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YA Book Reviews

First, I've listed some of my favorite YA titles. Toward the bottom of my page, you'll find a "pans" section, where I've listed YA books that fall short of the mark. Librarians and picky readers beware!

You can read more YA reviews and see the rest of the books I've read on my goodreads.com page.

YA Picks

From the author of Ball Don't Lie comes another excellent book that nails baseball but is about much more.

Danny is wicked gifted when it comes to baseball--he can knock baseballs out of the park, and his pitching maxes out the meter at the local fair even when he was smashed. But he couldn't throw anything but wild pitches the tryouts at his prep school, and not even he can understand why.

His number one theory, though, is that things would be different if his dad were still around. Not just baseball, either. If his dad hadn't left, then maybe Danny wouldn't be stuck feeling stupid when his relatives in National City tell jokes in Spanish. (Danny's mom, who's white, can't help him out in that department.) The official word is that Danny's dad took off to Ensenada, Mexico, but it starts looking like there's more to the story than that as Danny spends the summer with his dad's family in National City, a mostly Latino pocket of greater San Diego.

But the eventual revelation regarding Danny's dad is much less important than Danny figuring out how to be himself, a task made a little bit easier with the jokey, easy-going crew his cousin Sofia hangs with. Danny's best friend turns out to be Uno, the same half-black, half-Mexican kid who welcomed Danny to the neighborhood by busting his face at the beginning of the summer. Things are good--but they're also ugly, the way things are in real life. What matters is that Danny starts finding his footing in that real life, and baseball takes its place as one bad-ass game that helps him bring things into focus without beating up on himself.

WHALE TALK by Chris Crutcher

This is one of those books that sticks with you, characters and circumstances refusing to turn loose of your thoughts and emotions months after you stop reading about them. Things start out innocently when super-talented (athletically and intellectually) T.J. agrees to bail out a favorite teacher by throwing together a swim team. He also sees the team as a way to give the nasty jock contingent at his school the finger by recruiting misfits and helping them to earn letter jackets.

T.J.'s got plenty of reasons to be proud of himself, but sometimes his self-appointed good guy role gets on the nerves and comes across as a little arrogant delivered through the first-person narration. But Crutcher needs to have us inside T.J.'s head since another chunk of the story has to do with his own past (he was abandoned by a drug-addicted mother), his feelings about his adopted father's past, and what all of that means for his family fostering two children needing protection from the local bigot.

What happens--well, it's not what you expect, yet it's fully motivated by the novel's events. And chances are, you won't be able to stop thinking about it.

SAMMY AND JULIANA IN HOLLYWOOD

by Benjamin Alire Saenz

Sammy can't stop thinking about Juliana, even after thinking won't get him anywhere with her. Even though he can never get the girl that he wants, he's got lots going for him--and lots stacked against him. There's nothing gimmicky here, just the hurt of growing up and seeing your neighborhood for what it is, working the difficult balance between achieving dreams and remembering where home is.

Saenz nails the hopes and hurts of one generation of Latinos in a gritty barrio of Las Cruces, New Mexico. Adult and teen readers alike won't soon forget Sammy, Juliana, or their Hollywood.

THIRTEEN REASONS WHY by Jay Asher

This page-turner of a concept book definitely had me hooked--I mean, who doesn't want to find out what a girl who killed herself has to say on the seven tapes (two sides each) that she mailed out right before she did it?

We listen along with her classmate and crush Clay, who visits all the places that feature in her audio-tour account of experiences that just turned out to be too much for her.

This book has a balance of guy and girl issues, so it should be appealing to both genders. The structure of the book--we only know Clay for the night, for example, and the author of the tapes is, for obvious reasons, done with her development--keeps us from seeing the characters change much. But all in all, a solid book worth recommending.

Fans of books like What Happened to Cass McBride? might like this title.

FREAKY GREEN EYES by Joyce Carol Oates

"Freaky Green Eyes" is Franky's code name for the more daring side of herself, a side she has to tap into more and more as her mom goes missing--first moving out of the house under mysterious circumstances--then disappearing altogether. It takes Freaky to help Franky see aspects of her father that she's hidden from herself and to do what it takes to bring the truth to light.

This is part family drama, part mystery, and all engaging. Although not the most memorable of Oates' many wonderful books, _Freaky Green Eyes_ is a fine read that YA fans, especially, will like.

