I thought the premise of this YA thriller by Katie Alender — a serial killer is recreating famous scenes from movies for his deaths — would be intriguing, but I found too much of it assembled from overly familiar bits. Plus, I was disappointed to find that Famous Last Words was also a ghost story, with spirits helping solve the mystery. I’m ok with real-life villains, but I don’t believe in ghosts, and mixing the two seemed to do both […]

Out in early 2015 is this fascinating young adult novel dealing with the issues of being transgender and intersex. Alex appears to be a boy, but she’s determined that she should really be a girl. When she decides to go public, attending a different school while dressing as female, her family falls apart, revealing a secret that’s been kept from her her whole life. As written by Alyssa Krugman, Alex as Well is told mostly in internal monologue, giving the […]

Of All the Gin Joints is a wonderful read for anyone interested in Hollywood history and/or alcohol — and really, can the two be separated? Mark Bailey has assembled in one volume short profiles of movie stars and writers, particularly those notable for how much they imbibed; their often notorious incidents involving drinking; descriptions of famous clubs and watering holes from the past; scenes from classic movies affected by alcohol; and classic cocktail recipes. I wanted to try them all, […]

I recently found out that Barry Lyga, author of Archvillain (a middle-grade novel series) and Mangaman, among many other titles, has written a trilogy of young adult novels about the son of a serial killer. I sampled the first, I Hunt Killers. Although a bit outré in premise, Lyga’s characterization keeps the book readable. Jasper “Jazz” Dent was trained by his father, a now-imprisoned killer responsible for 124 bodies, in the fine arts of murder and hiding the evidence. (Is […]

Out next week in the US is a dystopian science fiction novel by M.R. Carey (who is better known to comic readers as Mike, author of Lucifer, Hellblazer, The Unwritten, and X-Men). The Girl With All the Gifts set after the human race has almost been destroyed by a plague that takes over the nervous system, turning people into cannibalistic “hungries” that exist only to infect others. (So, zombie apocalypse, kind of, as is so popular now.) Ten-year-old Melanie is […]

Kids will relate to this YA novel about being assigned summer reading. I Kill the Mockingbird is short — just over 100 pages — and easy to read, although that means a certain lack of depth to the characters. Although they have dramatic events in their backgrounds, it doesn’t make up for how the reader never gets a sense of the cast as real, substantial people. Perhaps that allows for more identification with the kids, imagining themselves as part of […]

Ann Brashares, author of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, tackles YA science fiction with The Here and Now, the story of time-traveling Prenna and her struggles to do what’s right for the world. I was strongly reminded of Rogue Touch, last summer’s superhero novel tie-in, with the romance between Prenna, girl from the future, and modern-day Ethan as they try to save the future world. The book is on the short side, under 200 pages, and a bit sketchy […]