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Staff Reviews: YA Fiction With Adult Appeal

Check out these reviews written by the staff of the Marathon County Public Library! (For reviews in all genres, visit our main Staff Reviews webpage.) Staff book reviews are also published at Goodreads.com; follow us for the latest updates.


Cover: 'And She Was'

"And She Was" by Jessica Verdi

★★★ 18 year-old Dara Baker is a recent high school graduate with big dreams. Living in a small town in New York with her mother, Mellie, Dara has aspired to be a pro tennis star as long as she can remember. She’s on the verge of entering her first major tournament when she finds out a shocking secret: Mellie is transgender and is actually her biological father...

Audience: Teens | Genre: Fiction, Contemporary Fiction, YA Fiction With Adult Appeal, LGBT
Cover: 'Born at Midnight'

"Born at Midnight" by C.C. Hunter

★★★★★ Follow Kylie Galen on her journey to discovering who/what she is. Kylie seems to be your everyday, normal teenage girl. Her parent's send her off to a summer camp for "troubled" teens. Once there, Kylie's world gets flipped upside down and she soon discovers that the supernatural things seen in movies and read in books are real and that she is in fact a...

Audience: Teens | Genre: YA Fiction With Adult Appeal
Cover: 'Far From the Tree'

"Far From the Tree" by Robin Benway

★★★★ What exactly is a family? Are they your biological relatives? The people who raised you? Or are they the people you choose to surround yourself with every day? Far From the Tree explores the idea of family in all its forms as it follows three siblings who reconnect as teenagers after being given up for adoption in infancy. There's 17 year-old...

Audience: Teens | Genre: Fiction, Contemporary Fiction, Young Adult, YA Fiction With Adult Appeal, Award-Winning
Cover: 'Heartless'

"Heartless" by Marissa Meyer

★★★★ Everyone knows the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland to be a mad tyrant. But, how did Catherine, the future Queen of Hearts, become so heartless? Cath has no desire to marry the awkward and timid King of Hearts. Instead, she wants to open a bakeshop and spend her days baking macaroons and cakes for the Kingdom of Hearts. Her parents,...

Audience: Teens | Genre: YA Fiction With Adult Appeal
Cover: 'Gemina'

"Gemina" by Amie Kaufman, Jay Kristoff

★★★★★ "Gemina", the second installment of the Illuminae Files, jumps to the intended destination for the survivors of the Kerenza attack—Jump Station Heimdall. At Heimdall, preparations for the annual Terra Day Celebrations and scheduled maintenance of the wormhole are underway. Hanna, the often-indulged daughter of the widowed commander, is running late for the...

Audience: Teens | Genre: YA Fiction With Adult Appeal
Cover: 'An Ember in the Ashes'

"An Ember in the Ashes" by Sabaa Tahir

★★★★ This is the story of Elias, a soldier for the Martial Empire, and Laia, a slave for the Martial Empire. Their lives are separate and lived with separate purpose until their paths cross. They begin to realize that they are much more similar than they once had thought and destiny seems to lead them to one another. As a debut novel by this newcomer to the...

Audience: Teens | Genre: Fiction, YA Fiction With Adult Appeal
Cover: 'The Forbidden Orchid'

"The Forbidden Orchid" by Sharon Biggs Waller

★★★★★ As the eldest daughter of ten in a rural village in 1861 England, Elodie knows and fulfills society’s expectations by helping her mother and caring for her younger sisters. Her father, who hunts exotic plants in China, is rarely home except for his annual Christmas visits. Elodie shares his interest in science and botany and makes the small greenhouse at...

Audience: Teens | Genre: Fiction, YA Fiction With Adult Appeal
Cover: 'A Mad, Wicked Folly'

"A Mad, Wicked Folly" by Sharon Biggs Waller

★★★★★ Seventeen-year-old Victoria Darling longs to be an artist; however, when her love of art leads to expulsion from her French finishing school, her high society London parents bring her home and lay out a plan for her rehabilitation, which includes an arranged marriage to a young man from a proper family. Her alternative: to be banished to a life of near-...

Audience: Teens | Genre: Fiction, YA Fiction With Adult Appeal
Cover: 'Me and Earl and the Dying Girl'

"Me and Earl and the Dying Girl" by Jesse Andrews

★★★★★ Greg Gaines is a high school senior who has mastered the art of blending into the social woodwork at school. He’s friendly with the many cliques and social strata while being careful not to appear allied to any single faction. His limited experience with girls in junior high was unsuccessful, so he’s given up on dating during high school. His only friend—...

Audience: Teens | Genre: Fiction, Broken Lives, YA Fiction With Adult Appeal
Cover: 'Red Queen'

"Red Queen" by Victoria Aveyard

★★★★ Looking for a new dystopian series? Give this excellent debut novel a try! Mare Barrow is a thief living in a village with the rest of her family, born into poverty because of the color of her blood. The Reds are a lower caste than the aristocratic Silvers, who have superhero-esque abilities in addition to silver blood. Mare is offered a chance to work...

Audience: Teens | Genre: Fiction, Dystopian, YA Fiction With Adult Appeal
Cover: 'A Court of Thorns and Roses'

"A Court of Thorns and Roses" by Sarah J. Maas

★★★ A new fantasy series from Sarah J. Maas is sure to delight her fans, but this New Adult novel isn't perfect. If you are not familiar with the New Adult genre, expect the same emotional highs and lows from YA, but with more sex and violence, although not on the level with "A Game of Thrones." The protagonist Feyre is a young woman who is forced to leave her...

