Arthur Strohmeier shares his childhood in the beautifully written book, Raising Arthur by Will Sherwood. This is a tale of a young boy born to German immigrant parents at a time when it was not easy to be of German descent. His father was already...

It’s Free: So What Could Go Wrong? by Carol Hadley is a book written for young adults and tells the story of Andi who ‘wins’ a horse in a competition. She has always been mad about horses and this thoroughbred is exactly what she...

If you read, as I did, James Sniechowski’s book Worship of Hollow Gods and liked it, you will enjoy picking up An Ambition to Belong, where the author takes us inside the next key phase in his life: becoming a teen and moving on to...

Sam's Theory by Sarah Mendivel is a tale of domestic child abuse, trauma, healing, and empowerment, a story of fifteen-year-old Sam who is given away to a foster home by parents who don’t seem ready for her and her sister, and she gets horribly abused...

In Accidentally Perfect by Elizabeth Stevens, Piper Barlow is perfect, or so everyone thinks. In reality, she finds herself feeling sad and all alone, even though she has a loving family and plenty of friends. She just doesn’t feel comfortable expressing herself since she thinks...

Leeway by I.O. Jones is a novel that captures the tensions and the stress that accompany life in a high school in a city like New York, a book with a strong appeal for young adult readers, especially female adolescents. We encounter a young protagonist,...

Livia Stone’s life will never be the same again, not since her twin brother, Jasper, was tragically killed while on a college visit. It seems that everyone is trying to help—her mother, best friend, teacher-mentor, and even her dead grandmother—but no one understands the nightmare...

Under a Purple Moon by Beverly Stowe McClure is a rich novel — emotionally and psychologically — a coming of age story that follows the lives of four adolescents from dysfunctional homes who inadvertently find themselves in an old, abandoned house, seeking to escape the...

Hollywood Daze is a coming of age novel by Simona Moroni. The story takes us to Los Angeles, California where seventeen-year-old Mona Larvink has just moved after a few unfortunate events, such as being dumped by her boyfriend and being deserted by her parents. She...

“Sometimes you have to do crazy things to truly experience life.” The mantra of young adults who don’t yet know the fragility of life. As the story opens on a summer's day, we find ourselves in Snowdyn, North Dakota, riding along in an old yellow...