The Mysterious Disappearance of Aiden S. (as told to his brother)

When twelve-year-old Aiden disappears, the entire town turns out to look for him.  There are no clues and no witnesses, and as the days drag on, his family begins to lose hope.  After six days, his younger brother Lucas hears a sound in the attic where he discovers his missing brother.

At first, everyone is just overjoyed to have Aiden home, but Aiden isn't quite the same as he was before he disappeared.  He's quieter and he seems to be looking for something he's lost.  The police and their parents immediately begin to demand answers, but no one wants to believe Aiden's story.  He says he went through a portal in a cabinet in the attic to a place called Aveinieu.  

This is impossible.  Everyone knows that, but Aiden seems so sincere.  Aiden doesn't want to reveal details, but at night when their parents are asleep, sometimes he tells Lucas about Aveinieu.  Lucas wants to believe his brother even though he knows the story is incredible, even though he's been tricked before.  But he also doesn't want to confront Aiden because it finally feels like they have a real relationship now.

When Aiden's story gets out, he becomes an outcast at school and in the community.  The entire family struggles with questions and recriminations from people who once pledged their support.  Lucas really wants to be on Aiden's side, but that would mean believing in the impossible.  What really happened to Aiden during those six days?

This interesting story is David Levithan's first middle grade book, and those offering for a straightforward mystery may be disappointed.  Instead, this is an exploration of story and truth and the things we are willing to do (or believe) for the people we love.  The relationship between Aiden and Lucas is the heart of this book, and it is a gentle exploration of brotherhood and loyalty.  Recommended for thoughtful readers who are willing to sit with the story and think.

The Gilded Ones

Every year, all the sixteen-year-old girls must submit to a ceremony to determine if their blood is pure.  Purity means they can marry, have children, and become a part of the community.  If they are found to be impure, a swift death is the best they can hope for.  Deka lives in anticipation and fear of the ceremony day.  Then her worst fears are confirmed when her blood runs gold, the color of impurity.

The men of the village imprison her in a cellar and subject her to torture hoping to discover her true death and rid her impurity from the village.  Girls like Deka don't die like everyone else.  Their bodies can heal and resurrect from almost anything, and the village elders are happy to torture Deka while they harvest the gold from her blood for their own enrichment.  

One day a strange woman appears and gives Deka a choice:  stay in the cellar and endure interminable torture or leave to fight for the emperor's army.  Deka chooses to fight.  Deka and other young women like her are called alaki, and their enhanced stamina and healing abilities make them the only line of defense between Oterra and the nasty death shriek attacks that are plaguing the kingdom.  Despite this, they are reviled by normal humans and called all manner of names and insults.  Even Deka believes she is a demon.  How else could she have these abilities?  

But the more Deka and her new friends fight the death shrieks, the less confident she feels in the righteousness of their cause.  She would do anything to protect her new sisters, but is that what they are really doing?

Oh. My. Goodness.  This book is GOOD!  Namina Forna's debut novel is engaging, thoughtful and nearly perfect.  Deka is a perfectly flawed character who learns and grows through her experiences.  The alaki are a vast nameless force, but Deka's friends are well written and come to life on the page.  The romantic subplot is a very small part of the story, but it is well-integrated.  Forna takes on the traditional patriarchal society and the various means used to prop it up with skill.  This is a book readers will definitely want to discuss, perfect for book clubs.  Recommended for 8th grade and up.  There are some scenes with graphic violence, references to sexual assault that happens off-page, and some profanity towards the end of the book.

Alone

It was supposed to be just a fun secret, one night Maddie and her friends could share without parents or siblings.  When her friends back out at the last minute, Maddie decides to go ahead and sleep in her grandparents' vacation apartment alone.  

The next morning she wakes up in a ghost town.  The clues of a swift evacuation are everywhere:  cars, suitcases, even cell phones abandoned.  Maddie is alone.  It could be weeks or even months before anyone knows she is missing.  She doesn't know what prompted the sudden evacuation, but she told each parent she was staying at the other's house.  What if they don't end up at the same evacuation center?

She soon realizes she needs to work out a plan to survive.  With the help of her neighbor's Rottweiler, George, she begins collecting supplies.  As the months pass, Maddie realizes she may be alone for longer than she thought.  She can scavenge food and water, and the local library becomes her sanctuary, but the greatest challenge of all will be loneliness.  Can Maddie keep her hope alive as she faces wild animals, looters, and natural disasters?

Megan E. Freeman's new novel is a heartwrenching tale of survival and hope.  I could not put this book down!  Maddie goes through realistic periods of despair and hope and grows into a strong independent young woman by the end.  Readers will be engrossed in her story and curious about what caused the evacuation in the first place.  Now I want a sequel that shows what was happening on the outside and Maddie learns to be with people again after years on her own.  There is one scene of animal cruelty that is necessary to the plot, but it's something to be aware of for more sensitive readers.  This book is definitely a conversation starter, and I would recommend teachers and parents read it with kids and engage in discussion.  

