If seventeen-year-old Skylar Evans were a typical Creek View girl, her future would involve a double-wide trailer, a baby on her hip, and the graveyard shift at Taco Bell. But after graduation, the only thing standing between straightedge Skylar and art school are three minimum-wage months of summer. Skylar can taste the freedom—that is, until her mother loses her job and everything starts coming apart. Torn between her dreams and the people she loves, Skylar realizes everything she’s ever worked for is on the line.

Nineteen-year-old Josh Mitchell had a different ticket out of Creek View: the Marines. But after his leg is blown off in Afghanistan, he returns home, a shell of the cocksure boy he used to be. What brings Skylar and Josh together is working at the Paradise—a quirky motel off California’s dusty Highway 99. Despite their differences, their shared isolation turns into an unexpected friendship and soon, something deeper.

Hardcover, 400 pages  Expected publication: February 3rd 2015 by Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)

This story makes for a great summertime read: hot weather, long boring days, and fun parties at night. The setting of Creek View is a small town where everyone knows everything about each other. People date, break up, hook up, hang out and in Skylar’s case, work… a lot. Skylar doesn’t drink or do drugs; this sets her apart at times from her friends at parties as the “straight-edger”. She lives in a trailer park with her mother and her best friend Dylan has a baby. This is what she knows, her life is full of friends and family, and for the most part, is comfortable. That is, until her future plans of college seem unclear and she begins doubting everything.

Although the summary does portray the story,  we also get some of the book from Josh’s perspective, and it’s not in a traditional way. He gets a page every here and there and written more like a diary passage than regular narration. Josh and Skylar know each other from before he left, she even got close to his brother. But something is different about Josh when he returns home, and it’s not just the fact he lost a leg in the war. His whole persona has changed, and over the summer they get to see those changes in each other.

Overall, the story is more pensive than full of humuor. It deals a lot with big issues like sex, careers, and future goals. Both Skylar and Josh are in very defining points in their lives. She is torn because she her future goals are no longer realistic. Josh is angry and suffers post war nightmares. They find a friendship, and lean on each other for comfort.

What I really enjoyed about this story is their slowly developing friendship and them getting to know each other for who they are now; who they have become since life’s decisions hold so much more weight in their futures. I recommend this book to those that enjoy contemporary romance. There is great character development and a couple of steamy scenes!

Alice Tully almost has a normal life. Her foster mother, Rosie, is one of the warmest people she knows. Someone who finally gets her and listens to her and tries to make things better. Someone who is finally there. Alice has a boyfriend, Frankie, who she mostly can’t believe wants her. And she has a wonderfully ordinary job waiting tables at a local café.

But all of that is about to fall apart because Alice has a past. Sooner or later it is going to catch up with her. No matter how much Rosie tries to make things right, things will never be better.

Someday soon, Alice is going to have to face the past that she has been running from. She is going to have to remember January Jones; the girl that she was six years before. The girl that killed her friend on a lonely stretch of shore by the lake that also drowned a league of cats.

Looking for JJ starts with a powerful premise that exists in shades of grey. It’s centred on some difficult questions that don’t have right or wrong answers, though everyone has opinions on the matter. When a child kills another child, who is at fault? And how long must the child pay for her crime?

Looking for JJ seems to be inspired by the James Bulger murder. The media frenzy and public interest in Alice’s past bear similarities to that of Bulger’s killers, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson. Around this atmosphere hovers the question: can a person ever be free from such a violent past – and should they?

Perhaps the way people react to this novel says more about them than it does about the issue, but for my part the answer is no. Alice talks about regret. We see that her counsellors have had to push her to re-join a world that she doesn’t always think she deserves. She doesn’t think it’s fair for her to be happy.

And she’s right. She doesn’t deserve to be part of this world and it isn’t fair for her to be happy. Not because of her crime: she was ten and Cassidy’s depiction of her shows a far sweeter character than Venables or Thompson.

It also shows a character that has not given the slightest consideration to her victims after the fact. Alice’s life is not tied up in her past until the past threatens to harm her. She has never given the murder in depth thought; never considers how else she might have handled things until someone asks her. A child killing another child in anger might be forgiven. That child growing up and never deeply analysing her motives, behaviour and emotions – never even shallowly analysing the pain she caused her victim’s family and the victim – cannot be forgiven.

Therein lays the core of this novel. It will be judged based on the character and morals of the reader, not the author. And, for my part, I can’t sympathise with Alice no matter how she’s changed and how kind she is now because I can’t see any sympathy in her for the people she has hurt.

Looking for JJ certainly stirs some powerful emotions. It’s the kind of issue that everyone has an opinion on, but no one will agree on the right one. Because Alice was so determined to ignore the past there was less introspection than I would have liked, but it was a satisfying read.

