Hate List by Jennifer Brown

Hate List by Jennifer Brown

When Valerie’s boyfriend brings a gun into the high school Commons, he kills six people and injures a number of others.  In fact, he shoots Val in the leg as she’s trying to get him to stop his rampage.  Although she had no idea what Nick had planned, the students he targeted were people on the hate list Nick and Valerie wrote together, including all the students who had bullied them, and even people (like their parents) who had simply gotten on their nerves.  Valerie saw it as a way to express her frustration with being called Sister Death by her classmates, and her sadness about her parents’ constant bickering.  It never occurred to her that Nick’s talk of death,  wanting to be like Romeo and Juliet and maybe “leaving it all behind” had even an ounce of seriousness behind it.

Even though Valerie helped bring the shooting to an end, saved one girl by standing in front of her in the process and was injured herself, it seemed like the whole town blamed her for what happened.  Even when the police investigation cleared her, her own parents were still afraid of who she was and what she might do next.

Val’s pain and guilt throughout the book are easy for the readers to feel, making this a compelling read.  Even though it’s a little over 400 pages, I found it difficult to put down and finished it in just a few days.  I highly recommend it to all teen readers who like realistic fiction.  I think fans of Ellen Hopkins and Jay Asher’s Thirteen Reasons Why will devour this book.

Here’s a book trailer you can see from home:

Impulse by Ellen Hopkins

Impulse by Ellen Hopkins

In this gripping novel in verse, Hopkins tells what happens to three suicidal teenagers who meet in a clinic for “troubled youth” in Nevada.  First there’s Conner, who seems to have the perfect life if you don’t look too closely.  He lives in a mansion in an exclusive part of town and is very popular at school. Along with this, however, he has parents with impossibly high expectations who are always comparing him to his “perfect” twin sister Cara.  Then we meet Tony, a street kid who’s been in the juvenile detention system since he was a young child, but readers won’t learn why until much later in the book.  We just find out that he’s gay and been a prostitute on and off just to survive.  Lastly is Vanessa, the beautiful girl with a secret so dark the only way she believes she can relieve her pain is by cutting herself.  These three patients slowly become friends as they find they have more and more in common with each other.  Sharing their pasts is excruciating, but carefully they reveal their darkest mysteries to each other, learning to trust and love in the process.

This book is full of bleak topics: sexual abuse, self-mutilation, drug abuse, parental neglect, mental illness and suicide. Like all of Hopkins’ books, the author has done her research, and presents her characters in a realistic, if depressing fashion.  I found this book engaging, yet sad.  It didn’t really matter that I read it after I read Perfect, as there was only one character in common.  I would highly recommend this to teen readers who like realistic fiction and fans of Hopkins’ other titles.

Click HERE to see the review of the companion novel Perfect.

 

Perfect by Ellen Hopkins

Perfect by Ellen Hopkins

I haven’t read any Ellen Hopkins titles for awhile, and I forgot how emotionally wrenching they can be.  This one was certainly no exception in terms of teenagers trying to make their way in a hostile world.  Like she often does, the writer uses free verse poetry to tell four different yet overlapping stories in alternating chapters .  Cara is coping with the suicide of her twin brother Conner, who finally cracked under their parents’ unreasonable expectations for their perfect off-spring.  For Kendra, being perfect means having the perfect figure and face, even if it requires anorexia and plastic surgery.  Sean want to have the perfect future, which in his mind includes an athletic scholarship to Stanford and Cara as his girlfriend. Andre’s parents are high achievers, a plastic surgeon and an investment banker, and expect him to follow in their footsteps, even though dancing is what makes his heart sing. Here’s how we meet Andre Marcus Kane III:

“Don’t Get Me Wrong

I do understand my parents wanting only

the best for me.

Am one hundred percent tuned to the concept

that life is a hell of a lot more enjoyable

with a fast-flowing

stream of money carrying you along.