Amari and the Night Brothers

Amari's older brother Quinton was the star of the neighborhood, a genius who worked hard to make everyone around him be the best they could be.  Now Quinton is missing, and no one is offering any clues.  The police have chalked him up to being just another Black kid from a poor neighborhood who turned to drugs, but Amari knows that isn't true.  She's not even swayed by the fact that he turned down multiple ivy league scholarships to take some mysterious job that he couldn't or wouldn't talk about. 

After a terrible last day of school, Amari discovers a secret briefcase in Quinton's room meant for her.  It contains a nomination for a summer tryout at the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs.  Amari soon discovers a whole supernatural world she never knew about.  Her own brother is one half of the superstar investigator team, VanQuish, who brought in one of the most powerful dark magicians ever known.  He and his partner are missing, and now Amari knows it had something to do with his work at the Bureau.

Even with a celebrity older brother, things aren't much different at the Bureau than at her private school back home.  Rich kids teased her for being a scholarship student there, and the supernatural world is full of old families with lots of money and experience.  Most of the kids at the tryout have grown up in the supernatural world, and Amari is definitely at a disadvantage on that front.  

Things get even worse when Amari is revealed as a magician.  Magicians are feared and hated in the supernatural world because of the terrible deeds of the Night Brothers, powerful magicians who wreaked havoc.  But Amari just found out about this magical ability, and she's never used magic for anything.  Now, people are against her for her ability, too.

It's a good thing she has her roommate, a weredragon who has yet to shift into dragon form, and her partner in the agent training program.  Everyone else may hate her, but Dylan seems to be on her side even if he is a Van Helsing, one of the oldest and richest families in the supernatural world.  His older sister, Maria was Quinton's partner, and he is just as invested in finding them as Amari is.  The only way they can really investigate is to win spots as junior agents.  They will need to trust each other to make it through the highly competitive trials in order for that to happen.

An evil magician is threatening destruction on the entire supernatural world, and VanQuish's disappearance may be connected.  Can Amari learn to use her new abilities, with the aid of her new friends, to stop a madman, or is it already too late?

This new book by B.B. Alston is the best reading fun I've had in a while!  There are shades of Harry Potter here for sure and a dash of Men in Black, but Amari's story still manages to feel fresh and immersive.  There's humor, friendship, bullying drama, and plenty of twists and turns, and Alston also manages to deftly tackle issues of class and race privilege without bogging down the story.  Highly recommended.  This is a must-read!

Starfish

It's the end of summer, and Ellie is dreading returning to school.  Not only will she be back under the storm of bullying and harassment, but she will have to do it alone.  Her best friend is moving.  She'd rather just keep spending all her days swimming and floating in her pool.

When she meets her new neighbor Catalina, she's skeptical.  Catalina is so thin, and usually thin people (all people, really) bully Ellie about her weight.  But Catalina doesn't seem to pay attention to Ellie's body at all except to enjoy dancing to the music they both like.  In some ways, this friendship is freeing, but in other ways, it only highlights some of the worst parts of Ellie's life.  Catalina's whole family accepts Ellie without reservation.  Why can't her own mother do the same?

The bullies at school are cruel and unrelenting, but Ellie's mom is the worst of them all.  Ellie is always on a diet and pretty much always hungry.  Her mother didn't even buy her new school clothes this year.  The worst may be all the doctor visits her mom drags her to.  Her mom is always looking for some magic solution that will make her daughter thin, but Ellie knows the truth.  She will never be thin, and her mother will never love her.  

Lisa Fipps's debut novel is a heartbreaking look inside the life of a fat girl in America.  While boys have body issues, too, the bulk of body insecurity seems to be the burden of women and girls.  Plenty of people have body issues, some very severe, but unless you're a fat person, you will never really know what it's like to be a fat person.  Fipps gives readers a window into that world where you should accept bullying because you deserve it and doctors often believe "fat" is all that's wrong with you.  Some people may read this book and think the behaviors are too extreme and unrealistic, but that's just not the case.  Even fat kids who grow up with loving parents get well-meaning but hurtful comments about weight and that's not to mention the horrors of middle and high school.  I wish I had been as brave as Ellie is when I was younger.  It shouldn't take four decades to give yourself permission to take up space in the world.  Books like this are vital to the literary landscape.  This is a must-read for kids and parents.