Audience: Teens | Genre: Fiction, YA Fiction With Adult Appeal
Cover: 'In the Shadow of Blackbirds'

"In the Shadow of Blackbirds" by Cat Winters

★★★★★ This powerful debut from Cat Winters is unforgettable! Set in 1918 during the peak of the Spanish influenza pandemic, the story follows Mary Shelley Black, who moves to San Diego after her father's arrest. Mary Shelley moves in with her widowed aunt, who is fascinated by séances and a local spirit photographer. Mary Shelley struggles with the constant fear...

Audience: Teens | Genre: Fiction, Award-Winning, Morris Award Winner, YA Fiction With Adult Appeal
Cover: 'Black Dove White Raven'

"Black Dove White Raven" by Elizabeth Wein

★★★★★ This is the story of Emilia and Teo, who are raised as siblings from infancy by their mothers, who were stunt pilots in the 1930s in the U.S. The name of the mothers’ act was Black Dove, White Raven, which refers to Delia (mother of Teo) and Rhoda (mother of Emilia), respectively. The lives of Em and Teo are changed in an instant when a bird strike causes...

Audience: Teens | Genre: Fiction, YA Fiction With Adult Appeal
Cover: 'Who Done It? An Investigation of Murder Most Foul'

"Who Done It? An Investigation of Murder Most Foul" by Jon Scieszka

★★★★★ Herman Q. Mildew, an editor renowned for his lack of social skills (which is putting it very nicely!), a penchant for crushing dreams, poor hygiene, and love of stinky cheese is dead, and the police have requested alibis from the many writers and illustrators of young adult and children’s fiction that have reasons to wish him dead. These alibis range from a...

Audience: Teens | Genre: Fiction, Mystery, YA Fiction With Adult Appeal
Cover: 'I'll Give You the Sun'

"I'll Give You the Sun" by Jandy Nelson

★★★★★ Fraternal twins Noah and Jude have always sworn loyalty to each other above anyone else, but events during the summer before they start eighth grade and the months that follow fracture their relationship. Jumping ahead three years, we see that the artistic, socially-isolated Noah, who had constantly expressed himself through drawing (whether just in his...

Audience: Teens | Genre: Fiction, YA Fiction With Adult Appeal, Award-Winning, Printz Award Winner
Cover: 'Kingdom of Little Wounds'

"Kingdom of Little Wounds" by Susann Cokal

★★★★★ Susan Cokal's "Kingdom of Little Wounds" is not for the faint of heart. Some reviewers have proclaimed that this is not a book for teens, in spite of its Printz Award. The book charts the course of the imaginary Scandinavian kingdom of Skyggehaven beginning with the oldest living daughter's wedding to seal a treaty. At the wedding feast, the queen rips the...

Audience: Teens | Genre: Fiction, Award-Winning, Printz Award Winner, YA Fiction With Adult Appeal
Cover: 'Hero Complex'

"Hero Complex" by Margaux Froley

★★★★★ Devon is back at school following the holiday break, but she hasn’t been able to extricate herself from the repercussions of her first case. That task might be easier if she hadn’t been knocked out cold in the sole security blind spot on a yacht on New Year’s Eve. Devon is convinced it was no accident, but the lack of evidence to support her claim brings an...

Audience: Teens | Genre: Fiction, YA Fiction With Adult Appeal
Cover: 'Escape Theory'

"Escape Theory" by Margaux Froley

★★★★★ Devon Mackintosh, a scholarship student at an elite boarding school on the California coast, never really felt like she fit in. Now a junior with her sights on Stanford’s psychology program, she starts her duties as a peer counselor. These duties are far more challenging than she anticipated when one of the most popular guys at school, Jason Hutchinson (“...

Audience: Teens | Genre: Fiction, YA Fiction With Adult Appeal
Cover: 'Rose Under Fire'

"Rose Under Fire" by Elizabeth Wein

★★★★ Rose Justice, an American Air Transit Auxiliary (ATA) pilot, is captured by the Germans in late 1944 and sent to the concentration camp for female prisoners at Ravensbrück. She struggles learn the rules of the camp, whether those imposed by the guards or those of her fellow prisoners. The novel paints a vivid portrait of life in the prison camp and Rose’s...

Audience: Teens | Genre: Fiction, YA Fiction With Adult Appeal, Historical Fiction
Cover: 'Mortal Heart'

"Mortal Heart" by Robin LaFevers

★★★★ In this final installment of the His Fair Assassin trilogy, readers finally learn more about Annith, a young woman who is trained as an assassin in 15th century Brittany. Annith and the other members of the convent, Ismae and Sybella, serve Mortain, the god of death, and also use their skills to protect the young Duchess of Brittany. Unlike Ismae and...

Audience: Teens | Genre: Fiction, YA Fiction With Adult Appeal
Cover: 'Oh Yeah, Audrey'

"Oh Yeah, Audrey" by Tucker Shaw

★★★ This is a fun read about a teen who is obsessed with actress and legendary style icon Audrey Hepburn. Gemma started a Tumblr blog-Oh Yeah, Audrey- about the star, and virtually met several teens who share her fascination. They agree to meet in person in New York City for a weekend adventure inspired by Hepburn's famous film "Breakfast at Tiffany's," but...

Audience: Teens | Genre: Fiction, YA Fiction With Adult Appeal
Cover: 'Divergent'

"Divergent" by Veronica Roth

★★★★★ The first book in Veronica Roth's wildly popular series does not disappoint! We meet 16-year-old Beatrice Prior on the eve of the most important decision of her life. She must chose one of five factions to belong to for the rest of her years. Will she choose to stay with her family or find a new one? Her decision is complicated by her test results and her...

Audience: Teens | Genre: Fiction, YA Fiction With Adult Appeal, Dystopian