STACKED

books

Contemporary YA Books Featuring Family Stories

|

It’s book list time! To go along with Amy’s post about why she writes about family in her contemporary YA, I thought it’d be worth highlighting some of the many books featuring strong family story lines within them. Not all of these books feature family at the forefront, but they all do feature some significant element of family — be it a parental relationship, a lack of parental relationship, or sibling relationships. They run the gamut in experiences and exploration of what family is or is not. And in some cases, the family story is the fact that there is no family present, but it’s that lack and want for it that impacts the character significantly. 

All of these titles are from within the last two to three years, and all descriptions come from WorldCat, unless otherwise noted. This is, of course, an incomplete list, and I would love to hear of other recent contemporary YA that showcases strong, unique, or dynamic family life, so feel free to leave other titles in the comments. I’d be especially interested to know about more non-traditional families, including those featuring adoption, step-siblings, grandparents or other relatives who are primary caretakers, or remarriage. Please also point me to more stories featuring families of color that have come out in the last two or three years. 

Ink is Thicker Than Water by Amy Spalding: For Kellie Brooks, family has always been a tough word to define. Combine her hippie mom and tattooist stepdad, her adopted overachieving sister, her younger half brother, and her tough-love dad, and average Kellie’s the one stuck in the middle, overlooked and impermanent. When Kellie’s sister finally meets her birth mother and her best friend starts hanging with a cooler crowd, the feeling only grows stronger. But then she reconnects with Oliver, the sweet and sensitive college guy she had a near hookup with last year. Oliver is intense and attractive, and she’s sure he’s totally out of her league. But as she discovers that maybe intensity isn’t always a good thing, it’s yet another relationship she feels is spiraling out of her control. It’ll take a new role on the school newspaper and a new job at her mom’s tattoo shop for Kellie to realize that defining herself both outside and within her family is what can finally allow her to feel permanent, just like a tattoo. (via GoodReads)

The Reece Malcolm List by Amy Spalding: When her father dies suddenly, Devan is shipped off to Los Angeles to live with her estranged mother, Reece Malcolm, a bestselling novelist with little time for a daughter, and Devan navigates her way through her new performing arts school.

All These Lives by Sarah Wylie: Convinced that she has nine lives after cheating death twice as a child, sixteen-year-old Dani tries to forfeit her remaining lives in hopes of saving her twin sister, Jena, whose leukemia is consuming their family.

A Certain October by Angela Johnson: Scotty compares herself to tofu: no flavor unless you add something. And it’s true that Scotty’s friends, Misha and Falcone, and her brother, Keone, make life delicious. But when a terrible accident occurs, Scotty feels responsible for the loss of someone she hardly knew, and the world goes wrong. She cannot tell what is a dream and what is real. Her friends are having a hard time getting through to her and her family is preoccupied with their own trauma. But the prospect of a boy, a dance, and the possibility that everything can fall back into place soon help Scotty realize that she is capable of adding her own flavor to life. 

The Lucy Variations by Sara Zarr: Sixteen-year-old San Franciscan Lucy Beck-Moreau once had a promising future as a concert pianist. Her chance at a career has passed, and she decides to help her ten-year-old piano prodigy brother, Gus, map out his own future, even as she explores why she enjoyed piano in the first place.

Under the Mesquite by Guadalupe Garcia McCall: Throughout her high school years, as her mother battles cancer, Lupita takes on more responsibility for her house and seven younger siblings, while finding refuge in acting and writing poetry.

Juvie by Steve Watkins: Working hard to be a contributing member of her family, Sadie accepts blame for her sister’s drug deal to keep the latter out of prison and finds everything she worked for threatened by a six-month sentence that tests her sister’s character.

Out of Reach by Carrie Arcos: Accompanied by her brother’s friend, Tyler, sixteen-year-old Rachel ventures through San Diego and nearby areas seeking her brother, eighteen-year-old Micah, a methamphetamine addict who ran away from home.

Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass by Meg Medina: One morning before school, some girl tells Piddy Sanchez that Yaqui Delgado hates her and wants to kick her ass. Piddy doesn’t even know who Yaqui is, never mind what she’s done to piss her off. Word is that Yaqui thinks Piddy is stuck-up, shakes her stuff when she walks, and isn’t Latin enough with her white skin, good grades, and no accent. And Yaqui isn’t kidding around, so Piddy better watch her back. At first Piddy is more concerned with trying to find out more about the father she’s never met and how to balance honors courses with her weekend job at the neighborhood hair salon. But as the harassment escalates, avoiding Yaqui and her gang starts to take over Piddy’s life. Is there any way for Piddy to survive without closing herself off or running away?

A Midsummer’s Nightmare by Kody Keplinger: Suffering a hangover from a graduation party, eighteen-year-old Whitley is blindsided by the news that her father has moved into a house with his fiancée, her thirteen-year-old daughter Bailey, and her son Nathan, in whose bed Whitley had awakened that morning.

If You Find Me by Emily Murdoch: There are some things you can’t leave behind… A broken-down camper hidden deep in a national forest is the only home fifteen year-old Carey can remember. The trees keep guard over her threadbare existence, with the one bright spot being Carey’s younger sister, Jenessa, who depends on Carey for her very survival. All they have is each other, as their mentally ill mother comes and goes with greater frequency. Until that one fateful day their mother disappears for good, and two strangers arrive. Suddenly, the girls are taken from the woods and thrust into a bright and perplexing new world of high school, clothes and boys. Now, Carey must face the truth of why her mother abducted her ten years ago, while haunted by a past that won’t let her go… a dark past that hides many a secret, including the reason Jenessa hasn’t spoken a word in over a year. Carey knows she must keep her sister close, and her secrets even closer, or risk watching her new life come crashing down. 

Where the Stars Still Shine by Trish Doller: Abducted at age five, Callie, now seventeen, has spent her life on the run but when her mother is finally arrested and she is returned to her father in small-town Florida, Callie must find a way to leave her past behind, become part of a family again, and learn that love is more than just a possibility.

Brother, Brother by Clay Carmichael: After his grandmother’s death, seventeen-year-old Brother sets out, with the abandoned son of a friend, on a 200-mile trip to North Carolina’s Outer Banks to find his twin brother, of whose existence he just learned.

Fingerprints of You by Kristen-Paige Maldonia: After spending her life moving from place to place with her single mother, pregnant seventeen-year-old Lemon takes a bus to San Francisco to seek the father she never knew, as well as truths about her mother and herself.

The Book of Broken Hearts by Sarah Ockler: Jude has learned a lot from her older sisters, but the most important thing is this: The Vargas brothers are notorious heartbreakers. But as Jude begins to fall for Emilio Vargas, she begins to wonder if her sisters were wrong. 

Golden by Jessi Kirby: Seventeen-year-old Parker Frost has never taken the road less traveled. Valedictorian and quintessential good girl, she’s about to graduate high school without ever having kissed her crush or broken the rules. So when fate drops a clue in her lap–one that might be the key to unraveling a town mystery–she decides to take a chance.

Narc by Crissa-Jean Chappell: When his little sister is caught with a bag of weed, seventeen-year-old Aaron Foster takes the fall. To keep the cops from tearing his family apart, Aaron agrees to go undercover and help bust the dealer who’s funneling drugs into his Miami high school. But making friends with the school’s biggest players isn’t easy for a waste-case loner from the wrong part of town.

The Whole Stupid Way We Are by N. Griffin: During a cold winter in Maine, fifteen-year-old Dinah sets off a heart-wrenching chain of events when she tries to help best friend and fellow misfit Skint deal with problems at home, including a father who is suffering from early onset dementia.

Boy21 by Matthew Quick: Finley, an unnaturally quiet boy who is the only white player on his high school’s varsity basketball team, lives in a dismal Pennsylvania town that is ruled by the Irish mob, and when his coach asks him to mentor a troubled African American student who has transferred there from an elite private school in California, he finds that they have a lot in common in spite of their apparent differences.