Hush

Shae and her mother have lived as outcasts since her brother died of the Blot.  This highly contagious disease comes from books and reading.  So those things have been outlawed to prevent the spread of the Blot.  It starts ink-stained veins in the eyes and hands and spreads to take over the body in a painful pulsing network of disease until the victims cry for death.  Since her brother's death, Shae's mother hasn't spoken a single word, and Shae's only communication is with her best friend Fiona and Mads, who has been in love with her for years even if Shae can't understand why.  

When Shae returns home to find her mother murdered and the house ransacked, she is horrified.  Fiona's family takes her in, but it isn't long before she can feel her friend's parents tiring of her presence and the gossip that surrounds her.  To make matter worse, the local magistrate and everyone else now seems convinced Shae's mother died in a landslide.  The harder she tries to defend herself, the angrier everyone in her poor village becomes.  That's when Shae decides to leave.

High House is home of the Bards, the ruling force of the country.  They are trained to use tellings to alter reality and see the truth.  Shae believes the Bards can help her, but her arrival at High House brings shocking revelations and uncomfortable truths.  Will Shae uncover the truth about her mother's murder before she is silenced forever?

This series opener by Dylan Farrow has all the ingredients of a winning fantasy series, but it just falls a little flat for me.  It took Shae a little too long to figure some things out and way too long to feel a sense of outrage seeing the lavish lifestyle of High House compared to the rest of the country.  Also, the is one of the worst cases of instalove I have ever read.  Not only did she instantly fall in love, but the object of her affections is dismissive and rude.  I kept waiting for some explanation for this, but there was none.  Farrow's author's note about victims of abuse and violence being silenced is powerful, but I'm not sure that message really came across in the story.  This was ok but not great for me.

Lore

Every seven years the Agon returns, and the descendants of the great heroes of ancient Greece battle each other as they race to gain immortality.  As punishment for their cruelty to humanity, Zeus cursed the original major Olympians to become mortal every seven years for seven days.  A hunter who kills a god during that time gains that god's power and immortality at least until the next Agon when they are among the hunted.  

The Agon is starting again, and Lore wants nothing to do with it.  Seven years ago, her parents and younger sisters were murdered, and Lore has spent the years since then trying to get out of the eternal hunt for glory and live a normal life, but this time the Agon is in New York, Lore's city.  She has spent the last few years as a caretaker to an older man named Gil who taught her to be gentle with herself and best friend to Miles.  They all lived together in Gil's brownstone until he died leaving everything to Lore.  Now it's just Lore and Miles and her grief.

Despite her efforts to make a new life for herself, Lore is dragged back into the Agon when she comes home one night to find Athena, one of the original gods, bleeding on her doorstep.  Athena offers Lore a deal.  They will make a binding oath to work together to end the Agon once and for all.  Wrath, the new Ares, is waging a bloodthirsty battle through the Agon, killing gods and claiming hunters to his army through fear and intimidation.  Once a god is killed by another god, that power is gone forever, and Wrath wants to be the last god standing.  Wrath is the god of war and bloodlust, but Athena is his counterpart, the goddess of rationality and just wars.  She wants to kill Wrath and end the Agon by being the last god standing herself.  She needs Lore's help because as the last of the Perseides, Lore is the only one who can wield or gift the Aegis, a powerful shield created by Zeus.  Lore is sceptical of Athena's motives, but she has her own reasons to want Wrath dead.  Despite all the work she's done in the past years, she still longs for vengeance against the man responsible for her family's death.

Lore has another unexpected ally, her childhood best friend Castor.  The last time she saw him, Castor was dying of leukemia, but now he's back.  He's powerful, strong, and the new owner of Apollo's power.  Castor doesn't remember how he killed Apollo during the last Agon, but he has inherited the god's abilities so it must be true.  

Convincing her allies not to kill each other will be battle enough, but striking against Wrath and nearly all the rest of the hunters will be even more difficult.  As Lore races to save the world from the dreadful and destructive rule of Wrath, there will be plenty of dark twists along the way, and Lore will never be able to predict who will be her enemy or her ally in the end.  

This new book from Alexandra Bracken sounds promising.  I was excited to read it because I love Greek mythology, but it just wasn't as good as I wanted it to be.  There is so much casual violence and gore that it was difficult for me to stick with it.  I struggled to read more than a few chapters at a time.  I know the original myths are violent, but they aren't nearly this descriptive.  The first few chapters were also very confusing.  I had no idea what was going on or why for quite a while.  There were big twists and shocking reveals, but they felt rushed.  Even the conclusion of the book didn't really get the weight it deserved.  In some ways, this felt like the conclusion to a series or at least a companion book instead of a stand-alone novel.  There was so much backstory just crammed into a paragraph here and there which meant character choices and relationships didn't carry the weight the author wanted them to have.  I also wanted more from Athena's perspective to really make her character arc more meaningful.  I didn't hate it, but I also didn't love it, and the gore factor was a real turn off for me.