A Debut with a Flair for the Grotesque

Although I write about YA books almost exclusively in this column, I do, extremely occasionally—the last time was in 2011, for David Levithan’s The Lover’s Dictionary—branch out. As I’m a huge sucker for stories about boarding schools for prodigies—geniuses, criminals, musicians, you name it—I’m making one of my rare exceptions for M. M. Vaughan’s middle-grade debut.

According to The Ability, 12-year-olds have a special gift: They can use 100% of their brain, which allows for accelerated learning and, in some very special cases, abilities like telekinesis and telepathy. During World War ...

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There Will Be Blood…and Aliens

Any notion of friendly alien encounters is chucked to the fire with Rick Yancey’s new young-adult sci-fi thriller, The 5th Wave. A looming spaceship appears in the sky. It sits; it waits. Humans sit; they wait. Nothing much happens—no Others asking to be taken to our leader, just eerie quiet. Then, through four waves of extermination (elimination of electricity; tsunamis; plague; snipers), the Others strategically annihilate their only threat: humans. It becomes clear that these aliens aren’t on a close-encounter tour of goodwill; they mean to claim Earth as their own. As the Others hasten toward victory ...

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Forever YA: Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Let Down Your…Oh, Never Mind

BOOK REPORT for Towering by Alex Flinn

Cover Story: Fancy Dress Returns

BFF Charm: A World of No

Swoonworthy Scale: 0? I guess?

Talky Talk: Insufferable

Bonus Factor: Drug Rings

Anti-Bonus Factor: Literally Everything About This Book

Relationship Status: It’s Not Me; It’s You

Cover Story: Fancy Dress Returns

Oh, hey, Fancy Dress. I saw you everywhere I looked in 2012, but this is the first time I have seen your face in 2013. I was hoping that the New Year would bring about more book cover options, but I was clearly a sweet summer child. Fancy Dress ...

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YA Paranormal, Angst Free

When Isobel Brannick’s mother gives her her first solo assignment, Izzy can’t help feeling a bit insulted: After all, she’s a BRANNICK. As the youngest in a long line of monster hunters, she’s had training, training and more training, and she’s capable of dealing with stuff WAY MORE HARDCORE than a measly haunted high school. Sure, she recently almost got drained by a vampire, but there TOTALLY were extenuating circumstances! It wasn’t HER fault that he read her mind and distracted her by talking about the mysterious disappearance of her older sister! That would ...

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Young Emily Dickinson, Mystery Solver

I’m nobody! Who are you? / Are you nobody too?

Fifteen-year-old Emily is only somewhat embarrassed when a handsome young stranger finds her lying in a field of wildflowers trying to convince a bee to land on her nose. He quickly sets her at her ease, though, and while they never exchange names—they call each other Mr. and Miss Nobody—it’s quite clear from the first moment that they are kindred spirits, and she very much looks forward to seeing him again soon.

A few days later, he is found dead in a nearby pond.

So begins Michaela ...

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A Close Encounter of the Awesome Kind

BOOK REPORT for The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey

Cover Story: Airport Thriller
BFF Charm: Double Trouble
Swoonworthy Scale: 6
Talky Talk: She Said, He Said EXTREME!
Bonus Factors: Aliens, The Apocalypse, Trust No One
Relationship Status: You Shook Me All Night Long

Cover Story: Airport Thriller

There is nothing embarrassing about this cover (which, in the YA genre, is something to celebrate), but there's nothing spectacular about it either. It looks exactly like any number of thrillers you might find in an airport newsstand, and that's a shame, because this cover should scream, "PICK ME! I AM ...

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'The Eternity Cure's Vampire Apocalypse

Since delivering her human companions to the only known safe haven for humans, vampire Allison Sekemoto has been traveling solo, searching for her sire and the sadistic creature who is holding him captive. As it has the same strengths and weaknesses of its predecessor, Julie Kagawa’s The Eternity Cure—book two in her Blood of Eden series, after The Immortal Rules—isn’t likely to win over any detractors, but it will very definitely please fans of the original.

Things that work:

The cinematic action. Kagawa’s wicked flair for this is evident from the very first scene, in ...

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Holy Shift

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The Profoundly Awesome Voice of Sara Zarr

BOOK REPORT for The Lucy Variations by Sara Zarr

Cover Story: Fine

BFF Charm: Nay

Swoonworthy Scale: NO.

Talky Talk: Sara Freaking Zarr

Anti-Bonus Factor: Patty Chase Awful Family Award

Bonus Factors: Sassy Housekeeper, Charles Wallace

Relationship Status: My Best Friend’s Sister

Cover Story: Fine

I don’t love this cover, but it’s serviceable. I’m not a big fan of aggressively girly typefaces, and walking through the aisles of a bookstore, this probably wouldn’t catch my eye. On the other hand, it relates to the story and I wouldn’t be embarrassed to read it in ...

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Ride a Magical Submarine to 'Emilie and the Hollow World'

Martha Wells’ Emilie and the Hollow World is so entertaining, so compelling, SO MUCH FUN that it made me do something that I haven’t done since the fourth grade: When my lunch break was over, I just kept on reading by super-stealthily hiding my book under the desk. Which would have been less obvious if I’d been sitting in my office rather than the library’s circulation desk. Happily, judging by all of the smirks I caught, my patrons apparently approve of the appearance of my (usually Inner) Bad Librarian.

And as this is totally a book that ...

