12) Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children-Ransom Riggs

Jacob was your average teenager. He worked at one of the chain of drugstores his mother's family owns, he goes to school and has a grandpa that lives in a senior community in Florida. But when his grandpa calls him frantically asking where the key to his weapons collection is because the monsters have finally found him, the life he thought was his is a complete falsehood. When he discovers his grandpa slashed across the middle in the woods behind his house, his grandpa uses the very last of his breath to tell him to find the bird and the loop, that the letter will lead him on his way. Jacob barely has the time to process what he's said when something comes charging through the woods. With the faint light of the flashlight, he sees a gruesome creature with tentacle-esque tongues before it disappears.

In the months after his grandfather's death, the image of the creature haunts his dreams. He has become riddled with anxiety and confused by what his grandfather had told him to do. It isn't until they are cleaning out the house that he finds the box of photographs he remembers from his youth. As a child, his grandfather would tell Jacob of the levitating girl who needed weighted shoes to stay down, of the boy who had bees living inside of him, of the brother and sister who could lift boulders like feathers that lived on the island he fled to when the Nazis were sweeping through Poland. It was years ago that Jacob said they were nothing but fairy tale, but was he wrong? Were these photos, these children, this island that his grandfather had talked about linked to the monsters shaking him in the night?

It's at his birthday party that he finds what he's been looking for. He grabs for the book his aunt had given him from his grandfather's house and a letter slips out. Jacob retreats to his room and finds that this it the letter his grandfather was talking about. Armed with this new information, Jacob sets off to find the answers that wait for him on the island. Who are the people in these yellowing photographs? What will this adventure tell him about not only his grandfather, but himself?

I'd had my eye on this book for a long time. I would walk through the store for a good two months with it under my arm before I finally decided to buy it. And here I am months later finally reading it. The creepy girl on the cover is definitely what drew me in. Until I really looked at it, I didn't even realize that she was levitating. Yes, you know that the book is going to be creepy when you pick it up, but I honestly didn't see where it was going. This book completely took me by surprise in the sense that it didn't go in the direction that I thought it would. I wasn't surprised that I liked it as much as I did. It definitely kept you on your toes and forced you to pay attention to the little details.

I just read that the author is currently working on the sequel. Thank God because the ending definitely leaves you hanging and wanting to figure out exactly what happens next. Add the sequel to my most-anticipated list!

11) Al Capone Does My Shirts-Gennifer Choldenko

Moose Flanagan is not happy that his family has to move. He's also not happy that the move is to Alcatraz island, home to the worst of the worst behind bars. Once there, he realizes that there aren't many children to come by and the differences between his old life and the life on Alcatraz are even more different than he thought. After meeting Piper, the warden's daughter, he gets into trouble by being an accessory to her elaborate scheme to take money from students to have their clothes laundered by Al Capone. When the entire operation blows up in their faces, Moose's mother tells him that he will have to take care of his sister every day after school.

Natalie is a special case. It's 1935 and Autism has yet to be fully diagnosed, which has lead the Flanagan's to many different treatments to figure out what has happened to their daughter. After she is rejected from the Esther P. Marinoff school and Moose begins to take care of her, things start to change for everyone involved. Natalie is once again interviewed for the school. Does she make it in this time? What if she doesn't? What could Moose or anyone else possibly do to make sure that this time she finally gets in and stays?

Secondary Schools read. I thought it was a good book. It was really quick. I didn't realize that I'd already put away 100 pages until I looked at the page number. It was interesting to see how they approached the topic of Autism in the earlier part of the century when it still wasn't diagnosed. They never actually say what's wrong with her, but you are able to figure it out. When you see the title, you have an assumption of what you're about to read, but when you get into it, it's completely different. I liked that about it. Despite the fact that he lives on Alcatraz with some of history's most notorious convicts, it doesn't necessarily bring attention to that, but when they do, it's really interesting how they tie it in. 

Plus, I just pictured Stephen Graham from Boardwalk Empire as Al Capone and it made him more tangible. What? We all do weird things, okay? I'm actually intrigued enough to want to read the sequel now!

10) Dash & Lily's Book of Dares-Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

She was not a needle. This was not a haystack. We were people, and people had ways of finding each other.

It started with a red moleskin journal nestled between Salinger books at the Strand. When Dash pulled the book from the shelf, he didn't expect there to be instructions on just what to do next. Bored by with winter break and intrigued by this mysterious find, Dash does what the notebook says. Once he completes the task, he has a choice to either put the journal back and forget about it OR respond with his own list of dares.

