Mermaid Park by Beth Mayall

When Amy Rush gets to stay in Wildwood, NJ with her godmother instead of her bullying stepfather and indifferent mother and sister, she is relieved. Soon she's ecstatic because she has finagled a job at Mermaid Park. Little does she know how pivotal it will prove to be.

Highly Recommended

Sloppy Firsts by Megan McCafferty

Jessica Darling has just had her best friend move away and she is heartbroken. No one seems to understand, from her shallow "friends" to her overly critical parents. Told alternately in letters to her friend and diary entries, Jessica really finds out what it means to be herself.

Highly Recommended

How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life by Kaavya Viswanathan

This plagiarized book is fluffy Indian-American chick-lit. I read Sloppy Firsts immediately afterwards and even though the main characters' outlooks and tone were different, it really felt like a cheap knock-off.

Since the articles said the publisher thought her original idea was too "dark", I am curious if it would actually been better written and not plagiarized.

Not Recommended

Falcondance by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

In this sequel to Snakecharm, a young Falcon must decide between loyalty to his family or to his Wyvern princess.

Highly Recommended

Girls For Breakfast by David Yoo

Nick Park is a Korean-American growing up in the WASPiest town in Connecticut. He loves girls, adores them but somehow he can't get them. Is it because he's Asian or is it something deeper?

Highly Recommended

my saucy stuffed ravioli by Cherry Whytock

Angelica Cookson Potts is back and this time she's going on holiday in Italy with her family and her best friends. But something isn't quite right. Her mom seems much more "normal" than usual and is always mysteriously "out." Could she be having an affair with a gorgeous Italiano?


Highly Recommended

The Healing Time of Hickeys by Karen Rivers

Haley is about to start her senior year of high school which she is convinced will be the greatest. That is until she gets labeled "hickey girl", she gets severe chicken pox, her best friends starts dating her crush, and her hippy dad gets busted. Is this year salvageable?

Recommended

A Bad Boy Can Be Good for a Girl by Tanya Lee Stone

Told in verse, three high school girls fall to charms of a popular senior buy only to find that he's just using them. To get back, and warn others, they write about him in the endpapers of the school library's copy of Forever.

Highly Recommended

Are Men Necessary? by Maureen Dowd

New York Times columnist Dowd takes on gender relations in a variety of settings, from politics to the mall, in an insightful, thought-provoking and funny way. You may not agree with her but she'll certainly give you something to think about.


Highly Recommended

Size 12 Is Not Fat by Meg Cabot

Heather Wells is a former teen pop star who is now working as an assistant director of an undergraduate dorm, I mean Residence Hall. As if dealing with being dumped by her boy-band boyfriend and rooming with his hunky, older, PI brother isn't enough, now there are girls mysteriously dying at work. Can Heather solve the mystery before another girl dies?

The first in the Heather Wells mystery series.

Highly Recommended

Inexcusable by Chris Lynch

Keir is a good guy. Everyone says so including his childhood friend Gigi. That's why he doesn't understand why Gigi is saying he raped her. He loves her and good guys don't do things like that, right?

Highly Recommended

High Heels and Homicide by Kasey Michaels

Another book in the Maggie Kelly mystery series. This time Maggie, St. Just and crew are headed to England for the filming of a movie of one of her St. Just books.

Highly Recommended

Peeps by Scott Westerfeld

Peeps are parasite positives or, for those of you not in the know, vampires. Cal is a carrier working for Night Watch. He has just tracked down the last of the girls he infected but he still has to find the girl who infected him. But something else is going on, something Cal has never seen before. Can he figure out the mystery before it's too late.

Highly Recommended

Best American Nonrequired Reading 2005

Another great edition with an intro by Beck. One of my favorite pieces was "The Death of Mustango Salvaje" by Jessica Anthony

Highly Recommended

Avalon High by Meg Cabot

The teenage daughter of Medieval scholars finds herself smack in the middle in a modern day version of the King Arthur legend when she starts school at Avalon High in Annapolis, MD.

Highly Recommended

The Book of Bunny Suicides by Andy Riley

It's sick, it's twisted, it's hilarious. Cartoons of bunnies committing suicide.

Highly Recommended

how i live now by Meg Rosoff

Evil stepmothers, anorexia, terrorism, forbidden love, and war.

Do I have your attention yet? how i live now touches on all of this and more when Daisy moves in with her English cousins just as war breaks out.


Highly Recommended

Emily's Reasons Why Not by Carrie Gerlach

Emily is in her thirties and having trouble finding love. She decides to go to therapy. It is there that her doctor tells her to enumerate the 10 reasons why she shouldn't have dated her exes in the hopes that it will help her choose someone more appropriate.

Recommended

A Heart Divided by Cherie Bennett and Jeff Gottesfeld

When wanna-be playwright Kate Pride is forced to move to Tennessee from New Jersey for a year she is not pleased. That soon changes as she gets involved in the controversy over the high school mascot, the Rebels, and the flying of the Confederate flag.


Highly Recommended

The Blind Man of Seville by Robert Wilson

A very dark, suspense-filled mystery that starts with the brutal killing of a wealthy businessman. But as the death toll mounts, Inspector Jefe Javier Falcon starts finding connections to his recently dead father. And as he reads more of his journals, he realizes that things are not always what they seem.

Highly Recommended