Sold by Patricia McCormick

I enjoyed reading McCormick's earlier novel Cut a few years back, and while Sold can technically be classified in a similar category of problems faced by adolescents, it's clear how much McCormick's talent has progressed over the time in between.

Lakshmi is a 13 year old Nepali girl living a difficult but simple life in the mountains. She helps her mother with chores like planting and cooking and caring for her baby brother. After the village survives the longest drought of Lakshmi's life, the monsoons that come are so fierce that her family's rice paddy and entire livelihood are wiped out. Her stepfather, an indolent gambler, believes he has the solution when he sells Lakshmi to a woman from the big city, who takes her to India where she is forced into prostitution in a seedy brothel. Although she initially is drugged by the madam, she eventually succumbs and numbs herself to the misery of her life. She describes the plight of herself and of the other girls who live there, including one who has young children.

I enjoyed McCormick's style of telling Lakshmi's story in short vignettes, almost like prose poetry. She is very effective at getting a feeling across to the reader, without necessarily conveying every detail. But the details that she does share are enthralling, if depressing.

Although the plot is based in the sex industry, the novel isn't too graphic for teenagers to read. It's obvious what is going on, and why, but the details are not gratuitous or unnecessarily descriptive. It was clear that the author did extensive research for this novel, and that she has the talent of getting inside a young girl's head, as she did in Cut. I finished this book in just a couple of hours, and found it a captivating depiction of an appalling situation, worth adding to any young adult collection.

The Guy Not Taken by Jennifer Weiner

The latest offering by one of my favorite authors is a collection of short stories written at different times in the author's life. As always, I found her words captivating, and I was reluctant to stop reading even when my eyes were drooping shut. The reading experience wasn't quite the same as reading one of her full-length novels, where the reader can really get to know the characters and get into the plot, but the end of each story left me hungry for more. Whenever I hear someone dismissing chick lit as girly fluff, Jennifer Weiner is definitely the author to point the poor misguided reader to.

The Second Summer of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashears

This book was such an emotional rollercoaster. Brashears does an excellent job of capturing teen turmoil and it left me crying throughout half the book.

Eloisa James

This is currently my favorite romance author- I am trying to read all her backlist. Her novels are set in the Regency period, and they are quite amusing, which is very rare for me to say about a romance. Each of the books I have read so far has characters that are linked in some way to previous characters, so it is super easy for me to get caught up in the world she has created. I'm not entirely convinced that her characters behave entirely realistically for the period, but I don't really care- they are entertaining and personable, and have personalities and characteristics that are their own. Most of the females that James writes use some kind of makeup, which I absolutely love, whether they darken their lashes or brows or color their lips. I know obvious painting was frowned upon, but I have always found it difficult to reconcile women's insecurities of today with the images of the flawless heroines in historical romances. I also enjoy James' literary allusions; as an English professor and Shakespearean scholar, she certainly knows what she's talking about and always has the right quote for the occasion.

Charmed Thirds by Megan McCafferty

This is the third book in the Jessica Darling series, and covers a lengthy time span. It opens at the beginning of the summer after her freshman year at Columbia, when she is about to start an internship at a hip magazine. It had been so long since I read the first two books that I forgot many of the details, but old times are mentioned enough that I am mostly up to date. She is still with Marcus, but he is at a Buddhist college in California so they hardly ever get to see each other. The story is told through her diary and through letters to Marcus and her friend Hope, but only during summer and winter breaks, so a lot of time has gone by between each section.
When I started reading these books, they were YA but they are now in the adult fiction section at the bookstore. This sequel has way more adult themes; for instance, Jessica writes about sex a lot, and in rather detailed descriptions, as would any typical college diarist. It's not like it was more shocking than anything else I've read, but I feel as if I've known Jessica Darling through her high school years when she had hardly ever been kissed and now she is growing and changing.
On the other hand, she is still immature in a lot of ways. She hasn't grown up enough yet to see her parents as people, and is totally surprised when her big sister Bethany tells her things about their parents that Jessica never even bothered to find out. For someone who is so intelligent and usually so industrious, Jessica shuts down entirely under stress.
I find that what annoys me about this book has nothing to do with the actual writing but more Jessica herself, but that's because I can't help but see her as a real person, which is really a testament to McCafferty's writing.
Apparently we will be seeing Jessica's post-college life as the back book flap says the author is working on another Jessica Darling book.

The Thirteenth Tale

This new book by Diane Setterfield is the best book I have read all year! It's complex, engrossing, captivating... It took me a long time to read, but I would do a chapter or two a night, and then it was in the forefront of my mind all day. Margaret Lea is a reclusive woman who lives over her family's antiquarian bookshop, and is content to spend her life surrounded by the written word and her father's company. She spends some of her time conducting biographical research, and has managed to have some of her work published. This has brought her to the attention of one Miss Vida Winter, an incredibly famous but secretive author who commands Margaret's presence at her mansion so that she can dictate her life story to Margaret.
Over the course of Margaret's stay there, she learns as much about herself as she does about the incredibly fantastic past of her new employer, a story involving all the classic elements: love, betrayal, scandals and secrets. She also finds a way to take control of her own life, and make decisions rather than just letting things happen. Overall, The Thirteenth Tale is a book that I would recommend to anybody, with no reservations, for its attention to detail, originality, and extremely entertaining story.

Writing on the Wall by Lynne Reid Banks

This is a book that I got from the library when I was in about fifth grade- actually my mom checked it out and I read it. As an adult I was trying to remember what it was called, but all I could recall were a few details of the plot and the cover. When I read it as a kid, the cover made a huge impression on me because it had a naughty word on it- the boy and girl are standing in front of a wall which she has just graffitied, and so are partially blocking out where she sprayed "Kevin is a bastard". I thought that was the ultimate in badness and slightly cool as well. Anyways, after an extensive search for the book last year, I found out the name and that it was by Lynne Reid Banks, who I've always liked for not only the Indian in the Cupboard books, but also her other J and YA novels. So I was really excited to get a library's discarded copy for Christmas.

It's about a London girl who gets into the punk culture in the early 1980s, and whose new boyfriend, Kevin, is more of a handful than she is really ready for. On an end of school year bicycling trip through Holland with friends, Kevin convinces her to break away from the group and go with him to Amsterdam. Although she starts to realize that Kevin is really not the greatest guy, she's not ready to lose him and is still willing to go along with his ideas. However, what he puts her through in Amsterdam makes her realize that she needs to get back with the group and get back to England, but it's not as easy as she expects. It is a good story, although amusingly dated, and while my main reason for reading it was to recapture a childhood favorite, it's definitely worth it if you can find it at one of the local libraries.