When Lily discovers that someone has responded to the book, she's not sure how she feels. She's a loner and finds herself to be really weird. Was someone serious about this or were they just messing with her? But Lily wants to do something new, something different. With her parents away in Fiji for Christmas, her grandpa down in Florida and her brother too obsessed with his new boyfriend to care about her, she needs to find something to busy herself with, so she accepts his dares, too.

Back and forth, back and forth over a week and a half the notebook is passed between the two. Always a list of new dares, always something to look forward to. But what happens if they meet? Are they going to be everything they dreamed of or be a complete disappointment? Are they falling for the idea of the other person or the real thing? Or are they just portraying false versions of themselves to keep it interesting? By keeping the journal going, they discover what it means to embrace the new and different while still maintaining just who you are.

I absolutely loved this book. I had read their previous collaboration, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, last year and thought it was good, but this was just great. They seemed like people I wanted to be friends with. It was funny, but really relatable. I thought the more minor characters were also really great. They really added to the main characters. I would also like to point out that they mention my favorite Evelyn Waugh book, Vile Bodies, and Lily mentions that she wanted to be at home watching Meet Me in St.Louis and crying when Margaret O'Brien smashes the village of snow people. I screamed and said, "Rachel Cohn, you do that, too?!" That happens to me every Christmas Ever without fail. It's terrible. Anyway, I really did love this book and I would certainly recommend it to anyone who loves books and witty dialogue and really smart love stories.

9) Speak-Laurie Halse Anderson

Melinda Sordino is a social pariah and it's only her first day of high school. None of her former best friends will speak to her and no one will ask her why she called the cops to the party over the summer. Would anyone believe her if she were to even tell them the truth? Instead, she refuses to speak. She does the bare minimum in every aspect. She stops showering all that often, bites her lips until they bleed, chews on her nails until there's almost nothing left and stops participating in school. The only somewhat glimmer of hope is her art class with Mr.Freeman. It's here that she learns to express herself and see life differently. It's in the art room that she realizes that she can't hide from what happened or pretend that it was all made up in her head. It happened and it's how she chooses to deal with and come to terms with it that she needs to figure out.

Lit in Secondary Schools assignment. I hadn't read this book since before my freshman year of high school, so I was interested to see how I would react to it now. When I read it before, I wasn't very impressed by it. I honestly hadn't finished the last 30 pages because I had to take the test for it in the next class. However, I still got an A+ because I sort of figured out where it was going and made educated guesses. Having read it now, though, was a different experience. You catch small little details that you didn't catch before that sort of help you understand what she's going through a little more. 

My problem with this book is how she let it all get to her and really wreck her life. Yes, I understand that this is a terrible ordeal. I couldn't even imagine myself in her position, but had this happened to me, I would have done everything I could have to fix it. There's a part where she attends a pep rally and the two girls behind her give her grief over calling the cops to that party. One knees her in the back and the other pulls her hair. I'm sorry, but that would certainly not fly with me. Maybe that's my problem with the book. I can't really get behind her not sticking up for herself. I liked the diary aspect and the stream of consciousness, though. I always find books like that interesting. It really gets you into the head of the character.

Whether you read this book or not, a word of caution: Avoid the movie. This was a good book and it was made into an awful movie. No, thank you!

8) Beneath a Startlet Sky-Amanda Goldberg & Ruthanna Khalighi Hopper

Disclaimer: This is a sequel to their previous book, Celebutantes.

After last year's whirlwind Oscars week, Lola Santisi had expected to have had a better year as the CEO of Julian Tennant Inc., her best gay friend's high-end fashion label. However, Lola is still sleeping on Julian's couch in New York City while trying to make ends meet and not get dumped by their financial backer. She struck big when she convinced her mega-star director father to use one of Julian's gowns in his new film and has been hoping to get Julian to design the wedding gowns for the new Baz Luhrmann musical opus. The only bright spot in her stress filled days is her doctor doctor, not actor cast as a doctor on TV, boyfriend that she flies home to LA to see.

But even being the most buzzed about designer a year before means almost nothing now. Unless she can get Julian's gowns into that film and for the star to wear one on the most coveted fashion magazine cover, Vain, she wonders what she'll do to keep the company afloat. Lola decides to stage a fashion show at this year's Cannes Film Festival in the desperate hope to get every celebrity to see Julian's talent. Of course, Coz, the evil employee at Vain, is doing everything she possibly can to screw over both Lola and Julian Tennant Inc. Between Coz, her brother's secret movie going up for the Palme d'Or against their father's, her mother's constant camera rolling for her new reality show, her best actress friend being the tabloids new target, her doctor doctor boyfriend and everything else, Lola wonders how she's going to hold it altogether and succeed all at the same time.