I like driving a pricey car, wearing

clothes that feel

like they want to be next to my skin.

I love not having to be a living, breathing

stereotype because

of my color.  Anytime I happen to think

about it, I am grateful to my grandparents

for their vision.  Grateful

to my mom for her smarts, to my dad

for his bald ambition and yes, greed.

Not to mention

his real intuition.  But I’m sick of being

pushed to follow in his footsteps.  Real

estate speculation?

Investment banking?  Neither interests me.

Too much at risk, and when you lose,

you lose major.

I much prefer winning, even if it’s winning

small.  I think more like my grandfather.

Andre Marcus Kane Sr.

Embraced the color of his skin, refused

to let it straightjacket him.  He grew up in

the urban California

nightmare called Oakland, with its rutted

asphalt and crumbling cement and frozen

dreams, all within

sight of sprawling hillside mansions.

I’d look up at those houses, he told

me more than once,

and think to myself, no reason why

that can’t be me, living up there.  No

reason why at all, except

getting sucked into the swamp.”

I loved this book, in fact, it’s one of my favorites from fall 2011.  I think all teens can identify with the issues these four struggle with, even though the characters’ problems are taken to pretty extreme lengths.  I recommend this to all young adult readers, with a  special shout out the the Berkeley High Ellen Hopkins fans!  By the way, this is the companion novel to Hopkins’ earlier title Impulse.

Scars by Cheryl Rainfield

Scars by Cheryl Rainfield

For me, this story of a young teen’s sexual abuse and self-harming (cutting) behavior was mesmerizing.  It’s told in the first person perspective by high school freshman Kendra.  The readers learn in the first few pages that Kendra has been abused, can’t remember who her abuser is, thinks he is currently stalking her, and has a therapist to help her cope with all these related issues.  She remembers phrases from what her abuser said, like, “I will kill you if you tell.”  When she hears these things in her mind, or remembers flashes of his hands grabbing her, the only thing that calms Kendra down is when she cuts her self with a utility knife she hides in her room and begins carrying in her backpack.  Although Kendra keeps the scars on her arm a dark secret, her emotions come out in her artwork, which is strong, violent and emotional.  Although her mother only criticizes her art, their close family friend Sandy supports her and tells her how talented she is.  In fact, he helps her show and sell some of her paintings in a local coffee house when her parents tell her they can no longer afford her therapist Carolyn.  Frighteningly, Kendra is remembering more and more of her abuse, and getting closer to identifying the abuser.  At the same time, this means she’s cutting herself more and more.

This book and the main character captured my heart.  It turns out that the author suffered through a similar situation, and the readers can feel the emotions bleeding through the pages.  I recommend this to readers  who like realistic teen fiction, teens who are drawn to titles about emotional problems,  and fans of A Child Called It and similar books.  If you know anyone suffering from sexual abuse like the main character in this book, here’s a hotline recommended by our Teen Health & Wellness database:

Break the Cycle Organization for Teens
The Safe Space
http://www.thesafespace.org

Here’s a video book trailer you can watch from home:

Jumpstart the World by Catherine Ryan Hyde

Jumpstart the World by Catherine Ryan Hyde

When Ellie’s mom rents the fifteen-year-0ld her own apartment so the mom’s  boyfriend won’t have to deal with a teenager, Ellie realizes that it’s a good thing she enjoys her own company.  It’s not like she had a choice, after all.  One of the few benefits, though, is her new neighbor Frank, who she is developing a crush on, despite his having a live-in girlfriend.  In her mind, he’s so different from the boys she sees at school.  He’s kind, gentle and actually listens to what she thinks.

Soon, however, Ellie discovers that he is different in a way she had never considered before, and she is both surprised and hurt.  As she learns more about Frank and explores her feelings about him, Ellie begins to grow up, and even understand herself and her dysfunctional relationship with her mother better.

