by Victoria Aveyard This is a story of “haves” and “have-nots,” where the “haves” have superpowers and the “have-nots” get trampled underfoot. A “have-not” girl gets unexpectedly thrown in among the “haves,” for surprising reasons and with dire consequences. It’s like X-Men meets Gladiator meets British history’s War of the Roses, where everyone did whatever […]
by Patricia C. Wrede This is a coming of age story of a girl on the frontier in an alternate America where magic is a part of daily life and woolly mammoths and steam dragons threaten the settlements. Eff Rothmer must sort out her relationships with magic, her family, the frontier, and herself, while confronting […]
by Sarah J. Maas This book is a mash-up retelling of Beauty and the Beast and the legend of Tam Lin, intended for a YA audience, with a good deal of faerie mixed in. I disliked this book so much I couldn’t even finish it–I made it about three-quarters of the way through. I almost […]
by Tiffany Schmidt When bookworm Merrilee transfers to a new, co-ed private school, she soon discovers that the boys there are eerily like the boys she swoons over in her books. But being part of a romance story is not at all what she expected. I loved this nerdy, slightly cheesy rom-com. The witty banter […]
by Kristen D. Randle When Ginny and her family move across country at the same time that her favorite brother goes to college, she feels totally lost and alone. In the midst of her upheaval, she is drawn to Smitty Tibbs, the strange boy in her homeroom who hasn’t spoken a word to anyone since […]
by Julie Buxbaum After her father’s tragic death in a car accident that still haunts her, Kit needs space. She finds refuge at the lunch table of David Drucker, a quiet outsider with Asperger’s (although he’ll be the first to tell you that’s not an actual disorder anymore). An unlikely friendship forms, which opens both […]
by Gwendolyn Clare In this steampunk alternate history where scriptology—creating alternate worlds with words—is an actual science, Elsa comes from her scribed homeworld of Veldana to Earth to try to find and rescue her abducted mother. She learns a lot about Earth, friendship, and her own abilities along the way. This book made me want […]
by Hendrik Willem van Loon I am trying to read, or at least attempt, all of the Newbery Award winners from 1922 to the present, and this is the very first. It tells the history of the world from the beginning of time through the present day. Because the scope is so broad, some people […]
by Alwyn Hamilton Middle East meets Wild West in this magical gunslinging adventure. All Amani has ever wanted is to get out of her nowhere town of Dustwalk. But when she finally escapes with a mysterious stranger, she’s in for surprise after surprise—about her companion, her country, and even herself. Fast-paced, smart-mouthed, and full of […]