Debut YA Novels: July 2016

August 1, 2016 |

Welcome to August! This month you’ll be treated to two debut YA novel round-ups, since I didn’t post July’s during July.

Like always, this round-up includes debut novels, where “debut” is in its purest definition. These are first-time books by first-time authors. I’m not including books by authors who are using or have used a pseudonym in the past or those who have written in other categories (adult, middle grade, etc.) in the past. Authors who have self-published are not included here either.

All descriptions are from WorldCat or Goodreads, unless otherwise noted. If I’m missing any debuts out in July from traditional publishers — and I should note that indie/small presses are okay — let me know in the comments.

As always, not all titles included here are necessarily endorsements for those titles. Get ready to get reading.

Gemini by Sonya Mukherjee

Seventeen-year-old conjoined twins Clara and Hailey have lived in the same small town their entire lives—no one stares at them anymore. But there are cracks in their quiet existence, and they’re slowly becoming more apparent. Clara and Hailey are at a crossroads. Clara wants to stay close to home, avoid all attention, and study the night sky. Hailey wants to travel the world, learn from great artists, and dance with mysterious boys. As high school graduation approaches, each twin must untangle her dreams from her sister’s, and figure out what it means to be her own person.

How to Hang a Witch by Adriana Mather

Samantha Mather has just moved to Salem, Massachusetts from New York City in the wake of her father’s mysterious illness. But Mathers have lived in Salem for centuries and Sam is the ancestor of Cotton Mather—one of the architects of the Salem Witch Trials. Her name precedes her, and comes with too many stigmas. Before long, Sam finds herself at odds with The Descendants, a powerful group of girls who also have ties to the trials; only their ancestors were on the other end of the noose.
Before long, Sam realizes she is at the center of a centuries old curse that is tying her fate, as well as her father’s, to her new enemies. Can she overcome her family’s past and break the cycle of unexplained deaths or will she discover just how easy it can be to hang a witch?

The Killer in Me by Margot Harrison

Seventeen-year-old Nina Barrows knows all about the Thief. She’s intimately familiar with his hunting methods: how he stalks and kills at random, how he disposes of his victims’ bodies in an abandoned mine in the deepest, most desolate part of a desert.

Now, for the first time, Nina has the chance to do something about the serial killer that no one else knows exists. With the help of her former best friend, Warren, she tracks the Thief two thousand miles, to his home turf—the deserts of New Mexico.

But the man she meets there seems nothing like the brutal sociopath with whom she’s had a disturbing connection her whole life. To anyone else, Dylan Shadwell is exactly what he appears to be: a young veteran committed to his girlfriend and her young daughter. As Nina spends more time with him, she begins to doubt the truth she once held as certain: Dylan Shadwell is the Thief. She even starts to wonder . . . what if there is no Thief?

Learning to Swear in America by Katie Kennedy

An asteroid is hurtling toward Earth. A big, bad one. Yuri, a physicist prodigy from Russia, has been called to NASA as they calculate a plan to avoid disaster. He knows how to stop the asteroid: his research in antimatter will probably win him a Nobel prize–if there’s ever another Nobel prize awarded. But Yuri’s 17, and having a hard time making older, stodgy physicists listen to him. Then he meets Dovie, who lives like a normal teenager, oblivious to the impending doom. Being with her, on the adventures she plans when he’s not at NASA, Yuri catches a glimpse of what it means to save the world and save a life worth living.

Little Black Dresses, Little White Lies by Lauren Stampler

Harper Anderson always believed she belonged somewhere more glamorous than her sleepy Northern California suburb. After all, how many water polo matches and lame parties in Bobby McKittrick’s backyard can one girl take? That’s why Harper is beyond ecstatic when she lands her dream internship as a dating blogger at the elite teen magazine Shift. Getting to spend the summer in New York City to live her dream of becoming a writer? Harper’s totally in.