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Strangelets' Mysterious Vortex

Sophie Page is almost relieved to be near death: Her body has been so ravaged by lymphoma that every move she makes causes her pain, and she’d rather that her family would be out in the world living than staying at her bedside, watching her slowly die. Just as she takes her final breath, though, time seems to stop, a swirling vortex appears at the foot of her bed...and engulfs her.

On the other side of the world, Declan Murphy has been cornered in a Galway alley by two huge Russian thugs. He attempts to return the box ...

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'Taken': It's Five Books in One!

BOOK REPORT for Taken by Erin Bowman

Cover Story: Oof

BFF Charm: Aw Hell No

Swoonworthy Scale: -12

Talky Talk: Who Am I Talking to Today?

Bonus Factor: Teen Dad

Relationship Status: We Have a Personalities Clash

Cover Story: Oof

What words can I use for this cover? Oh, wait, I have some: Derivative. Boring. Physics-defying. Why is there a tree in the sky? And why have they made poor Claysoot look as if it’s been re-tiled by something on sale at the Home Depot?

I will say that the actual font and title of this book have a ...

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The Girl Behind the Paper Doll

For the past 10 years—ever since the man she now calls “Father” smuggled her out of the high-security science facility that created and imprisoned her—Ariane Tucker, formerly known only as GTX-F-107, has lived by the following rules:

1. Never trust anyone.

2. Remember they are always searching.

3. Don’t get involved.

4. Keep your head down.

5. Don’t fall in love.

Project Paper Doll was ultrasecret and ultraexpensive, and Ariane’s disappearance represented the loss of years of research and millions of dollars, so her father hid her in plain sight: right under GTX’s nose ...

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Naming the Monster

When novelist Meg Medina talks about her own experiences with bullying, the pain in her voice is still acute. “There's a shame to it,” she says, quietly. “You start to wonder if there really is something wrong with you.”

The title and first line of Medina's new book, Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass, is taken nearly word for word from a threat Medina received as a teenager. “Someone approached me and said, 'So and so is going to kick your ass.' And I had no idea who that person was, no clue why I was targeted ...

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'Eleanor & Park' Will Break Your Heart and Put it Back Together Again

BOOK REPORT for Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

Graded By: Jenny Bird

Cover Story: Perfection

BFF Charm: Platinum Edition

Swoonworthy Scale: 10

Talky Talk: He Said, She Said

Bonus Factors: The Real '80s, Diversity, Cliff Huxtable Award for Awesome Parenting, The Patty Chase Award for Awful Parenting

Relationship Status: Going To The Chapel

Cover Story: Perfection

This cover is beautiful in its simplicity. There's no way a stock photo could ever capture the essence of the story in the same way that this simple drawing does. It also doesn't scream YA, which is always a good thing when ...

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Make Room On Your Shelf for Another YA Dystopia

I’ve been dystopia-ed out for well over a year now. Can you blame me? Ever since the explosive popularity of The Hunger Games, every third book I pick up is set in a vision of our near future in which the world’s population has been disastrously affected by the cataclysmic version of a nightly news issue (climate change, bee extinction*, genetic engineering gone wrong) leading to some form of authoritarian government that strips away the civil liberties of the remaining populace and violently enforces new cultural constraints; in which the protagonist fights said new world order; and, if ...

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'Mojo' Gets Our Respect

At page two, I laughed out loud.

At page six, I vowed to go back and read everything that Tim Tharp has ever written.

At page eight, I was completely and irrevocably in love with Mojo, and more specifically, with the voice of its narrator, high school junior Dylan Jones. I didn’t fall in lurrrve with the boy himself—instead, I developed something far more rare: a sort of awe at what a fully realized character he is. I believed in him unreservedly from the very first page—through crazy situations and plot twists—and, even as I watched ...

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Where ZOM-Bs Come From

Bestselling writer Darren Shan gave this talk at the American Library Association Midwinter conference earlier this year. Today, with the release of the latest book in his ZOM-B series, ZOM-B City, we’re sharing Shan’s talk, which reveals the origins of his fascination with zombies (hint: it wasn’t zombies!).

I want to talk about my new series, Zom-B, today, but before I get around to it, I want to go back to some of my early influences, to give you an idea of why I write the sorts of books that I do, and why there’s more ...

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Forever YA: What a Cruel Thing to Pretend

BOOK REPORT for The Shadow Girl by Jennifer Archer

Cover Story: Two Big Faces; No Waiting

BFF Charm: Nope

Swoonworthy Scale: 1

Talky Talk: Dan Brownisms

Bonus Factor: Dolly the Sheep

Anti-Bonus Factor: Bad Science; Too Much Plot On Our Hands

Relationship Status: It’s Not Me; It’s You

Cover Story: Two Big Faces; No Waiting

As dedicated followers of Forever Young Adult are aware, we have a real problem with the Big Face phenomenon which is ceaselessly plaguing Young Adult covers these days. And that problem is that those covers are ugly. They’re just ugly, y’all ...

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A Gothic Missing Thrills and Chills

On my new list of Top Five Things I Wouldn’t Want to Hear When Moving into a New Household:

“Your youth is to your advantage. You’re moldable and not at all like . . . some people.”

I was so excited to read Jane Nickerson’s Strands of Bronze and Gold. After all, it’s a reimagining of Bluebeard! Set in 1855, just a few years before the Civil War, in a centuries-old English abbey that the richer-than-rich, handsome, captivating Monsieur Bernard de Cressac moved to Mississippi 25 years ago stone by stone! Starring 17-year-old Sophia Petheram, a heroine who—as ...

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