Today’s the big day. You can get your full Cybils award winners list right here!

As a member of the YA judging panel, I just want to say that this was a lot of fun but way tougher than it looks. We debated and debated over titles for a while before choosing Cracked Up to Be by Courtney Summers as our winner. I promise it was a very close vote – it literally came down to one vote being the difference.

If you haven’t read Summers’s book, please do. It is gritty, it is real, and it is an incredible debut by this author. This is a book that has teen appeal written all over it while still maintaining a strength in its writing. Parker is a character I couldn’t like for so long, but yet, I was utterly compelled to keep reading.

Being a part of the judging panel exposed me to a lot of opinions on good writing, and it made me rethink how I evaluate books. I reread one of the finalists, as the first read of it left me feeling less than satisfied. The second read was a much different experience and made it appreciate the title a bit differently. It is fun to read books and discuss them with people who have entirely different backgrounds and experiences, as it lends to evaluating one’s thinking quite differently. Thanks to Em, Lee, Carrie, and Cathy for a great experience!

Stay tuned for tomorrow — I’ll be posting a review of Courtney Summers’s second book, Some Girls Are. I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if that makes it to the Cybils list somewhere next year, too.