SKINNED
by Robin Wasserman

For readers of Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series, the cover of this book may look familiar, and it would be tempting to assume that the storyline is similar.   Lia Kahn's physical body is really the main character in this book, and there the similarities end.  Skinned takes place in a future, post-nuclear accident America, where the rich have every possible advantage and the poor live in unhealthy squalor.  Medical science has advanced to the point that a person's mind can be downloaded into a beautiful mechanical body, but those who have had the procedure done, either by choice or because their bodies have become so damaged that they had no choice, if they wanted to continue to exist, are looked at as inhuman, souless machines.  They are the outcasts of society.  After a horrifying accident, Lia's father decides to save her by giving her a mechanical body. She is then faced with not only adjusting to the physical changes, the change in her social status, but much more importantly, dealing with who and what she has become emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually.  This book poses all the difficult questions about what it means to be human, whether there is a god and spiritual life, and what the responsibility is of those who are virtually indestructible to those who aren't.  None of these problems are solved, but at the end, Lia is at last ready to consider the questions.  Skinned is Book One in a trilogy which promises to be full of action and thought-provoking angst.  ~reviewed by Dail Sams

the summer i turned pretty
by Jennifer Han

Belly (a nickname for Isabel) lived for the summers--the long summers in Susannah's beach house, with her mother, Laurel, and brother Steven and Susannah and her boys, Jeremiah and Conrad.  Susannah and Laurel had been best friends forever, so they blended their families every summer.  Jeremiah and Conrad seemed as much Belly's brothers as Steven did, except she had always had a crush on Conrad. If Conrad noticed it, he never gave any indication.  This summer, the summer of Belly's sixteenth birthday, everything seemed different.  Steven was only there for a couple of weeks because he was leaving to visit colleges with his dad, Belly was dating a local boy, which didn't seem to make Jeremiah and Conrad very happy, Conrad was aloof and angry all the time, and Susannah spent a lot of time in her bedroom.  The tension was thick, but Belly didn't know what was wrong.  She only knew that for the first time ever, she was being noticed, and she liked it.  When Susannah's illness finally comes out, Belly realizes what has been wrong with Conrad all summer, and she also realizes nothing can be the same again.  An appealing coming of age story with an ending that didn't quite add up.            ~reviewed by Mrs. Sams

The Ask and the Answer
by Patrick Ness

After running for weeks to reach Haven and escape Mayor Prentiss and his men, Todd carries the wounded Viola into the town square of Haven, only to find the Mayor waiting there for them. So ends Book One of the Chaos Walking trilogy.  The intensity never lets up in Book Two, The Ask and the Answer, as Todd and Viola are separated, manipulated, and deceived by the Mayor and others with their own agendas.  Viola finds herself aligned with a rebel group of women called the Answer, led by Mistress Coyle, a healer and adept strategist for planning terrorist attacks on the city.  Meanwhile, Todd is a virtual prisoner of Mayor Prentiss, and is made to do increasingly cruel and immoral acts.  He doesn't have the will to resist because he believes Viola has left him alone on purpose.  His means of enduring is to turn off his emotions entirely and refuse to think about the pain he is inflicting on women of the city and the Spackle, natives of the planet.  As the Answer steps up their terrorist attacks, Mayor Prentiss responds with his own brand of evil cruelty in the Office of the Ask.  Both groups are trying to solidify their own power before the arrival of Viola's people in their space ship.  The final agonizing scene of this powerful story finds the Ask and the Answer racing toward a final battle on the outskirts of the city, the spaceship nearing arrival, and Todd finally gaining a tenuous control over the Mayor inside the now destroyed cathedral, when out of the hills a totally unexpected conquering force marches toward the city.  This is the epitome of a "cliff hanger."  As with the first in this trilogy, The Knife of Never Letting Go, I found this story incredibly painful to read, but once begun, there's no stopping. This saga is so much more than science fiction.  --reviewed by Mrs. Sams

the red necklace

by Sally Gardner

I find it really too bad that the cover of this book is so "girly."  That probably will keep many guys from checking it out, which is a shame, because the main character of this book is Yann Margoza, an appealing orphan Gypsy boy who has been reared by Tetu, a dwarf with powers of the mind.  They make their living by performing in a magic show in a Paris theater.  Yann himself has limited powers which he uses in the show, but these powers seem to desert him one night when he meets Count Kalliovski, a creepy and intimidating man of the upper class, and Sido, despised daughter of the selfish and silly Marquis de Villeduval.  Set against the backdrop of the turmoil and bloodbath of the French Revolution, this story is full of intrigue and interesting historical facts.  To avoid being captured and killed by the evil count, Yann is forced to flee to London, where he is cared for by a well-to-do couple, and educated as a gentleman.  When he learns that Sido and her father are in danger, he realizes that he must return to Paris and rescue them.  In his quest to recapture his former powers and learn new ones, Yann also seeks out the Gypsy community near Paris and comes to grip with his own heritage.  I really liked this story.  It's much more than a historical novel, and Yann and Sido's story is compelling.  I'm not sure if a sequel is forthcoming, but it's possible since Gardner left plenty of loose ends.    ~reviewed by Dail Sams

Four things my Geeky-Jock-of-a-Best-Friend Must Do In Europe  
by Jane Harrington

Brady is heading off to Europe with her mother for her coming of age trip, a family tradition.  Before she leaves, her best friend Delia writes four must-do things on Brady's hand in permanent ink.  Brady spends her entire Mediterranean cruise trying to overcome her insecurities, fulfill her friend's instructions, and wash off the ink.  This is a novel in letters--the letters Brady writes home to Delia reporting on her progress and adventures in her sardonic and ironic voice.  From being dragged around Pompeii, Barcelona, and Florence by her mother, to partying with fellow shipmates, Brady has a funny take on all that happens to her.  Pure fluff, Harrington's travel novel is a really quick read and a fun piece of escapism.     ~reviewed by Dail Sams