HOW I LIVE NOW by Meg Rosoff

This book is Cormac McCarthy's THE ROAD with a YA sensibility, a silver lining, and a slightly less catastrophic set of circumstances. It also covers some of the same girl-survives-disaster-and-matures territory as Z FOR ZACHARIAH. HOW I LIVE NOW has the advantage of a fuller cast of characters than the set-up of Z allowed for.

Daisy is a cool Manhattan teenager visiting cousins in the English countryside when THE WAR breaks out and England (as well as many other parts of the world) is occupied by THE ENEMY. At first, the biggest effect of the war is that Daisy's aunt--who was away on business when the war began--can't come home. This means that the kids get a break from adult supervision, leading to lazy days of fishing trips and eventually love between Daisy and her cousin Edmond. Yeah, it's incestuous, but in the world of the book it makes sense, and it's hard to think they're gross when they're so sweet together.

Of course, war is... war, and things turn ugly when the British military seizes the farmhouse where they live and they are separated into different homes. The situation becomes increasingly dire, made all the more eerie by the facelessness of the enemy. Rosoff wisely sidesteps political issues/terrorist stereotypes by keeping THE ENEMY roughly sketched and largely out of the immediate picture.

THE BOOK THIEF by Markus Zusak

Beautiful, inventive, moving--all things a book should be. Along with EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED, this is one of the few books I've read in the past decade that made me feel new and different emotions about the Holocaust.

BEFORE I DIE by Jenny Downham

We know three pages into “Before I Die” that sixteen-year-old Tessa won’t survive her leukemia--and that there’s plenty she still wants from life. So she makes a list and vows to do everything on it before she dies.

Like most teenagers, Tessa is at odds with her parents and angsty about how life’s shortchanged her. At first her ranting and left-field demands seem too adolescent. Isn’t the looming presence of death supposed to mature her beyond her years?

But that’s precisely the kind of “dying-young” trope that Downham admirably resists throughout the novel. Tessa burns up a maddening number of days moping when we think she should be fulfilling her dreams. She finally pushes herself to face facts: “I have two choices--stay wrapped in blankets and get on with dying, or get the list back together and get on with living.”

Downham escapes the common shortcoming of many young adult novels in which the only character that ever really matters to us is the speaker. In this novel, Tessa’s relationships are so dynamic that we ache with her at the thought of losing them. Throughout the book, their interactions thrum with tension and tenderness.

There’s Cal, the tactless younger brother who helpfully explains the process of decomposition. And Zoe, the careless best friend who has her own troubles to wake her up to life. There’s Dad in denial, determined to save Tessa through organic foods and fierce hugs. Mom, who cut out about the time of Tessa’s diagnosis and who remains slightly outside of the helping circle (without becoming a monster). And there’s Adam, the blessing of love and vulnerability that lands next door to Tessa at the right time.

And where a lesser writer might swill us readers around in dying-girl thought soup, Downham lets the telling detail speak for Tessa’s feelings instead. Her anger comes to us through her as she gives herself points for the imagined deaths of healthy strangers: “One point for the lump on her neck, raw and pink as a crab’s claw.” We feel her hunger for life as she licks an ice-cream stick until “the wood rasps my tongue.” We know her true well-wishes for those she loves as she dreams up a replacement for her boyfriend, a “girl with lovely curves and breath like oranges.”

There’s nothing treacly here. It’s a brave, humanist novel, one that leaves the reader gulping the polluted, precious air of Tessa’s world with a passion and astonishment almost as great as Tessa’s. Downham earns for us the catharsis of the ending, for her characters come to take up real space in our hearts. Up until the last word, I think, we hope that Tessa will somehow, against all odds, keep breathing.

When she doesn’t, we mourn for Tessa just as she wished: by remembering her.

THE FIRST PART LAST by Angela Johnson

Beautifully written with an unusual twist, THE FIRST PART LAST is a great pick for readers intimidated by longer books and a pleasure for anyone. This is great in the audiobook version. I loved the voice of the narrator.

BALL DON'T LIE by Matt de la Peña

Matt de la Peña nails the basketball scene and the gritty world of foster homes in this guy-friendly book packed with action, tension, and emotion. Multiple story lines come together in a dramatic ending that is not at all forced. I love how the author takes on numerous issues--pinning hopes on athletics, inner-racial relationships, obsessive compulsive disorder, prostitution--without making this an "issue" book. Because at bottom, what it's really about is Sticky, a ball-playing foster kid who wants to treat his girl right and can't keep himself clear of trouble.

