Books shelved under “Young Adult”

Not sure how I discovered Scarlett Epstein Hates it Here (I swear I’d seen it discussed before I plucked it off my library’s shelves). The fanfic motif really works for me; I was looking for something to recapture the same goodness of Fangirl. Still, I have to admit I didn’t have high expectations—I’m not sure if it was the title, or the cover art, or whatever, but little about the book jumped out at…

The Animorphs series is many things over its 54+ book run. At times it is moving, heart-wrenching in its portrayal of the cost of war. At times it is humorous, heart-warming in its depictions of compassion in the face of hatred and misunderstanding.

At times it reaches into very dark places and confronts us with images that sear themselves into your soul.

I’m not trying to be dramatic. Well, maybe a little. But #30: The…

I don’t much like economics. I like Cory Doctorow’s metaphor here in For the Win of the economy like a train: most people have no idea where it’s going, or whether the driver is even still alive; while economists speculate on all of this, some people pay attention to them while others just ignore them entirely and watch the scenery go by.

I don’t much like economics, but I guess I should admit that the…

It’s another Megamorphs, and more time travel! This time it’s not the Ellimist who sends them back but Crayak, of all entities, via the Drode, because a Yeerk got its hands on the Time Matrix, and ain’t nobody wants that. Of course, Crayak has a “price” to enlisting the Animorphs: one of them must die!

This book is dark in a way few of the previous Animorphs books have been. And its darkness…

Much of my young adult reading this year has been on the … intense … side. Lots of stories about what teenagers, and particularly young girls, go through. So it was with some relief that I discovered Flannery. I don’t want to give the impression that this is a fluffy book devoid of important themes. Our eponymous protagonist has to deal with an immature mother whose impulsive spending means they might not make rent.…

A sequel to #19: The Departure, The Sickness moves forward the Yeerk peace movement subplot. And I don’t know how you can possibly hate on Cassie after reading this book, because she literally saves the day single-handedly. She is boss mode.

I mean, if Cassie had been any more successful, she would be a Mary Sue. Not only does she infiltrate the Yeerk Pool, without any backup, by hosting a sympathetic Yeerk, rescue…

So many feelings, not sure how to put it into words. Mistwood started off like its title: hazy but somewhat enervating in all its potential; as it condensed, the story and plot started narrowing until it almost missed the mark. Even a few days later, I’m not sure whether I think this is a good book or not. I guess the truth is that I liked so many parts of this book, but in other…

I am ambivalent about this one. On the one hand, Ax! Being delightfully too human! Soaps! On the other hand … everything else.

The plot of #28: The Experiment is a mess. It’s backwards, in fact, with the big reveal delayed and stuck at the end as some kind of huge twist when it should have been up front. What we’re left with is a couple of attempts by the Animorphs to infiltrate a meat-packing…

I can’t believe we’re into April already and on to the fourth Banging Book Club read! I was very excited when I saw that All the Rage, by Courtney Summers, made it onto the reading list (thanks, Leena!). Courtney Summers is the bee’s knees. Cracked Up to Be one of my best books read in 2015.

All the Rage is a quick read, thanks to Summers’ skillful prose, but it is also a…

For a while I did not like this book. In fact, I was downright worried: was I really going to pan a Terry Pratchett book? Inconceivable! So I let out a sharp breath of relief when everything suddenly clicked and fell into place. Nation is a fun yet sensitive tale, full of Pratchett’s signature wit. I mean, how can you not enjoy exchanges like this?

“The thing about the trousermen is, they are very brave

…

Louise O’Neill is scary good at writing amazing but depressing books. I thought her second novel, Asking For It, was powerful, but her debut, Only Ever Yours, is arguably even darker. I’m happy I picked it up, but not happy having read it—this is about as far from a feel-good book as one gets.

I want to put some trigger warnings on this book and review but am not sure where to draw…

The Chee are back, sort of, but they’ve got problems on the Animorphs can fix. It involves a deep dive, acquiring two new morphs, and weighing the consequences of the sides you pick. The Exposed has its moments, but after the explosiveness of The Attack, its more goofy drama feels incongruous.

Rachel is an excellent narrator for this story. She is good at taking weird in stride: when Erek shows up at the mall…

The Animorphs save everyone with the Power of Love™, and it would be disgusting if they didn’t need this win so very much.

The Attack is notoriously the last Animorphs book written exclusively by K.A. Applegate for a very long stretch. As such it is regarded (accurately) as an island of quality among otherwise mediocre, or at least uneven, books. Indeed, this is a great book—not quite five stars, because it didn’t really move me…

I got asked a lot about why I was teaching Lullabies for Little Criminals because it is such a dreary book. Why teach something that is so raw, so traumatic? Why can’t I find something more uplifting? And hey, I’m not saying I’ll never teach a fun or funny book. But I like YA that is raw, because that’s real. Growing up is hard. This is an idea we might pay lip-service to as adults,…

Trigger warnings for discussions of suicide and Faustian bargains with eldritch beings.

Mean Girls is one of my favourite movies of all time. It was the first movie I ever purchased for myself on DVD. (If you are reading this in the future, kids, DVDs were the optical media of choice for storing video, back before Netflix just decided to store everything directly in your brain.) It’s a scathing, fun, moving look at the harmful…

I could see Making Pretty making it as your standard rom-com fare. (You might have to age-up the characters, but not by much). Corey Ann Haydu creates a good setup here. At first the book promises to be about two sisters drifting apart as one goes off to college and the other finishes high school. Once united in an us-against-the-world kind of bond forged by their mother’s departure and their dad’s subsequent string of wives,…

I love it when a book manages to surprise me! I picked this up from the library at a whim, no real expectations, but not overly optimistic from the vague description and some of the reviews I read here on Goodreads. Ash & Bramble gets likened to a Cinderella retelling, but that’s a bit like saying Hansel and Gretel: Witchhunters was a retelling of Hansel and Gretel—in that it is entirely inaccurate. Sarah Prineas…

Ugh, so many feelings. I’ve consciously been trying to write shorter reviews, but this is not going to be one of those. It will be spoilerific and angry—also, trigger warnings for rape and suicide. If you’re down for all that, buckle up—otherwise, I have literally more than a thousand other reviews you could read right now. Here’s one of the aptly-titled Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, which is funny and uplifting. Asking for It…

Look, I know the writing is clunky and the kids read more like twelve-year-olds than the fifteen-year-olds they’re supposed to be. I know the story jerks about in stops and starts. I know Nicholas Flamel is a terrible role model and these kids should not be emulating him.

But. But.

I still really enjoyed The Alchemyst. And this is one of those times I’m glad I tend to wait a day or two before…

And so we’ve reached the ghostwriter era, with The Extreme delivering a fairly dull adventure to an exciting place: the Arctic.

There’s not actually much wrong with this book. The trouble is that it comes on the heels of a particularly strong moment in the series—the David trilogy and The Hork-Bajir Chronicles—and most stories would look boring in comparison. Unfortunately for a story called The Extreme, Marco and the other Animorphs don’t get…