Personal Effects by E. M. Kokie: Matt has been sleepwalking through life while seeking answers about his brother T.J.’s death in Iraq, but after discovering that he may not have known his brother as well as he thought he did, Matt is able to stand up to his father, honor T.J.’s memory, and take charge of his own life.

Starting From Here by Lisa Jenn Bigelow: Sixteen-year-old Colby is barely hanging on with her mother dead, her long-haul trucker father often away, her almost-girlfriend dumping her for a boy, and her failing grades, when a stray dog appears and helps her find hope.

Live Through This by Mindi Scott: From the outside, fifteen-year-old Coley Sterling’s life seems imperfect but normal, but for years she has buried her shame and guilt over a relationship that crossed the line and now that she has a chance at having a real boyfriend, Reece, the lies begin to unravel.

Me, Him, Them, and It by Caela Carter: Playing the “bad girl” at school to get back at her feuding parents, sixteen-year-old Evelyn becomes pregnant and faces a difficult decision.

Uses for Boys by Erica Lorraine Scheidt: Anna remembers a time before boys, when she was little and everything made sense. When she and her mom were a family, it was just the two of them against the world. But now her mom’s gone most of the time, chasing the next marriage, the next stepfather. Anna gets used to being alone, until she discovers that she can make boys her family, from Desmond to Joey to Todd. But filling the void comes at a price.

Black Helicopters by Blythe Woolston: In a day-after-tomorrow Montana, fifteen-year-old Valley (now Valkyrie) and her big brother leave their underground den to fight a government that will kill them like coyotes. (Kelly refutes this is a “day after” sort of novel — it’s wholly contemporary in her read).

Reality Boy by A. S. King: An emotionally damaged seventeen-year-old boy in Pennsylvania, who was once an infamous reality television show star, meets a girl from another dysfunctional family, and she helps him out of his angry shell.

The Storyteller by Antonia Michaelis: Wealthy, seventeen-year-old Anna begins to fall in love with her classmate, Abel, a drug dealer from the wrong side of town, when she hears him tell a story to his six-year-old sister, but when his enemies begin turning up dead, Anna fears she has fallen for a murderer.

Don’t Breathe A Word by Holly Cupala: Joy Delamere is suffocating from severe asthma, overprotective parents, and an emotionally-abusive boyfriend when she escapes to the streets of nearby Seattle and falls in with a “street family” that teaches her to use a strength she did not know she had.

Fall for Anything by Courtney Summers: As she searches for clues that would explain the suicide of her successful photographer father, Eddie Reeves meets the strangely compelling Culler Evans who seems to know a great deal about her father and could hold the key to the mystery surrounding his death.

Stupid Fast by Geoff Herbach (the entire series): Just before his sixteenth birthday, Felton Reinstein has a sudden growth spurt that turns him from a small, jumpy, picked-on boy with the nickname of “Squirrel Nut” to a powerful athlete, leading to new friends, his first love, and the courage to confront his family’s past and current problems.

Contemporary YA Down Under: Australian Realistic Fiction Guest Post by Simmone Howell (Everything Beautiful)

|

One of our readers — more than one, actually — requested we blog about contemporary YA from Australia, since we’re becoming more aware of it as it makes its way to the US. We’re familiar, of course, with Melina Marchetta (The Piper’s Son and Jellicoe Road), but there are plenty of other Aussies making a splash on this side of the world. Simmone Howell, one such author, is here to talk about what is in the water down under. . . and introduce us to some killer Australian contemporary YA. 

In the event you see an Australian book you’re interested in and can’t get it here or don’t want to wait to get it, you can always try searching Fishpond World for a title. Shipping is free (though some have said they’ve ordered and not received items in the past). 

Simmone Howell is the author of Notes from the Teenage Underground, Everything Beautiful and Girl Defective. In her youth she did indeed sink tinnies and chuck punches but now she is more highly evolved and does it through her characters. She lives with her family in Melbourne and likes coffee and Wes Anderson movies. Find her at simmonehowell.com and @postteen on Twitter. Girl Defective will be out with Simon & Schuster Antheneum in fall 2014.