I really liked this book.  It deals with a difficult subject in a very senstive way, without imposing stereotypes on its characters.  I also appreciated that it took place in New York City without being cheesy, just allowing the urban setting to play a natural role in the story. Since the book is fairly short (under 200 pp.) it would be great for someone doing a quack book project.  I recommend it to all teens.

Dark Song by Gail Giles

Dark Song by Gail Giles

Fifteen year old Ames is a good girl and diligent student, living in Boulder. Colorado, with her parents and six year old sister. When her father is caught embezzling from clients to make risky investments that failed, the family is left with nothing. Forced to leave her private school when they sell their house, Ames and her family move to Texas where her father’s parents are stingy slumlords. They live in a ramshackle house that was used for crack dealing, cleaning it up in return for living there. The stress and humiliation has turned Ames’ parents short-tempered, and she feels totally abused. When a boy she meets suggests she get revenge on them for ruining her comfortable life, Ames is drawn into his plans. How far will she go? I couldn’t put this book down because I was mesmerized by the way Ames started to change from a good girl to someone who was willing to listen to her negative impulses. If you liked Shattering Glass by the same author, you will love Dark Song!

Review by Mrs. Goldstein-Erickson

I Will Save You by Matt De La Pena

I Will Save You by Matt De La Pena

Although a little different from De La Pena’s previous books (Ball Don’t Lie and Mexican White Boy), readers will  be engaged in this book from the very beginning.  The book opens with three teens at the top  of a 40 foot cliff overlooking Cardiff Beach on the Pacific Ocean.   Then suddenly, one  boy pushes the other off the steep cliff onto the beach below, lighted only by the reflection of the moon.  When Kidd wakes up, he finds himself in what feels like solitary confinement, and tries to piece together what happened that night at the  beach.

Our main character, Kidd has run away from the Horizons mental facility, where he has lived and been counseled since he mother killed herself after shooting her abusive husband.  He’s now living in a tent at a beach campground, helping Mr. Red, a former surf champion, with general care-taking chores around the campground.  Red has sort of adopted him, giving him fatherly advice while taking him under his wing.  At the same time, Kidd has noticed a beautiful girl who’s been at the campground all summer, Olivia.  The blue-eyed blond is the daughter of a rich family, and Kidd is shocked when she actually wants to spend time with him.   Meanwhile, Kidd’s embittered friend from Horizon has somehow found him, and Devon never missed a chance to tell him how much better the kids from Cardiff think they are then them, and how Olivia will dump him before the summer’s over.  It’s only when Devon starts making threatening remarks and gestures about Olivia that Kidd gets really scared.

I loved this remarkable story.  Part of it was the way it was told–some in regular narration, some in flashbacks and some in the form of a journal Kidd writes so he can remember things.  I really felt like I knew this character by the end of the book.  I would recommend this to fans of realistic teen fiction and Matt De La Pena lovers.

Room by Emma Donoghue

Room by Emma Donoghue

Room is the only world five-year-old Jack has ever known.  He lives in the 11 x 11 foot room with his Ma and has never left it. When Jack and Ma watch TV for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening, Ma tells him the things he sees on it aren’t real, they’re just in TV world.  When Jack goes to bed at night, he sleeps in the wardrobe so he won’t be visible when Old Nick comes by at 9 o’clock to visit his Ma.  Although the story is told entirely from Jack’s perspective, the readers realize early on that Jack and Ma are captives and that Ma was kidnapped by Old Nick seven years earlier.  Somehow she has created a daily life for them that feels normal to Jack: eating their three meals, exercising, reading, cleaning, TV time.

But now that he’s five, Ma starts telling Jack about her life before the room, and explaining that most of the things they see on TV really do exist in the Outside.  At first Jack has difficulty imagining life outside the four wall which are all he’s ever known, but eventually Ma devises a risky escape plan that includes Jack as her hero and rescuer.

I really enjoyed this book and it haunted me for days after I read it.  I recommend to all readers who love a mystery and especially those who love realistic, gritty stories.

