Nov 28
Why write a whole YA book when you can query by title alone? Feel free to nab any of these. Evocative YA Titles The First and Darkest Throne Above Clouds of Illusion A Pure Sea of Dragons Haunted Breath Godsmoke Unlike Promises of Glass The Fangling Starflame A Mortal Yet Heavenly Prince Among the Gold …
Nov 04
Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire Tor Books, 2016 Every Heart a Doorway is a book that spans genres. It’s part YA, part horror, part old-timey Portal fantasy, and part magical boarding school fantasy, with a dollop of LGBTQ. It’s disturbing, in ways both unintentional and obvious. It won a Nebula award, yet could …
Oct 31
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie Little, Brown & Co., 2017 (10th Anniversary Edition) [Challenge # 5: A book by a local author.] The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a semi-mythic coming of age story of a Native American boy’s freshman year. Arnold Spirit Jr. lives on …
Oct 22
The following book review is condensed from and elaborated on from an earlier post. Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard HarperTeen, 2015 Red Queen, by Victoria Aveyard, is one of those dystopias that appears to take its high concept to the max. Mare, a teenage girl on the cusp of turning 18 and being drafted into …
Sep 09
Americus by M. K. Reed and Jonathan Hill First Second, 2011 Dragons make an appearance in this graphic novel about the dangers of censorship in that the book-in-a-book under fire features a “wytch” protagonist who is half-dragon… leading to cries of bestiality from the Christian far right! Americus is based on a controversy of some …
Aug 05
Exo by Fonda Lee Scholastic, 2017 Of all the YA science fiction I’ve read so far (and keep in mind it hasn’t been a lot) Fonda Lee’s Exo is the only one I’d call true SF. That is, an out-there premise is given and the author extrapolates from it, showing us the effects it has …
Jun 26
Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell St. Martin’s Press, 2013 I had high hopes for Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl when I bought it, but because of disappointments with other YA books, I tempered my expectations. But it turns out I didn’t need to. I enjoyed Fangirl every bit as much as I’d hoped I would, and then some. …
Jun 11
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer Little, Brown, and Company, 2005 [Challenge # 29: A book by someone everyone else seems to have read but you have not.] Well, well. What to say about Stephenie Myer’s YA vampire romance Twilight that hasn’t been said before? This book was bad. Execrably, horrifyingly, stultifyingly, bad. It was so dull …
May 29
Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi Balzer + Bray, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2015 Tomi Adeyemi’s West African fantasy Children of Blood and Bone is one of the most talked-about YA releases of 2018, scoring the author a seven figure movie deal. Reviews have been gushing, but is it worth all the …
May 03
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli Balzer + Bray, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2015 Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda was one of the happiest books I’ve read this year. Recently released as a movie, it originally came out in 2015, earning a well-deserved place on YA must-read lists for its …
