Scotty's Junction by Andrew Arthur is an impressive YA coming-of-age novel. Centering on an artistic genius named Scotty Madaki, we are introduced to this teenager and his father in a New York park. Scotty's father, who he calls Pops, places a high value on education,...

Sandra J. Jackson’s Catching Butterflies is a dystopian story of siblings April and Beth on their quest to find their way home. After escaping their captor, they found themselves with very little memory of their past. The siblings were at the mercy of nature, surrounded...

In The Elementals by Michelle Knohl, Mia had never been a normal girl. From the time she was little her mother feared her ability to tell a person's future, keeping her away from peers her own age. At her wit's end, Mia’s mother takes her...

Hannah is the Vice President of her school's Students Against Destructive Decisions club. She gets good grades and is called Mouse by her close friends because she often doesn’t make decisions for herself and lets others make them for her. She gives in to her...

Rocket Queen by Julianna Morgan is a mesmerizing coming-of-age YA novel that follows sixteen-year-old Wren Evans as she deals with depression and seeks deeper levels of connection with herself. She forgets dates, often feeling moody and lonely. But her depression becomes stronger when she is...

Club Fed by Stephen Arrington is the story of finding a purpose. Jake, Raoul, Walt, Clayton, and Jessie are an unusual bunch. They meet at a minimum-security prison camp. They are randomly chosen and put together as the inmate fire crew for the town of...

Time's Up is book three in the Time Zero Trilogy by Carolyn J. Cohagan and a terrific conclusion to an intriguing dystopian story. Mina and Juda are forced to return back home to Manhattan and they don’t want to. They spend days trying to find...

Open the Gate by Kain Carter is a short novel that follows a girl in her life path. Due to an unfortunate circumstance, this girl no longer has the life she had been used to nor a place to call home. She fights between life...

The year 1968 was a difficult one for Timothy James Crowley. It began with his father separating from his mother and moving far away. Unable to deal with their mother's declining mental health and cruel behavior, TJ’s brother Ronnie joins the army and is sent...

A Young Person’s Field Guide to Finding Lost Shipwrecks: The Search for the Santisima by Laurie Anne Zaleski is an informative and fascinating account of all that goes into searching for a lost shipwreck. The author, a marine geologist, takes the reader along on the...