There’s just one teeny, tiny, infinitesimal problem: Apart from some dance floor make-outs, Harper doesn’t have a lot of – or, really, any – dating expertise. In fact, she might have sort of stolen her best friend’s experiences as her own on her Shiftapplication. But she can learn on the job…right?

From awkward run-ins with the cute neighborhood dog-walker to terrifying encounters with her crazed editor, from Brooklyn gallery openings to weekends in the Hamptons, Harper finds out what it takes to make it in the Big City–and as the writer of her own destiny.

Remake by Ilima Todd

Nine is the ninth female born in her batch of ten females and ten males. By design, her life in Freedom Province is without complications or consequences. However, such freedom comes with a price. The Prime Maker is determined to keep that price a secret from the new batches of citizens that are born, nurtured, and raised androgynously.

But Nine isn’t like every other batcher. She harbors indecision
and worries about her upcoming Remake Day — her seventeenth birthday, the age when batchers fly to the Remake facility and have the freedom to choose who and what they’ll be.

When Nine discovers the truth about life outside of Freedom Province, including the secret plan of the Prime Maker, she is pulled between two worlds and two lives. Her decisions will test her courage, her heart, and her beliefs. Who can she trust? Who does she love? And most importantly, who will she decide to be?

**Worth noting this book looks like it was published by Shadow Mountain in 2014, though this refers to the Simon Pulse edition from this month.

Riverkeep by Martin Stewart

The Danék is a wild, treacherous river, and the Fobisher family has tended it for generations—clearing it of ice and weed, making sure boats can get through, and fishing corpses from its bleak depths. Wulliam’s father, the current Riverkeep, is proud of this work. Wull dreads it. And in one week, when he comes of age, he will have to take over.

Then the unthinkable happens. While recovering a drowned man, Wull’s father is pulled under—and when he emerges, he is no longer himself. A dark spirit possesses him, devouring him from the inside. In an instant, Wull is Riverkeep. And he must care for his father, too.

When he hears that a cure for his father lurks in the belly of a great sea-dwelling beast known as the mormorach, he embarks on an epic journey down the river that his family has so long protected—but never explored. Along the way, he faces death in any number of ways, meets people and creatures touched by magic and madness and alchemy, and finds courage he never knew he possessed.

The Season by Jonah Lisa Dyer and Stephen Dyer

Megan McKnight is a soccer star with Olympic dreams, but she’s not a girly girl. So when her Southern belle mother secretly enters her in the 2016 Dallas debutante season, she’s furious—and has no idea what she’s in for. When Megan’s attitude gets her on probation with the mother hen of the debs, she’s got a month to prove she can ballroom dance, display impeccable manners, and curtsey like a proper Texas lady or she’ll get the boot and disgrace her family. The perk of being a debutante, of course, is going to parties, and it’s at one of these lavish affairs where Megan gets swept off her feet by the debonair and down-to-earth Hank Waterhouse. If only she didn’t have to contend with a backstabbing blonde and her handsome but surly billionaire boyfriend, Megan thinks, being a deb might not be so bad after all. But that’s before she humiliates herself in front of a room full of ten-year-olds, becomes embroiled in a media-frenzy scandal, and gets punched in the face by another girl.

The season has officially begun…but the drama is just getting started.

Signs of You by Emily France

Since sixteen-year-old Riley Strout lost her mother two years ago, her saving grace has been her quirky little family in the grief support group she joined as a freshman. Jay, Kate, and Noah understand her pain; each lost a loved one, and they’ve stuck together in spite of their differences, united by tragedies only they understand.

When Riley thinks she spots her mother shopping in a grocery store, she fears she is suffering some sort of post-traumatic stress. Then Jay and Kate report similar experiences. Only Noah hasn’t had some kind of vision, which is perhaps why he’s become so skeptical and distant.

When Noah disappears, Riley fears she’s lost another loved one. As they frantically search for him, she, Kate, and Jay are drawn into the mystery surrounding a relic that belonged to Jay’s dead father and contains clues about the afterlife. Riley finds herself wrestling with her feelings for both Noah and Jay—which have become clear only in Noah’s absence. If Riley is to help those she loves, and herself, she must set things right with the one she’s lost.

