With the prophecy of the end-of-the world in three months and the expected Departure of the New World Society followers, a tender story of sibling love and individual persistence is woven in Come November, Katrin Van Dam’s first young adult novel.  Rooney’s mother is an avid follower of Everett, leader of the New World Society, which believes that humans have destroyed the overpopulated Earth through climate change and overconsumption. Extraterrestrials beings will come on November 18th to take believers to a new planet to start a more pure society.

Rooney’s senior year angst of college and a boyfriend is minor to her anxiety about money for food or her embarrassment about her “crazy” mother.  Real life issues are a heavy responsibility for a young woman who just wants to dream of a better life in the normal world. The sense of love and duty to her brother and the hope of a different life are the sustaining themes of this book.  It is an entertaining, valuable read for a young adult navigating the challenges of daily life with the possibility of creating their future through perseverance and education. Rooney’s mother’s situation is unusual but Rooney’s role of responsibility and struggle is very relatable for teenagers today.

What happens to a person when the negative side of their personality does everything in its power to overtake the side that barely keeps the person sane? Ella Black suffers from dissociative identity disorder. Bella, her evil twin, comes to life when Ella gets stressed. Bella has progressively made Ella do more violent things, which scare Ella each time. When her parents whisk her away from school mid-day to temporarily move to Rio, she assumes it is because they have figured out she has this disorder which she has been hiding from everyone. But more lies and truths will unfold in this fast-paced, unpredictable novel, totally ingratiating the reader until the last comments at the end. Ella is a believable character, which makes the story all the more twisted. Speaking of twisted, the last few dramatic scenes hit hard, literally. This reader thoroughly enjoyed Emily Barr’s writing and will look to pick up a few more of her works.

It’s the start of a new school year and Kate Bailey is hesitant to be in her podcasting class that she signed up for just because her best friend Alana wanted her to. Sure enough, super shy Kate is picked by the teacher to be one of the co-hosts for the podcast which will focus on giving advice to people who email or call in anonymously. While she discovers that she’s pretty good at giving advice, she also discovers that she likes the guy her best friend is crushing on even though Kate is trying hard to get them together. While readers will see this developing way before the characters themselves, Kasie West also throws in a few other twists to keep readers wondering. Will the text message from Kate’s ex-boyfriend make a difference? Will the sudden interest from Kate’s nemesis change the course of Kate’s feelings? Slightly oh-my, this flirty girl novel will definitely find fans in the 7th – 10th grade level.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Grand Escape:  The Greatest Breakout of the 20th Century by Neal Bascomb.  This book details the life of prisoners of war kept by Germany in World War 1 and their attempts to escape prison camps.  What makes this book entertaining is the range of characters with their shenanigans who tended to treat these escapes like a game.  One was even disappointed when he was returned to his own country before the war was over because he wanted to see if his escape plan devised with two other prisoners would work.   It is noted that many of the prisoners were very intelligent and adventuresome, as it tends to describe officers, including pilots who were shot down and then surrounded by Germans.   So given their sudden confinement, these prisoners tended to act like mischievous children with plans that included using molasses that resulted in solitary confinement, and stealing tools to help them in their endeavors.  They also found productive ways to spend their time such as learning new languages which aided in escaping. To make escaping Germany even more difficult, the German people were encouraged to turn in suspected escaping prisoners.  Other tactics by the Germans was to send captured escaping prisoners to different camps and to use strict military officers to oversee them. The illustrations contain actual war souvenirs such as telegrams, photographs, and propaganda.  If I could change one thing about this book, I would have put the map of Germany and surrounding areas at the front of the book rather than on page 217. The book ends with what happened to the British prisoners when the war ended, including reunions and teaching younger military recruits how to cope in case of capture.  Overall, this book made it easy to understand the actual lives of military men kept as prisoners during wartime on a very personal level. I highly recommend this book for all types of students.

Set in Seattle, Washington, Rachel Lynn Solomon’s young adult novel Our Year of Maybe tracks the lives of two teenagers whose lives have always been entwined as best friends, and maybe, Sophie thinks, eventually something more. She cannot imagine life without Peter, and so, when she turns out to be the one match for the kidney he needs, she does not hesitate…she donates one of hers.

This selfless act generates in Sophie a picture of the future in which Peter and she are in love and together forever. For Peter, however, while deeply grateful to Sophie for saving his life, it’s not a cut and dried determination that they will be lovers. With his new lease on life, Peter sees his future as one in which he is now free. Then he finds himself attracted to Chase as more than a friend, a development that surprises him, and certainly one that Sophie cannot even imagine.

As they work through these awakenings, their stories explore themes of first loves, expectations, indebtedness, outdated old beliefs and the changes that come with confronting things honestly. Like dandelion fluff, nobody knows where these understandings will be blown, but hopefully, well-rooted friendships will mature and survive.

Recommended.

