Shea Ernshaw’s A Wilderness of Stars brings multiple genres of adventure, romance, and sci-fi together as it starts off strong but finishes disjointed and rushed. Vega is from a line of “Astronomers”. When the stars are in alignment, she begins a journey to find the “Architect” and save the world. She meets a girl named Cricket who saves her from danger and brings her to the “Architect”. After the “Architect”‘s sudden death, the apprentice Noah replaces him and brings Vega to her final goal. This follows a traditional plotline that incorporates more serious topics of disease, poverty, and harsh environments that the author executes beautifully. However, the story falls flat with the climax and ending. The timing was inconsistent and the added science-fiction element created a disjointed flow—like a car jerking as it runs out of gas. And additional purchase for most libraries.

Kristine Ehlebracht for Kristi Bonds

Hiding her love for Nora was hard enough in her conservative, small town. After graduating high school, Stevie and Nora had big dreams of moving to a more accepting world. But Stevie’s accident has left her with amnesia — she can’t remember anything from the last two years and she barely feels connected with her own family anymore.

Confusion, frustration, and loneliness are part of the struggles both Nora and Stevie face as they learn about each other again, all while wondering if their love will be rekindled. Alyson Derrick gave enough backstory so one could feel how deep their passion for each other. This reader was cheering them on as Stevie and Nora fell back in love. The only flaw– how easily her parents accepted her sexuality given the community they lived in — is concerning in that not all students reading this would be so lucky. But a theme of the book has to be hope in true love and where one sees a flaw another can argue that it is evidence of the theme. What could have been a tragic love loss story is instead one where each page had a purpose in explaining the intimate details of their connection. A highly recommended love story for high school students.

Adina Walker is intelligent, driven, pretty, and sociable but because she is Black and middle-class, life at her exclusive, private high school has not been easy. When Adina loses her acceptance to Yale, she has the opportunity to regain it by winning “The Finish;” however, this elite competition is not all that it seems to be. In fact, something is clearly sinister about the game. 

Joelle Wellington’s Their Vicious Games is an entertaining read. The story is fast-paced, and populated with developed characters that are recognizable, not always likable, yet very interesting.  Events are unpredictable and the plot is twisty while descriptions are brutal and gory.   It is an anxiety-inducing, horrifying thrill-ride and the reader will not want to disembark until it is done.  This novel effortlessly allows readers of all ages to engulf themselves in this YA high-action, thriller and is highly recommended!

Venom & Vow, by Anna-Marie and Elliott McLemore, twists and turns through intrigue and self-discovery with excitement on every page. Valencia has trained her entire life in combat, trickery, and deception to aid her country and her Princess in the war against Adare and their prince, Patrick McKenna. When peace talks bring the two sides together, Valencia is finally able to investigate the mysterious boy who put a curse on the land and trapped the king and queen in El Encanto. Switching between the two characters’ perspectives creates a rich and vivid world without revealing the next twist in the plot. The character’s disabilities are woven well into their stories and believable in the book’s world. Topics surrounding gender identity are introduced slowly and naturally and avoid the common tropes that one would expect. Despite action occurring on nearly every page, the descriptions of movement, especially in combat scenes, can become difficult to follow. This fictional world of mystery, magic, and intrigue weaves Spanish and Scottish language and culture to make an unfamiliar world feel more familiar. For readers who like to guess the answer right away and those who wait for it to be fully revealed, the surprises and twists in this story will keep you guessing the whole way. Highly Recommended. 

I Will Find You Again is an emotional story about two teens who fell in love but one didn’t find hope in their future, which led to suicide. Chase is an overachiever and Lia is free-spirited. Lia feels there is no other choice than to die. The story revolves around Chase and her process of grieving.

The author does a great job creating a back story to keep the reader hooked and wanting to see what is about to happen. Lyu shows the emotions of the characters well throughout the book going into the stages of grief: denial, anger, depression, and then acceptance. The story is a bit strange in that the main character loses their memories due to taking pills. Then there was a character who is actually the main character’s subconscious because of the pills. It was a bit confusing at times, but the author eventually came around to connect all the pieces together.

This was a great read for people who are trying to make sense of suicide and Lyu doesn’t shy away from the grieving process. The theme of loving who you are, not some fake perfect version of yourself, is genuinely felt. It may also help someone who is grieving a loss know there is hope eventually. However, a large expanse of the book is heavy, dark, and depressing. This made it feel slow to progress, though it finished quickly and left this reader confused. The main character was too fine. Therefore this is recommended as an additional purchase for school libraries.

Spanning the last two years of high school for Stony Shelor, this fictional tale puts a sad light on a small town named Early in Appalachian U.S.A. Stony is a boy who is not only figuring out his own life but those of many in his town — from the town drunk to the bully, from the illegal moonshine makers to the racist acts by the Klu Klux Klan. Stony is coming into adulthood realizing that his father’s job as mayor of such a town is not easy. But Stony is a boy at heart who loves a good chase and when the new kid comes to town with swagger, Stony is drawn to his style. The two set off to be private detectives for the town, which gets them into touchy situations. He’ll be shot at multiple times but risking his life seems to be his purpose for living, even at his young age. More often than not he works with the local sheriff’s office, though it may not have been legal 100% of the time. There are many examples of racism that Stony has to deal with and while this is the obvious social message of Hopkins writing, it feels more like a Huckleberry Finn than a To Kill a Mockingbird story. It’s more about the action Stony gets himself into. This librarian will put it on the shelf and try to sell it to a few key students but it may not have an audience with today’s youth.

