Monster by Walter Dean Myers

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Steve is 16 and on trial as an accomplice to murder.  This is his first person account of the trial and his time in juvenile detention.

This book is amazing.  Steve tells the story in the form of a film script.  We see everything from his perspective as the court case goes on.  It illuminates the feelings that prisoners have and how they interact with each other without preaching to the reader.  I would recommend this to boys especially those who have trouble staying with a story.  The story is fast and the illustrations help to highlight the action and move the story along.

The Boyfriend List by E. Lockhart

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Ruby is seeing a shrink to deal with the panic attacks that she has been having.  (Five in one week is really too many.)  After Ruby starts explaining that she lost her boyfriend and all of her friends and became a social leper her doctor suggests that she make a list of all of her boyfriends, even if she thinks they don’t count.  She uses the list to tell the story.

This book is fantastic!  It really nails the pettiness and randomness of friendships in middle and high school.  It shows how one mistake, even something small, can change your whole world.  The characters are realistic, not over the top, and the situations are believable for the age group. There is no one “mean girl” that ruins the main character’s life.  She makes bad choices, and some other characters make bad choices.  That does not make them “bad people”.  (I would recommend this book to high school age girls that like realistic fiction.)

On the Day I Died by Candace Fleming

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This is a collection of short ghost stories.  A guy is driving home late, and he picks up a strange girl.  He dries her home, the notices she left a pair of shoes in the car.  He goes back to deliver them only to find that the girl has been dead for years.  He then meets a series of ghosts who explain how they all ended up dead.

Short stories are a lot of fun.  These in particular take a variety of classic ghost tales and tell them in new and interesting ways.  I liked the book.

The List by Siobhan Vivian

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It is a tradition at Mount Washington High School for a list of the four prettiest girls and the four ugliest girls to be produced just before Homecoming.  One girl is chosen from each grade.  This book tells the story from the perspective of all eight girls.

I enjoyed reading the book, including the twist ending.  It’s interesting to see how the list affects the girls positively and negatively.  The girls most hurt by the list are not the ones that you would think.  The book is both realistic and eye opening.  It’s more serious and fun then I thought it would be when I picked it up, but I really liked the book.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

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After the death of his grandfather, Jacob, starts seeing odd things and is convinced that he needs to travel to the island where his grandfather grew up in order to reconcile the things his grandfather told him and what everyone else tells him. He finds adventure and a reality that he was not expecting.

It seemed that everyone was reading this book so I resisted for a long time.  A book club that I’m a member of picked this book and I read it.  The book started out strong with an interesting premise and a realistic main character.  As the story went on I found myself predicting what would happen and being disappointed with the way the story was being told.  That said, it is a book for teens so maybe they would not see the ending coming from a mile away.  The pictures are very cool and it’s nice to have an mystery/adventure to give to teen guys. 

Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin

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After Liz is hit by a taxi she wakes up on a giant ship bound for Elsewhere.   She is not alive but she’s not completely dead either.  Death is a part of life, so her life goes on in Elsewhere.  Here she must learn how to complete her journey and find a way to “live” what remains of her life. 

This story is interesting because Elsewhere is like Earth, but also different from Earth.  Everyone who dies goes to Elsewhere and ages backwards until they become babies again and are sent back to earth to be reborn.  The process of aging backwards is really interesting and the story makes some interesting points about life without hitting you over the head with it.  I would recommend this book for teen readers, 8^th grade and up, who are looking for a little something different to read.