Bibliophile Support Group

The Iron Thorn is an AWESOME YA fantasy by Caitlin Kittredge. Aoife has always dreaded her sixteenth birthday. Both her mother and her brother went insane when they turned sixteen. And the day is drawing nearer for Aoife - something that she can't deny, but tries to anyway. In the city of Lovecraft madness is an epidemic - a result of the necrovirus, a virus that causes all the horrifying creatures that haunt the darkness and the heretical magic and witchcraft that the Proctors stamp out with enthusiasm. There are many madhouses in Lovecraft, one of which houses Aoife's mother - and threatens to house Aoife as well if she begins to show any signs of following in her family's footsteps. For now, Aoife focuses as much as she can on her schoolwork - having gained an impressive slot at the Lovecraft Academy where she stretches her intelligent mind and is fascinated by the engines that run the city. But as her sixteenth birthday looms even closer a letter arrives - it is pe...

So Shelly is a YA novel that imagines the famous poets Keats, Byron, and Shelley into present-day high school students, written by Ty Roth. High school Junior John Keats met Shelly while working on the school newspaper. A poet, but a shy and agonizing one, he couldn't help but be entranced by her energetic spirit. That's also where he met Gordon Byron, already a published and lauded author of a best-selling YA book. He doesn't care for the arrogant, good-looking jerk - but Shelly has been friends with him since she was very young. When Shelly dies by drowning in a sailing accident, Gordon and Keats can't help but be thrown together by their mutual grief. They steal Shelly's ashes, per her mysterious instructions before dying, and try to make it to Lake Erie where she wished to be scattered while her favorite song played. In the meantime, Keats reflects back on his short but memorable time with Shelly - and the night she got drunk and told him almost every detail...

Ashes, Ashes is a new YA disaster-movie-esque novel by author Jo Treggiari. Lucy is only sixteen but she has seen and lost a lot. She has seen her home city of New York go from the shiny metropolitan we know it as to a crumbling, ramshackle ghost town. The reason? A small pox epidemic that wiped out nearly all the population, leaving behind a small number of primarily children and the elderly. Also the sudden weather changes in which half of the year is drought and the other half is flooding, overwhelming rains, which has drastically changed the environment of the land and made food scarce. In quick succession Lucy lost all the members of her family to the disease, leaving her completely alone. She's made herself a little home with her very few belongings and a survival manual she got from an abandoned book store. Each day she works hard just to make it to the next one. But when a pack of wild dogs pursue her, a good-looking, smirking teenage boy named Aidan helps to rescue her...

Abandon is the first book in a new YA contemporary fantasy trilogy by the best-selling, beloved author Meg Cabot! Ever since Pierce died almost two years ago, she has felt different. According to studies, this is normal. After all, she was dead - then brought back to life. Who wouldn't be different after experiencing that? Thing is, Pierce has good reason to feel not as attached to the world of the living - she was, for a short time, attached to the world of the dead. And in that world she met someone. And he wants her back. Her Mom decides to move the two of them to a small Florida island community where she grew up, to see if that might brighten up Pierce. Pierce has been running into more trouble than she ever used to. Ever since she died. Ever since she met him. But Pierce knows that moving isn't going to stop him from following. He's always gonna be there when she needs help. Whether she likes it or not... OMG - I loved it!!!!!!!!! I was excited for Abandon , as I am ...

Corsets & Clockwork: 13 Steampunk Romances is a collection of Victorian era YA with an infusion of fantasy, science fiction, and steampunk attitude edited by Trisha Telep and featuring popular names in YA fiction. I absolutely loved Kiss Me Deadly , another YA anthology edited by Trisha Telep, which introduced me to so many authors that I am now huge fans of - so I was super excited to read another collection of YA short stories. Especially since they are "steampunk" romances, which is a word that I hadn't been familiar with for a very long time until I began to notice that a ton of books I was a fan of, awesome period mysteries with flare, were being described with the term! In Corsets & Clockwork you have feisty, smart heroines, genius inventors, magic, science, danger, bravery, romance and all kinds of shocking twists and turns! Here is a quick breakdown of what I thought of each story: Rude Mechanicals by Lesley Livingston: This was a very interesting ta...

Enclave is a new YA apocalyptic novel by Ann Aguirre. Deuce lives deep underground in an enclave where the oldest person is wrinkled and shaky at twenty-five. This is the way it has been since she can remember. Controlled breeding, carefully planned hunting for food, and rules to keep everyone doing their job - surviving. She is thrilled to be named a Huntress. Always she has admired the strength of the hunters and the way they band together. But when her partner is named and it is Fade, the outcast boy that was not born in the Enclave but found wild and nearly dead in the tunnels at a very young age, Deuce doesn't know what to think. People still avoid him. It's unheard of to survive on your own like he did - and his stories of where he came from were touted as lies. He said he was from the surface, but that is impossible. All there is above is death. But they allowed him to stay if he would fight for them. And he has. But when one of Fade and Deuce's first missions to...

Stranger with my Face is a YA suspense novel by Lois Duncan, updated to have more modernized text. Laurie Stratton just had the best summer of her life. She caught the eye of Gordon, her high school's best looking and most popular guy, and began dating him. After spending her entire life as the girl who sits alone reading, suddenly being part of the popular group, going to parties, and being noticed is like a dream-come-true. So for once she is looking forward to the first day of school, because her senior year is looking to be the best by far. She almost thought that she wasn't going to make it on the first day because she had gotten so sick the day before and had to miss an amazing party she was planning on going to with Gordon the day before. But it looked to be a 24-hour bug, just like her Mom suspected. But when she got to the ferry, which took all the Brighton Island kids to the school, Gordon and her new friends seemed to be giving her a cold shoulder. It doesn't...

