapter, each in a unique and well-realized voice. Finch's self-destructive streak and suicidal impulses are never far from the surface, and the chapters he narrates are interspersed with facts about suicide methods and quotations from Virginia Woolf and poet Cesare Pavese. When the story inevitably turns tragic, a cast of carefully drawn side characters brings to life both the pain of loss and the possibility of moving forward, though some notes of hope are more believable than others.
Many teen novels touch on similar themes, but few do it so memorably. (Fiction. 14 & up)
4) "The Storyspinner" by Becky Wallace
A circus girl attempts a balancing act when she gets involved in feudal politics and ancient magic.
Johanna Von Arlo grew up with Performers, trained to fight and wanted to be a Storyspinner like her father. After his mysterious death, Johanna tries to eke out an existence for her three brothers and now-alcoholic mother. But when Johanna encounters young Lord Rafael Santiago DeSilva, she ends up Performing at his court, attracting the attention of other, less honorable nobles and an assassin hunting the lost Princess Adriana. Yet others are also pursuing the lost princess. Mage Leão and Keepers (long-lived warriors, each magically tied to an element) Jacaré, who is over 300 but looks and acts 18, his angry sister, Pira, and ancient rebel Texugo must escape Olinda, cross a magical (but fading) barrier into Santarem and find the princess in order to restore the boundary between the lands. Each chapter is told from the perspective of one of seven characters, sacrificing strong character development, and the minimal plot is dragged out, sadly necessitating sequels. Debut author Wallace bucks the trend of retold fairy tales, serves a (superficial) smattering of Spanish elements, offers but doesn’t overwhelm with political intrigue and nicely balances romances with adventure.
An overlong and overcrowded but action-packed beginning. (Fantasy. 12-18)
5) "Under a Painted Sky" by Stacy Lee
Two girls on the racial margins of mid-19th-century America team up and head west.
As the book opens, Samantha, a 15-year-old Chinese-American violinist, yearns to move back to New York City in 1849, though her kind and optimistic father, owner of a dry goods store in the bustling outpost of Saint Joe, Missouri, has great plans for them in California. When the store burns down and her father dies, she is forced to defend herself from their predatory landlord. Suddenly on the run from the law, Samantha and Annamae, a 16-year-old African-American slave who covets freedom, disguise themselves as boys and head west on the Oregon Trail. Well-crafted and suspenseful, with more flow than ebb to the tension that stretches like taut wires across plotlines, Lee’s tale ingeniously incorporates Chinese philosophy and healing, music, art and religion, as well as issues of race and discrimination (including abolitionist views and examples of cruel slave treatment), into what is at its center a compelling love story. “Sammy” and “Andy” meet up with Cay, West and Peety, three young, good-hearted cowboys with secrets of their own, who help them on their arduous, dangerous journey.
Emotionally resonant and not without humor, this impressive debut about survival and connection, resourcefulness and perseverance will keep readers on the very edges of their seats. (Historical fiction. 12-16)
6) "The Creeping" by Alexandra Sirowy
Although she remembers little, Stella witnessed her friend Jeanie’s murder when they were 6 years old. Now Stella needs to learn just what kind of monster was responsible.
Was it a supernatural monster? Is it still out there in the woods today, waiting for redheaded little girls to kill? Certainly most residents of Savage, near Minneapolis, believe in the supernatural monster. Shane, the police detective in charge of Jeanie’s case, has no doubt the monster is human. Mrs. Griever, a seemingly crazy old lady living on the outskirts of town, has no doubt the monster is centuries old. When another redheaded little girl turns up dead, Stella believes the two cases must be connected. Warned by Shane that she may be in real danger, Stella nevertheless constantly risks her safety to investigate what she increasingly believes may be a truly paranormal beast of some kind, especially when she and another childhood friend learn that Jeanie was far from the first redheaded little girl to be murdered in Savage. Sirowy’s main focus—the rift between legend and fact—slowly emerges. With Shane as the voice of skeptical reality and Mrs. Griever the purveyor of longstanding local legends, Stella eventually must learn which is correct if she is to survive. Although the story takes rather too long to tell, it delivers with a nicely suspenseful plot that builds to a crisis point.
Intriguing all the way through. (Suspense. 12-18)
7) "Playlist for the Dead" by Michelle Falkoff
When his best friend leaves behind a mysterious playlist in lieu of a proper suicide note, Sam is left with dozens of questions and only a handful of songs as clues.
Hayden and Sam have been thick as thieves since they were 8, but the pressures of high school have been pushing them apart bit by bit for the last few months. After a party turns disastrous, the two leave on the worst of terms, and Sam finds Hayden’s body in the morning with an empty bottle each of vodka and Valium. He also finds a playlist and a note with just one sentence: "For Sam….Listen and you'll understand." As Sam deals with his only friend's death, a mysterious girl come out of the woodwork offering condolences and a different account of Hayden's personality. As Sam discovers more and more about his friend, he discovers a bit more about his own sense of identity as well. It’s a nice premise with some truly powerful moments, but there is a serious overreliance on exposition-heavy dialogue. These conversations are lined up one after another so often it almost becomes comical. A few emotional dead ends are met as well, making for an ambitious book that doesn't quite stick any of the landings. The highs of the journey are so high that it's almost forgivable that the book's central mystery ends up being a bust.
A mixed bag that delights slightly more than disappoints. (Fiction. 12-16)
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