New Books Highlight: Books You’ll Like if…

This week I want to show you three brand new books that share some traits with books you may have already read. We all know how it feels to hunt for a book that is kinda like the last great book you read. Sometimes it is hard to pin down exactly what you liked about that last book, but sometimes you know just what you’re looking for. Here are three you might like if…

If you like the pace and subjects of books by Ellen Hopkins like Identical and Tilt, or you liked the style and setting of Looking for Alaska by John Green you should try…

Escape Theory by Margaux Froley (A Keaton School Novel)

Devon has never really fit in at her prestigious California boarding school. Because she plans to study psychology at an even more prestigious college -Stanford University – she decides to use her lack of social life and her misfit status to her advantage by becoming a peer counselor. It seems fairly straightforward until the stunning suicide of a classmate, Jason Hutchins aka Hutch, rocks the school. Devon is called upon to hear her peers’ struggle with accepting the death, all the while struggling herself to understand how and why it happened. To make things trickier for Devon, she might have loved Hutch. And she might know more about his death than what the school wants students to  know.

Sneak Peek! “Devon’s eye caught the harsh glare of the setting sun. She blinked and looked down, realizing she was rubbing her right palm where Hutch had kissed her before.” (Text copyright © 2013 by Margaux Froley)

If you like books by Meg Cabot and Lisi Harrison you should try…

Revenge of the Girl With the Great Personality by Elizabeth Eulberg

Lexi is popular, has lots of great friends and a nice family…oh, except for their obsession with her younger sister’s beauty pageants, as though beauty was all that mattered. Lexi has always been the girl with a “great personality,” but what does that even mean? One day she decides she’s sick of being ignored by the guys she likes, by her family, by everyone. She wrangles her confidence – luckily it’s abundant -to step up and take the world on with her great personality, letting her inner beauty outshine everyone around her.

Sneak Peek! “Applying butt glue to my sister’s backside is, without question, not the first way I’d choose to spend a weekend.” (Text copyright © 2013 by Elizabeth Eulberg)

If you liked The Year of Secret Assignments by Jaclyn Moriarty, the quirky fantasy of books like A Wrinkle in Time and The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne Valente you should try…

A Corner of White by Jaclyn Moriarty (The Colors of Madeleine Book One)

Madeleine Tully lives in rainy Cambridge, England, with her kooky mother. Meanwhile in the Kingdom of Cello – which may or may not be Fairyland – Elliot is desperately searching for his father who went missing a year ago on the same night his uncle was found dead. Things are amiss in Cello, it seems, where Dangerous Colors are raining destruction. When Elliot and Madeleine both discover a gap between their parallel worlds they begin to communicate and events in their lives begin to intertwine.

Sneak Peek! ” Madeleine Tully turned fourteen yesterday, but today she did not turn anything. Oh, wait. She turned a page.” (Text copyright © 2013 by Jaclyn Moriarty)

Short Books for a Long Weekend

It’s finally here! The most-anticipated long weekend of the fall: Thanksgiving break. School is closed, so if you don’t play a winter sport you probably don’t have much else going on this weekend other than finally seeing Breaking Dawn Part 2 (but ONLY because you have to see how it all ends), spending a little time with your homework, and stuffing yourself on stuffing.

You probably also have a few minutes to fill and you KNOW you have a lot of fun reading to catch up on. So here’s a short list of short books to fit into your loooooong weekend. Most are so short that you could read a few and brag about how many books you finished this weekend when you get back to school on Monday…

A Certain October by Angela Johnson (158 pages)

Angela Johnson’s books are nice and drama-packed for being so short. Main character Scotty sees herself as pretty boring, without her friends who add the spice to her life. But when an accident leaves Scotty feeling guilty and her family reeling from the trauma, even her closest friends can’t get through to her. Life becomes a haze where Scotty can’t tell what’s real and what’s not. Can anything wake her up to the joy that life holds once more? Because of the length of the book, you don’t have to worry about waiting too long to find out.

The Year of the Beasts by Cecil Castellucci (175 pages)

This engaging, fast-paced read is written in alternating chapters of regular narrative and graphic novel story. The narrative chapters tell the story of Tessa who tries to hold it together when her big crush falls for her little sister. She is driven towards a strange loner, who might just be what she needs. The graphic novel chapters are a sort of mythological metaphor about a girl, who is sort of like Tessa, with Medusa hair and Medusa powers: she goes around turning everyone at school to stone; something Tessa only wishes she could do. You’ll be flipping through this comic-novel hybrid quickly, while wishing there was more.

An Abundance of Katherines by John Green (227 pages)

Everyone’s read everything by John Green, right? You haven’t? Then take these few days off of school to catch up and start with the short novel, An Abundance of Katherines. Possible genius Colin has been dumped by 19 different girls name Katherine. And that’s a lot considering that most of us know maybe three. So in order to get a grip and maybe make a change, he sets off on a road trip with his buddy Hassan and his beat-up old car. Colin and Hassan’s road trip will have you laughing all the way to the end, probably in one sitting.

You can find more quick-to-read books in this list of Shorewood Library YA books under 250 pages: Short on Time?!