CATCHING FIRE

By Suzanne Collins

Though Katniss and Peeta have been given a few short months of peace and prosperity following their victory in the Hunger Games, it is inevitable that Katniss, at least, would be punished by President Snow for her defiance at the end of the games. Refusing to kill Peeta has sparked rebellion in a number of the districts, infuriating government officials. Punished she is, in many and excruciating ways. The most painful way of all is the announcement by the government that she and Peeta will be going back into the arena for the Quarter Quell, the 75th anniversary of the Hunger Games. Katniss has no hope that she will survive the games a second time. Even if she could, she has already made the decision to protect Peeta as long as she can and sacrifice herself to keep him alive. Returning to the diabolical arena are a host of tributes from past games, some there just to stay alive as long as they can, but others allied together to spark further rebellion. Collins has followed up her highly acclaimed The Hunger Games with another turn in the arena guaranteed to keep readers racing through the pages and begging for more at the cliff-hanger ending. ~reviewed by Mrs. Sams

Hawkes

Harbor

S.E. Hinton

Those who have read and loved such S.E. Hinton classics as The Outsiders and Tex may have wondered if she has written anything new recently. The answer to that question is yes! After a 15-year hiatus, Hinton has come out with a new novel, but if readers are looking for another teen novel like The Outsiders, Hawkes Harbor will come as something of a shock. This dark, adult novel of Jamie Sommers, an orphan abused as a child, and terrified as an adult by an awakened vampire to the point of madness, moves too slowly to really capture, and for me, at least, was too crude and violent to engage. I wanted to stop reading every page. The plot seems inconsistent. Near the end of the book, the cruel vampire, Grenville Hawkes, is cured of his vampirism, and suddenly gains concern for the man he violently controlled for years. While I like happy endings as much as anyone, this resolution just didn't seem to fit the tension-filled beginning of this novel. S.E. Hinton's new book will not be available in the high school library, and I would be hard-pressed to recommend it to our students. There are plenty of better vampire books out there. Leave this one on the shelf. ~review by Dail Sams

BLADE: playing dead

by Tim Bowler

It's been a long time since I've read a book with such unrelenting tension and suspense. Not even one sentence of comic relief interrupts the sense of fear and darkness that envelops the life of fourteen-year-old Blade, a street kid in urban Britain. Blade is a person with a past--a violent and painful past. But he managed to escape the life he had been living, and for the past three years, he's been playing dead, hiding from every personal contact and even from himself. Blade is a master at sensing trouble; he has honed his powers of observation to a fine point. But one day he slips, is brutalized by girl gang members, and his life starts unraveling. Ghosts from his bloody past come to track him down. He makes the mistake of starting to care for a girl and a small child. He has lost control, and never has he been in greater danger. Told with Blade's voice to an unseen observer, Bigeyes, in British street slang and Bowler's own language, this story grips the reader from page one and doesn't let go even at the last sentence. The word is that Blade is book one in an eight-book series. That is a good thing, because at the end of book one, Blade has no where to go but up. ~reviewed by Dail Sams

THE KNIFE

OF NEVER

LETTING GO

By patrick ness

Sometimes the Noise in Prentisstown on New World is overwhelming, though most every man has learned to deal with it somehow. There's little privacy because everyone can hear everyone else's thoughts--their Noise. Prentisstown has only men in it. All the women died long ago. And Todd Hewitt is the youngest of the children in town. In one month he will turn 13 and become the last boy to reach manhood. Until then, he's lonely. He does have his dog Manchee to talk to, though dogs don't have much to say back. But one day, down in the swamp, Todd hears a hole in the Noise, a silence that is deafening, and he finds a girl, a terrified girl, hiding from Aaron, the preacher man in town. Todd has long suspected Aaron is crazy, and when he hears Aaron's noise about the quiet, he knows for sure.

Ben and Cillian, Todd's guardians tell Todd to run. They know the town's secrets, the secrets that every boy learns when he becomes a man. They know Todd Hewitt must escape, even if he doesn't understand why. So he and Manchee run, and the silent girl runs with them. They are relentlessly pursued by Aaron, and then by the army formed of all the men in the town. They head for the legendary town of Haven, the first settlement on New World, and the largest city. Over and over they are caught and hurt and endangered, and over and over they escape to run on again, never completely understanding why, but knowing they are being followed by evil... The Knife of Never Letting Go is painful to read but impossible to put down.

~reviewed by Dail Sams

The Opposite of Invisible

by Liz Gallagher

I really liked this almost love story. It was easy, a fast read, and true to teenage life, without having the usual "kids are so cruel to kids" theme. Alice and Jewel (a nickname for a guy named Julian) have been best friends forever. They both are artsy and just haven't needed anyone else. Except in their own small art group. they are pretty much invisible at school, and don't care a bit. Narrated by Alice, the story of their lives changes subtly when it seems that Jewel might be wishing their friendship was more than that, and Alice can't tell him that she has a crush on a jock in the popular crowd. When Alice starts dating her crush, Simon, it seems like the Alice/Jewel friendship is over, but it doesn't take Alice long to realize that she just isn't that comfortable with Simon. The good thing about going with Simon is that she is drawn into his crowd, and she makes new friends that just might last longer than the relationship. And to a lesser degree, the same thing happens to Jewel. When they are able to patch things up, Alice and Jewel have become more confident in themselves and their lives have become richer and less isolated. A sweet first novel for Gallagher, and on this year's Tayshas list. ~reviewed by Dail Sams