THE COMPLETE MAUS by Art Spiegelman (graphic novel)

This book is a visually gripping portrayal of a man's experiences in Nazi-run Poland's ghettos and concentration camps as well as a portrait of the relationship between that man and his American son (the author). In reading this, you sense the degree to which "survivors" of the Holocaust did not, in fact, survive intact. It's also quite moving to watch the efforts at intimacy (by both son and father) that are made so difficult by the scars of the war.

HATERS by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez

Fun story of Paski (short for Pascuala), a Mexican-American who's used to a laid-back life in Taos. When her cartoonist dad gets a big break and they move to L.A., Paski has to deal with the haters, nasty girls at her high school who have it in for her. What I like best about this book is its humor and the fact that Paski's being Mexican-American isn't the focus of the whole book.

THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN by Sherman Alexie (2008 National Book Award)

The humor rings absolutely true here, and Alexie has plenty to say about cultural identity and self. The protagonist has to negotiate his difficult role as an American Indian and a gifted student--by going to school off rez, he risks being seen as betraying his community.

THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER by Stephen Chobsky

Journal-style writing with a narrator who sometimes doesn't grasp the full significance of things, which allows the reader to put together some of the pieces behind his story. An endearing, funny page-turner.

THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME by Mark Haddon

An intriguing and moving narrative told from the perspective of an autistic teen trying to solve the murder of a local pet and understand his parents' split-up. Well executed. Similar in style to PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER.

WAVES by Sharon Dogar

This book alternates between the perspectives of a brother and a sister (who's in a coma) to tell the story of her tragic surfing accident (or was it an accident at all?) and reveal the circumstances surrounding it. Deft plotting and well-developed characters.

MAKE LEMONADE by Virginia Euwer Wolff

Brief novel-in-verse convinces with its thoughtful, action-based characterization. The protagonist is a down-to-earth yet caring inner-city teenager who becomes wrapped up in the lives of a single mom and her two kids. Beautifully executed, fulfilled and surpassed my expectations for the genre (verse novel).

IMANI ALL MINE by Connie Porter

I loved the gentle, no-nonsense narrative voice of this book. The characters seem real--not animated stereotypes. The tensions in the book are well-developed, and the end is at once surprising and a natural extension of the plot events.

A CERTAIN SLANT OF LIGHT by Laura Whitcomb

I listened to this on audiobook, and I found myself sucked into the eerie world of the narrator, who is a ghost. The section of the book in which she has taken over the body of a teen girl smothered by her controlling parents--and what brings that family to crisis--seemed contrived to me, but the book as a whole kept me under its spell.

YA Pans

THE AFTERLIFE by Gary Soto

This was a disappointment to me because Soto's poems and short stories have such powerful voice and narrative force. Like the ghostly protagonist of this short book, who has been killed in a random shooting, the narrative meanders and drifts without clear direction.

DEAD GIRLS DON'T WRITE LETTERS by Gail Giles

Unreliable narrator tells of how a girl pretending to be her dead sister shows up one day. Has a somewhat forced resolution as well as a twist that comes a bit too abruptly.

REMEMBERING RAQUEL by Vivian Van Velde

This slim book shows what everyone thinks about Raquel, a non-conformist teen who dies in a car accident. I found the story pretty thin, and when the title character is already dead (and never speaks), it's hard to have much forward momentum.

AS SIMPLE AS SNOW by Gregory Galloway

I like books with some ambiguity, but this book introduces heaps of "clues" to the mystery of the disappearance of the protagonist's girlfriend--none of which ever comes to signify anything definitively. There was also a creepy lack of warmth between the characters and an over all gloom-and-doom aura that I don't have much patience for unless something comes of it in the end. (A CERTAIN SLANT OF LIGHT is a good example of a dark, mysterious book that permits ambiguity but doesn't overdo it.)

From glancing over the other reviews on goodreads.com, it seems this is a love-it-or-hate-it book.

FORGED BY FIRE by Sharon Draper

Many teens like Draper's books in this series, but I found this book melodramatic and stilted throughout.