It's been quite a while since I had a contest, hasn't it? Well, that's why I am here and posting on a Tuesday - to give y'all an opportunity to win books!!! How about two books? How about two winners? Sound good? I thought so! So Random House Children's Books (a big huge publisher, if you didn't know) just recently announced two new paperback imprints - Bluefire and Ember . Bluefire is going to feature beloved fantasy novels, while Ember is going to present us with award winners and bestsellers. Click on the names of the imprints to go directly to their websites to learn more! Imprints can help you to know whether or not you're gonna be interested in the title. For examply, some of the authors that will be featured under Bluefire are: Tamora Pierce, Isobelle Carmody, Esther Friesner, Eoin McNamee, Henry Neff, N.D. Wilson, and Janni Lee Simner. While under Ember you're gonna see options like: The Alchemyst ; Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret ; The C...

The Daughters Take the Stage is the third novel in Joanna Philbin's YA contemporary series The Daughters . Just as I said in my review of The Daughters Break the Rules on Friday, I strongly suggest reading every series in order to have the best reading experience. So, I'd recommend skipping this review if you haven't read the first and second books in the series yet, even though each one is about a different character so the spoilers aren't too bad. But any spoilers at all, in my opinion, are bad! :) Anyway, in The Daughters Take the Stage Hudson Jones is the star. Being the daughter of super-famous, ultra-popular pop star Holla Jones makes the fact that Hudson is starting to have an interest in her own music career a bit more difficult. Because Hudson has a sound different from her mom's, and she still hasn't felt ready to have the spotlight on her yet. Can Hudson overcome her stage fright? And even if she does, will she have the courage to sing the way she...

The Daughters Break the Rules is the second book in the YA contemporary series The Daughters written by Joanna Philbin. In this second outing, Carina Jurgensen takes center stage and the story takes off at the exact moment it ended - which is awesome to me. I've never been a fan of "two months later" or "five weeks later." Now, I believe that it is possible to read The Daughters Break the Rules without reading The Daughters , but then you would spoil Lizzie's story and why would you want to do that? So, if you haven't yet read The Daughters , I strongly encourage you to do so before reading The Daughters Break the Rules ! Carina has never been close with her billionaire businessman dad. When her parent's got divorced when she was ten, she knew it was his fault - and she never totally forgave him for not letting her live with her Mom. But she's learned to artfully avoid him. Yet usually avoiding him isn't much of an issue since he seems t...

The Daughters is the first YA contemporary novel in Joanna Philbin's series of the same name. Katia Summers is drop-dead, stunningly gorgeous and a famous, instantly recognizable supermodel. She is followed by adoring fans and rabid paparazzi. And Lizzie Summers is her only daughter. At fourteen, Lizzie is finding that it becoming more difficult to be Katia's daughter, as she is no longer the adorable little girl of America's beloved model, but instead the awkward, odd-looking girl that takes after her plain, journalist father, without a trace of the beauty gene. But Lizzie has her two best friends, two other girls that know what it is like to have famous parents and be under the radar by default. One is Carina, daughter of billionaire businessman Karl Jurgensen, and the other is Hudson, daughter of popstar icon Holla James. With them by her side, Lizzie tries to let go of her lack of looks and embrace the good news that her now-very-cute childhood neighbor Todd has retu...

Summer of Fear is a YA horror/thriller by the revered Lois Duncan. Rachel is ready for a relaxing summer hanging out with her best friend and childhood playmate/recently turned boyfriend. But then her mother receives a call telling her that her sister (along with her husband and housekeeper) all died in a terrible car accident. Immediately Rachel's Mom and Dad head out to pick up Julia, the seventeen-year-old daughter that had been waiting at home and become suddenly orphaned. Since her aunt, uncle, and cousin had moved to a remote area when Rachel was young for her uncle's writing, Rachel has never met Julia and only vaguely remembers her mentioned in Christmas letters. But she feels bad for the girl and tries to ready herself for another girl living with them - making sure the sad girl will feel welcomed. Yet when Julia arrives... she is odd. Rachel tries to give her the benefit of the doubt, since her cousin is grieving - but there is something about her unblinking, pene...

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is a middlegrade fantasy and Newberry Honor winner by Grace Lin. Minli lives in the Valley of Fruitless Mountain where she sees her parents work very hard every day in the fields with very little to show for it. Her favorite part of the day is the evening when her tired but pleasant father tells Minli tales about the Valley they live in and how it became Fruitless, as well as about the Old Man of the Moon, who knows the answers to everything. Then one day Minli decides to try and make things better for her family by setting out on a quest to find the Old Man of the Moon - knowing that he will know how to change their fortunes. So she sets out on a journey that causes her to meet a talking fish, a dragon who can't fly, a powerful king, and more! First off, I must say that I love the vivid, eye-catching cover and illustrations that decorate this charming, sweet, earnest tale of magic and fantasy. It didn't take long at all for me to be swept ...

The Gathering is a YA paranormal by best-selling author Kelley Armstrong, and the first in the new trilogy entitled Darkness Rising . Maya has never resented living in a tiny Canadian town. She loves her parents, she loves the wilderness and animals, and she loves her friends. The fact that the pharmaceutical company that owns the little town for their employees, in order to prevents the influx of corporate spies, gives them all the best of everything isn't too bad either. But last summer Maya's best friend drowned in the lake when they were out swimming, even though she was on the swim team and an excellent swimmer. So when a reporter starts showing up asking questions about her death, Maya doesn't know what to think. And the thing is, that's not the only thing that's weird. An older woman in a tattoo shop calls Maya a witch when she sees Maya's fading paw-print birthmark. More cougars than usual begin appearing in the town. A new guy with a sexy bad boy st...