A turbulent ride into the future with traces of the “Rusties” past littering the Victoria landscape is in store for readers of Scott Westerfeld’s Imposters. Put on something comfortable from your “hole in the wall”, grab your “crash bracelets” and step onto your hoverboard with your fully charged “pulse knife” and “cyrano”. Maybe secure a couple of plasma guns just in case for this plot line. Westerfeld quotes Chinese general Sun Tzu, author of The Art of War, on the title page of Part 1: “Regard your soldiers as your children and they will follow you into the deepest of valleys.” This may not be pretty.

Sir Walter Scott said “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!” Frey, posing as her twin sister Rafi, encounters Col, the heir apparent to the city of Victoria. Here the twists and turns begin. Is the danger from without or within? Are the twin sisters like-minded though one raised a dignitary for the city of Shreve and the other was raised as her absolute secret body double — and as a trained killer? Throw in the love factor and Frey must decide if Col can be trusted with the truth, allowing her to become her own person. This is a page turner as Westerfeld weaves an intriguing tale pitting good against evil, love versus power, conservation over greed in the opposing neighboring cities of Shreve and Victoria. Recommended, as with all other Westerfeld titles.

Ascent is the 3rd in a series of books focusing on Peak Marcello, a teen whose life revolves around mountain climbing. His summit of Everest with his father in the 1st story was not on Peak’s terms. In book two, both extreme action and characters are brought into Peak’s life as he attempted to climb in Afghanistan. For his 3rd major climb, he just wants to return to the natural art of climbing, to have a “clean” climb. But in extreme sports, it is rare anything is easy. This reviewer read Ascent as a stand-alone 1st and it can hold its own as that, though knowing more of the background story with his father Josh, Zopa the wise spirit, and other characters really gives the story depth. Once the climb begins, Smith’s pace in events picks up, though the mystery and twists in the 1st half of the novel keep readers interested too. This is an additional purchase, especially if your library already holds Smiths earlier Peak stories.

How do you deal with death, especially the death of someone you look up to and admire? For Charlie, the death of his father will spin him into a world he never imagined for himself. Sent to his grandparents for the summer in 1988, Charlie learns he has friends, family, comic book heroes, basketball and jazz to help him get back to feeling normal. While Grandaddy impresses upon Charlie the job of being on a team and playing a full game, it’s his cousin Roxie who teaches him the game and moves to be great in the game. Grandmother’s cooking makes all things bearable as she listens and shares in his new adventure. A quick trip to jail might also be life-changing, and friend Skinny goes with him because that’s what friends do. Readers watch a 12 year old Charlie become something special, being the path of maturing into Chuck, father of Jordan and Josh Bell from Alexander’s earlier Newbury Award Winning The Crossover. A prequel to that novel in verse, Rebound will give depth to the story of the Bell family but can be read as a stand alone as well.

The Year of Living Awkwardly runs the reader rapidly through the life of high school sophomore Chloe Snow. The author, Emma Chastain, compels the reader through this emotional year with Chloe and her classmates as she works at the pool concession stand, plans to go to dances, hilariously prepares for and takes the PSAT, terrifyingly attends traffic safety classes, and flubs trying out for the school musical. If that isn’t enough drama, her parents have separated and are proceeding with a divorce. Chloe lives with her attorney dad while her writer mom has moved to Mexico with the boyfriend. Can Chloe forgive her mom for leaving? or her dad for dating Chloe’s English teacher? Can Chloe even figure out who her real friends are amongst the teen drama at school? Chastain presents a sophomore girl who is unfiltered, sexually aware and floundering to find love in most of the wrong ways. Some readers will be put off by this girl’s choices, though no doubt there are girls who have lived parallel lives to Chloe’s by the age of 16. The teenage angst is dripping from this novel as Chloe is battling how to be true to herself as she trusts and loves others. This is an additional purchase for upper high school students.

Maya is in an experimental phase in her life, quite literally. Going into the summer after graduating high school and losing her mother to cancer, Maya’s world is in a state of emulsion — droplets that aren’t mixing together in the right way. Whit, her boyfriend of over a year, dumps her for another girl. Her dad is more concerned with carabiners than college preparations. Her best friend, another boy, is leaving for college at the end of the summer. Maya’s summer plan consisted of transcribing notes from a college professor at MIT, where her mother had previously worked as a chemist and where Maya would be attending in the fall. But shortly after the implosion of her love life, Maya discovered a notebook of her mother’s with field notes on an secret experiment with a serum containing pheromones to spice up the mother’s relationship with her dad. With the help of a PhD candidate in the lab at MIT who had also worked on this secret project, Maya devises a way to continue the experiment, the goal of which is to get her boyfriend back. A true love story without many surprises, Meredith Goldstein gives readers a character that has a little fun while figuring out with which guy she really has the right chemistry. Recommended for hopeless romantics who like clean finishes.