“What’s in the water?” a little think on Australian YA contemporary Fiction




It is a fine and flattering question I get asked sometimes by US writers and readers regarding Australian young adult fiction (ozya). (The Brits rarely ask it, I think because, we’re still part of the Commonwealth, and it would not be done to admire blossoms sprung from convict soil.) What’s in the water? I looked it up. Lots of stuff — Hydrogen and Oxygen and Flouride.

Australians are self-effacing creatures, inept humble-braggers. Most of the YA authors I know worry that they might be a little bit crap. Australia is not a country for claiming success. It is wrong to think highly of yourself and anyone who does so in public must arm themselves for the storm of abuse! Traditionally, Australian characters fall into these categories: Good Blokes, Lovable Larrikins and Bonza Sheilas.

Our leading men cannot be confident and hunky – there should be issues, a certain attractive inarticulateness. The blurb to Marcus Zuzak’s The Messenger said something like: ‘Ed is in hopeless love with Audrey.’ – and that seems to me to be an eminently Australian condition – in any endeavour there should be the likelihood of failure.

Our leading ladies are emphatically not manic-pixie dreamgirls. Ideally, they should be able to knock back a tinnie, chuck a punch, save their best friend from getting date-raped, get the boy in the end but decide he’s not worth it. They’re multi-taskers and they refuse to be concerned with thigh gap.

Here are some recent reads that definitely have something in the water …

Creepy and Maud by Diane Touchell
A sort-of romance between a girl who has trichotillomania and the boy who spies on her. It’s sharp writing, never sentimental, it’s real and sometimes tragic but also full of memorable and funny lines. Creepy, talking about his parents and their disintegrating affection says of his mother: Once upon a time she lovingly washed his skidmarks …

http://diannetouchell.blogspot.com.au/

I’ll Tell You Mine by Pip Harry
About a goth girl who – due to an incident that is only revealed later – becomes a boarder at the school where she used to be a day-student. Great character and clear prose and this unabashedness about failure that makes the triumphs all that sweeter.

http://www.pipharry.com/

Cry Blue Murder by Kim Kane & Marion Roberts

An email correspondence between two teenage girls who are both obsessing over the case of a local girl who’s gone missing. These voices are so true, so full of the minutiea and inertia of being fifteen, and then you know, the subject matter is creepy, depressing – it’s a weird blend of a book and I don’t think I’ve ever read anything like it.

http://www.readings.com.au/news/the-way-we-work-kim-kane-and-marion-roberts

The Dead I Know by Scot Gardner
“Again, I felt something. A change in the weather, a shift in the season, something dawning or something setting. Some tide on the move or moon made full. Stirrings of ancient dust.”
There’s usually some point in a Scot Gardner book where I’m lost for words and feeling the hugeness of the world and have to have faith that if there’s a scrap of beauty in there somewhere he will lead me to it!

http://www.scotgardner.com/

Wildlife by Fiona Wood
Love and sex at a school ‘wilderness’ camp. This is beautiful and complicated and hasn’t crossed the water yet but will do so next year – look out for it!

http://fionawood.com/

Obviously there are more. Ozya is chock-full of writers to admire and learn from, and most of them are lovely people. I love to see our books travel – I come over all jingoistic. I was in San Francisco a few weeks ago and saw Cath Crowley’s Graffiti Moon at Green Apple books and I felt quietly thrilled. I’m very excited that my own novel Girl Defective will be published next fall (so long to wait!) and I hope to come over again to lurk in bookstores. Lost and alienated, flawed and funny, my favourite Australian characters are all these things. They fuck up but it’s okay. Go find them!

Contemporary YA Books Featuring Humor

|

Humor is kind of personal. We all find different things to be funny, so sometimes what one reader considers to be a funny book another reader might not find as humorous. But the nice thing about humor being so personal is that there are so many books that could be considered funny. 

Good readers know, too, that funny books are not “easy” books. It takes skill to nail the voice of a funny book and it takes skill to maintain a level of humor throughout a story. 

