In the young adult novel Holding Up the Universe, Libby Strout and Jack Masselin live two separate lives with the same goals: to be wanted in society. Libby, formerly known as “America’s Fattest Teen” who was cut out from her house after a massive panic attack, and Jack, a high school boy living with Prosopagnosia, the inability to recognize faces, even the people he loves, come together through a demoralizing prank.
Obsidian, the first book in Jennifer L. Armentrout’s Lux series, was shamefully addicting. This book fits the typical YA paranormal romance plotline, but I couldn’t put it down. Katy, a typical girl next door character, moves to the middle of nowhere in West Virginia, where her neighbors, Daemon and Dee Black, are aliens. Forming a relationship with the Blacks places Katy in the middle of a timeless rivalry between the Luxen and their evil alien counterparts, the Arum.
Shadow Kiss is the third book in the Vampire Academy series by Richelle Mead. This installment explores what it means to be shadow kissed and Rose's feelings for Dimitri. When Rose's mind is tainted by unexplainable darkness, and she begins to see ghosts, including Mason's, she must decide who she will confide in, risking her closest relationships while trying to move on. I absolutely loved Rose's continued character development; she took a giant step toward becoming more mature in this book.
Feelings are enigmatic yet vital to humans. Matt Wainwright narrates his erratic emotions in the book A Short History of the Girl Next Door by Jared Reck. Matt is a socially awkward athlete who is in love with his best friend. Juggling school, sports, his family and friends around, Matt overall seems like a normal teenager. Everything goes downhill when his best friend starts dating the most popular guy in school. After a bewildering incident, Matt’s emotions are at the peak.
In a world called Asalin, faes are in control of, and rule over witches. A 17-year-old transgender boy named Wyatt Croft is a witch destined to marry the prince of the fae kingdom, Emyr. No longer wanting to be oppressed by his family and the faes, he flees to the human world. When Prince Emyr wants Wyatt to continue the marriage and stop an uprising, Wyatt is hesitant. Wyatt soon becomes tangled in his feelings and desire to stop the revolution. Will Wyatt fall for Emyr? Will they both stop the uprising? Read more to find out!
Meet Oscar, a strong-willed senior in high school. He has high hopes to take over his families’ Swedish food truck business. While at school, he meets Mary Louise, a girl who is the total opposite of Oscar. They both plan a minimal food waste project that includes his food truck. Despite all the chaos around them, a romance blooms between the two as they face each of their own struggles.
Breath Like Water by Anna Jarzab is a Teen Fiction novel. It is a diverse and heart wrenching book with many ups and downs. Breath Like Water is about a Latino girl named Susanna who lives in Chicago with her friends and family. Susanna loves to swim, that’s her life, swimming and competing, that is until she meets a boy at a swim meet. They become friends and soon something more, until a series of events forces them apart.
Meet Karou. She is a 17-year-old art student living in Prague, loves going out for goulash with her friend Zuzana, and spends an excessive amount of time avoiding her nightmare of an ex-boyfriend. But there’s more — Karou was raised by demon-like chimaera, uses tiny beads to make wishes that really do come true, and runs errands with magic portals that take her over the entire world. However, when mysterious black handprints start appearing on doorways around the world and winged strangers make themselves known, Karou is swept up into a conflict much larger than anything she’s ever known.
Juliette, a girl with a lethal touch, was locked up in an asylum for 264 days. She wants human contact but her lethal touch holds her back. Suddenly she gets a cellmate, Adam. She helps him adapt to life there, only to find out he is a soldier working for The Reestablishment. He isn’t completely loyal to The Reestablishment and against all odds is somehow immune to Juliette’s touch. Warner, the Chief Commander and Regent of Sector 45, intends to use Juliette as a weapon for The Reestablishment.
It’s no secret that pirates are good-for-nothing swindlers, assassins, and thieves — and Alosa may be the worst of them all. Trained personally by her father, the pirate king, she has learned to be cutthroat and ruthless, and will do nearly anything to get what she wants. When Alosa is tasked with retrieving a part of a legendary treasure map that happens to be on the ship of a rival crew, she facilitates her own capture to access the map. However, she’ll have to best the unexpectedly clever and wily first mate, Riden, before she can complete her mission.
