The Here and Now by Ann Brashares

In the not-so-distant future, a mosquito-bourne disease has killed off most of humankind. A small group of immune people survive and they have the technology to travel back in time. A group of "travelers" head back to 2014 to try to head off the disastrous future that they know is coming. The day they travel to 2014, a "time native" named Ethan sees a naked girl appear by the river where he is fishing. He notices a number written on her arm. He gives her a sweatshirt and she wanders away, but he never forgets her or her number. A couple of years later she shows up in one of his high school classes. Prenna lives by the rules of her people—she can never tell where she is from, never interfere with history, and never be intimate with anyone outside of her community. She tries to stay away from Ethan but they have a strong connection and when a homeless man tells them the meaning of the number that was on her arm, they learn that they need to take some action together. I enjoyed this book a lot—it's got romance, action, and time travel, and characters that you end up caring a lot about. Recommended for 7th grade and up. (My copy was an advance copy from the publisher. The book will be published in April 2014. Galloway students can borrow my copy until then.)

Reboot by Amy Tintera

Imagine a world where people die and come back to life. It seemed like a good thing in this future society where there was a fear that the human race was dying off. However, people came to fear the "reboots" and humans decided to enslave them and use them to fight battles too dangerous for people to fight. Reboots are known by a number—the number of minutes they were dead before they rebooted. The main character of this book is 178. It's a scary-high number, because it's common knowledge that the higher the number the less human a reboot can be. 178 doesn't is an excellent fighter (and killer) and doesn't feel very human herself until she becomes the trainer for 22, an unusual reboot who hasn't yet learned to give up his humanity. When they find out there may be humans and reboots who want to rebel against the system they find the courage to leave their prison and head off to the slums of Texas.  And yes, they also find some romance along the way. This book was strong on action, especially in the last half of the book. The problem for me was that I didn't fully get invested in the characters. I thought it was a pretty good book but it borrowed a lot from other dystopian books and didn't rise to the level of The Hunger Games or Starters or Unwind, or The 5th Wave, which are some of my favorites. Still recommended for dystopia fans, though. Probably best for 8th grade and up.

Nantucket Blue by Leila Howland

From the cover this looks like a breezy summer romance book, which it is in a way, but I didn’t find it quite as satisfying as I thought I might. The main character, named Cricket, spends much of her time with her best friend, Jules, and her family, partially to avoid her own divorced parents. When Jules’ mother dies unexpectedly, Cricket finds herself rejected by her best friend, uninvited to stay at their Nantucket home for the summer, and on her own to find a summer job on the island. It’s not the romantic summer she was expecting, but it has its surprises and an unlikely romance (and Cricket’s first sexual encounter). I was moderately interested in this story but I found that I didn’t really like Cricket or Jules, and there was too much going on for me to get very attached to their story (a dead senator, an adopted stepbrother from Russia, a long-lost tell-all diary of Cricket’s mom). This one was just so-so. For a truly breezy romance I recommend This is What Happy Looks Like byJennifer E. Smith. 

Hidden by Helen Frost

Darra and Wren were eight years old when Darra’s father stole a car and kidnapped Wren in the process. The two girls never met at the time but their stories intertwined and they have unresolved questions about each other. When they meet six years later at summer camp they instantly know each other but it takes some time before they are able to slowly connect and talk openly about their shared past. This is a really unique book, both in its plot and its form. The free verse style makes it a quick read and deceptively simple. The characters are intriguing, the summer camp setting is perfect for their cycle of emotional growth, and in the end readers discover some hidden messages in Darra’s passages. While the poetic form makes the book unique, at the same time it meant that the book did not go into great detail. I enjoyed the story but felt like I would have connected with the characters more had there been more meat to the writing. I also thought the additional hidden story line in Darra’s narrative (see the author's note for an explanation), didn't deliver any surprising additions to the plot. Overall I did enjoy this book and I will recommend it to middle schoolers, especially reluctant readers.  

Letting Ana Go by Anonymous

Kids today probably don’t know Go Ask Alice, the young adult novel from 30 years ago that was supposedly the true diary of a girl sinking deeper and deeper into drug addiction. Letting Ana Go is obviously a modern twist on this style—a cautionary tale told in the first person about a young person who slowly goes from being a good girl with everything going for her to a psychological disaster. The narrator has no real reason to diet except that she runs cross country and needs to track her calories to be sure she is eating enough. However, her best friend, Jill, is a ballet dancer who begins losing dangerous amounts of weight in order to further her dance ambitions. The narrator counts calories in solidarity with Jill at first, but then finds that she gets positive attention from her new boyfriend (Jill's brother) and that it helps her deal with her parents' breakup. She soon becomes unable to stop her dangerous behavior. I am no expert on anorexia. I cannot say whether this book accurately represents the progression of this disease, but I can say that it did not ring true to me. The narrator's descent into the disease happens rather quickly and her health also fails too rapidly for me to believe. I found it hard to suspend my disbelief enough to think that this girl really would have let this disease get the best of her. I think there is a subset of teen and pre-teen girls who will like this book because of the subject matter and the appeal of “problem novels” but I cannot say that I recommend it to readers in general. If you really want a chilling look at eating disorders try Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson.