Liar’s Moon by Elizabeth C. Bunce. Arthur A. Levine Books, Scholastic. 2011. Review copy from publisher. Sequel to StarCrossed. Spoilers for StarCrossed.
The Plot: Lord Durrel Decath is in prison, accused of murdering his wife. Decath saved Digger’s life once. She owes him. She knows he could not have done it, and uses her skills as a thief and a spy to try to figure out what happened. Of course, nothing is ever as simple as it looks.
The Good: Digger, from StarCrossed, is back and oh… Read More
The Plot: Theseus Cassio Lowood kills ghosts, just like his father before him. Years ago, his father was killed by one of those ghosts. Now Cas, a high school senior, travels the country with his mother, a witch, always on the hunt for ghosts. The hunt has brought them to Thunder Bay, Ontario, to Anna Dressed in Blood. She is the ghost of a teenager killed in the mid 1950s, her throat slit, drenching her… Read More
Drink Slay Love by Sarah Beth Durst. Margaret M. McElderry Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. 2011. Review copy from publisher.
The Plot: Meet Pearl. She’s a typical sixteen year old vampire: sleeps all day. Fond of blood. Has a charming, handsome boyfriend named Jadrien — of course he’s a vampire. Humans are food. She lives with her Family; her parents (Pearl was born a vampire of vampire parents), aunts, uncles, cousins. And then, she gets staked. By a horn. A unicorn’s horn. Suddenly, she can… Read More
The Plot: Two girls, a horse, and the open road. The horse is old and it’s owners want to put it out down. Hattie, sixteen, wants to give Speed, a work horse all his life, a chance to “be a horse,” to live his last days as a free horse on the open range. Delores, eighteen, is happy for an excuse to leave home. Together, they hope to find –… Read More
The Plot: October, 1950. Kit has left Providence, Rhode Island for New York City. Kit, 17, is lucky — she’s found a job dancing in a Broadway musical. It’s not a great musical, it’s not a great job, it’s not great pay: she’s paying ten dollars a week to sleep on a couch in the Bronx. But it’s the start of her dream to be an actress, and it’s away from… Read More
The Plot: Amy Martin, 17, is frozen and placed on a spaceship with her parents and others. Three hundred years from now, the settlers will be unfrozen to settle a planet. Amy’s parents are important to the mission. Amy is going along because she is 17 and they are her parents.
Elder, 16, was born and raised to become the leader of the ship Godspeed. He’s been raised a… Read More
The Plot: At the beginning of Lupita’s freshman year at high school, her mother is diagnosed with cancer. Mami has always been the one who held their large family together. Lupita, as the oldest, has always been responsible. Now even more falls on her shoulders. Like the mesquite, Lupita will survive and grow stronger.
The Good: Under the Mesquite is told by Lupita, using free verse. The reader is pulled into Lupita’s world… Read More
It’s About: Cooking! Flinn, who studied at Le Cordon Bleu, sees a woman in the foodstore stocking up on preprocessed and frozen meals and convinces her to try a few easy, simple substitutes… Read More
The Plot: Rory Deveaux is spending her senior year at Wexford, a boarding school in London. Meeting new people, figuring out a new school system, being in London instead of a small town in Louisiana, should be amazing. And it is — except for the murders. Murders that are mimicking the infamous 1888 Jack the Ripper murders. Rory and her fellow students try to… Read More
Looking for a place to talk about young adult books? Pull up a chair, have a cup of tea, and let's chat. I am a New Jersey librarian. My opinions do not reflect those of my employer, SLJ, YALSA, or anyone else. On Twitter I'm @LizB; my email is lizzy.burns.
The Plot: Lord Durrel Decath is in prison, accused of murdering his wife. Decath saved Digger’s life once. She owes him. She knows he could not have done it, and uses her skills as a thief and a spy to try to figure out what happened. Of course, nothing is ever as simple as it looks. 
