Scythe is set in a future where natural human death has been cured, and people have the ability to heal all wounds and afflictions. To deal with the growing population and everyone’s immortality, society has created a population of Scythes, individuals responsible for choosing which members of society will be permanently killed (referred to as “gleaned”). Rowan and Citra, two teenagers living normal lives, have always revered and feared scythes, and like most citizens hoped never to interact with them. However, both are forced to when a renowned Scythe chooses them as his apprentices, although only one of them will be able to become a full Scythe. Rowan and Citra must now train in the art of killing, aide the Scythe, and learn what it means to take a life, all while competing against each other. To make matters worse, complicated Scythe politics hold danger and deceit at every turn, positioning the two at the center of a battle between old and new Scythe ideologies. And when everything is a matter of life and death, Rowan and Citra’s survival is anything but certain.

The protagonists begin as rather predictable archetypes of the genre, Rowan the kind, humorous hero and Citra the fierce, serious heroine. The real pull to these characters, however, is how they expand from these classic personas, each event of the book building who they are in both positive and negative manners. When forced to train as a killer, for instance, Rowan develops a bloodlust that he must fight throughout the remainder of the novel. When learning about the history of the Scythes, Citra comes to embrace the Scythe lifestyle and role in society. Ultimately, they respond to their experiences as people do, as teenagers do, making each new chapter as impactful to the characters as the readers.

An additional strength of the novel is its structure as a collection of journal entries and multi-focused narration. By having this format, Shusterman allows the reader a greater scope of the world he’s created, which subsequently makes the dystopian reality feel more plausible. Furthermore, the intentional narrative focuses precisely reveal character actions and motivations, permitting Shusterman to create suspense and surprise into certain events while still giving readers enough information to visualize the scenes presented.

A final significant aspect of the novel is its plot, which I found to be both fresh and familiar. Shusterman uses many common tropes of YA science fiction, such as corrupt conspiracies and omnipotent technologies, however he twists them in a way that I have rarely seen in other texts. To illustrate, the looming super-computer watching and governing all of society is actually a benevolent, or at the very least morally ambiguous character, instead of the common role of “root of all evils.” Continuing on, the tests given to the Scythe apprentices do not result in the unexpected revelation of unknown talents or complete success, as is usually the case with that class plotline, and instead showcase the shortcomings of such tests in actually measuring the characters’ worth.

Fans of fast-paced, thrilling science fiction will marvel over Scythe’s various intricacies and components. From the characters to the storyline, Shusterman successfully spins a dystopian future that seems all too possible, while showing respect to the expectations of the genre. I can’t wait to read the sequel!

The main character, Jude, was taken from her home in the mortal world when she was only a child, along with her two sisters, Taryn, and Vivienne. The girls were forced to watch as their parents were murdered by a fairy named Madoc. They later find out this is because Vivienne is actually his child who was stolen from him when their mother was still pregnant. The three sisters are then raised among the fairy gentry. Jude has never found it easy. While she can’t imagine going back to the mortal world, she doesn’t fit in among the fairies. No one will let her forget this fact, Prince Cardan least of all.

Cardan is the youngest of the royal family. He will never wear the crown, and he will never be the most beloved. He’s too cruel to ever gain anyone’s love or trust. But he has a special love of torturing Jude. His disdain for her drives her to prove that she can be something that he should fear. In the end, she proves more powerful than anyone could have imagined – Jude may just be more dangerous than she ever thought she could be.

Black uses Jude’s love for her sisters and hatred of Cardan to drive the story forward. It is these emotions which push Jude to enter into schemes and plots which she would never have otherwise dreamed about. In the end, her emotions could lead to her becoming or to her downfall – either way, they will decide the future of the entire fairy kingdom.

Young adult literature is life-saving and powerful. In a difficult time, teens need writing and art that speaks directly to them. As proven by #WeNeedDiverseBooks and #YASaves, teens depend on literature to help them feel heard, less lonely, and prepared to take on the stresses of everyday life. Every member of The Passed Note team has a story of how young adult literature was there for them as a teen; now we seek to pass that experience on to the next generation. We hope to bring paintings, photographs, poetry, and stories to the lives of the young adults who desperately need them.

With your help, we can widen our advertising power, increase our author honorariums, and protect our brand. All of this will aid in our vision of providing more content for young adult readers with the hope of encouraging a compassionate and intelligent generation.

The novel, written by Vicki Grant, begins in the office of a PHD student, who is conducting a research experiment on the psychology of falling in love. More specifically, he wants to see if two people can fall in love by asking and answering 36 predetermined questions. This is where Hildy and Paul come in. Hildy is an eighteen-year old thespian and high school student who has never been lucky in love, and whose idyllic life feels like it’s on the brink of crumbling. Paul is a high school dropout with a hidden past, trust issues, and a knack for drawing. Each volunteering for wildly different reasons, the two come together to discuss the questions and prove or disprove the PHD student’s hypothesis. However, their disparate backgrounds and contrasting personalities make being in the same room together a challenge and liking each other an impossibility. Still, they persist in completing the study, each question revealing more and more and building to the bigger question: “Could Hildy and Paul be falling in love?”  Following Hildy during the study and beyond, 36 Questions That Changed My Mind About You delves into what love is, how it lasts or doesn’t, and how people navigate it.