Dark Song by Gail Giles

Dark Song by Gail Giles

Ames Ford has the life any teenager would envy: rich parents, posh private school, designer clothes and virtually no responsibilities.  When her father is fired as a stockbroker for “borrowing” money from his clients’ accounts, they are forced to give up their mansion, leave Boulder and move to a raunchy rental house in Texas, that looks like it used to be a crack house.  When they arrive to m0ve in, Marc, a friend of a friend, is there to help them clean out the filth and roaches.  Ames finds herself attracted to him, especially because he is a little older and seems like he’s saving the family from their own problems.  Ames feels angry and betrayed by her parents, who give her more and more responsibility for the family, while at the same time treating her with minimal affection or positive attention.  She ripe to be manipulated by someone like Marc, who it turns out is really 22 years old and out of school.  She isn’t even that surprised when she finds out he has a gun “collection” with enough arms to equip a small militia.  Ames is hardly taken aback when her boyfriend suggests they kill her family and head to Mexico.

I love the way Giles keeps readers on the edge of their seats.  I found Ames’ transition from spoiled teen to rebellious brat a little abrupt, but not enough to give up on her.  Until the end, I wasn’t really sure how things would turn out, and was surprised at the conclusion.  I recommend this for mystery fans, readers who like Gail Giles books, and anyone looking for an  engrossing story.

Glimpse

Glimpse by Carol Lynch Williams

Even though Hope and Lizzie were a year apart in age, they had been best friends ever since they could remember. When little sister Hope walks in on Lizzie, fourteen years old, about to shoot herself with a shotgun, her heart  “pounds so much that it hurts.”

“She fingers the

trigger.

Looks up.

My sister.

My sister just looks

up at me.

Touching

the trigger

of that gun.”

Hope can’t understand what could be so terrible that her Lizzie would want to end her life.  She goes back to beginning to start her story, when their father was killed on his motorcycle while out getting medicine. The readers see glimpses of the past, while living in the difficult present time with Hope.  Lizzie is put in a mental hospital for treatment, and Hope must contend with their abusive mother alone, an unscrupulous and exploitative woman who turned to prostitution years ago as means to support her daughters.  The mental hospital’s psychiatrist believes something has happened recently to change Lizzie’s behavior, and the reader learns along with Hope what has happened with Lizzie and how she can “save” her.

I highly recommend this book to fans of realistic teen fiction and  fans of Ellen Hopkins.  You will find it hard to put down once you get started!

Rikers High by Paul Volponi

Rikers High by Paul Volponi

Seventeen-year-old Martin Stokes has spent five  long months waiting behind bars for his trial for a petty crime.  He used to think his New York City neighborhood was tough, until he got to the infamous Rikers Island jail.  Here, he’s found it safest not to even talk to anyone at all, even though the isolation is wearing him down.  As a bleak reminder of where he is, Martin has a long, jagged scar on the right side of his face from when he was cut with a razor for not getting out of the way quickly enough during an inmate fight. At least his injury gets him sent to a different section of the jail where he’s actually sent to classes to earn credit towards his high school diploma.  But will the kindness of some of the teachers be enough to save Martin from the dangers at Rikers and his own need for revenge on the kid who cut him?

This realistic title was written by Paul Volponi, who many readers remember from  Black and White and Rucker Park Setup. As one of the teachers on Rikers Island for five years, Volponi incorporates much of the incidents he witnessed into this fictional account.  Reading the book, I felt like I was there along with Martin, experiencing the prison slang, tension and inmates along with him.

I would recommend this to readers of Urban Drama, Paul Volponi fans and anyone who wants to see what it’s like for a teenager inside a prison.

