Simone Elkeles is the author of Perfect Chemistry, Leaving Paradise, and our August Book of the Month: Return to paradise. She can be found at www.simoneelkeles.net.

Simone has agreed to review one of her latest YA reads The Duff by Kody Keplinger. Enjoy!

The Duff
A review by Simone Elkeles

How do you keep having these amazing hook-ups and then actually fall in love with the guy who’s somehow become your best friend after rudely calling you “the Duff” (designated ugly fat friend) to your face? Repeatedly.
It shouldn’t really be possible. Should it?

So when Bianca Piper, a seventeen-year-old cynic with a razor-sharp tongue, realizes that the person who knows, understands, and likes her the best is Wesley Rush, the school’s resident hottie who will do any girl so long as she has legs, it comes as a bit of a shock. A very unpleasant, unwelcome shock.

In this debut novel that I found incredibly hard to put down (forget feeding my family a healthy dinner the day I read this – did they even get dinner?), author Kody Keplinger deftly and believably transports the reader to the very real, seemingly average life of Bianca Piper, an unconventional heroine and modern American teen: her parents are separating, her gorgeous, thin friends are boy-crazy, and she thinks she’s The Duff. But it’s when Bianca realizes her own worth and that of her new best friend (and secret lover) that Keplinger’s The Duff is a YA book with real depth that’s definitely worth picking up.

A lot of girls in high school think they’re The Duff at some point in their lives; Keplinger’s debut , that I think she wrote when she was 17, celebrates the Duffs in all of us!

Audrey Beth Stein is the author of the memoir Map, a 2010 Lambda Literary Award Finalist for Bisexual Nonfiction. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College and is a two-time national prizewinner in the David Dornstein Memorial Short Story Contest. She teaches memoir and novel development at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education.  Direct links to order Map can be found at http://map.audreybethstein.com.

Audrey chose to review one of  her favorite novels The Vast Fields of Ordinary by Nick Burd, also a Lambda Literary Award Finalist.  Enjoy!

The Vast Fields of Ordinary by Nick Burd

Dade Hamilton has no problem telling his ceiling fan or his soap dish that he’s gay.  He fools around secretly with Pablo, the “Sexican” jock, wishing Pablo’s girlfriend Judy was out of the picture, until the day Dade blurts out “I love you” and Pablo smacks him in the face.  Senior year is ending, Dade’s dad has just confessed to an affair (but not ended it), Dade’s mom is popping pills to pretend everything’s okay, and an autistic nine-year-old’s disappearance dominates the local news.  In three months Dade will be off to college, but that’s a whole summer away, and Pablo Pablo Pablo isn’t just fading into the night.

Enter Alex Kincaid.  Alex isn’t exactly Mr. Wholesome American Boy–at age twenty, he’s got a job at Taco Taco and moonlights as the drug connection for Dade’s classmates–but he’s hot and intriguing and compared to Pablo he’s a breath of fresh air.  Dade doesn’t know if Alex is gay, but a short exchange at a party prompts Dade to ask a classmate who this guy is and how to find him again: “I was acting on some instinct that I didn’t know I had.  I’d never gone out of my way for a guy before.  Even my and Pablo’s first encounters were totally initiated by him.  I never went out of my way to follow crushes around high school.  I never approached anyone with the hopes of getting a phone number or even a name.  I was afraid of giving myself away.  I didn’t want anyone to know.  Sometimes even I didn’t want to know.”

Alex is gay, and he’s also sincere, kind, and not afraid to show up with a bouquet of carnations for dinner with Dade’s parents after Dade comes out to them.  The burgeoning relationship between Dade and Alex is one of the sweetest parts of the book, all the more so for its realness.  In a world where so many adolescents fumbling through their own emerging sexuality (straight and queer) learn through unhealthy relationships and encounters, like the ones portrayed aptly and painfully between Dade and Pablo, it is wonderful and refreshing to read realistic portrayals of people treating each other with vulnerable kindness.

Of course the story doesn’t end this simply, not with an ex-not-boyfriend around or parents leaving Dade alone for two whole weeks, but I won’t give away the twists and turns, or why I found myself crying at the last chapter.  Nick Burd has an easy and perceptive style that makes for an enjoyable reading experience.  His three main characters feel like they must exist and make the choices that they do.  Dade’s empathy for Pablo’s confusion–which doesn’t erase his anger or hurt at Pablo’s actions–is a nice touch, and occasional reported sightings of the autistic girl underline the theme of disappearance and reappearance that threads throughout the book.  The Vast Fields of Ordinary well-deservedly won a Stonewall Book Award and was named a Lambda Literary Award Finalist, and I highly recommend it for both young adult readers and adults who enjoy YA literature.

Maria V. Snyder is the author of the popular novels, The Study series, The Glass series, and most recently Inside Out, which also happens to be our Book of the Month right now.  We recently asked Maria to review one of her favorite YA novels.  She chose Shade by Jeri Smith-Ready.   Enjoy!

Shade by Jeri Smith-Ready

Award winning fantasy author, Jeri Smith-Ready has dipped her toe into the young adult market with her recently released fantasy book, Shade.

The premise of the book is quite intriguing – On the day of Aura’s birth a Shift happened and all children, including Aura born after this Shift can see and hear ghosts. It’s sixteen years later and the world has adjusted to life with ghosts that only kids can see. Aura would like nothing better to ignore them and hang out with her rocker boyfriend, Logan Keeley. In fact, Aura would like to find out why the Shift happened and how she could undo it.

Jeri has created an unique world with Shade. And she answered all the logical questions a reader would ask about what’s it like to live with ghosts (thank you Jeri!). For privacy, she invented black boxes that keep ghosts from entering certain rooms like the bathroom and schools. People wear red to repel them, and there’s a shady government agency (of course) dedicated to studying and policing them.

Just like in her urban vampire books, Wicket Game and Bad to the Bone, Jeri’s love of music is once again a main theme throughout this book. Aura’s hot boyfriend is the singer in an Irish-flavored rock band in Baltimore named the Keeley Brothers. In the beginning chapters of the book, we learn it’s the night of Logan’s 17th birthday and record company reps are listening to their gig. After the gig, he’s offered a recording contract. Basically, it’s the best night of his life, but unfortunately it’s his last.

Now don’t yell at me for spoiling this little surprise. Just read the back cover blurb or the write up on Amazon.com and you’ll know all about it, too. And the kicker about those back cover blurbs is – the author doesn’t write them. It’s usually the editor or marketing, hoping to hook a reader’s interest. After I read the blurb, I assumed that Logan’s death happened before the start of the story (don’t know why – I just did). That when I opened to chapter one, it would be a few months later or even a day later, but no, there’s Logan happy and full of life. He’s a great character and so are Aura and the band members (Jeri excelled with creating very likable characters).

Unfortunately for me, knowing he’s going to die makes it really hard for me to read the first three chapters (the reason – I’m a mother of a 15 year old boy so I don’t think this would bother the target audience as much). I kept putting the book down, but I wanted to review the book and I loved Jeri’s other books, so I kept with it. But as soon as I made it past the tragedy, I flew through the rest of the book in a day.

This is a great book you need to read. Logan returns as a ghost (so he’s not gone gone) and another potential and very much alive suitor, Zachary Moore arrives with his secrets and sexy Scottish brogue. The characters and world are rich and well developed and the ending hinted at more books to come. Which I just found out, the second book, Shift is due out on May 2011.

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Read also Maria’s review of Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer here.

Visit Maria’s website for more info about her and her books.