Emmy & Oliver - Robin Benway

Summary: "Sheltered seventeen-year-old Emmy's childhood best friend Oliver reappears after disappearing with his father ten years ago"-- Provided by publisher.

Booklist Reviews

Emmy and Oliver, next-door neighbors born on the same day, had been best friends since birth. When they were seven, Oliver's dad kidnapped him from school, and the world changed immediately. Scarred lives and altered relationships are front and center while everyone tries to maintain a sense of normality. That uneasy status quo suddenly is tested by Oliver's return 10 years later. No one is certain how to handle what was always hoped for, but little by little, as Emmy makes her way into Oliver's life, the healing begins. This coming-of-age tale with a twist is filled with emotional wounds that are deep and painful and conversations that are awkward and revealing. Rather than focusing solely on Emmy and Oliver's relationship, Benway fearlessly examines the effects of loss and return from every perspective: Oliver, his friends, his mother and her new family, Emmy's parents. Hope, confusion, frustration, and love coexist without shame as teens and parents come to grips with the realization that nothing stays the same no matter how desperately we want it to. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.

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A court of thorns and roses - Sarah J Maas

A court of thorns and roses - Maas, Sarah J

Summary: "Dragged to a treacherous magical land she only knows about from stories, Feyre discovers that her captor is not an animal, but Tamlin, a High Lord of the faeries. As her feelings toward him transform from hostility to a firey passion, the threats against the faerie lands grow. Feyre must fight to break an ancient curse, or she will lose Tamlin forever"-- Provided by publisher.

Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Faeries and humans live apart, separated by a wall and generations-old hostility, and resourceful Feyre struggles to keep her poor family alive. She kills a wolf one winter day, and a monstrous creature arrives at her home, demanding her life as punishment. What follows is a Beauty and the Beast–style retelling as Feyre is spirited away to the grand lands of this creature, who turns out to be Tamlin, High Fae, under a mysterious curse. Feyre's feelings for him and his world morph slowly from an angry combativeness into a strange affection, but a mysterious disease is ravaging his home, and at risk of losing everything she has begun to hold dear, Feyre begins a journey that takes her Under the Mountain, the dangerous home of the faerie queen. The ensemble is exquisitely developed, as is the sultry romance between Feyre and Tamlin. The end result is a story that, despite its hefty page count and ambitious scope, simply dazzles. Refreshingly, there are no cliff-hangers here, but enough open-endings ensure that the clamor for a sequel will be deafening. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Maas' Throne of Glass series has been a smash hit, and with a six-figure marketing campaign, this new series is primed to follow. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.

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Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe - Benjamin Alire Saenz

Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe - Saenz, Benjamin Alire

Summary: Fifteen-year-old Ari Mendoza is an angry loner with a brother in prison, but when he meets Dante and they become friends, Ari starts to ask questions about himself, his parents, and his family that he has never asked before.



Horn Book Magazine Reviews
Aristotle -- Ari for short -- meets Dante at the pool one summer day in 1987, and the two boys quickly strike up a friendship that will change their lives in ways both subtle and profound. Ari admires Dante's gregarious personality, his intellectual curiosity, and his close bond with his parents, especially his father. In contrast, Ari's own father, a Vietnam vet, remains aloof, damaged by his experience of war, and both parents refuse to discuss his imprisoned older brother. When Ari saves Dante's life but breaks his own legs in the process, it not only strengthens their friendship but cements the bond between the two Mexican American families. When Dante's father leaves El Paso for a one-year position at the University of Chicago, the boys stay in touch through letters. Dante had telegraphed his sexual attraction to Ari, but now comes out to his friend in writing. When Dante returns, the two cautiously resume their friendship, but when Dante gets beat up in an alley for kissing another boy, it's a catalyst for Ari to examine how he really feels about Dante. Ari's first-person narrative -- poetic, philosophical, honest -- skillfully develops the relationship between the two boys from friendship to romance, leading to the inevitable conclusion: "How could I have ever been ashamed of loving Dante Quintana?" jonathan hunt Copyright 2012 Horn Book Magazine Reviews.

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Unmarked - Kami Garcia

Unmarked - Garcia, Kami

Summary: Kennedy Waters and her companions find themselves in a world where vengeance spirits kill, ghosts keep secrets, and a demon walks the Earth. As they learn more about their ancient secret society, its longtime rivals the Illuminati, and Kennedy's mysterious family, they wonder whether Kennedy is really meant to be a member of the Legion.



Booklist Reviews
Accidentally releasing the powerful demon Andras (in Unbreakable, 2013) leaves Kennedy Waters guilt-ridden, especially as destructive weather, widespread violence, and eerie kidnappings dominate the nightly news—surely it's a sign of Andras' evil at work. Even after her friends, especially hunky Jared, rescue her from boarding school, she still can't quite shake the feeling that she deserves all the blame. But her inner struggles quickly take a backseat to their quest to uncover the secret last member of the Legion, who happens to be Kennedy's long-lost relative. In this installment of Garcia's popular series, the teens dig up encoded clues all over the Eastern Seaboard to trace the ancient history of the Legion, and in the process, they learn life-altering truths about Kennedy's past and the source of her gifts. Garcia's cinematic scenes—full of timely reveals, terrifying moments of demonic possession, and crackerjack detective work— zip on by with a pace that rivals Dan Brown. That, coupled with snarky, mood-lightening teenage interludes, makes this a crowd-pleasing page-turner. Readers new to the series should start with the first installment.

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Daughter of Smoke and Bone - Laini Taylor

Daughter of Smoke and Bone - Taylor, Laini

Summary: Seventeen-year-old Karou, a lovely, enigmatic art student in a Prague boarding school, carries a sketchbook of hideous, frightening monsters--the chimaerae who form the only family she has ever known, in a unique fantasy by an award-winning author about forbidden love, an epic battle and hope for a world remade.



Booklist Reviews
Seventeen-year-old Karou moves deftly between her relatively normal high-school life in Prague and the strange world of the chimaera, in which she collects the human and animal teeth that the wishmonger, Brimstone, painstakingly sorts. The chimaera are the only family Karou has known, and when access to their world suddenly disappears behind smoldering black handprints, she vows to find them. Could this have been a result of the perpetual war between the chimaera and the seraphim? Along with this central mystery of monsters, a fantastical Romeo-and-Juliet romance develops between Karou and the angel Akiva, a romance destined for hurt and betrayal. Author Taylor has created a variety of worlds, time frames, and creatures with such detail and craft that all are believable. Blurring the boundaries of good and evil, slaves and owners, human and beast, she careens readers from sadness to love, from the predictable to the amazing, and from the outlandish to the bizarre. Readers will look forward to the suggested sequel to this complex, exciting tale.

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