Fallout by Ellen Hopkins

Fallout by Ellen Hopkins

This third and final novel in Hopkin’s Crank series brings  the meth-addicted Kristina’s story full circle.  It tells the story of her three eldest children as teenagers: Hunter, Summer and Autumn.  Although they all live separate lives, even being raised in different families, these young adults have all been impacted by their mother’s love affair with the Monster (methamphetamine) and the life path it has led her down.  They are all predisposed to addiction, and deal with anger, trust and self-esteem issues with a variety of levels of success.

From Hunter, age 19 and a college freshman at University of Nevada, Reno:

“I’VE GOT A LITTLE PROBLEM

And I’m not really sure

how to fix it.  Not really sure

I need to.  Not really sure I could.

Life is pretty good.  But once

in awhile, uninvited and

uninitiated, anger invades me.

It starts, a tiny gnaw

at te back of my brain.  Like

a  migraine, except without pain.

They say headaches

blossom, but this isn’t so

much a blooming as a bleeding.

Irritation bleeds into

rage, seethes into fury.

An ulcer, emptying hatred

inside me.  And I don’t

know why.  Life is pretty good.

So, what the hell?”

This was a great story, although very sad at times.  Kristina’s three children that are featured have so many obvious and unexpected issues related to their absent mom and various dads.  The two youngest that she was actually raising herself were no better off as she had basically no parenting skills and was more concerned with herself than her kids.  This book made me realize how so much that parents do affects their children in ways that can never be anticipated.  For me, it brought the story back to where it started, when Kristina was a teen having to make hard decisions about drugs, relationships and family.  Now her own children are having to make these same types of choices.

I would recommend this book to fans of Hopkins, fans of realistic fiction, and readers who like stories told in free verse.

Here’s a pretty good book trailer you can see from home:

Smack by Melvin Burgess

Smack by Melvin Burgess

Fourteen-year-old British runaways become heroin addicts in this gripping story.  No one would be surprised to see Tar runs away from his abusive, alcoholic parents, even though he had no idea where to go or how he would take care of himself.  But when Gemma decides to flee from her overly strict parents to join him, it changes everything.  Through a helpful tobacco storeowner, they find an empty building and decide to join some others in “squatting” there.  After they meet the carefree older teenagers Lily and her boyfriend Rob, life becomes one non-stop party, free of responsibilities, full of sex  and drugs and partying.  Slowly, the couple’s occasional heroin use turns into a full blown addiction, pulling them in directions they never imagined possible.

What most readers love about this “impossible to put down” book is that is doesn’t lecture them about the dangers of drug abuse.  It simply grabs you from the first page and plunges you first-hand into a lifestyle you probably wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy.

I would recommend this to all types of readers, especially those who like gritty, realistic stories about teens living on the dangerous edge of society.

Ellen Hopkins Event!!!!

One of Berkeley High’s favorite authors has her latest book coming out this month.  We can even see her, hear her read and chat at one of our local indie bookstores!

Thursday, September 16, 2010 – 7:00pm

A Great Good Place for Books

6120 LaSalle Avenue

Oakland, California 94611

A Great Good Place for Books proudly welcomes Ellen Hopkins as she reads from her new book FALL OUT,  Thursday September 16th at 7:00 pm.  This is the third and final book in the Crank series.  Here’s a description from Goodreads.com:

Hunter, Autumn, and Summer—three of Kristina Snow’s five children—live in different homes, with different guardians and different last names. They share only a predisposition for addiction and a host of troubled feelings toward the mother who barely knows them, a mother who has been riding with the monster, crank, for twenty years.

Hunter is nineteen, angry, getting by in college with a job at a radio station, a girlfriend he loves in the only way he knows how, and the occasional party. He’s struggling to understand why his mother left him, when he unexpectedly meets his rapist father, and things get even more complicated. Autumn lives with her single aunt and alcoholic grandfather. When her aunt gets married, and the only family she’s ever known crumbles, Autumn’s compulsive habits lead her to drink. And the consequences of her decisions suggest that there’s more of Kristina in her than she’d like to believe. Summer doesn’t know about Hunter, Autumn, or their two youngest brothers, Donald and David. To her, family is only abuse at the hands of her father’s girlfriends and a slew of foster parents. Doubt and loneliness overwhelm her, and she, too, teeters on the edge of her mother’s notorious legacy. As each searches for real love and true family, they find themselves pulled toward the one person who links them together—Kristina, Bree, mother, addict. But it is in each other, and in themselves, that they find the trust, the courage, the hope to break the cycle.

