In THIS IS MY BRAIN ON BOYS by Sarah Strohmeyer, Addie Emerson doesn’t believe in love. She believes in the chemicals that create feelings of love, and she believes that those chemicals alter a person’s thoughts and actions and brain chemistry, but that’s not the same thing as believing in love. Especially when Addie has…
Literary Crush: Chase from Some of the Parts
After a long hiatus, Literary Crush is back with Chase from Some of the Parts by Hannah Barnaby. Name: Chase Abbott Age: 16 What does he look like? Tall and lanky with dark curly hair and dark eyes. A dead ringer (please excuse the unfortunate pun) for the female main character’s dead brother. What does…
Editor’s Pick: Everlife Series by Gena Showalter
You know that feeling you get when you start a new series, and you know it will be one you wish you could read again for the first time? Everlife by Gena Showalter will be a series like that for me. The world in this series is so richly drawn, I felt the struggles of…
Editor’s Pick: When We Collided by Emery Lord
Emery Lord’s WHEN WE COLLIDED, which won the 2017 Schneider Family Book Award for representation of disability, is excellently titled. Collision, in all its forms, is somehow inherently violent. It is something that is abrupt, disorienting, life-altering. It is a moment after which nothing is the same.”When we collided” is therefore a very apt description…
Editor’s Pick: All We Have Left by Wendy Mills
It is a bit dismaying to me that an event that I not only lived through but also remember with vivid clarity happened long enough ago that they’re writing historical fiction about it. However, that is my only complaint about ALL WE HAVE LEFT by Wendy Mills. ALL WE HAVE LEFT tells the story of…
Best Books of 2016: We Pick Our Faves
Happy 2017 everyone! It has been a tough month here for me, so we haven’t updated much on TLR, but I’m starting the year with the team’s picks of best books of 2016. We look forward to another year sharing of great books with you all. Cassie’s Picks: Exit, Pursued By a Bear by EK…
Editor’s Pick: Zero Day by Jan Gangsei
Eight years ago Addie Webster was kidnapped straight out of the Governor’s Mansion. Now she’s back, escaped from her captors, returned to her family who now live in the White House. At exactly the same time a terrorist group has begun attacking Washington, D.C.. Zero Day is a engaging Tom Clancy style spy novel seen…
Heroines Who Rock: Amy Gumm from Dorothy Must Die
Who She Is: Amy Gumm’s story might sound familiar to you. She’s a girl who lives in the middle of Kansas until a tornado shows up one day and whisks her off to a magical land called Oz. Except that Oz isn’t so magical these days, because Dorothy (yes, that Dorothy) returned and took…
Editor’s Pick: The Call by Peadar O’Guilin
A thousand years ago, the Irish banished the twisted faerie race to the Grey Lands. A millennium later, the faeries have enacted their revenge. Before they turn seventeen, every child in Ireland will be spirited away to the Grey Lands, to try their best to survive a day against the Sidhe. In the real world,…
Editor’s Pick: Falling Over Sideways by Jordan Sonnenblick
I don’t know how, but Jordan Sonnenblick has the mind of a 13-year-old girl. In Falling Over Sideways, eighth grader Claire has a lot going on. Her friends are skipping ahead of her in dance, her nemesis is taunting her with his first chair saxophone status, her science teacher has it in for the entire…