On a hot summer’s day in her small Florida town, fourteen-year-old Beverly Tapinski sadly buries her dog Buddy with the help of her best friend Raymie. She then decides to leave town and hitches a ride with her cousin to… Read More ›
Dysfunctional Relationships
All Eyes on Us
Amanda Kelly and Carter Shaw, who have been The Couple in their high school for the past 3-1/2 years, are now approaching graduation and the beginning of their college careers. Their future lives together are planned, as far as the… Read More ›
Patron Saints of Nothing
Right before his last Spring Break before graduating from high school, seventeen-year-old Jay learns that his Filipino cousin Jun is dead, apparently killed as an addict and drug dealer in President Duterte’s war on drugs. Jun’s father, a regional police… Read More ›
Opposite of Always
Eighteen-year-old Jack King’s two best friends in the world are Jillian and Franny (Francisco). Unfortunately, Jack has been in love with Jillian since they met at the beginning of freshman year at Elytown High, though she is unaware of how… Read More ›
Sorry for Your Loss
Pup Flanagan has spent most of his seventeen years as (in his mind) an undistinguished person compared to his seven older siblings. At school he is accepted by his classmates but generally ignored, neither liked nor disliked. He has no… Read More ›
Ordinary Girls
Here’s a modern day send-up of a Jane Austen novel: two young girls–their acclaimed novelist father deceased for many years–live with their inept artistic mother in a shabby but genteel Victorian house in a Philadelphia neighborhood. They subsist on royalties… Read More ›
Better Than the Best Plan
Weeks before the beginning of summer vacation, seventeen-year-old Ritzy finds herself living alone in the apartment where she and her mom have been staying for the past three years. Her mom, a free-spirited devotee of holistic living and seeker of self-fulfillment,… Read More ›
How to Make Friends with the Dark
The protagonist of this book, Grace (aka Tiger), is a high school sophomore living in a small Arizona desert town. She does not know who her father is/was, and her mother is secretive about most other parts of her past… Read More ›
The First True Thing
First of all, let me say the blurbs on these book jackets are nonsense. This particular book, while worthy of notice and thought, will not leave you “breathless,” nor is it “heartbreaking” or particularly “raw.” OK, thank you, I feel… Read More ›
The Goodbye Summer
Caroline is sixteen-going-on-seventeen, the only child in a loving and attentive family. Although she has dated before, she falls hard for a grocery store clerk named Jake, who is three years her senior, and she becomes embroiled in an intense… Read More ›