Next month’s “Get Genrefied” guide is to YA humor, but because I think it’s a category of books we don’t talk quite enough about, I wanted to tease out a contemporary-only list of titles that span the last few years. I don’t think humorous contemporary books are published at the same pace that books tackling other topics are, so it would be hard to limit my list to titles in just the last two years. So it’s a little bit of a broader scope (though not too much — so yes, I’m missing some older titles).  

All of these books are either meant to be humorous throughout or they’re books that have a significant amount of page time devoted to being funny. Again, it’s a personal call on humor, but I suspect most of these books would be considered funny by the majority of readers. 

As usual, the list isn’t comprehensive, and all descriptions come from WorldCat. If you can think of other funny contemporary YA, I’d love to know more titles in the comments. I’ve also limited my list to one book or series per author. 

Since You Asked . . . by Maurene Goo: Fifteen-year-old Holly Kim, the copyeditor for her San Diego high school’s newspaper, accidentally submits a piece ripping everyone to shreds and suddenly finds herself the center of unwanted attention–but when the teacher in charge of the paper asks her to write a regular column her troubles really start.

Firecracker by David Iserson: Forced to attend public school after being expelled from her elite private school, Astrid earns the enmity of her new peers as a result of her biting wit and competitive worldview until fellow misfits teach her a lesson in humility.

Withering Tights by Louise Rennison (series): Self-conscious about her knobby knees but confident in her acting ability, fourteen-year-old Tallulah spends the summer at a Yorkshire performing arts camp that, she is surprised to learn, is for girls only.

Carter Finally Gets It by Brent Crawford (series): Awkward freshman Will Carter endures many painful moments during his first year of high school before realizing that nothing good comes easily, focus is everything, and the payoff is usually incredible.

Me & Earl & The Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews: Seventeen-year-old Greg has managed to become part of every social group at his Pittsburgh high school without having any friends, but his life changes when his mother forces him to befriend Rachel, a girl he once knew in Hebrew school who has leukemia.

Swim the Fly by Don Calame (series): Fifteen-year-old Matt and his two best friends Sean and Coop, the least athletic swimmers on the local swim team, find their much anticipated summer vacation bringing them nothing but trouble with unsucessful schemes to see a live naked girl and with Matt, eager to impress the swim team’s “hot” new girl, agreeing to swim the 100-yard butterfly.

Art Girls Are Easy by Julie Klausner: Fifteen-year-old Indigo Hamlisch is an art prodigy looking forward to her last summer at the Silver Springs Academy for Fine and Performing Arts for Girls. But her BFF Lucy Serrano is a C.I.T. this year, and that means she doesn’t have to hang out with Indigo and the other campers anymore: she can mingle with the counselors–including Indigo’s scandalous and unrequited crush, paint-splattered art instructor Nick Estep. But it’s not like anything is going to happen between Lucy and Nick–right? As Indy becomes more and more paranoid about what’s going on between her best friend and her favorite counselor, Indy’s life–and her work–spin hilariously out of control. 

Confessions of the Sullivan Sisters by Natalie Standiford: Upon learning on Christmas Day that their rich and imperious grandmother may soon die and disown the family unless the one who offended her deeply will confess, each of the three Sullivan sisters sets down her offenses on paper.

I am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class President by Josh Lieb: Omaha, Nebraska, twelve-year-old Oliver Watson has everyone convinced that he is extremely stupid and lazy, but he is actually a very wealthy, evil genius, and when he decides to run for seventh-grade class president, nothing will stand in his way.

Are You Going to Kiss Me Now? by Sloane Tanen: After winning an essay contest, high school junior Francesca Manning finds herself stranded on an island with five celebrities when their plane crashes on the way to a charity event.

Destroy All Cars by Blake Nelson: Through assignments for English class, seventeen-year-old James Hoff rants against consumerism and his classmates’ apathy, puzzles over his feelings for his ex-girlfriend, and expresses disdain for his emotionally distant parents.

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell: Cath struggles to survive on her own in her first year of college while avoiding a surly roommate, bonding with a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words, and worrying about her fragile father.