Songs About A Girl by Chris Russell

Charlie Bloom never wanted to be ‘with the band’. She’s happiest out of the spotlight, behind her camera, unseen and unnoticed. But when she’s asked to take backstage photos for hot new boy band Fire&Lights, she can’t pass up the chance.

Catapulted into a world of paparazzi and backstage bickering, Charlie soon becomes caught between gorgeous but damaged frontman, Gabriel West, and his boy-next-door bandmate Olly Samson. Then, as the boys’ rivalry threatens to tear the band apart, Charlie stumbles upon a mind-blowing secret, hidden in the lyrics of their songs.

*This book appears to be a UK release, so it might not yet bet available in the US/Canada.

This Week at Book Riot

July 29, 2016 |

Big week over on Book Riot. I’m excited to share these pieces:

I had the pleasure of interviewing author Megan Abbott about her recently-released book You Will Know Me, about why women are killing it in crime and YA fiction, and so much more. This interview may be one of my all-time favorites.

I pulled together 65 YA horror novels written by women. The best part of this list, though, is I could have added so many more. I limited to one book per author, too.

If you’ve been itching to read anything by Meg Medina, I put together a reading pathway to get you started.

And here are some YA novels set in Hawaii.

Reflections on DOMESTIC ARRANGEMENTS by Naomi Klein

July 27, 2016 |

“I mean, doing good is so dreary. At least doing bad is inventive.”

I hadn’t had the chance to read any of the Lizzie Skurnick reissues since she began the project a few years back. I’d purchased Domestic Arrangements last fall, though, in hopes of doing that and now, deep into a month of reading nothing but backlist, I had the chance to sink in.

And this book was a knock-out.

Norma Klein wrote fiction for young readers beginning in 1972 and she wrote through her death in 1989. Prior to reading the introduction written by Judy Blume in the Skurnick edition of the book, I didn’t realize she was a contemporary of Blume’s, nor, to be fair, did I know anything about her or her work. Klein, though, was a trailblazer in young reader fiction. She wrote about complicated families, as well as empowered and mature teenagers navigating the tricky, confusing, and difficult terrain of adolescence. Worth noting that at least in this book, those empowered and mature teenagers are privileged and white. This isn’t surprising nor problematic given the time this was published.

Domestic Arrangements, in my initial thinking, would be “like Blume” in terms of exploring a teen girl’s sexuality. In many ways, it certainly was; however, what really struck me about this particular book was how absolutely frank main character Rusty is about her interest and participation in sex.

This slice-of-life fiction follows 14-year-old Tatiana (nicknamed Rusty because of her long red hair) in the immediate after of filming her first movie. Her mother had been in the business for a long time, and it was sort of by luck and chance Rusty scored a role in a film. She wasn’t an actress nor was she particularly interested in acting. But she landed this role and played the part of a teen girl who serves as an object of lust and fascination to an older man (who, by marriage, becomes a relative). Though her upbringing in New York City and as the daughter of a well-known actress made her turn on the screen not a huge deal in her world, it was the nude scene she did in the film that garnered her so much attention — both warranted and unwarranted.

On the surface, it’s a story about Rusty navigating those seas. Does she want to pursue a future in acting? Or does she want to let it go all together?

But deeper down, this is a larger metaphor, of course, for growing up and learning how to traverse the tricky space between being a child who complies with her parents and standing up for one’s own choices and decisions in order to become an adult.

Domestic Arrangements is not in any way a shy book. The opening chapter takes us into this immediately; Rusty has gotten in trouble because her father caught her and her boyfriend Joshua having sex in the bathtub. The entire scene is wonderful in how it lays out exactly who these characters are. We know that Rusty is not ashamed of being sexually active and indeed, she’s pretty open, especially with her parents, about how she enjoys having sex with her boyfriend and doesn’t plan on stopping. There is a great deal of page time given to Rusty discussing the options of birth control, too — and with the aid of her mother, Rusty begins using a diaphragm.

