“Spontaneous”, by Aaron Starmer, is an equally humorous and heartbreaking look at the unique experience of growing up in the modern age. When students start spontaneously exploding all around her, senior Mara Carlyle has to come to terms with her own mortality and make every moment count.
Intricate and intriguing, E. Lockhart’s “We Were Liars” provides both a captivating mystery and a bittersweet portrayal of young love. The Sinclairs are an extremely wealthy family that spends each summer on their private island, Beechwood. The readers are introduced to their charmed yet secretive lives through Cadence Sinclair, a teenager who suffers from amnesia and chronic migraines after a tragic accident that occurred on Beechwood when she was fifteen.
With an interesting premise that falls disappointingly flat, Katharine McGee’s “American Royals” portrays a fun, if shallow, alternate universe where the United States has a royal family.
Return to Beechwood with E. Lockhart’s “Family of Liars”, a prequel set in the 1980s to the modern “We Were Liars”. Focusing this time on Cadence’s aunt Carrie as a teenager, the book follows her during her seventeenth summer.
Malinda Lo’s “A Scatter of Light” is a coming of age novel that sadly falls flat in comparison to its semi-companion piece: “Last Night at the Telegraph Club”. This novel centers Aria Tang West, a teenager sent to live with her grandmother in California as punishment for a scandal that she caused during her last week of senior year.
Rae Carson’s “Any Sign of Life” is a survival story with a heartfelt edge. The novel centers Paige Miller, a skilled teenage basketball player, who becomes extremely sick and passes out. When she wakes up days later, everyone is dead. She’s somehow avoided the arrival of the apocalypse, but now everyone she loves is gone.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a classic fiction novel written by Ken Kesey that explores the themes of individuality, conformity, and mental illness. The book is set in a mental institution in the 1950s, the story is narrated by Chief Bromden, a patient who has been in the institution for many years and who is believed to be deaf and dumb.
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare that tells the story of two young lovers who are caught in the middle of a feud between their families, the Montagues, and the Capulets. Romeo, a Montague, is in love with Juliet, a Capulet, and their families are sworn enemies. Despite the obstacles they face, Romeo and Juliet declare their love for each other and secretly marry each other. The play is set in the Italian city of Verona.
Heart of Darkness is a realistic fiction novel by Joseph Conrad that takes place in the late nineteenth century and explores Western colonialism and imperialism. It is a complex and haunting work of literature that explores the themes of imperialism, power, and the darkness that lies at the heart of humanity.
