(2) YA As Dino started falling for his first boyfriend, Rafi (who is trans), he became ex–best friends with July. After July unexpectedly dies of a brain aneurysm, Dino gets a shock in his family's mortuary: July's corpse inexplicably comes back to life. Dino and July are complex characters; their easy banter is witty, philosophical, and engaging as Hutchinson's story blends speculative fiction, existential dread, morbid fascination with death, and surrealism.

Reviewer: Jonathan Hunt | Horn Book Magazine Issue: March, 2019

(3) YA In this anthology, authors reflect on their challenges involving mental health--usually their own, sometimes that of people close to them. This candid look at a range of mental health issues also offers some discussion of individuals' management. The inclusion of multiple authors with similar conditions (particularly anxiety) underscores their varying effects. Websites.

Reviewer: Shoshana Flax

(3) YA Twenty-one female YA authors offer personal essays about moments and life experiences that shaped their feminist worldview. The timely topics covered include the intersection of race and gender, sexual assault and rape, issues around weight and body image, and the experience of growing up a girl in an immigrant family. Engaging, emotional, and perfectly attuned to today's young women, this feminist collection promises to make an impact. Websites.

Reviewer: Kristy Pasquariello

(3) YA Anxiety-sufferer Stefanie Brons hates the diagnosis "selective mutism": it makes others think she has control over her inability to speak. (Her narrative voice, however, is wonderfully sardonic and plainspoken.) When Steffi befriends cute new boy Rhys, who's deaf, and communicates with him through sign language, she sees herself anew. Thunder is the rare, authentic novel that dives into the day-to-day of debilitating anxiety.

Reviewer: Robyn Bahr

(3) YA When astronomy-loving seventeen-year-old Zorie Everhart joins a "glamping" trip in Northern California, she gets stranded in the wilderness with her former best friend/crush Lennon Mackenzie. Luckily, he has survival skills, and over challenging terrain and under meteor showers, Zorie and Lennon rekindle their relationship and divulge family secrets. Romance and survival are entwined with issues of divorce and betrayal in this appealing realistic novel.

Reviewer: Carolyn Shute

(3) YA Bowman here mines similar material as in her debut Starfish, with its focus on distant mothers and making art in the face of pain. Musician Rumi contends with the sudden death of her sister/songwriting partner, Lea, as well as her mother's abandonment after Rumi is sent away to live with an aunt in Hawaii. Though it's slow to take hold, this story of loss and catharsis is ultimately emotionally satisfying.

Reviewer: Rebecca Kirshenbaum

(3) YA High-school senior Ali never expected she'd be road-tripping up the California coast in a 1968 Firebird convertible with her ex-boyfriend. But that's what happens when she inherits the classic (stick-shift) car from her estranged father and needs Nico to drive it to a buyer. Along the way, Ali confronts painful memories and finds forgiveness and love. This lyrically written romance is populated with memorable and imperfect characters.

Reviewer: Rachel L. Smith

(2) YA Eighteen-year-old distance runner Annabelle embarks on a cross-country run to manage the anxiety, guilt, and sorrow dogging her since the boy she calls "The Taker" irrevocably changed her life nine months ago with a gun. Readers take the physical and mental journey with Annabelle as she relinquishes feelings of self-blame and inspires others to act. Caletti's lyrical third-person, present-tense narration blends immediate detail with gut-wrenching flashbacks to great effect.

Reviewer: Jennifer Hubert Swan | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2018

(3) YA Fifteen-year-old Ronney is grudgingly keeping his family together after his depressed father attempts suicide. His fragile equilibrium is rocked when his best friend starts dating his crush--and when a bevy of zoo animals are released into his suburban Indiana hometown. This gritty, voice-driven novel has a blend of dark humor and surreal violence that should appeal to fans of Andrew Smith.

Reviewer: Jessica Tackett MacDonald

(3) YA Despite her fear of germs and her indifference to biology, seventeen-year-old MIT freshman Mei Lu is on the path to becoming a doctor, per her strict Taiwanese parents' wishes. But her first few months away inspire big changes: unbeknownst to her parents, Mei reconnects with her disowned older brother and indulges in her passion for dance. An endearing and at times laugh-out-loud coming-of-age story.