Freshman Year & Other Unnatural Disasters by Meredith Zeitlin: Smart, occasionally insecure, and ambitious Brooklyn fourteen-year-old Kelsey Finkelstein embarks on her freshman year of high school in Manhattan with the intention of “rebranding” herself, but unfortunately everything she tries to do is a total disaster.

Guy Langman: Crime Scene Procrastinator by Josh Berk: Sixteen-year-old Guy Langman, his best friend Anoop, and other members of the school Forensics Club investigate a break-in and a possible murder, which could be connected to the mysterious past of Guy’s recently-deceased father.

There is No Dog by Meg Rosoff: When the beautiful Lucy prays to fall in love, God, an irresponsible youth named Bob, chooses to answer her prayer personally, to the dismay of this assistant, Mr. B who must try to clean up the resulting catastrophes.

52 Reasons to Hate My Father by Jessica Brody: On her eighteenth birthday, spoiled party girl Lexington Larrabee learns that her days of making tabloid headlines may be at an end when her ever-absent father decides she must learn some values by working a different, low-wage job every week for a year or forfeit her multimillion-dollar trust fund.

Sparks by SJ Adams: A sixteen-year-old lesbian tries to get over a crush on her religious best friend by embarking on a “holy quest” with a couple of misfits who have invented a wacky, made-up faith called the Church of Blue.

Spoiled by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan: When her mother dies, sixteen-year-old Molly moves from Indiana to California, to live with her newly discovered father, a Hollywood megastar, and his pampered teenaged daughter.



Audrey, Wait by Robin Benway:  While trying to score a date with her cute co-worker at the Scooper Dooper, sixteen-year-old Audrey gains unwanted fame and celebrity status when her ex-boyfriend, a rock musician, records a breakup song about her that soars to the top of the Billboard charts.

Freak Magnet by Andrew Auseon: Two teenagers, both burdened by grief and loss, find each other and gradually develop a strong connection.

She’s So Money by Cherry Cheva: Maya, a high school senior bound for Stanford University, goes against her better judgement when she and a popular but somewhat disreputable boy start a profitable school-wide cheating ring in order to save her family’s Thai restaurant, which she fears will be shut down due to her irresponsible actions.

Mostly Good Girls by Leila Sales: Sixteen-year-olds Violet and Katie, best friends since seventh grade despite differences in their family backgrounds and abilities, are pulled apart during their junior year at Massachusetts’ exclusive Westfield School.

My Most Excellent Year by Steve Kluger: Three teenagers in Boston narrate their experiences of a year of new friendships, first loves, and coming into their own.

Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan: When two teens, one gay and one straight, meet accidentally and discover that they share the same name, their lives become intertwined as one begins dating the other’s best friend, who produces a musical revealing his relationship with them both.

Contemporary YA Books Featuring Mental Illness

|

Mental illness and mental well-being are topics that keep emerging in contemporary YA, and they keep being explored in worthwhile — even life-changing — ways. This list features very recent contemporary YA titles that have tackled mental illness in some capacity. 

All of these titles were published in the last two years, though many, many more titles have come before and many more will come after. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but rather one meant to show a range of experiences. Some of the descriptions aren’t entirely insightful as to what the mental illness tackled is, and sometimes that’s purposeful (The Stone Girl, for example, highlights the eating disorder but there is most definitely a mental illness coexisting with it). 

If you have other favorite contemporary realistic YA titles that tackle mental illness and mental well-being from any period of time, feel free to leave the title and author in the comments. And yes, you may borrow and share this list as you see fit. 

Descriptions are from WorldCat, unless otherwise noted. 

Wild Awake by Hilary T. Smith: The discovery of a startling family secret leads seventeen-year-old Kiri Byrd from a protected and naive life into a summer of mental illness, first love, and profound self-discovery. 

Opposite of Hallelujah by Anna Jarzab: For eight of her sixteen years Carolina Mitchell’s older sister Hannah has been a nun in a convent, almost completely out of touch with her family–so when she suddenly abandons her vocation and comes home, nobody knows quite how to handle the situation, or guesses what explosive secrets she is hiding.

