Teen Tuesday

Code Red (Faith Flores Science Mysteries  #2) by Janie Chodosh (Poisoned Pen trade paperback, 7 February 2017).

Faith Flores, the science whiz we met in Death Spiral, has flourished while living with her Aunt T. in West Philadelphia.  

Here, we meet her upon her arrival at St. John's College in Albuquerque the residence for ten teens who have been chosen from around the country to act as summer interns in various fields of study.  Faith will be spending the summer at the fictional Salazar Center for Plant Genomics.  

She doesn't expect to make any friends, but almost as soon as she arrives, she connects with an attractive young local named Clem, a violinist who has won the music internship several years in a row.

During their orientation, the teens are warned about a new designer drug on the streets.  Called "liquid gold", it's derived from a local plant and used not only for recreational purposes, but also as as a date-rape drug.  

Faith has another goal while she's in Albuquerque: to find her father.  According to a newspaper clipping she'd found in her late mother's things, he'd been arrested on a drug charge there two years earlier.  

The story is an enjoyable read that is difficult to put down.  Faith is an engaging protagonist, smart and driven, but not without faults.  Due to her background, she is slow to trust and easily spooked.  It's encouraging to see a young woman who is interested  -- and successful -- in a scientific field.  Also refreshing is that her supervisor is female.

Code Red can be read as a standalone, but do read Death Spiral first in order to fully appreciate Faith's journey.



Many thanks to the author for sending me an Advance Review Copy.

Teen Tuesday -- Fall Releases

Velvet Undercover by Teri Brown (Balzer + Bray hardcover, 20 October 2015).

Samantha Donaldson's family has always done its duty for the British Crown. In the midst of World War I, seventeen-year-old Sam follows in their footsteps, serving her country from the homefront as a messenger for the intelligence organization MI5. After her father disappears on a diplomatic mission, she continues their studies of languages, mathematics, and complex puzzles, hoping to make him proud.

When Sam is asked to join the famed women's spy group La Dame Blanche, she's torn—while this could be an unbelievable adventure, how can she abandon her mother, who has already lost a husband?
But when her handlers reveal shocking news, Sam realizes she can't refuse the exciting and dangerous opportunity.

Her acceptance leads her straight into the heart of enemy territory on a mission to extract the most valuable British spy embedded in Germany, known only as Velvet. Deep undercover in the court of Kaiser Wilhelm II, Sam must navigate the labyrinthine palace and its many glamorous—and secretive—residents to complete her assignment. To make matters worse she must fight a forbidden attraction to the enemy—a dangerously handsome German guard. In a place where personal politics are treacherously entangled in wartime policy, can Sam find Velvet before it's too late . . . for them both?

Manners & Mutiny (Finishing School Book the Fourth) by Gail Carriger (Little, Brown BFYR hardcover, 3 November 2015).

Lessons in the art of espionage aboard Mademoiselle Geraldine's floating dirigible have become tedious without Sophronia's sweet sootie Soap nearby. She would much rather be using her skills to
thwart the dastardly Picklemen, yet her concerns about their wicked intentions are ignored, and now she's not sure whom to trust.

What does the brusque werewolf dewan know? On whose side is the ever-stylish vampire Lord Akeldama? Only one thing is certain: a large-scale plot is under way, and when it comes to fruition, Sophronia must be ready to save her friends, her school, and all of London from disaster--in decidedly dramatic fashion, of course.

NEED by Joelle Charbonneau (HMH BFYR hardcover, 3 November 2015).

Teenagers at Wisconsin’s Nottawa High School are drawn deeper into a social networking site that promises to grant their every need . . . regardless of the consequences. Soon the site turns sinister, with simple pranks escalating to malicious
crimes. The body count rises. This chilling YA thriler examines not only the dark side of social media, but the dark side of human nature.

Dangerous Lies by Becca Fitzpatrick (Simon& Schuster BFYR hardcover, 10 November 2015).