While it sounds incredibly mature in terms of how Rusty handles being sexually active, Klein gives us real depth and teenage-ness to Rusty because of how she then uses this privilege in irresponsible, yet realistic, ways. When her boyfriend makes her angry, Rusty cuts up the diaphragm; this action sends guilt through her not because of what it means for her relationship, but because she knows how much that cost her mother to acquire and how she’ll need to keep this action a secret. There is a smart push-and-tug in the exploration of growing up and the ways in which being an adolescent is about making stupid, irrational decisions.

Klein’s depiction of a family is excellent, raw, and really boundary pushing for 1982. Though it’s not clear early on, Rusty’s family situation isn’t a smooth, happy one. Her mother and her father aren’t in love the way they once were, and that manifests in not only cheating (her mother and her father both take on new partners in the story), but also in how they choose to parent both Rusty and her sister Cordelia (Deel — yes, both girls are named after Shakespeare characters). The way Rusty and Deel talk about their parents and think about the implications of their extramarital relationships is real and somewhat painful. But perhaps what’s most interesting and authentic about it is that, while both girls hate seeing their parents hurt each other, both also understand that their parents’ relationship is imperfect and might not last. I only wish that we’d gotten a richer exploration of the relationship between Rusty and Deel; at times, it felt like a great relationships and at other times, it felt like Rusty was a downright witch toward her sister. The book description notes that Deel is envious of her sister and her new-found fame, but I never quite got that feeling. I could have gone for even more of that, especially knowing this book is meant to be from Rusty’s point of view.

What really made this book a fun read for me was that it’s the sort of idealistic, dreamy fantasy realistic world that teens, especially younger teens like Rusty, believe of being a teenager. There’s the fame, the starring role in a mature film for adults, and the hot boyfriend who is always available for sex. As readers — and perhaps this is a product of how much YA has exploded in the last decade or so — it’s obvious that this isn’t 100% realistic but instead, more like a Hollywood depiction of adolescence. Teenagers believe in possibility and dream all of the big, heavy dreams; this allows readers to be part of those dreams and see how, despite the gloss, those dreams aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be. Beneath the surface of Rusty’s perfect life are cracks, are truths, and are the harsh realities of being caught between being a kid and being an adult.

The longer I’ve been away from Klein’s book, the more I’ve thought about how boundary pushing it was for 1982. But more, it’s boundary pushing by today’s YA standards. The language, the topics, and the unabashed discussion of sex and sexuality — both on the teen level and on the adults-having-affairs level — is so respectful toward readers. Klein doesn’t hold back, and she respects her readers enough to know that they’re thinking about and seeing and living through these realities. Putting them on paper shouldn’t shy away from the truths, even if they’re hard or ugly or even really damn great. Rusty talks about having great sex and it’s really outstanding to see a girl say such a thing, especially when so much of what we do have in YA about sexuality rarely allows female autonomy, let alone female pleasure and interest.

It’s obvious how much influence Klein and Blume had on one another, and it’s really damn unfortunate that Klein died at such a young age. I can only image the sort of powerful pieces we’d see from both of them, together and apart, about the changing landscape of YA fiction and more, the sort of love and reverence both have for and toward teenagers (especially teenage girls!). Domestic Arrangements is certainly dated in places, but the story itself has resonance and would absolutely be a book teenagers today would find interesting, challenging, and compelling. I’d especially pass this along to fans of Judy Blume, particularly those taken with Forever . . . which might be many, many, many teens, and especially teen girls on the younger end of teenhood.

Without doubt, this book would Cause A Stir on today’s shelves. And that is one reason why it’s so good.

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Since I wanted to do this post as sort of a reflection, as well as a review, I thought it would be fun to round up some of the book’s covers through the years. It came out in 1982, so it got the nice 80s touch to it.