Traditions and connections are more important than most things at Seton Academic Prep. The football team has gone to the playoffs every year since 2006 when Cooper Adams was quarterback and he attributed it to the Seton Girls. A playoff birth became the expectation of every quarterback since and they would continue their “tradition” of making that happen with those exact Seton Girls. Enter “J” and “Alz”, two outsiders whose academic and extracurricular merits gave them scholarships to attend Seton. J and Alz have been a couple since they were kids and they walked into a hornet’s nest of affluent, and at times obnoxious, teenagers. J’s JV quarterback skills are promising for his senior year but first Parker will lead the team, and it’s “tradition” to win. Over the course of the summer though, Parker’s control of the “tradition” is lost, because of a few of the Seton Girls, including Alz’s brave decision and Britt’s recognition of how to play the player. In a story that would hopefully never happen, readers will discover just who the Seton Girls are, how have more control than they realize, and how certain traditions are meant to be broken. References to sex and partying are strung throughout the text but this is tame for high school audiences today.

In Jennifer Dugan’s (drawings by Kit Seaton) inconsistent graphic novel for teenagers, Emsy is a blissful California adolescent uprooted from all that she enjoys when she is forced by her parents to move to Upstate New York after the murder of members of the family coven. Emsy is a witch and in New York, she learns about her past, her powers, and her possibilities in ways that are unfortunately cliche for this genre. The novel seems sincere in its approach and is most successful when focusing on the web of social relationships, upheaval, and the sincere passion young people can have for one another so quickly. The drawings are clean and effectively convey a sense of inner vibrancy and intense fire moments. Unfortunately, the writing and plotting are too often tired and predictable. Adults are drearily predictable and two-dimensional. On the other hand, and not for the better, the adolescents are both wildly sophisticated and tediously whiny. “I mean witches? Evil Tomes? Dateless for homecoming? How is this my life?” The writing told excessively through dialogue and images, is weirdly out of their register and does not capture how teens talk. Dugan struggles to develop characters. Her tone is breezy and the writing stays fixated on teen relationships – who likes who – in the midst of murder, witchcraft, and what should be a deep loss. The plot jumps between a Who-Done-It, a tale of the supernatural, and interwoven relationships, without effectively satisfying an element. The book has a lot of potential appeal, unfortunately it treats the characters in such superficial ways the work fails to ignite the powers that the genre is so eager to tap into. Therefore, this is an additional purchase for most libraries.

Cassie Gustafson’s The Secrets We Keep delves into the emotional journey of Emma, a high school freshman faced with piecing together the truths about her family’s past. When her best friend accuses her father of sexual misconduct, she must confront dire shifts in her closest relationships and decide where her loyalty lies.

Emma writes “fairy tales” to cope with her loneliness, which are dispersed throughout the novel and provide an allegorical illustration of loss and rupture in trust. Within these nightmarish fragments, the reader gets a unique glimpse into a teenage girl’s anxious inner landscape. Meanwhile, the text shifts between accounts of Emma’s painful present-day social interactions surrounding the accusation and her repressed memories, including the scandal that drove her family from San Francisco to rural Oregon. Each vignette reveals poignant bits of information to build a cohesive and direct commentary about the webs of abuse. Though the plot is sometimes predictable and lacks complexity, Gustafon’s story-telling technique unfolds as a nuanced and dimensional study of intimacy and the psyche in grief. Thoughtful of the trauma some people already have experienced in their lives, she also gives readers a warning that the story may be a trigger for some as well as a list of support organizations at the end. Recommended for high school libraries.

The Do-Over by Lynn Painter is sure to be popular with hopeless romantics everywhere as they read sixteen-year-old Emilie Hornby’s experience of a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad, reoccuring Valentine’s Day—think of the movie Groundhog’s Day here. She tries everything she can think of to make the day perfect instead of horrible, but she can’t seem to prevent the unfortunate events of the day. Because of this, she decides to change it to a Day of No Consequences (DONC) with Nick Stark, the person she keeps running into. On this day she does whatever she wants because she will wake up at the beginning of Valentine’s Day again, except when she finally wakes up on February 15th and all of the consequences of her decisions from the previous day must now be faced. I enjoyed the confessions at the beginning of each chapter as they gave the readers more background on Emilie without taking up too much of the book. I also love the Taylor Swift references throughout the novel and in the playlist. The concept of reliving the same day is one I have read in books before, but I enjoyed this one a lot more because Emilie was doing different things in an attempt to produce a different outcome, so the days were never exactly the same. I disliked that after the DONC Emilie woke up on the 15th, I found it predictable and I was not looking forward to reading about her getting in trouble. I was also disappointed that she never told Nick that she was reliving Valentine’s Day. This romantic twist on Groundhog Day is lighthearted enough to be fluffy with just the right amount of emotion to make it seem real. General fiction readers may enjoy the adventure and drama presented in the story with the DONC and Emilie’s family problems. While romance lovers will get butterflies from the friendship between Nick and Emilie— he is very grumpy and she is very sunshine. This novel is the book version of a rom-com and Lynn Painter has not failed me yet with her fluffy reads. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested.