Janssen hit something on the head last week in stating that there has been a lot of hype over a number of young adult titles lately that just don’t live up to it. There have been some big budgets on a number of titles — especially debuts — that have left me wondering what the point was. However, one book has slid under the radar for a few months now, and it’s thanks to a colleague across town from me that I picked it up and immediately decided I needed to order it for my library collection.

Dirty Little Secrets by C. J. Omololu, weighing in at just about 200 pages, packs an unbelievable amount in a short book. It is worth every minute of your time.

Lucy keeps secrets. Her best friend doesn’t know them. Her soon-to-be boyfriend doesn’t know them, nor will he. The secrets remain between her and her mother, as well as her distance brother and even more distant sister.

The secrets are the items her mother hoards in their home.

Lucy’s mom keeps everything, from old, rotting food, to Christmas gifts meant to be given years ago. Her mother seems normal from the outside, working in a medical facility, but she is far from okay both inside her house and inside her own head.

Unfortunately, we never get to know Lucy’s mother. She dies immediately in the book. But Lucy ISN’T sad about it. In fact, she’s terrified that the secrets will get out, and she cannot imagine a fate worse than making the news for living in a house of squalor.

Dirty Little Secrets takes place over the course of just over one day. Lucy is a character who you will be unable to forget, as she drags the reader through emotional torment. At once, I feel sorry for her mother and hate her mother, but throughout the book, I was far more concerned about Lucy. I wanted her to be safe and get out, and I wanted her to overcome the troubles she had been keeping without ruining a sweet budding relationship with a boy. She’d never had one before, of course, thanks to keeping the secrets.

We are dragged through this house and the accumulation of things in this book, and in such a manner, we are completely invested in Lucy’s safety. Although it would be easy to label her heartless about the death of her mother, we also see how this is a moment of liberation for Lucy. She covers her mother in a sheet and sets to getting things clean enough at home to make rescue less about the mess and more about the loss of life.

But it is her meddling sister that won’t let this happen as she wants.

I can’t write more about this book because the ending is completely unexpected and utterly fitting. Dirty Little Secrets left me near tears throughout the entire story, though the very end almost made me smile. I felt Lucy’s decision.

Omololu’s story never once feels rushed or overwritten. It was extremely well executed, and the pacing was spot on. When I was 10 pages from the end, I worried there was going to be a sequel to end the story; fortunately, a strong writer pulled off a surprise twist that makes this a stand alone knock-out of a book. It is completely realistic and explores a hidden world that we do indeed only hear about in the news. Although Omololu states she doesn’t write from experience, her work is informed through her work with a hoarder’s organization.

This book was so compelling and so important that I nominated it for ALA’s BFYA consideration. It is my hope that it gets much-deserved attention that way.

A couple years ago, I was enchanted by the cover and description of a book called Gossip of the Starlings by Nina de Gramont and purchased it. This was, of course, a big deal since I am not a book buyer.

Although that book ended up being less than I hoped, I was excited to see that de Gramont would be releasing a teen book this year — GotS featured a prep school girl, and I had the hopes that when aiming to reach the teen audience, rather than the adult audience, the story would come together a little better.

Every Little Thing in the World delivered.

Sydney Biggs has been getting in more and more trouble lately — and when she and her best friend Natalia steal a car, that’s the end of the rope for Sydney’s mother who decides she needs to spend time with her father while they figure out a punishment.

While away, her mother and father decide the best means of punishing her for her poor behavior is to send her to a summer camp in the wilds of Ontario, Canada. The lessons in self sufficiency and survival should help her learn to be more responsible and think through her actions. As Sydney calls Natalia to break this news to her, Natalia lets Sydney know that she, too, will be joining her.

Oh, and Sydney is pregnant but she hasn’t told anyone except Natalia.

Every Little Thing in the World follows Sydney as she not only spends an extended period in the wild but as her relationship with Natalia changes. Once best friends, their time on punishment has really changed how they relate to one another and to other people their age. Then there is the issue of the pregnancy, which tears the two of them apart and pulls them back together at the very end of the story.

While the story itself is not the most unique or necessarily the most well developed — a number of jumps in time and in plot, particularly near the end of the story, were not cohesive with the pacing — the writing is excellent. de Gramont has a talent for strong writing and attention to detail and syntax which makes the bumps in pacing almost forgivable. In addition to the pacing, I found that the mother and father figure in the story weren’t fully fleshed and the ending made her mother especially flat.