Stella Gordon’s life is a lie.
She does not belong in Thunder Basin, Nebraska. As the star witness in a murder trial against a drug

dealer, Stella is now in the Witness Protection Program. The small town locals can never know who she really is. Not even Chet Falconer, the one boy who makes her want to reveal her true self. She knows that telling the truth will only bring violence to this safe haven.

Despite how hard Stella tries to stay under the radar, danger is fast-approaching. Criminals have a way of getting rid of witnesses, and Stella may have made the one mistake that could lead the cold-blooded men hunting for her right to her doorstep.

Teen Tuesday

These Shallow Graves by Jennifer Donnelly (Delacorte Press hardcover, 27 October 2015).

As the only daughter of the wealthy American aristocrat Charles Montfort, 17-year-old Josephine is expected to graduate from finishing school and marry a rich, well-born young man.  But in late 19th Century New York, things are changing, and Jo would much rather become a journalist like her heroine Nellie Bly.

Even though she fights with the administration to publish some of her investigative pieces in the school newspaper, Jo's life is pretty rosy.

Until she receives the news that her father has died from a gunshot.  Her uncle manages to keep the detail that it was deliberately self-inflicted out of the newspapers, but Jo knows that her father was too experienced to clean a loaded gun.

On a stealthy visit to a newspaper that her father owns, she hears a young reporter claim that Charles' partners paid to keep quiet the fact that his death was really a murder.  Jo strikes up a friendship with Eddie, and his pal Oscar, a medical student who works at the morgue.

Jo defies propriety by teaming up with the two young men to find out what really happened to Charles, and in the process learns about things that Young Ladies should never even think of: poverty, prostitution, and child labor, for starters.

Class and gender differences of the period may be surprising to some teen readers, but Jennifer Donnelly is an experienced writer of historical fiction, and her research is accurate and thorough.

The novel is fast-paced and gripping.  I read it in a single afternoon, and would dearly love to read more of Jo Montfort's story.




FTC Full Disclosure:  Many thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss for the e-galley.

Teen Sherlock (Part II, recently released)

Every Breath by Ellie Marney (Tundra hardcover, 14 October 2014).

Rachel Watts hates living in Melbourne, but moving to the city was a financial necessity for her family after they lost their farm.  But at least she made a good friend fairly quickly. James Mycroft, also seventeen, lives two doors down and goes to the same high school.

Mycroft (they are on a strictly last-name basis, Rachel tells us -- the story is told in the first person from her point of view) lives with his Aunt Angela, with whom he has a rocky relationship.  We learn the details of his parents' tragic death later in the story.  

Late one evening, when Mycroft is showing Watts around the city, they stumble upon the body of one of his pals, a man known as "Homeless Dave".  While they are waiting for the police, the teens take detailed photos of the crime scene, and after they spend many hours being interviewed at the police station, Mycroft concludes that Dave's case won't get much attention because of being homeless.  

He resolves to solve the case on his own, and Watts, reluctantly at first, finds herself helping him.  Though both of them are extremely intelligent, they inevitably get into hot water at home, at school and just in general.

One of the noteworthy things about this story is that both teens joke about their names.  At one point, Rachel reminds her friend that Mycroft was Sherlock's smarter brother. 

The relationship between Rachel and James does develop into more than a friendship, and it will be interesting to see how it evolves in the next two books in the series, Every Word and Every Move. Both of these have already been released in Australia, but there's no indication of when they'll be published in North America.  



FTC Full Disclosure:  I borrowed this book from my local library.

Teen Sherlock (Part 1, forthcoming)

Lock & Mori by Heather W. Petty (Simon & Schuster BFYR hardcover, 15 September 2015).

James "Mori" Moriarty first meets Sherlock Holmes when her drama teacher asks her to make sure he's noticed the fire alarm from his "secret" lab in the basement of the school theatre.  

She sees him again that evening when she's walking in the park near her home after a fight with her father.  As they walk together, they come  across a crime scene: a man has been killed. Eavesdropping on the police officers' conversation, they are appalled by the idiocy of the "deductions".  