Like I said, this was the sequel to their previous book, Celebutantes. I bought that book on a whim and devoured it in about two days. It's a fun romp through all things fashion and Hollywood while still having something relatable to those not within that world. It's very funny and every other page is filled to the brim with well known names. However, it's not really that aspect that draws you in. You want Lola to succeed and you root for those around her and you want her to reach that happy ending that you feel she really deserves. I really loved this book. I don't care that it sounds like a girly throw away. It isn't and you would know that if you picked up both. Which I think you should!

7) Thirteen Reasons Why-Jay Asher

Hannah Baker is dead. She committed suicide two weeks ago. Every morning, Clay looks at her desk in the center of the first period class he shared with her and wonders why she did it. Until one afternoon when he comes home to find a shoebox addressed to him sitting on the doorstep. Curious as to what it may be, he opens it and finds seven cassette tapes wrapped in plastic without a note. Clay remembers that his father kept an old cassette radio on his workbench in the garage. He places the tape with the blue number one in the corner into the player and waits for the sound he wasn't expecting.

"Hello, boys and girls. Hannah Baker here. Live and in stereo." He can't believe it. Hannah has been dead for two weeks. How is this happening? Scared, but still wondering what this could mean, he continues to listen. Hannah goes on to explain that each of these seven tapes represents the thirteen reasons why she killed herself and if you're one of those receiving these tapes, you contributed in some way to her ending her life. She's not doing this to give you her life story, but explain every reason why she's ending it. There are two rules that go along with these tapes: 1) you listen and 2) you pass them on. If you don't pass them on, Hannah has an insurance policy. Should the tapes stop their cycle, the tapes will be released in a very public way and who would want that?

Starting with the first few weeks she came to this town all the way down to the very last day of her life, Hannah sets the record straight of all the rumors and reveals just how much people have to hide.

Incredible. Stunning. Engrossing. Breathtaking. I don't even know which word would be best suited for this book. It was just that amazing. It was interesting to hear her story while seeing the reaction it had on Clay, one of the people the tapes made their way to. You kept reading because you wanted to know how things got to where they were and you, along with Clay, wanted to know her thirteen reasons why. I gasped quite a few times because it's sad that the sort of stuff she's talking about is realistic in high schools today. People are vicious and people don't realize the power they possess when they open their mouths or turn away. I just cannot get over just how great this book was. READ IT.

6) Inside Out and Back Again-Thanhha Lai

Ha is a young girl growing up during the Vietnam War in Saigon. She knows that things are turning sour, but she could never imagine a life outside of the city that provides her with open markets, friends and family, familiarity and her own papaya tree. As things start to unravel, Ha realizes that she might very well have to leave Saigon. When the time comes to flee on a navy ship, she is terrified that she will never feel like she belongs wherever she ends up; as if she will lose herself entirely by assimilating into new territory. 

Once her family arrives on the shores of Florida, family after family is matched with a sponsor while Ha's family remains in one of the refugee camps. Her mother finally realizes that those that say they are Christians are getting sponsored faster and changes their religion. A man from Alabama comes and asks for a single boy who would be capable of working on cars. One of Ha's older brothers says that he is, but refuses to leave his family. The "cowboy" agrees and takes them all in. What's it like once they reach Alabama? Does the town fully accept them? Or do they get the cold shoulder because they're from the country that America has been fighting and are therefore unwelcome? How does she learn to keep the balance between the Ha she was and the Ha she must become in the states? How much can one's world spin in a year?

I thought this was an incredible book. It reminded me a lot of Stealing Buddha's Dinner by Bich Minh Nguyen, despite that one being nonfiction and this one being fiction. They both told stories of what it was like to live in Saigon during the Vietnam War and what it was like to escape the conflict. Both revealed what it was like to wait and wait for a sponsor and hope that they would be able to strike a balance between their old lives and their new ones. As I said, this story is fiction and written in verse. I liked that it was written in that style. It was something different and refreshing from what I normally read. Plus, it didn't get so detail or dialogue heavy that you lost the story entirely. By writing it in a sort of fragmented way, you really get a feeling for what she's feeling or trying to say. Definitely recommend.