Told in three voices and punctuated by news articles chronicling the family’s story, FALLOUT is the stunning conclusion to the trilogy begun by CRANK and GLASS, and a testament to the harsh reality that addiction is never just one person’s problem.

I can’t wait to read this book as I absolutely loved Crank and Glass!  I would recommend this to readers who like realistic fiction and books told in verse.

Dirty Little Secrets

Dirty Little Secrets by C. J. Omololu

This short novel is the fascinating study of a family with a parent who is an uncontrollable hoarder.  Lucy’s home is mortifying, and she never lets anyone in the house.  ”Towering piles of newspapers and magazines.  Bags of junk flooding every inch of open space.  The rotting smell permeating the air.”  But she only has a little over a year until her high school graduation, then she can escape just like her older brother Phil did.  She has finally let one of her classmates past her ironclad emotional barrier she uses to hide behind, and has a best friend by the name of Kaylie, who has no idea about Lucy’s secret.  There’s even a boy, Josh, who she’s been crushing on forever who actually seems interested in her and invites her to a party where his band will be playing.

Imagine Lucy’s shock when she comes home to get clean clothes for the party, and finds her mother dead under a pile of old National Geographic magazines in the hallway.  She knows that if she calls 911 or the police, the news of their “filth and squalor” will be all over the TV and newspapers.  The book details Lucy’s thought processes and actions and she comes to terms with what to do about her mother and her life.  The end is a surprising twist, but a little unrealistic to me.

I think many of our students will love this book–the same readers who love the Dave Pelzer books (Lost Boy, etc.) and books like Push and Go Ask Alice , that show the gritty and depressing underbelly of life.  Omololu tells the story in hour-by-hour detail, with each chapter telling the time.  I suspect most readers will be unable to put this book down, and may finish it in on e sitting.  Omololu is a very talented local writer, and I can’t wait to see what she writes next.

Other titles you might like: (click on cover for review)

Stolen

Stolen by Lucy Christopher

While this intriguing debut novel certainly kept me turning the pages, I also found it creepy and somewhat disturbing.  It is told from the first person perspective, as a letter written from sixteen-year-old Gemma to her kidnapper Ty.  He has drugged and abducted her from the Bangkok airport, where she was traveling with her parents on vacation, and takes her to a house he has built in the isolated Australian Outback.  There she discovers that the man in his mid-twenties has been stalking her for six years, and  says he loves her and would never hurt her.  Ty is determined to open her eyes to the beauty and mystery of the Outback.  If only she will cooperate with him, she will want to stay, he is convinced.

But Gemma is stronger than he realized, and fights back, eventually escaping and almost dying in the desert.  As he rescues her, she begins to see a new side of him that might counter the obsessive young man she thinks he is.

This was a difficult book more me to like, although I found it hard to put down.  Ty is portrayed fairly sympathetically, and Gemma’s eventual affection for me felt wrong.  Her psychologist talks about the Stockholm Syndrome, where captives eventually come to identify with their captors, but she doesn’t see herself as having this.  She continues to see Ty as misunderstood.  At the end, the question is whether or not she will testify against him in court to put him in prison.