Reviewer: Kristy Pasquariello

(3) YA Chloe (Confessions of a High School Disaster) relates in diary entries the ups-and-downs of sophomore year in her "hellishly pleasant New England suburb." Mean-girl dynamics affect longtime friendships; a sweet romance with a younger boy unfolds; and she struggles with her father's new relationship and her mother's absence. Chloe's voice is refreshingly honest and often humorous in this engaging and not-at-all-facile novel.

Reviewer: Martha V. Parravano

(3) YA When a new girl--bold, confident Chloe Donnelly--arrives in small-town Iowa, smart but isolated Chloe Sanders (soon known as "Other Chloe") feels increasingly inferior. After Chloe Donnelly introduces a secret-swapping game, the increasingly high stakes have Other Chloe fighting hard to protect her own secrets and those of her crush. Desir generates plenty of tension and suspense in this psychological thriller.

Reviewer: Norah Piehl

(3) YA Isolated seventeen-year-old Penny Talbot lives in a small, seaside Oregon town haunted by the executions of three sisters accused of witchcraft centuries ago: every year since they drowned, the sisters' spirits exact revenge by luring teen boys to their watery graves. Can Penny save enigmatic newcomer Bo? Ignore the soggy premise and embrace Ernshaw's plush, eerie prose and taut Gothic mystery.

Reviewer: Robyn Bahr

(2) YA Sixteen-year-old Elena Mendoza discovers she can heal people, but her gift comes with a cost: each healing leads to random people being "raptured" into the heavens. As Elena muses on her weightier cosmic choices and more mundane high-school decisions, the narrative delves into thought-provoking philosophical territory. Another surreal, provocative, and witty book about the end of the world from Hutchinson.

Reviewer: Jonathan Hunt | Horn Book Magazine Issue: March, 2018

(3) YA Seventeen-year-old Lizzie Borden is physically and emotionally abused by her cruel father and stepmother in this modern-day reimagining of the historical murder mystery. Painfully shy and suffering from a medical condition that causes blackouts during menstruation, Lizzie leads a miserable life until a charismatic new maid at her parents' bed-and-breakfast sparks hope and possibility. Spoiler alert: things don't end well in this dark, unsettling thriller.

Reviewer: Kristy Pasquariello

(3) YA Simon True series. There were fifty-nine hours between fifteen-year-old Nick Markowitz's kidnapping and gruesome murder in 2000 for his half-brother's unpaid drug debt. Kovatch focuses on the dysfunctional family dynamics (incorporating his extensive interviews with family and friends), people's failure to report or stop the crime, and their reflections on their inaction eighteen years later. A fast-paced, true-crime tragedy with no winners and many lessons. Bib.

Reviewer: Jack Forman

(3) YA Since her twin brother was diagnosed with leukemia at age nine, Parker has known that she'll attend Harvard, then become a doctor. But when she quits a prestigious summer internship to work at a pottery studio (and spend time with a guy from her childhood), Parker cautiously imagines a new future. Beautifully written, the novel sensitively portrays a complex sibling relationship.

Reviewer: Rachel L. Smith

(3) YA With her mom's death, her dad's remarriage, and estrangement from her best friend, sixteen-year-old anxious introvert Analee prefers online role-playing games to living in the real world. An arrangement to fake-date a popular jock, though, sets her on a course of self-rediscovery. Milanes delivers a diverse cast of fully fleshed-out characters with nuanced relationships and relatable situations in this complex, rewarding rom-com.

Reviewer: Lana Barnes

(3) YA In contrast to the weekenders who flock to their Oregon resort town, Ana, Erik, Georgie, and Davis are "Dead Enders," year-round residents and no strangers to the poverty and violence beneath the town's touristy veneer. Bound together by witnessing an arson, the four teens narrate their interlocking stories in first-person narratives of elegant prose with careful pacing.

Reviewer: Norah Piehl

(2) YA Estranged twins (and alternating narrators) Tovah and Adina Siegel, whose mother has Huntington's disease, are tested for the gene at eighteen: Tovah didn't inherit it; Adina tests positive. Solomon's debut novel examines how an awful inevitability splinters everyone's vision of the future. The family's Conservative Jewish faith provides refuge for Tovah, but Adina struggles against God. Sprinkled Hebrew dialogue adds intimacy to happy moments and sharpness to disagreements.

Reviewer: | Horn Book Magazine Issue: March, 2018