When he challenges her to solve the crime before he does, she is, at first reluctant.  Her policeman father would be furious if he knew she'd been in the park after dark, and an angry father has not been safe for Mori and her brothers since their mother died of cancer some years earlier.

But when she realizes that the dead man is the father of one of her classmates, Mori becomes more interested.  And when she sees a photo of her mother at the memorial service, she has to find out what the connection is.

Although Mori thinks she can investigate the link between her late mother and Lily Patel's father on her own, what she uncovers is more ugly and dangerous than she could possibly anticipate.  Thankfully, Sherlock is there to help her when things are at their worst.

Sherlock (whom Mori dubs "Lock") and Mori are well-conceived characters:  two teens who are forced to be adults earlier than necessary. Because they both have troubled homes, their bond is much more than a friendship of convenience between two extraordinarily intelligent young people.

According to the author's website, their are two more books planned in this series, and I look forward to seeing the relationship between Lock and Mori develop.





FTC Full Disclosure:  Many thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss for the e-galley.

Teen Tuesday

For the first time in years, Bouchercon welcomes a young adult author as one of the guests of honor:  Eoin Colfer, author of the Artemis Fowl series.

There will also be some ya-centric panels.

On Friday afternoon at 1:30 is Dystopian YA, with moderator Jess Lourey and panelists F.T. Bradley, Joelle Charbonneau, Michelle Gagnon, Sophie Littlefield, and Alexandra Monir.  (Unfortunately, I won't be able to attend this panel, as I'm moderating a panel called No Computer,  No Cars, No Problem at the same time.)

On Saturday at 8:30 a.m. will be Teen Angst, with moderator Joelle Charbonneau and panelists Cara Brookins, Janie Chodosh, Margaux Froley, Owen Laukkanen, and Lissa Price.  At 11:30 that morning, Alison Gaylin will interview Eoin Colfer, who will be signing, along with the other guests of honor, at 12:30 p.m.

There will  be a panel on Crime for Middle Grades at 10:00 on Sunday morning, moderated by former school librarian Leslie Blatt and panelists Keir Graff, Carol Hughes, Gay Kinman, Sarah Smith, and Penny Warner.



Finally, on Sunday afternoon at 1:00, a Y.A. FanFest aboard the Queen Mary: a special limited-ticket event with Eoin Colfer and over 20 other young adult authors. All proceeds go to the Long Beach Public Library  Foundation for their Family Learning Center program, designed to promote literacy and academic success.

Tickets for this event are $65, and can be purchased on the Bouchercon  website.





It's not too late to register for Bouchercon 2014, Murder at the Beach. If you can't make it for the whole convention, single-day passes are available.

Searching For the Truth

Hero Complex (Keaton School series #2) by Margaux Froley (Soho Teen hardcover, 14 October 2014).

It's the beginning of  the second semester of Devon Mackintosh's junior year at the prestigious Keaton School.

Just a week earlier, she'd spent New Year's Eve with poor little rich girl Cleo Lambert on Mr. Lambert's yacht.  Devon gets confused in the maze of corridors, and is struck on the back of the head, hard enough to knock her out.  Cleo's parents prefer to believe that Devon had too much champagne, fell, and hit her head, but both Cleo and Devon know that isn't true.

 She is no longer assigned to Mr. Robins, the  school psychologist who had encouraged her to be a "peer counselor" the previous term.  In his place is psychotherapist Dr. Jocelyn Hsu, who, though she drinks herbal tea and wears flowing dresses with thick socks, makes Devon nervous.  She's pretty sure the doctor is hiding something, and she plans to determine just what that something is.

Meanwhile, Devon's mother doesn't seem at all pleased when Devon unexpectedly goes home for a weekend, and behaves very oddly in general.

Devon is determined to find out what is going on, and how she -- who knows little about any of these people -- is involved.

Readers who enjoyed Escape Theory will be thrilled to share Devon's quest for the truth, but should be prepared for all the questions that arise when she discovers it.  Perhaps there's a third Keaton School book coming?




FTC Full Disclosure:  Many thanks to the publisher for the Advanced Reading Copy.