ttyl by Lauren Myracle

Three best friends deal with boys, school, and their changing friendship as they navigate their first semester in 10th grade. Told entirely in IMs.

Highly Recommended

Bad Boys (Rush Hour Volume 2) edited by Michael Cart

The second volume in a new literary journal for young adults. The theme is bad boys and it has a mixture of shart stories, novel excepts, essays, and non-fiction excerpts by Jacqueline Woodson, Ron Koertge and Robert Lipsyte, just to name a few.

Highly Recommended

Margaux with an X by Ron Koergte

Margaux is beautiful and that is all guys seem to notice, until dorky Danny comes along and shows her that she has more to offer.


Highly Recommended

monkey business by Sarah Mlynowski

A great, funny novel about four business school students making their way through their first year in a dorm dubbed The Zoo. Sex, cheating, lying on applications, all in a years work for Kimmy, Russ, Layla, and Jamie.

Highly Recommended

Playing With Boys by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez

Chick-lit with some substance to it. I didn't like it as much as Dirty Girl's Social Club but it was well-written.

Follows the lives of three very different Latinas (one Tejana, one former telenovelas star, and one from El Salvador) who become friends and help each navigate life, work and (of course) love. Also has a Cuban rapper.

Recommended

Girls in Pants: the third summer of the sisterhood by Ann Brashares

Another great installment in the traveling pants series. This one takes place in the girls' summer between high school and college. It focuses more on the girls and less on the pants.

I can't wait for the movie.

Highly recommended

Stuck in Neutral
Cruise Control by Terry Trueman

The same story told from two different perspectives. Shawn McDaniel is a 14-year-old with Cerebral Palsy and everyone thinks that he is a total vegetable but only he knows that he's not. Also, he thinks that his dad is planning to kill him. Cruise Control tells the story from the perspective of Shawn's successful, jock brother.

Fast-paced, good writing, believable.

Recommended

Girls' Night In Edited by Lauren Henderson, Chris Manby and Sarah Mlynowski

A great collection of short stories by some of the great chick-lit writers of the day.

Wonderful and light

Highly Recommended

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

A beautiful and bittersweet love story about the relationship between an artist and a time-traveling librarian. Wonderfully written, not very sci-fi.

Highly Recommended

My Scrumptious Scottish Dumplings: the Life of Angelica Cookson Potts by Cherry Whytock

The second installment of a charming series. In this episode Angel must deal with her father's protest against Harrod's for selling inferior haggis and her best friend moving to Florida.

Highly Recommended

Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher

When you have a name like The Tao Jones and you're a mixed-race adoptee of white parents in an extremely white, rural community you learn to be tough real quick. This is T. J.'s story.
It's about bringing together outsiders, becoming a team and what it means to be man.

Hilarious, heart-wrenching and real.

Highly Recommended