There’s only a week left to vote for your favorite YAVA nominee! Voting can be done in person through September 15th at your local branch or online here. There’s so many good books to choose from as well. All the authors worked hard and should be commended, but only one can win! Now to give a quick synopsis of each book for you.
Everywhere You Want to Be
Tilly dreams of being a professional dancer. A slip on ice a year ago almost destroyed it though, so when she’s offered an opportunity of spending the summer with a dance troupe in NYC she can’t possibly turn it down. Her mom makes her promise to visit her grandmother and enroll in college in return. The first is easy, Tilly loves her Abuela, but the second, not so much. Unbeknownst to her mother, Tilly defers college for a year, putting all her hopes on the summer troupe will turn into something permanent. She quickly makes a friend and an enemy as well as running into an old flame. Can she handle all the drama that ensues?
Kiss Collector
After being burned by her only love and watching her parents marriage fall apart, Zae decides that it’s time for girls to get what they want. She and her friends decide that what they like most about relationships with boys is the kissing, the really good making out kind. They hold a competition amongst themselves to see who can collect the most kisses during spring break. The goal is to kiss ’em senseless and leave ’em hanging. From musicians and athletes to poets and bad boys, these girls have their sights set. Will they make it through without falling in love? Who will have the upper hand in their relationships? Will Zae’s parents get back together? Read to find out!
Live in Infamy
What would have happened to the United States if the Axis Powers won World War II instead of the Allies? This book explores the possibility two generations later. Following through on Germany’s proclivity for testing humans during that time to make “super soldiers” there are people with some magical powers here as well. They’re trained up to benefit the Empire. You can’t beat freedom out of everyone though. The main character, Ren Cabot, wants to take part of the underground revolution coming up even though his mom was killed in front of the whole town for her participation in it. Things are dangerous here, he’s never far from being discovered. This one will keep you on the edge of your seat.
On Blood Road
Taylor Sorenson is the son of a Special Attachi in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. He reluctantly goes with his mom to visit his father for his birthday in Saigon. Taylor sneaks out to see a local celebration and literally gets caught in some crossfire. He is soon taken as a prisoner of war since he is recognized as related to someone important. Slowly it sinks in to his brain the realities of a war like this. Blood, death, amputations, prisoners, land mines, Agent Orange, it becomes his life. Taylor is marched down Blood Road, also known as the Ho Chi Ming Trail. It’s all he can do to stay alive day after day, putting one foot in front of the other.
Reign of the Fallen
The King of Karthia has been reigning for over 200 years. How is this possible? Our main character, Odessa, is a necromancer which is an important job in this country. Once someone noble dies here, it is her job to bring them back from the Deadlands. The catch? No part of their skin can be seen from that moment forward or they will turn into Shades which are bloodthirsty and powerful. The color of a person’s eye coordinate to the type of power they can wield. There are necromancers and beast masters as well as weather mages. Odessa must find out who is turning the Dead into Shades before the kingdom is destroyed as well as come to terms with an unexpected romance of her own.
Ride On
A cowboy type in a post-apocolyptic future, Seph is a lone rider in a kill or be killed world. He’s been alone since his father was shot in front of him when he was 9. Seph gets captured by “lawmen” and meets Avery’s brother Finn in a prison. They are twins that have been recently orphaned and homeless from a nearby mining town. Avery is determined to save her brother and Seph is impressed with her courage as well as enamored if he’s being honest with himself. He teams up with her to help after escaping the prison thanks to lady luck and quick thinking.
Susanna’s Midnight Ride
The scene is the American Revolution and our title character is tired of having nothing to do to help other than household chores and spinning bees. Their tobacco farm has so many things to keep them busy, though slaves do nearly all of the physical labor, Susanna is kept hopping by her mother so she has little time to herself. She has two brothers off fighting for independence and the town, like many on the border of North and South, has neighbor fighting neighbor. When the British General Cornwallis takes over her family’s home on his way North he proudly boasts of secret plans to attack General Lafayette (just a handful of miles away) followed by Thomas Jefferson the next morning, thinking that the women of the house will be able to do nothing about it. Bursting to help, she convinces her mother to let her ride through the night to warn the General and the army of the devious plan.
The Disasters
A small yet diverse group of misfits are about to head home to Earth and accidentally witness a terrorist group attack the Academy they were just kicked out of. They are barely able to escape but the crimes are now pinned on them, as they all had “reason” to attack. After crash landing on a nearby colony they add one more to their group who convince them to participate in a dangerous heist to stay alive. They are the ultimate underdogs and quickly learn that relationships forged through necessity can be some of the strongest in the universe. Nax and his new friends work hard and use the skills that got them kicked out of the Academy in the first place. Can the group work together to stop the terrorists from killing even more people?
The Impossibility of Us
A love story for today’s age. Elise has just moved to a sleepy California coastal with her mom to help her sister-in-law and niece after her brother is killed while on tour in Afghanistan. It’s her senior year and she is too depressed to make friends. A new puppy that loves walks on the beach is her sole sunshine at first. During this time, she meets and befriends Mati. He’s here with his family on a temporary visa so his father can get treatment for cancer. She learns Mati is from Afghanistan and that takes her by surprise at first but she soon finds that her soul feels a connection with him. He loved her from first sight we learn through his poems. They have many hardships in their path to forming a relationship, not the least of which is their respective mothers. Only time will tell (and the book) if they are meant to be.
The Mystic’s Treachery
Anna’s father is just named the Russian Ambassador to the US so their family is moving from Moscow to NYC. Even if she isn’t on the best of terms with her twin sister at the moment, maybe she can still join the gymnastics team and find something to be happy about. Anna is weirded out when an old woman on the street, that she saw in both countries, gives her a warning that her life might be in danger. She listens to her tell tales of Rasputin and the famous lost Princess Anastasia. There’s similarities to the history books but there’s more too, a power struggle between the evil Mystics and Aura Readers. Does Anna have powers of her own? She’s got a lot on her plate as it looks like there’s an assassination attempt in the works.
The Zanna Function
The title character gets accepted to a school for gifted children. Gifted means really gifted here, to the point of being able to see and bend basic laws of the universe like gravity and chemical reactions. She is warned away at first by a mysterious woman but is determined to learn what she could be capable of doing. There are teachers for Chemistry, Physics, Math, and Self. The hardest function to master is that of one’s Self. That’s what Zanna needs to understand if she wants to survive her first year at this new school.
