In Honor – Jessi Kirby

Honor didn’t think anything worse than her parents’ death in a car crash could happen to her – but then her only brother, Finn, went and enlisted with the Army and got himself blown up in Iraq.

After the death of their parents at a young age, Honor and Finn grew up close in Texas under the care of an aunt. Just a couple of years older than Honor, Finn immediately took on the role not only of big brother but of protector and did all he could to help care for Honor as they grew up. When Finn dropped plans to attend college and enlisted for the Army upon high school graduation instead, no one saw it coming – not Honor, not their Aunt Gina, not even Finn’s best friend, Rusty. Each are furious with him in their own ways for leaving them to go join up and fight in a foreign land, but that anger turns to devastation when they receive word he’s been blown up by an enemy device.

As the book opens, Honor and her Aunt Gina’s pain and loss is palpable. At times, Honor feels like she can’t breathe just thinking about happy-go-lucky, smiling Finn boxed up in a coffin draped with an American flag. The funeral offers no comfort or catharsis as she watches all these military types going through their militaristic funeral motions – they knew him only as a fallen comrade, not the boy she considered both a brother and best friend. When she gets home from the funeral, Honor is stunned and sickened to see a letter waiting for her on the kitchen table with her address written in an all-too-familiar handwriting – that of her brother, Finn.  When Honor finally has the strength to open it, she finds two tickets inside to a Kyra Kelly concert and a note from her brother teasing her to tell Kyra Kelly she’s sorry her brother can’t make it to her show but he’s really good-looking and she’d like him. Finn knew Kyra was Honor’s favorite singer and the tickets are for a show in California the week before Honor is set to begin college – his gift to her before she starts the next stage of her life.

Honor quickly decides she’s going to honor her brother with a final gift – she’s going to take his beloved Chevy Impala sitting in the garage and road trip to California so she can tell Kyra Kelly to her face what a wonderful brother she had. She leads her Aunt Gina to believe she’s going up to her college early for orientation and loads up the car ready to head out when she’s stopped by the last person she wants to deal with in all this – Rusty. Rusty was Finn’s best friend up until the time Finn announced he would be leaving to serve his country, then the two had a big falling out that they never mended. All Honor has heard of Rusty since were rumors that he was drinking his way through college. When Honor admits where and why she’s taking Finn’s treasured Impala, Rusty insists on joining her. Honor resists at first but then agrees an extra driver for the trip – one who could help fix the old car should it have issues – would help, and the two set off.

Like any good road trip novel, Honor and Rusty meet interesting characters along their ride from Texas through Arizona and New Mexico to California, including a psychic who informs Honor she will indeed meet Kyra Kelly and fulfill a special destiny for her brother. Things are tense between Honor and Rusty during the first part of their journey, but as you can probably guess, as the two start to talk and share mutual stories of their shared love for Finn, the ice begins to melt and they learn a lot about each other and what drove Finn to do a 360 and leave home to go and fight. When their romance starts to blossom, it’s both sweet and natural.

Teens gravitate towards books about love and loss, and this one does a nice job of capturing both the pain that comes with losing someone you love but then finding the good in life to eventually pick yourself up and keep going. Put this in the hands of Sara Dessen fans. You can learn more about Jessi Kirby and her books at http://www.jessikirby.com/ .

The Raven Boys (Raven Cycle One)  – Maggie Stiefvater

Can you imagine anything suckier than being told if you kiss your true love, he will die? Such is the supposed fate of sixteen-year-old Blue Sargant. Blue is born into a clairvoyant family, and for nearly as long as she can remember in reading after reading, this is her destiny – to kill her true love. Obviously, with this heavy anvil hanging over her head, Blue doesn’t date much...like at all. Since she’s not busy dating, Blue has lots of time to assist with the family business. Blue herself doesn’t have the ability to see into the future, but she does have a special energy that helps heighten future visions seen by her mom and extended family of aunts and cousins, who all do readings out of their shared home on 300 Fox Way in Henrietta, Virginia.

On St. Mark’s Eve, Blue’s asked to join her mother’s half-sister, Neeve, in the naming of the dead, an annual occasion in April where psychics witness a ghostly parade of local people who will be dying over the course of the next year. Cheery! Feeding off Blue’s energy, Neeve plans to ask the names of the ghosts as they’re passing by while Blue jots their names down. Blue’s done this depressing job before, so no biggie, except this year goes a little differently than ever before – for the first time, Blue actually sees one of the ghosts…a boy her age who identifies himself only as ‘Gansey.’ Blue can’t resist following him to see if she can communicate further with him, but all she gets is, “Gansey. That’s all there is.” Ugh, don’t you hate when you’re trying to pump a guy for info…and you get NOTHING! His clothes alert her to one other thing, though – he’s an Aglionby boy. Aglionby boys are the moneyed boys who attend Aglionby Academy, a ritzy prep school in town. With the raven as its mascot, the locals refer to them as Raven Boys. Since the Raven Boys are known for bratty, entitled behavior, Blue and the other townspeople aren’t their biggest fans.

