Posts tagged with coming-of-age
The Forest of Hands and Teeth, by Carrie Ryan
A word of warning before we begin: on the Depression Scale, Carrie Ryan's debut novel The Forest of Hands and Teeth ranks somewhere between Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games and Schopenhauer...
Fate, by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
YA author Jennifer Lynn Barnes has quite the talent for creating unlikely heroes. Her The Squad series features cheerleader secret agents, while 2007’s Tattoo and its recently released...
A Girl's Guide to Modern European Philosophy, by Charlotte Greig
Charlotte Greig’s thoughtful, beautifully-written debut novel A Girl’s Guide to Modern European Philosophy hovers somewhere between the general fiction and YA shelves: the story’s heroine is very—...
Heroes of the Valley, by Jonathan Stroud
For my money, Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus trilogy was the best young adult fantasy series of the past decade. Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass was better than any individual book in Stro...
Kisses and Lies, by Lauren Henderson
Kiss Me Kill Me, the first book in Lauren Henderson’s series featuring 16-year-old Scarlett Wakefield, was an unexpected delight: a YA mystery that blended the guilty pleasures of the Gossip Girl series with...
The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
I’ve had a copy of Suzanne Collins’s novel The Hunger Games since September, but there are two reasons I’m just reviewing it now: one, I’m still recovering from the massive let-down that was ...
Flora's Dare, by Ysabeau S. Wilce
Middle series installments frequently feel like stopgaps, but Ysabeau S. Wilce’s Flora’s Dare, the sequel to 2007’s Flora Segunda, is in all ways exceptional. As the story opens, fourteen-year-old Flora has discovered that her formerly crazy father was actually a lot easier to live with back when he was nuts...
The Debs, by Susan McBride
Much like Gossip Girl, The A-List, Clique, and countless other titles in the booming subgenre of YA literature about rich, beautiful teens cavorting in the wealthiest communities in America...
Acacia, by David Anthony Durham
As David Anthony Durham’s sprawling epic fantasy Acacia opens, Leodan Akaran, the ruler of Acacia, has begun to question the secret arrangement that ensures his empire’s prosperity: a horrify...
Wake, by Lisa McMann
Lisa McMann’s debut novel Wake has a lot going for it: a great premise, an intriguingly dark atmosphere, and a plausibly screwed-up heroine. Unfortunately, it’s way too short, it’s currently...
Princess Ben, by Catherine Gilbert Murdock
Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s new novel Princess Ben is a major departure from her earlier works, Dairy Queen and The Off Season. While Dairy Queen and The Off Season focused on the trials of a dairy-farming teenager with dreams of playing high school football in small-town Wisconsin...
Darkside, by Tom Becker
Tom Becker’s debut novel Darkside opens with a kidnapping: thirteen-year-old Ricky Thomas is abducted from the middle of Trafalgar Square in broad daylight, and, strangely, none of the hundreds of...
Confessions of a Serial Kisser, by Wendelin Van Draanen
Seventeen-year-old Evangeline Logan, the heroine of Wendelin Van Draanen’s new YA novel Confessions of a Serial Kisser, has a lot in common with the eponymous star of her kid-friendly Sammy Keyes mystery series. Both girls are smart, resourceful, and fearless...
Black Hole, by Charles Burns
Charles Burns’s graphic novel Black Hole is lyrical, meticulously illustrated, and thought-provoking. It’s also creepy, stomach-churning, and unnecessarily grim. Delicate flowers might want to s...
Dragonhaven, by Robin McKinley
Robin McKinley’s Dragonhaven, her first novel in four years, is a celebration of atmosphere and characterization. It’s an intensely absorbing story, but longtime fans take heed: this book has much more in common with her character-driven vampire novel Sunshine than her earlier, more conventional fantasy novels...
The Sweet, Terrible, Glorious Year I Truly, Completely, Lost It, by Lisa Shanahan
I don’t know much about Australian entertainment. My knowledge of their popular culture is limited to Strictly Ballroom, a single episode of Kath & Kim I caught in England, and an Australian romance novel that I read a few years ago, which featured such outdated sexual politics that I originally thought it was written in the sixties...
Nodame Cantabile Vol. 1, by Tomoko Ninomiya
Smart, weird, and irresistibly funny, Tomoko Ninomiya’s Nodame Cantabile is one of our all-time favorite mangas. This coming-of-age story about a group of budding classical musicians will have particular charm for readers who’ve had some musical instruction, but Nodame Cantabile is worth reading even if you’ve never so much as plonked out Chopsticks on your neighbor’s piano...