Reviews written by Kristie Lowry, Promotions Manager

Angie is about to start sophomore year, and she's miserable. She made it through 9th grade on her second go, but her girlfriend has moved away, her best friend has been emotionally distant, the guy who has been bullying her has increased his efforts, and Angie is still trying to...

Seventeen-year-old Harley has been dating Mike for a couple of years, and being his girlfriend gives her a status and comfort level that she's afraid to be without--even though there's a lot about Mike that she doesn't like. His drinking is the biggest issue in their relationship, and when Mike...

Eleven-year-old Tash has been carted off to camp against her will, and she'll be there for a month while her uncle/foster father Kevin visits New Zealand. Tash would have preferred to stay with their elderly neighbor, Cap'n Jackie. Cap'n Jackie tells awesome stories about Draphin (an imaginary pet dolphin-dragon), and...

It's 1984 and Laura Ratliff is a high school student with issues beyond a typical sixteen-year-old. Her mom and her mom's new husband have been the talk of the town thanks to their VERY public extra-marital affair--compounded by the fact that the new husband is one of the few black...

As MOTHER TONGUE by Julie Mayhew begins, eighteen-year-old Darya envisions the bits of freedom she'll enjoy once her little sister, Nika, finally starts school. Darya has been Nika's primary caregiver since she was brought home from the hospital--their mother stayed in the hospital longer, and when their mom returned to...

THE PENDERWICKS AT LAST is the last in the series of Jeanne Birdsall's books about the Penderwick family. In this book, they return to Arundel, the setting for the first book, and it features Lydia, the youngest of the Penderwicks. Lydia wasn't born when the first Arundel adventure took place,...

MAMMOTH by Jill Baguchinsky features a month in the life of Natalie Page, a high school student and the author of the Fossilista, a fashion blog that also focuses on paleontology. Natalie has been selected for a spot in a highly competitive summer internship working at a dig...

Brangwain Spurge is an elfin historian on a mission: he's tasked with delivering a gift to the king of the goblins, and he's hoping to be the first elf to safely return from the goblin kingdom in over 100 years. His goblin host during the visit, Werfel, is a warm-hearted...

Hideki is a 13-year-old Okinawan and Ray is a United States Marine. Both are play important roles in the "Love Day" invasion of Okinawa during World War II. In GRENADE, Alan Gratz follows both young men as they work their way across the island during the waning days of the...

Twelve-year-old Matthew is reluctant to leave his house due to his fear of illness and germs, so he watches and records the happenings in his neighborhood from the upstairs windows. Through those windows he's learned a lot about his neighbors, and as he observes the happenings around him, we learn...

Mischa is the perfect high school student. She has joined all the right clubs, she has the best grades, and her test scores are terrific. Imagine her surprise when she doesn't get into any of her top college choices--and then she's rejected by her safety school, too. ...

"Chandler and Golden versus the world" has been the motto of Chan and Go since they were 11. As seventeen-year-olds, they're a couple, and although they're still facing life's challenges together, there's been a distance between them ever since they became two of four survivors of a horrific bus bombing...

Delphernia lives in a cloister of turnaway girls on the island of Blightsend, and she's unable to do the one thing that the turnaway girls are raised to do: stay silent and turn music made by the Masters outside the cloister into gold. To further complicate things, Delphernia loves to...

Carson Mastick and Magpie "Maggi" Bokoni are two Native American high school students living on a reservation outside of Niagara Falls. Carson is a senior and has lived there his whole life; Maggi has been a City Indian for seven years, and she's not excited to start her sophomore year...

Moss has grown up on a magical island with Pa, his stories, and their dogs. The island is filled with flowers that Pa believes relieve him of his sickness--the blackness that sometimes overtakes him and leaves him lying in bed for days at a time. Eventually others...