New YA: March 1-14.
New hardbacks:
Breaking Sky, by Cori McCarthy:
The one element that makes Breaking Sky stand out as more than just a semi-forgettable retelling of Top Gun—side note: does the fact that there’s now a retelling mean that Top Gun is viewed as a modern-day fairy tale?—is the gender swap. It made me realize two things: 1) that we very rarely see female characters take on a true Maverick role (Starbuck in the BSG reboot is one of the few), and 2) that when female characters DO take on that role, we often criticize them for exhibiting the very self-absorbed, dangerous, costly behavior that we expect from male Mavericks, the very behavior that, in male Mavericks, is so often lauded as “independent.”
Tether (Many-Worlds), by Anna Jarzab
Teresa of the New World, by Sharman Apt Russell
Women Heroes of the American Revolution: 20 Stories of Espionage, Sabotage, Defiance, and Rescue (Women of Action..., by Susan Casey
Magnificent Minds: 16 Pioneering Women in Science and Medicine, by Pendred E. Noyce
Disappear Home, by Laura Hurwitz
The Bunker Diary (Fiction - Young Adult), by Kevin Brooks
Prairie Fire (Fiction - Young Adult), by E. K. Johnston
Infandous (Fiction - Young Adult), by Elana K. Arnold
Biggie, by Derek E. Sullivan
Love & Profanity: A Collection of True, Tortured, Wild, Hilarious, Concise, and Intense Tales of Teenage Life, by Rachael Hanel and Geoff Herbach
Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poets for the Next Generation, by Brett F Lauer and Lynn Melnick
Read Between the Lines, by Jo Knowles
Down from the Mountain, by Elizabeth Fixmer
Painless, by S. A. Harazin
The Tragic Age: A Novel, by Stephen Metcalfe
Sorceress (Spellcaster), by Claudia Gray
The Memory Key, by Liana Liu
Remnants: Season of Fire (A Remnants Novel), by Lisa Tawn Bergren
The Dark Water: A Well's End Novel, by Seth Fishman
The Dead I Know, by Scot Gardner
How to Win at High School, by Owen Matthews
Silence, by Deborah Lytton
Not Otherwise Specified, by Hannah Moskowitz
Positively Beautiful, by Wendy Mills
Femme (Lorimer SideStreets), by Mette Bach
Fight Back (Lorimer SideStreets), by Brent R. Sherrard
Mosquitoland, by David Arnold
Bone Gap, by Laura Ruby
The Storyspinner (The Keepers' Chronicles), by Becky Wallace
Dead to Me, by Mary McCoy
Death Marked (Death Sworn), by Leah Cypess
Tagged, by Diane C. Mullen
The Bullet Catch: Murder by Misadventure, by Amy Axelrod and David Axelrod
The Glory, by Lauren St. John
The Infinite (Gates of Thread and Stone Series), by Lori M. Lee
The Agency 4: Rivals in the City, by Y.S. Lee
Everybody Knows Your Name, by Andrea Seigel and Brent Bradshaw
Little Peach, by Peggy Kern
Game Seven, by Paul Volponi
The Dickens Mirror: Book Two of The Dark Passages, by Ilsa J. Bick
Seed, by Lisa Heathfield
The Brilliant Light of Amber Sunrise, by Matthew Crow
In a Split Second, by Sophie McKenzie
Shadow Scale (Seraphina), by Rachel Hartman
Vanishing Girls, by Lauren Oliver
Burning Kingdoms (The Internment Chronicles), by Lauren DeStefano
The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B, by Teresa Toten
New paperbacks (that I've read):
Mafia Girl, by Deborah Blumenthal:
Pros: Gia's sexual appetite. Props to Blumenthal for allowing Gia to lust after someone and for allowing her to pursue that feeling without branding her a slut. I do have some issues with that storyline, but I did appreciate that aspect of it.
Tandem (Many-Worlds), by Anna Jarzab:
Unfortunately, that’s the most positive thing I have to say about Tandem, so if A) you read it and loved it, B) you’re planning on reading it and want to keep an open mind, or C) you suspect it’ll be a good fit for you, you might want to skip the rest of this column. Then again, based on the premise—and especially my love of parallel universe stories—I thought that I was firmly in category C, so it’s possible that my experience might be a good barometer for you.
Previously: