A great contemporary YA, What To Say Next would have made my Best of 2017 list if I’d read it in time. As it is, you have a delightful treat in store for you if you missed this book last year. David Drucker is different. He doesn’t have Asperger’s since, as he can tell you,…
After I DIK’d My Life Next Door by this author, I immediately went after her other books. Happily, What I Thought Was True possesses much of what I enjoyed reading that book, including a strong setting, likeable protagonists, and an intense story without teen drama. In some ways, like its respectful portrayal of a sexually…
Thus far, Big Love is my favorite Rick R. Reed book. Why? Because Reed makes no false steps in this one. What he does is take a much-loved YA cliché and transform it into a thoughtful, moving three-story novel. He does it by adding two MORE romance clichés: the long-married, suppressed gay man and the…
Like Rapunzel, compliant and affluent Samantha Reed has watched the boisterous Garrett family from her window for years, because her icy control freak state senator mother simply doesn’t interact with “that kind of people.” When Jase Garrett finally introduces himself, Samantha finds herself not only falling in love with him, but with his family and…
The Ocean Herself saves Kahlen from drowning in a shipwreck and promises her a century free of aging and disease. All Kahlen has to do is join her sister Sirens in singing humans and ships to a watery grave when the Ocean’s hunger becomes overwhelming. With twenty years left to her service and a memory…
Isla Martin has been in love with Joshua Wasserstein since she first saw him in ninth grade, but between Isla’s shyness and Josh’s misunderstanding of her relationship with her best friend Kurt, the two never managed to get on the same page. Suddenly it’s senior year, and these bicultural New Yorker/Parisians have started to figure…
When my teenage student walked into my classroom, slammed a copy of this book on the desk, and announced, in audible capital letters, “THIS IS THE BEST BOOK EVER WRITTEN,” I knew Anna and the French Kiss was something special. A contemporary story of discovering the world and yourself at the same time, Anna works…