Something Like Normal by Trish Doller: When Travis returns home from Afghanistan, his parents are splitting up, his brother has stolen his girlfriend and car, and he has nightmares of his best friend getting killed but when he runs into Harper, a girl who has despised him since middle school, life actually starts looking up.



Charm & Strange by Stephanie Kuehn: A lonely teenager exiled to a remote Vermont boarding school in the wake of a family tragedy must either surrender his sanity to the wild wolves inside his mind or learn that surviving means more than not dying. 

Crash and Burn by Michael Hassan: Steven “Crash” Crashinsky relates his sordid ten-year relationship with David “Burn” Burnett, the boy he stopped from taking their high school hostage at gunpoint.

Drowning Instinct by Ilsa J. Bick: An emotionally damaged sixteen-year-old girl begins a relationship with a deeply troubled older man.

Crazy by Amy Reed: Connor and Izzy, two teens who met at a summer art camp in the Pacific Northwest where they were counsellors, share a series of emails in which they confide in one another, eventally causing Connor to become worried when he realizes that Izzy’s emotional highs and lows are too extreme.
Dr. Bird’s Advice for Sad Poets by Evan Roskos: A sixteen-year-old boy wrestling with depression and anxiety tries to cope by writing poems, reciting Walt Whitman, hugging trees, and figuring out why his sister has been kicked out of the house.
Zoe Letting Go by Nora Price: Zoe goes to a facility to help cure her anorexia as she comes to terms with the loss of her friend and her own identity. 

Bruised by Sarah Skilton: When she freezes during a hold-up at the local diner, sixteen-year-old Imogen, a black belt in Tae Kwan Do, has to rebuild her life, including her relationship with her family and with the boy who was with her during the shoot-out.

Perfect Escape by Jennifer Brown: Seventeen-year-old Kendra, living in the shadow of her brother’s obsessive-compulsive disorder, takes a life-changing road trip with him.

This is Not A Drill by Beck McDowell: Two teens try to save a class of first-graders from a gun-wielding soldier suffering from PTSD. When high school seniors Emery and Jake are taken hostage in the classroom where they tutor, they must work together to calm both the terrified children and the psychotic gunman threatening them–a task made even more difficult by their recent break-up. Brian Stutts, a soldier suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after serving in Iraq, uses deadly force when he’s denied access to his son because of a custody battle. The children’s fate is in the hands of the two teens, each recovering from great loss, who now must reestablish trust in a relationship damaged by betrayal. Told through Emery and Jake’s alternating viewpoints, this gripping novel features characters teens will identify with and explores the often-hidden damages of war. 

Chasing Shadows by Swati Avasthi: Chasing Shadows is a searing look at the impact of one random act of violence. Before: Corey, Holly, and Savitri are one unit– fast, strong, inseparable. Together they turn Chicago concrete and asphalt into a freerunner’s jungle gym, ricocheting off walls, scaling buildings, leaping from rooftop to rooftop. But acting like a superhero doesn’t make you bulletproof. After: Holly and Savitri are coming unglued. Holly says she’s chasing Corey’s killer, chasing revenge. Savitri fears Holly’s just running wild– and leaving her behind. Friends should stand by each other in times of crisis. But can you hold on too tight? Too long? In this intense novel, told in two voices, and incorporating comic-style art sections, Swati Avasthi creates a gripping portrait of two girls teetering on the edge of grief and insanity. Two girls who will find out just how many ways there are to lose a friend– and how many ways to be lost. 
The Girls of No Return by Erin Saldin: A troubled sixteen-year-old girl attending a wilderness school in the Idaho mountains must finally face the consequences of her complicated friendships with two of the other girls at the school.
OCD Love Story by Corey Ann Haydu: In an instant, Bea felt almost normal with Beck, and as if she could fall in love again, but things change when the psychotherapist who has been helping her deal with past romantic relationships puts her in a group with Beck–a group for teens with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Cracked by K. M. Walton: When Bull Mastrick and Victor Konig wind up in the same psychiatric ward at age sixteen, each recalls and relates in group therapy the bullying relationship they have had since kindergarten, but also facts about themselves and their families that reveal they have much in common.
Freaks Like Us by Susan Vaught: A mentally ill teenager who rides the “short bus” to school investigates the sudden disappearance of his best friend.
Lexapros and Cons by Aaron Karo: Realizing that his OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) is out of control, seventeen-year-old Chuck Taylor, who wants to win his best friend back and impress a new girl at school, tries to break some hardcore habits, face his demons–and get messy.
Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick: A day in the life of a suicidal teen boy saying good-bye to the four people who matter most to him.
Pretty Girl-13 by Liz Coley: Sixteen-year-old Angie finds herself in her neighborhood with no recollection of her abduction or the three years that have passed since, until alternate personalities start telling her their stories through letters and recordings.
The Stone Girl by Alyssa Sheinmel: Seventeen-year-old Sethie, a senior at New York City’s Franklin White girl’s school, has outstanding grades, a boyfriend, and a new best friend but constantly struggles to lose weight.