After her ghostly close encounter, though, Blue becomes slightly obsessed with finding this Raven Boy named Gansey; meanwhile, the reader learns Gansey has an obsession of his own. Richard “Dick” Gansey isn’t just an Aglionby boy – he’s one of the richest of the Aglionby boys. He lives with two of his close friends off-campus in a loft located in an old manufacturing building; there, he’s crafted a miniature model of the entire town of Henrietta and amassed books and notes detailing his life’s obsession – following the ley line (an energy field) that runs through the town of Henrietta to locate a long-buried but still very powerful Welsh king, Glendower. Legend has it the person who discovers the burial site of Glendower and helps wake him from death will be granted a wish of his/her choosing. Gansey recruits his two roommates and another Aglionby friend to assist in his quest: Ronan, the hulking, short-tempered and menacing roommate; Noah, the quiet, weird roommate; and Adam, a poor boy from a trailer park attending Aglionby on scholarship and too prideful to accept any monetary assistance from his wealthy classmates. As different as these Raven boys are, they share a loyalty to Gansey and determination to find Glendower.

After a chance meeting between the boys and Blue at a café, Adam takes a liking to Blue who in turn ignores her mother’s warnings and becomes friends with all the boys. She can’t help herself! It’s not so much that she likes Adam – which she definitely does, only there’s that whole kiss-of-death thing - but it’s their quest to find Glendower, and Gansey’s involvement in particular, that draws her to the Raven Boys. Her ability to affect supernatural energies might help them, and in finding Glendower, she might help Gansey avoid his fate.

After I finished reading The Raven Boys, my one criticism was going to be that while Stiefvater took such great pains to set up the story (Blue’s interactions with her clairvoyant family, how the Raven boys came to be friends, the mystery behind Glendower, the great search for the burial site), the ending seemed too abrupt, and I was left with lots of unanswered questions. Since I read a galley, I missed the whole Raven Cycle One part, so when I saw on Stiefvater’s website that this is book one of a four-part series, I did a Homer Simpson “D’oh!” Okay, I’m cool with the ending now. ;-) Like her recent book, The Scorpio Races, The Raven Boys is an ambitious Y.A. novel. It’s got everything - fantasy, romance, bromance, supernatural beings, a murder mystery, humor – but also like The Scorpio Races, it takes some time to get into the story. Readers who stick with it, though, will be rewarded with some powerful storytelling.

The Raven Boys (Raven Cycle One) is set for release on September 18. To learn more about Stiefvater, The Raven Boys, and her other fab-o works, visit her website at http://maggiestiefvater.com/ .

Unbreak My Heart – Melissa Walker

Every girl should know Rule #1 of the Girl Code: Don’t EVER date your best friend’s crush, boyfriend or ex-boyfriend. Ever. Under any circumstances. These things never end well, and really, who should be more important in your life – your bestie or your lustie? Exactly.

Unfortunately, Unbreak My Heart’s Clementine skipped that page in the Girl Code Rule Book…or tore it out. Y’see, when the book opens, we find Clem in exile on a boat with her family for the summer. Her parents love sailing, especially taking six weeks off in the summer to do a circuit up the eastern coast. After the disastrous past few months of her life, Clem begrudgingly agrees to go with her parents and younger sister, Olive, on the trip to escape the mess she’s made of her life at home. It’s not like she has any friends left there anyway…

Friendship rewind. Amanda is Clem’s girl soulmate. They’ve been friends for forever, each family’s adopted daughter, and neither can imagine ever doing anything to hurt the other one’s feelings in any way…that is, until Amanda starts dating Ethan their sophomore year of high school. Like a good friend, Clem is genuinely happy that her BFF has found such a cool guy to have for a boyfriend, but as Clem and Ethan start to spend more time together through her friendship with Amanda, they also become drawn to each other. Clem and Ethan discover they share the same tastes in indie movies and music, and Clem even goes so far as to make a mix CD for Ethan. Girrrs, you know a mix CD is just a ‘Press Play’ away from a hookup. When Amanda discovers the unlabeled CD and quizzes Clem as to who the lucky guy is, Clem lies and realizes she’s driving down a dangerous road. Destination? Cheatersville. But does she stop and turn that car around? Oh no.

Over the course of her travels at sea, we get to know Clem and the story behind her break-up with her best friend. Walker does an excellent job, without being preachy, of exploring the fracturing of a friendship between two girls when one convinces herself it’s okay to go for her own happiness over that of her friend’s…because isn’t that how these things get started? What’s more, no one is harder on Clem in the aftermath of the break-up of the friendship than Clem herself. Losing her best friend is like a death to her. As hard as her family tries, they can’t seem to cheer her. Even the cute redhead she meets at sea named James, who’s doing the same sailing route but with his dad, does his best to charm her with Mitch Hedburg jokes and Elliott Smith songs, but seemingly to no avail until Clem can learn to forgive herself and seek forgiveness from her friend.

