Foul is Fair: The Fair Folk Chronicles, Book One, by Jeffrey Cook & Katherine Perkins. 2015
‘Foul is Fair’ has some of the common tropes of young adult fantasy: the teenager who finds that she is not completely human, but a fairy princess; being thrown suddenly into another world full of dangers; the main conflict revolves around the Sidhe, Irish ( Read more... )

The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender, by Leslye Walton. Candlewick Press, 2014Ava Lavender’s family had a history of heartbreaking love. Men who ran away, men who died, a father who married another and left her mother pregnant, an aunt who turned into a bird; it’s just not a cheerful family. To add to it, the dead haunt the living. So ( Read more... )

The Gracekeepers, by Kirsty Logan. Crown Publishers, 2015
Callanish is a Gracekeeper; she lives alone on a tiny, remote, island and gives water burial to the dead brought to her. North lives on a circus boat with her trained bear; she performs with the bear when the circus docks at a large island, at the shore line. Boat living people- damplings- ( Read more... )

Wither, by J.G. Passarella. Pocket Books, 1999 Windale, MA, is a quiet little college town in New England- most of the time. Three hundred years before, three witches had been hung. That, Danfield College, and the annual King Frost parade on Halloween night, are its claims to fame. Then odd things start happening; college freshman and white witch ( Read more... )

Marina, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Edebe, 1999; US translation Little, Brown & Co 2014 I fell in love with Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s writing when I read ‘The Shadow of the Wind” a few years ago, but I was not aware that he wrote young adult novels, too. This, the first book he wrote back in 1999 but just last year translated into English, is just as wonderful ( Read more... )

Wise Child, by Monica Furlong. Random House, 1987 “Wise Child” is the first in a young adult trilogy set in ancient Scotland. The Wise Child of the title does not bear that nickname out of respect at first; it’s a sarcastic term for a child who thinks they know more than others. She’s spoiled and lazy. In the care of her grandmother because her ( Read more... )

The Moon Sisters, by Therese Walsh. Crown 2014 When Beth Moon dies- possibly by suicide- her family falls apart. Her husband stops going to work takes to drinking from dawn to dusk. Olivia, the younger daughter, stares at the sun until she does permanent damage to her retinas, leaving her legally blind. Jazz, the older daughter, pushes on, getting ( Read more... )

Shadowplay, by Laura Lam. Strange Chemistry, 2014 ‘Shadowplay’ returns us to the world of Ellada that the author created in ‘Pantomime’. Micah Grey and Drystan, having escaped from the circus after the multiple deaths, need to hide out. Drystan takes them to the home (and former theater) of master magician Jasper Mask, who has been retired for ( Read more... )

Love & Haight, by Susan Carlton. Henry Holt & Company, 2012 Chloe is seventeen and pregnant- even though she used protection the one and only time she had sex. It’s 1971 and Roe v Wade is still two years in the future, and abortion is only legal in California and New York. Chloe lives in Arizona. Lucky for her, she has an aunt who lives in San ( Read more... )

Pantomime, by Laura Lam. Strange Chemistry, 2013 Iphigenia Laurus (who prefers to be called Gene) is the daughter of one of the noble houses on Ellada. She is being taught the usual pursuits of a noble lady- embroidery and the like- which bore her to tears. She prefers reading, or the company of her older brother, Cyril, and running through the ( Read more... )