Perhaps the biggest strength in the story is the development of Sydney as a character. When the book opened, I didn’t feel that connected to her, nor did I find myself caring too much about the predicaments in which she’d found herself. As the story progressed and as tensions rose between her and Natalia, I found myself really caring about Sydney and about what she was going to do about the pregnancy. As readers we’re led to believe a couple of different things about this issue, and the way it ends both is and isn’t expected.

Every Little Thing in the World will appeal to those who enjoy realistic fiction and coming-of-age fiction. Fans of Amy Efaw’s After will eat this one up for sure. There’s quite a bit of language and situations that will be a turn off to those who prefer cleaner reads, but I think the writing itself makes this a worthwhile read.

Although I found Gossip of the Starlings a let down, I think de Gramont has found her voice in young adult fiction. She writes a strong, realistic 17-year-old in this story and I think that Sydney’s voice will be relatable to teens who find themselves in tight spots. I read an interesting interview de Gramont gave on one of the blogs where she discussed the epilogue in the story. Having read the interview before the book, I read it a little more critically, and I have to agree with de Gramont completely: it could go either way. It both works and could work without being there.

So, though this title contains a lot of what we see in teen lit — especially the pregnancy, trouble-making teen — read this one for the writing and for the character of Sydney. I think this is an easy cross-over title for adults, as well, who may already be familiar with the author.

Confession: I’ve been pretty disappointed in a lot of the highly-hyped young adult novels that have been published so far in 2010. I did fall in love with Some Girls Are, but other “heavy hitters” like Before I Fall just flopped for me.

Fortunately, Swati Avasthi’s Split delivered.

Split is an issue novel, and it delves into family violence and abuse. Jace is a high school student who lives under a very abusive father, who happens to be a big named judge in Chicago. Jace’s mother and he struggle with living with his father, but neither feels they can quite escape from the situation. That was the case until Jace’s mother let slip the address of his long-since-gone brother Christian. Christian left the family years ago to escape the violence, unafraid of what the consequences might be.

Jace decides he has to get away, too. But it’s not quite what you think: Jace’s reason for needing to get away in that moment isn’t necessarily the abuse his father doles out. Instead, it is something much deeper and something that will ultimately change the course of his newly emerging relationship with brother Christian and Christian’s girlfriend Mirriam.

This book worked because the issues were dealt with in a manner that was quite realistic. I think that the voice worked for the older teenage boy very well, and I think there was just enough fantasy in his actions — fantasy in the means of solving issues or letting them solve themselves — was spot on.

Moreover, the issue of abuse is tackled tactfully and without making it either overwrought or light hearted. The issue is two-pronged, as well, and I think that Avasthi does a great job of getting to the deeper psychological issues of abuse. Let me step back for a second and say that this book shouldn’t be considered simply an issue book; it’s incredibly well-written that moves fluidly and smoothly in the way that Laurie Halse Anderson’s does in Wintergirls. I would not, however, compare this book to LHA’s, as it is not as unflinching and quite rightfully handles the abuse issue on a different level. That is, there is an entirely different story line here, though the audience for both may be quite similar.

What didn’t work for me in Switched were some of the subplots. I thought that introduction of running as a theme didn’t quite work as smoothly as it could have. It’s introduced a little too late into the book to make it effective. Again, let me go back to LHA and say it didn’t do quite what running did in Catalyst.

I found the last quarter of the book a little hard to follow. There was a lot going on, and I thought some of it was unnecessary or a bit under developed. Avasthi keeps her book to about 250 pages, but I think in the interest of furthering some of the relationships and events that happen in the last quarter of the book — including Christian and Jace’s reconciliation, their relationship with their mother, and Jace’s confessions to the new girl in his life — would have allowed easily for 50-75 more pages. I wish this were stronger, as this was the most critical part of the book but felt like a bit of a let down.

If you like strong writing and an interesting premise that unravels page after page, Switched is one you want to pick up. Avasthi is a fresh voice in young adult writing, and I am excited to see what she does next. She writes believable characters and has developed character relationships that aren’t flat or uninteresting (and in fact, they’re often a bit surprising how they do come to solidify and change). This was easily one of the best books published for this audience so far in 2010, and it is one I daresay should get some attention come awards season. A refreshing one to read after quite a few less-than-exciting reads.