Split

Split by Swati Avasthi

In this well-written first novel, the reader becomes immersed in the story of sixteen-year-old Jace Witherspoon, who arrives at his big brother’s apartment with a split lip, a beat-up face, and a pocket full of change. This is a story about what happens after a young person escapes a home rampant with domestic violence. Jace and Christian’s judge father has been beating on their mother for as long as they can remember. With the help of some friend’s parents, Christian ran away a number of years back, and is now in medical school in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Not once did he contact Jace to find out if his younger brother was OK. Of course, he wasn’t; he began intervening between his mom and dad the same way Christian had and had the scars to prove it. When he snapped one day and actually started hitting his father, he was exiled from the home, with only his camera and some money his mother had hidden from her abusive husband.

Jace tries to start a new life with his brother, but their mutual silence about the past cannot be overcome, even with Christian’s girlfriend threatens to leave him. And something terrible happened between Jace and his ex Lauren, something he can hardly think about… How can he even consider dating a new girl named Dakota, even though she’s smart and funny, and just as much a book-nerd as he is?

I adored this book and read it in two days, not being able to hardly put it down. I recommend to all readers and this guys who usually don’t like reading would especially like it.

Click HERE for a short excerpt from Chapter 1.

Watch the book trailer for this book from home:

Cracked Up to Be

Cracked Up to Be by Courtney Summers

First off, I have to admit that I almost abandoned this novel at around page 40.  The main character, Parker Hadley, was just so mean, obnoxious and unlikable, that I had a hard time getting involved in the plot.  She used to be the perfect student, all A’s, head cheerleader, hot boyfriend, and the most popular girl in school.  Then something terrible happened about a year ago that changed everything.  The reader learns about the incident in bits and pieces as different sounds and events trigger Parker to relive it over and over again.  Not until the end of the book to we discover what happened that has turned Parker, who never used to drink at all, into a binge drinker who is the original Mean Girl to everyone at her private Catholic school.

When I finally began to see the tremendous pain Parker was in, I became involved with her story.  It became a mystery that had me constantly trying to figure out what could have happened to change her so drastically.  In addition to all this, there’s a slight romance with the new kid, named Jake, who can’t help being intrigued by her, despite all her attempts to push him away.

This book would be a great choice for readers who like high school drama, realistic fiction and mysteries.

Love You, Hate You, Miss You

Love You Hate You Miss You by Elizabeth Scott

This short book is the emotional story of how Amy copes with her best friend Julia’s  dying in a car crash.  Did I mention that Amy was in the car with her? Or that Amy was the one who encouraged her drugged friend to leave the party and drive home?  The story is told mostly through Amy’s journal entries, all actually letters to Julia telling her about her life now that she feels completely isolated and alone.  Although Amy has stopped her binge drinking, she misses the numbness is gave her when she feels too tall, or too awkward, or too stupid.  And now her parents, who used to be so “in love” with each other that they virtually ignored her,  are trying to actually act interested in what Amy does, and how she’s doing.  Give me a break, she thinks silently.

This is one of the few books I’ve given 5/5 stars to lately.  What made it so special for me was that the emotions rang true, and the author didn’t try too hard to tie up the story into a pretty package at the end.  I highly recommend this book to all teens.

Bait

Bait by Alex Sanchez

Fans of Alex Sanchez’s books (Rainbow High series and others) will not be disappointed with his newest title.  Imagine that you have an out of control temper that is about to land you in Juvie, and that no matter what you do, certain comments just make you see red and you can’t control your fists.  This is what Diego MacMann is going through and nothing seems to help.  He has good grades and should have a bright future, but he is so miserable, he even hurts himself to try to dull the pain.  He carries a terrible secret so deep within himself, that he’s put himself in a prison according to his Probation Officer, Mr. Vidas.  But surprisingly, the two bond, and the reasons for Diego’s self-hatred slowly come to light.

I loved this book!  What I especially appreciated about it was that it didn’t focus so much on the issues from Diego’s past, but his journey towards making sense of his past and healing himself so he could live a whole life.  I would especially recommend this for fans of David Pelzer’s A Child Called It and Margaret Peterson Haddix’s  Don’t You Dare Read This, Mrs. Dunphrey.