This kind of drama goes on ALL THE TIME with girls, which is what makes it such an awesome read – especially for girls who have been hurt by their supposed best friends OR girls who were the ones who did the hurting. In addition to five other Y.A. books, Walker has written articles for both Seventeen and ELLEgirl magazines, so chick knows her girl dramaz. To learn more about Walker and her other books, visit http://www.melissacwalker.com/ .

The Selection – Kiera Cass

I’m one of those female freaks of nature who has never watched an episode of “The Bachelor” or “The Bachelorette.” I know!!  It’s not like I’ve got a problem with silly reality tv shows – I’ve watched all *cough* 18 cycles of “America’s Next Top Model” and my “Real Housewives ” addiction is so bad I even watched the *clears throat * Miami season -  but “The Bachelor/Bachelorette? Just. Never. Wanted.

So how did Kiera Cass’s new futuristic book, The Selection, about 35 girls selected to compete for the love of a prince jump onto my ‘to read’ radar?  That dress. That gorgeous powder blue chiffon dress on the cover spoke to me. It even spoke to my three year old, who saw me reading the book and said, “Wow, Mommy, that sure is a pretty dress.” Well done on the cover art marketing, HarperTeen.

Also, the librarian in me knows that even without the gorgeous dress on the cover, even without having ever watched an episode of “The Bachelor/Bachelorette,” c’mon…that plot is an easy sell to teens. But do the cover and premise live up to the promise?

The Selection is set 300 years into the future when Asia, specifically China, dominates the world and the United States of America is no more. It fell to China in World War III, was renamed American State of China, and then rose back to power after a war with Russia, when the country rechristened itself Illea with a monarchy as the government. Illean society is now divided into 8 castes – Ones being the royal family, Twos your wealthy, on down all the way to Eights, society’s homeless. The lowest of the low and the ones with the absolute least. So that bit of history and Hunger Games-ish society division in the book made me chuckle a bit, but I happily went with it…

Turns out the current king and queen’s only son, Prince Maxon, is now nineteen and ready to take a girl as his wife.  For Illean royalty, the prince chooses that special girl through a process known as “The Selection.” Thirty-five girls between the ages of 16 and 20 are randomly chosen to leave their families and castes for the opportunity to live at the castle with their competitors and vie to win the heart and hand of the prince. For as long as it takes the prince to make his decision, the girls are groomed and dressed only in the finest of clothes, eat with the royal family and go on one-on-one dates with the prince, and participate in press interviews with the nation’s Capitol Report tv show. One’s likeability with the citizens of Illea following the drama at home can impact her length of stay in the competition. Being chosen as one of the thirty-five girls comes with other benefits too. Their families are given extra money and food, which is huge if you rest on one of the low rungs of the caste-ladder.

America Singer is a Five. When she receives a letter in the mail about the Selection process, she expresses no interest in batting her lashes at a prince and playing fake to become his wife, even if it would help her family and own social standing. Thing is, she’s already in love with someone – a Six named Aspen. (Maxon? America? Aspen? Lawd, these names!!). Aspen loves America too, but no one is ever supposed to marry a caste beneath them. America believes love conquers all, and though she’s willing to disgrace her family to be with Aspen, he gets cold feet and breaks up with her riiiiiiiight when she learns she’s been chosen as one of the final thirty-five girls. Hurt, America decides to help her family and relents to go to the capitol to compete.

Of course, things get really good when America arrives at the castle. She quickly makes friends and enemies of the other girls, while a late night accidental run-in with the prince unwittingly turns her plans to simply last as long as she can on end. She makes clear to Maxon that she is still very much in love with someone else and is only there to help her family, but amazingly he admires her for her honesty and the two strike a friendship. As more and more girls are eliminated and Maxon and America grow closer, will America be able to let go of her feelings for Aspen and open her heart to the possibility of a future as Maxon’s wife? In true soap opera fashion, the book ends unresolved, and the Selection will continue into a book 2 and 3.

The Selection is a totally fun read.  Anyone who loved Meg Cabot’s Princess Diaries series or who’s a fan of fairytales will eat this like candy. Cass wisely writes the character of America as a girl with a brain who doesn’t give all the power to the guy, and both Maxon and Aspen are drawn to her because of her thoughtfulness and outspokenness.  

The CW has already snatched up rights to the book as a new tv series set possibly for next spring with Aimee Teegarden (Julie Taylor from ‘Friday Night Lights’, yay!) as the lead. You can read more about the show and Kiera Cass at http://www.kieracass.com/ . Also, Kiera Cass will be one of the authors appearing at this year's YallFest ( http://yallfest.org/ ) in Charleston, South Carolina, which I'm planning to attend along with some of my students. Yay!