No Small Feat

FANGIRL by Rainbow Rowell.

Macmillan, 2013.

Do not ask me how Rainbow Rowell was able to produce TWO incredible books this year (rush out and get ELEANOR AND PARK if you have not read it yet). This second offering is just as stunning as her first. Cath (she does not like to be called Cather) and her twin sister Wren are off to college. For Cath, it is a time of separation anxiety. She worries that her father will be all right with the separation. She is still angry that Wren decided that the two of them should not room together. Cath sinks herself into two things: her fiction writing class where she is the sole freshman, and the world of Simon Snow fanfiction where she is one of the reigning queens. Over the course of a semester with plenty of challenges, Cath learns how to stand up for herself, how to deal with her sometimes conflicting feelings, and most of all, how to find her own voice in her writing. Chapters from Cath's fanfiction and the book from which she is drawing her stories are interspersed in between the chapters and serve to reveal much about Cath along the way.

If You Find Me

IF YOU FIND ME by Emily Murdoch. St. Martins Griffin, 2013.

Carey and Jenessa have only known the rusted camper as home for almost as long as either of them can recall. Carey knows that they ran away from their father a long time ago. Mom wanted to keep them off the grid for their own protection, and so they live in the woods without electricity or running water. Somehow they manage. But now Mom has been gone for an awfully long time, and the food is running short. Carey worries about Jenessa who rarely speaks, How will they survive?

Suddenly, there is a man approaching the camper accompanied by a woman from social services. Carey and Jenessa are to be handed over to Carey's father who has been searching for them ever since Carey's mother abducted her when she was little. Now, they have a father (one Carey is not sure she can trust) and a stepmother and stepsister, too. There will be many changes hurtling toward Carey as the truth is slowly revealed. Great pacing, realistic characters and emotions will draw readers in and hold them to the final page.

ZEBRA FOREST

ZEBRA FOREST by Adina Rishe Gewirtz. Candlewick Press, 2013.

Annie and her brother Rew live with their grandmother. Their mother left them years ago. They have been told that their father is dead. Gran has her good days when she cooks pancakes and tells stories to Rew and annie. But more and more, those good days as=re few and far between. When the social worker comes by, it is Annie who steers her back to the car with assurances that all is well (even when it is not). And then one night, a man enters the house, a man Annie knows to be her father, not dead, but in prison for a long time. He has escaped and plans to hold the family hostage until he can make his way further to freedom. The truths that Annie now has to face are almost unbearable, How can she come to terms with this man, long believed dead, whom Annie has made into some sort of hero? What of the mother who did not want her own children? How can Annie handle these harsh realities?

Charm and Strange

CHARM AND STRANGE by Stephanie Kuehn, St. Martins Griffin, 2013.

Andrew Winston Winters has a wolf inside him. That is the only way to explain the sudden bursts of violence that overtakes him, the only way he has of dealing with his past. In chapters that alternate between Drew's childhood and his adolescence, Kuehn slowly reveals the story of drew, the young and vulnerable boy and Win, the teen left to his own devices at boarding school where an horrific murder has taken place. Was it a wild animal who committed this crime? Or is the villain much closer than that? Drew/Win each wrestle with the darkness inside.