Weekend Young Adult (and Crossover) Reviews

Geraldine Brennan reviews a number of teen books for The Observer.  Tim Bowler's Buried Thunder sounds especially good: "The suspense and claustrophobia, and the war in Maya's head between reason and paranoia, reminded me of Alan Garner's classic The Owl Service. It was hard to believe that Maya's family could move into their new home, acquire guests and scare them away all within a week, but the story is strong enough to survive a sketchy set-up."

Ibi Kaslik reviews Tim Wynne-Jones' Blink & Caution for The Globe & Mail.  "Despite the gimmicks and occasional heavy-handedness, Blink and Caution captures the alienation of adolescence and the painful process of becoming oneself, in a time fraught with complications and chaos both from within and without."

Pam Norfolk considers Julie Hearn's Wreckers for Fleetwood Weekly News. (U.K.)

Deb Abela reviews Ursula Dubosarsky's The Golden Day for ABC-Canberra. ("A haunting and beautifully written story...")

J.P. Wickwire reviews Lauren DeStefano's Wither for Jacksonville.com-The Florida Times-Union.("Written with both maturity and literary merit, it is a poignant and satisfying romance sure to spawn many sequels.")

Susan Carpenter also reviews Wither for the Los Angeles Times "Not Just for Kids" column.  Carpenter writes, "A wonderfully toxic brew of meddling and polygamist gamesmanship, Wither is an exciting and powerfully written addition to the increasingly packed shelves of dystopian YA."

Carpenter also reviews Ruta Sepetys Between Shades of Gray for The Kansas City Star.

Leslie Wright considers Karen McQuestion's Favorite for BlogCritics.org, picked up by Seattle PI. ("...an unexpected story set with great characters.")

Lisa Brown discusses Elizabeth Eulberg's Prom and Prejudice and Rick Yancy's The Monstrumologist in The Joplin Globe.

Julia Z. Rosenberg reviews books for kids and teens about sex at ParentDish. 

Michael Berry reviews three new fantasy novels "set in the British Isles" for the San Francisco Chronicle.  I am sure two of these will crossover to a teen audience.  (The last novel reviewed, Matt Haig's The Radleys, stars "a middle-class, suburban British family trying to cope with the supernatural, in this case their repressed need to drink human blood."  Sounds intriguing, but not particularly appealing for the Young Adult reader.)

Meghan Cox Gurdon takes a look at John Stephens's The Emerald Atlas--a Middle Grade/Young Adult novel aimed at the 9-to-15-year-old reader--in the Wall Street Journal.

The Seattle Times provides capsule reviews of local books for children and teens this week.  (New Deb Caletti and a cyberattack thriller are among them.)