Let’s start with today’s reissue edition from Lizzie Skurnick:

This cover is so moody and captures the essence of Rusty perfectly. There’s the long red hair, as well as a real movie star-esque vibe to the whole thing. This teenage girl looks like an any girl, but with something a little bit more dreamy about her.

This cover, for one of the original editions, features Rusty in a still from the film that made her famous. It’s interesting to me how her hair in this one is curly and big, which is opposite of the cover girl’s red hair in the Skurnick reissue. Clearly a reflection of the style and trends. I really love the two hands on this one, with no clear indication of who they belong to. They could as easily be Rusty and Joshua’s hands as they could be Rusty’s parents. It is an interesting message, though, that it would be Rusty’s role in the film tearing apart either — or both! — of those relationships.

“She learned about sex too soon — Now she has to learn about love.” What a tag line. I’m not sure she learns about sex too soon, but the fact she has to figure out what love is IS a central thread through Rusty’s story. But this cover! Talk about taking the cover to a level that makes it clear this book tackles sex.

However…

Where is Rusty’s red hair? The girl in the cover, from what it looks like, has curly brown hair. Rusty got her nickname, after all, from her trademark hair. It seems like the girl here misses that mark. But man, the 80s fashion here is pretty outstanding.

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Have you read Domestic Arrangements? What did you think? More, if I were to read another Norma Klein book, what should it be? I’m eager to look at what else she’s written because this book was a real surprise for me.

A Wicked Thing by Rhiannon Thomas

July 25, 2016 |

I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of fairy tale retellings. I loved the premise for Rhiannon Thomas’ A Wicked Thing, which focuses on what happens after Sleeping Beauty wakes to find that 100 years have passed and everyone she knew is dead – oh, and she’s supposed to marry the stranger who woke her up.

Aurora’s happily ever after doesn’t start when the prince kisses her. Rather, she’s bewildered by the fact that everyone believes he is her true love, since that was never a part of the story she knew. The story has been embellished over the 100 years she’s been sleeping, and now everyone expects her to marry the prince and help stabilize the kingdom, which has seen many, many kings since Aurora pricked her finger. The current king and queen essentially put her under house arrest, giving her no choice in the matter.

The royal family aren’t the only ones who want to use Aurora for their own ends. There’s a visiting prince who suggests another path for Aurora, but she’s not sure it’s the right one either. She meets a revolutionary boy who wants to overthrow the king (who is quite heavy-handed in his villainy) and use Aurora to help make that happen. And then there’s the evil witch who cursed her in the first place, who has her own designs on Aurora. She’s being pulled in so many directions and she’s not sure she can trust anyone – only herself.

Thomas does a good job portraying just how alone Aurora feels. No doubt many people who know the original or Disney story of Sleeping Beauty have wondered how Aurora must have handled the realization that her entire family and all her friends are dead, and Thomas provides a good explanation. There’s a little bit of magic beyond the initial curse here, too (the “wicked thing” reference in the title), that I felt was a little underdeveloped. Ultimately, the main conflict is what Aurora will decide to do – who will she side with? Is there anyone she can ally with who wants what is best for her, not just to use her to accomplish their own goals? Is it possible for her to have any true friends?

The path Aurora eventually chooses is the only right one, and I was satisfied by it, though it does leave things a bit open-ended. Luckily, there is a sequel! I wouldn’t call this an outstanding example of a fairy tale retelling, but it’s an intriguing one, it’s competently written, and it should satisfy most readers. I look forward to seeing where Thomas takes Aurora next.

This Week at Book Riot

July 22, 2016 |

Over on Book Riot this week . . .

A look at three pairs of books that are companions to one another (all the fun of a series without the commitment).

The bookish life of Florence Welch, aka leading lady of Florence and the Machine. I love when musicians and other artists I really admire are themselves book lovers and loud about it.

A quick head’s up: I’m going to write about Domestic Arrangements next week, meaning that the debut YA roundup I do monthly will be pushed a week back…which just means it’ll hit on August 1 for July debuts. So if you’re looking for that, it’ll still happen!