Beautiful, popular Samantha and her three best friends are the ruthless queen bees of their high school. But Samantha is living a nightmare: throughout the book, she relives the day of her death seven times, with some dramatic alterations and revelations depending on her choices—ditching school to spend time with her younger sister or, on a day when life’s rules have all but lost their meaning, seducing a teacher. She faces the often tragic consequences of even the smallest acts, awakens to the casual cruelties all around her, and tries to get things right and maybe even redeem herself. If this sounds too much like a Groundhog Day–style plot, make no mistake: evocative of Jenny Downham’s Before I Die, Oliver’s debut novel is raw, emotional, and, at times, beautiful (“It amazes me how easy it is for things to change,” Samantha thinks. “how easy it is to start off down the same road you always take and wind up somewhere new”). Samantha’s best friends are funny, likable, and maddening, but readers will love Samantha best as she hurtles toward an end as brave as it is heartbreaking. Ages 14–up. (Mar.)
Ah, yes Groundhog Day. Didn’t this just happen? If you’re like us, you’ve given up all hope of the warmth of the sun and are burrowing to await the end of this wretched cold. With the repetitive feeling of leaving and returning home in the cold dark, we present to you a few books that […]
Books have been a significant inspiration at the movies since the earliest days of the cinema. We’re never less than thrilled (if, perhaps, trepidatious) when we learn our favorite novel is being adapted into a film, because when it all comes together in just the right way, it’s glorious, breathing a second life into a beloved […]
A teen novelist, set loose in New York City after her debut sells big. A girl mutated by fever, just discovering the extent of her new supernatural powers. The dregs of the human race, fighting to survive alien invasion. In the best teen books of the year, young protagonists navigate life in our world and at the end of it. They struggle to survive and thrive in imagined universes, dead-end towns, and deep under the sea. These are the year’s most moving, heart-pounding, and engrossing teen books.
First lines are powerful. It’s the author’s best chance to hook the reader. A great first line will pull you in, introduce you to the narrator, and set the tone for the entire book. Depending on what you’re reading, a great first line can be funny or meaningful or sad or somehow all of the above. […]
Sci-fi and fantasy have their big, bad, powerful villains, but make no mistake—so does contemporary. In realistic YA fiction, no villain stands out like the bully, those classmates who make your life a living hell. Most of those books, of course, feature the victims: kids who get bullied for anything from going for the wrong […]