Wild and Crooked, by Leah Thomas. Bloomsbury, 2019When Kalyn’s grandmother has a stroke, she and her unstable mother must move back to the small town Kalyn was born in. Due to circumstances, Kalyn enrolls into high school under an assumed name, Rose. Her last name, Spence, is dirt in this town; her teenaged father killed another teen, the high ( Read more... )

The Haunted, by Danielle Vega. Razorbill, 2019Teen-aged Hendricks Becker-O’Malley and her family move to a small town so that Hendricks can start over after a traumatic event with her ex-boyfriend. The run down house they choose to redo is the Steele House, where some horrible deaths occurred years before- deaths that were not exactly on the ( Read more... )

The Golden Tresses of the Dead: A Flavia de Luce Novel, by Alan Bradley. Delacorte Press, 2019
Flavia de Luce is the 12 year old heroine of a series of mysteries; this is the tenth installment. At this point, she is an orphan, with one sister marrying and one sister ensconced in the library. Her father figure is Dogger, her late father’s aide (and ( Read more... )

The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall, by Katie Alender. Point, 2015
Recipe for a Young Adult horror novel: Abandoned mental hospital for troubled girls: check. Dark power that has issues with being left behind: check. Teenaged narrator who is a troubled girl, with her parents not trusting her: check. Ghosts: check. Narrator who is killed in the first ( Read more... )

The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko, by Scott Stambach. St. Martin’s Press, 2016
Seventeen year old Ivan is cynical, closed off, and a bit of an asshole. He has good reason to be; he’s spent his entire life in the Mazyr Hospital for Gravely Ill Children. He’s a Chernobyl baby, born with no legs and only a left arm, with a hand with two fingers and ( Read more... )

Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew’d: A Flavia de Luce Novel, by Alan Bradley. Delacorte Press, 2016 When I ordered this book, I somehow managed to miss something in the description. Mainly that the protagonist, Flavia de Luce, was a tween girl. I also thought it was set during the Victorian era for some reason, when it’s actually in the 1950s. While ( Read more... )

Library of Souls, by Ransom Riggs. Quirk Books, 2015 I LOVED the first two books in the Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children trilogy, so after finishing the second one I got Library of Souls from the library as soon as I could, expecting the excitement to carry on ( Read more... )

Hollow City: The Second Novel of Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs. Quirk Books, 2014
“Hollow City” picks up with Jacob Portman and the rest of the peculiar children where “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” left off, with the children escaping a submarine full of wights in the ocean, trying to get back to shore and to ( Read more... )

The Rest of Us Just Live Here, by Patrick Ness. HarperTeen, 2015 Think of an episode of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ taking place, with creatures blowing up the high school, people being killed, and strange things happening. Now think about the people who are living with these events, but aren’t part of the Scooby Gang, people who aren’t in on the ( Read more... )

Queen’s Own Fool, by Jane Yolen & Robert J. Harris. Speak, 2000 “Queen’s Own Fool” is Nicola, who is given the nickname ‘La Jardiniere’. La Jardinaiere was real, although we know almost nothing about her. Yolan and Harris have used her as a lens to view the life of Mary Stuart, the Queen of France and of Scotland ( Read more... )