Austin Reads

|

As I may have mentioned once or twice or a hundred times (particularly if you follow me on Twitter), I recently made a big move to Austin, Texas for a new job. It’s an exciting place. We have people like Sandra Bullock! Matthew McConaughey! Lance Armstrong! Frodo! Richard Linklater! Sadly, we no longer have Leslie, but we do still have other natural wonders like Barton Springs Pool, Hippie Hollow and Mount Bonnell.

With Kidlitcon (in Austin this year!) fast approaching, Austin books and Austin authors have been on my mind. I always get a kick out of reading a novel and being able to recognize particular landmarks that may only be known to locals. (My previous town makes a brief cameo in The Passage, but the geography of restaurants and such is all wrong.)

Below is a short reading list of YA books set in Austin – some written by Austin authors, but not all. Descriptions are from Worldcat. Am I missing any? I’ll give honorable mentions to books set in any Austin suburb.

Alien Invasion and Other Inconveniences by Brian Yansky: When a race of aliens quickly takes over the earth, leaving most people
dead, high-schooler Jesse finds himself a slave to an inept alien
leader–a situation that brightens as Jesse develops telepathic powers
and attracts the attention of two beautiful girls. Kimberly’s review

Derby Girl by Shauna Cross: When sixteen-year-old rebel Bliss Cavendar, who is miserable living in a
small Texas town with her beauty pageant-obsessed mother, secretly
joins a roller derby team under the name “Babe Ruthless,” her life gets
better, although infinitely more confusing.

How Not to Be Popular by Jennifer Ziegler: Seventeen-year-old Sugar Magnolia Dempsey is tired of leaving friends
behind every time her hippie parents decide to move, but her plan to be
unpopular at her new Austin, Texas, school backfires when other students
join her on the path to “supreme dorkdom.”

Lovestruck Summer by Melissa Walker: Quinn plans to enjoy her summer in Austin, Texas, working for a record
company, even though she has to live with her cousin Penny. Kelly’s review

Reunited by Hilary Weisman Graham: Alice, Summer, and Tiernan were best friends who broke up at the same
time as their favorite band, but four years later, just before they are
preparing to go off to college, the girls reluctantly come back
together, each with her own motives, for a road trip from Massachusetts
to Austin, Texas, for the band’s one-time-only reunion concert. Kelly’s brief review

Solstice by P. J. Hoover: Eighteen-year-old Piper lives with her controlling mother amid a Global
Heating Crisis, but when she gets her first taste of freedom she
discovers a universe of gods and monsters where her true identity, kept
secret from her birth, could make all the difference in the world.

 
Tantalize by Cynthia Leitich Smith: When multiple murders in Austin, Texas, threaten the grand re-opening of
her family’s vampire-themed restaurant, seventeen-year-old, orphaned
Quincie worries that her best friend-turned-love interest, Keiren, a
werewolf-in-training, may be the prime suspect.

Texas Gothic by Rosemary Clement-Moore: Seventeen-year-old Amy Goodnight has long been the one who makes her
family of witches seem somewhat normal to others, but while spending a
summer with her sister caring for their aunt’s farm, Amy becomes the
center of weirdness when she becomes tied to a powerful ghost. Kimberly’s review