Looking for JJ – Anne Cassidy

Point (2004)

ISBN: 9780439977173

Some of you may know just how stressful the ending of 2014 was for me. If you don’t…well, now you do. I’m attending school, working, and doing everything else under the sun. Blogging and reading is my getaway, but it was hard to get away when there was no time to do so.

I needed a book that would distract me from everything going on around me. I needed something that would capture my attention entirely and consume my mind.

When I picked up The Selection, I didn’t know that it would do that and more.

I wasn’t too happy when I heard that this trilogy was comparable to the show The Bachelor. I absolutely hate that show; I just don’t understand why people would go on national television to compete and embarrass themselves for a person who probably won’t give you a rose at the end of the day.

But I had already purchased the entire trilogy, the covers were beautiful, and the ratings on Goodreads were amazing, so I couldn’t turn it down. I loved The Selection more than I ever thought I would, and picked up The Elite within five minutes of finishing it.

The Selection started with 30-35 girls, but The Elite takes off from when there are only six left! America is the lowest caste still in the running, competing against twos, threes, and fours. Time is running out and the girls know that Maxon has to make his decision very soon!

Besides taking part in this competition, at first against her will, and then for the delicious food and comfortable bed, America is still struggling with the hardest decision she’s ever had to make; Maxon or Aspen?

If things weren’t tough enough in the castle, Aspen is now a guard, Maxon is confessing his love, promising to end the competition as soon as she gives him permission, and things between the girls are getting ugly. Think that’s it? No! To top it all off, the castle is being attacked by rebels.

Whew. I thought The Selection had a lot going on, that was nothing compared to The Elite.

Overall, I loved The Elite, as well as the rest of the trilogy! I couldn’t get enough of America and the world she struggled to live in. What I loved the most about her was that she was blunt. She didn’t change. She remained the same person, with the same thoughts and beliefs, no matter how much glitter and glamour was thrown at her. She was the girl I came to know in the first book, but so much stronger.

Beside that, I spent the entire first book wondering what it would be like for Maxon and Aspen to meet. I wanted to see how they would act towards one another, and how comparable they would be. Obviously Maxon didn’t know Aspen was the boy America told him stories about, but it was interesting to see how similar and different these two were.

Again, I LOVED The Elite, and I wish I could go into more detail and completely fan girl, but I don’t want to ruin the story for you all!

Thank you so much for reading!

Meet one of our long time and beloved staff members, Lisa Smith. She’s a college student from Washington State and has her own website over at turningpages.

Welcome to a world where ordinary people can be selected to undergo a transformation to superhero. Where curious teens test out an urban legend on multiple dimensions and find themselves lost in a world not their own. A world where a pill and a kiss can show you a future that may or may not come to pass.

This is just some of what you’ll encounter in Kaleidoscope. Including stories written by some of Australia’s most-loved fantasy authors, this compilation of speculative short stories will push your imagination to the limit. There are stories from Aurealis award winning author, Garth Nix, George Turner Prize winning author, Tansy Rayner Roberts, and NYT best-selling author, Sean Williams, to name just a few.

These twenty original stories explore fantastical and sci-fi worlds through a diverse YA framework. With stories featuring people with disabilities, people of colour, QUILTBAG characters, and neuro-diverse characters; Kaleidoscope is YA at its sensational best. The perspectives – while not new – are ones all too often confined to the sidelines. Here they shine. And they do so without becoming ‘issues’ tales. For the characters, their diversity is a fact of life; it isn’t brought out, dissected and analysed. The stories are way too fun to be having any of that boring stuff!

There were a few stories that were just amazing and made me want a whole novel, and not a measly short story. Tansy Rayner Roberts’ ‘Cookie Cutter Superhero’ is one of them. Funny, quirky and breath-takingly clever in its execution, it follows Joey, a girl who has been chosen as the next in line to Australia’s super-hero team. In a short space, Roberts deftly weaves a massive chunk of superhero social history into this tale, as well as commentating on world politics with regards to discrimination and finishing with a hope and a wish for the future.

‘Kiss and Kiss and Kiss and Tell’ by E. C. Myers is another one that I really enjoyed. The slightly futuristic world of drugs that can give people glimpses of the future but change when combined with medications is different; but it’s the characters that make the story real. Rene and Sam are so well realised in the present and in their many possible futures that you really hope that they’ll manage to find a future together.

These twenty stories are a fantastic selection from some amazing authors. Most of them are fun, sweet and hopeful – though a few have darker tendencies. The only real problem here is that so many of the stories leave you wanting more.

Kaleidoscope – Alisa Krasnostein (ed.) and Julia Ross (ed.)

Twelfth Planet Press (August 5, 2014)

ISBN: 9781922101112