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.

5) Brain Jack-Brian Falkner

Sam is just your every day high schooler. Well, in the sense that he's young and goes to school. However, he's smarter than he looks. On an average morning, he decides to hack into the country's most protected communications firm, Telecomerica, just to see if he could. He gets through the system without being detected and assumes that no one will be watching...until someone is. Before he's caught, he unleashes a virus that crashes their system just after ordering his friend Fargas and himself neuro-headsets. 

A few days later, he and Fargas attend a hackers convention. Sam believes he is attending H@ck-Con, when really the big boys are just trying to weed out the fakes from the real deal. When Sam proves himself, two masked people come up to him and say that that real Con is online. If he wants to join, he'll have to hack into one of the most guarded networks in the world: The White House. At 9 PM, Sam sets to work on creating a tunnel inside the building's network. Only minutes later, he's in. Just as he's about to approach the room where the others are located, his doorbell rings and his flown to a juvenile detention center called Recton. Did they find out that it was Sam who pulled off the hack into Telecomerica? Were they aware that he had just hacked into the White House's network? What will happen to him now that he's been caught?

I'm hardly scratching the surface of this book, but giving anything more away would honestly take away from it. This was an outstanding book. Completely terrifying, but incredible. There were so many moments where I was not only blown away by this guy's intelligence, but of the surprises lurking around every corner. I certainly did not see over half of this book coming. It was so smart. I was really happy that I had decided to pick this up.

As I said, this book also completely terrified me. While I can hang with Kubrick, Huxley, Vonnegut and Orwell like anybody else, the technological advances of today and within the pages of this book somehow didn't seem too different. This was something that I could see happening and that's not cool. It made me wonder if someone was watching me and quietly sifting through the contents of my phone and laptop. I feel like this sort of technology is imminent and that's so incredibly scary. But I guess that's the nature of certain pieces of Sci-Fi; they're meant to make us worry.

4) The Fault In Our Stars-John Green

And then there are books...which you can't tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal.

Hazel is a sixteen-year-old side effect of cancer which is a side effect of dying which was a side effect of being alive. She hadn't been to school in the three years and absolutely loathed being forced into going to a cancer support group. She would rather be at home reading or watching another marathon of America's Next Top Model instead of being surrounded by people offering false enthusiasm about living your best life today. That is, until the night she meets Augustus Waters. He can't stop staring at her. Augustus says he's been in remission for some time, that he was merely there for his friend, Isaac. When the meeting ends, he tells Hazel she reminds him of Natalie Portman in her V For Vendetta era. She has no idea what he's talking about and he asks her to come over and watch it. Right that minute. Intrigued, she goes.

What follows is one of the most moving stories of, not particularly young love (unless you focus solely on their age), but real love. The two learn what it is to feel again, what it means to look beyond the signed, sealed and waiting to be delivered fate they'd been handed, what it means to be alive again. An adventure in Amsterdam and a very scary, very real side effect makes them believe this all the more.

This really was a stunning book. I found myself laughing hard for the first 75% of the book and reading through my tears the last 25% of it. It was realistic and the characters were relatable despite the cancer aspect of their lives. Every character was so well written and it was, as previously stated, a truly moving piece of work. John Green did a phenomenal job and I am willing to wholeheartedly admit that this is easily my favorite book by him. It was powerful, emotional. It was an outstanding look at all of the different hats that grief wears.

3) Thumped-Megan McCaffterty

Out of respect for Megan McCafferty and her extensive fanbase, I will not be posting about this at this moment in time. I feel very lucky to have gotten an ARC so far in advance back in November at NCTE, but I wouldn't want the plot to come out with still months before the publication. 

However, it was fantastic and I recommend it (along with, of course, its predecessor, Bumped). Get it on April 24th!