Stylistically, the novel contains a unique dialogue structure, in which the conversations between Hildy and Paul are written as if they were transcripts in a research study. I found this to give a unifying effect to the story, as even as Hildy and Paul’s plots diverged and grew the structure of their conversation always referred back to that initial research experiment. However, because romance scene writing is often made believable through movement and body motions rather than pure dialogue, I found the structure to prevent readers from getting a realized sense of their intimacy and attraction. Furthermore, the description of motion that is included in the dialogue is telling rather than showing, which then diminishes the reader’s connection to those pivotal moments of the story.

The characters themselves are fully fleshed out, but very similar to classic YA romance archetypes. Paul is the “bad boy with a soft spot,” who uses attitude to steel himself off from the world around him. Hildy is the “straight-A, spunky, nontraditionally beautiful girl” whose awkwardness/clumsiness verges on absurdity. They never go beyond these roles, even when their exposition is revealed, and the author makes no attempt to expand or offer insight into their predictable behaviors. Furthermore, their behaviors perpetuate many antiquated, unhealthy concepts that are present in YA, such as reinforcing the notions that girls are hysterical/overemotional, that if someone actively antagonizes you they actually like you, that or that girls should strive to be “not like other girls” (what’s wrong with other girls?). Essentially, instead of attempting to reinterpret or deny the many tropes and aspects I dislike about YA Romance, the novel plays fully into them in a way that I simply didn’t find effective.

On the other hand, I did enjoy the mix of romance and drama that the book includes. Hildy’s difficult relationship with her family members, her struggles with her friends, and even her encounters with her old crush, Evan, were both compelling and important to developing her character. Furthermore, I enjoyed the fact that Grant did not reveal the cause of Hildy’s problems until well into the story, which allowed for tension and readers’ interest to build in the meanwhile. The same could also be said for Paul’s mysterious life and past, both of which was kept from the reader’s knowledge up until the final chapters.

In all, 36 Questions That Changed My Mind About You is far from a perfect book. However, for Valentine’s Day, it was a pleasant, cute story and a quick read. If you enjoy typical, sweet-but-predictable YA Romance, you’ll love its well-executed plot and fun characters. However, if you’re looking for a romance novel to revolutionize or stray from the expected YA romance model, you’ll be better off exploring other titles.

The Graveyard Book told of a life after death. It had bloody themes, like murder, but it helped me come to terms with the sudden death of secular friend. Seeing that there were options beyond a Jewish or Christian heaven gave me immeasurable comfort.

Before I started high school, I wanted to be a good person. However, I didn’t know how to approach disability or illness. Wonder helped me get over that hesitation and helped me see that people with disabilities are just like people without. Wonder gave me the confidence to treat everyone the same.

Unwind is set in a theoretical world where delinquent teens are harvested for their organs, and taught me to question the morality of laws. That book gave me the confidence to see that what was legal is not always right.

I could always identify similarities between myself and LGBT characters. The book I fell in love with for a strong, lesbian female lead was We Are Okay. Reading an LGBT book about cute girls falling in love with a happy ending showed young me that I could create a happy ending for myself as well, as long as I loved myself enough to find it.

A lot of people assume that books about drugs need to be warnings, but I found something different in Book of My Life by Angel and Clean. Written in free verse, Book of My Life by Angel is the first-person account of a girl drafted into prostitution, addicted to cocaine. As an upper-middle class white girl, this book taught me to empathize with the people most unlike me. Clean is about recovery, and takes place in a hospital. Clean showed me that it’s okay to get help.

Peace, Love, and Baby Ducks is a classic. It was the book I read under the covers by flashlight, the one passed under desks from girl to girl. It talked about everything: drinking, periods, and even teen pregnancy. That book gave me perspective on being a girl in today’s high school environment, and what it meant to grow up in our society.

YA is a great way to step outside yourself and into the shoes of another person. It helped me learn empathy and find comfort in hard times. When you’re in a bad place, I would highly recommend picking up a book.

Brimming with heart-stopping stunts, adrenaline-induced rides, and decadent costumes, the carnival epitomizes extravagance—and, for seventeen-year-old Emmaline King, escape. Having moved back to the monotonous town of Claremore, Oklahoma with her brothers and father while her mother pursues grant work in Guatemala, Emma seeks something more for herself. A spark in her otherwise dreary, undesirable day-to-day life. The carnival, she hopes, will serve as a temporary balm, a dazzling distraction to lose herself in with her friend, Jules. But the carnival is not as innocuous as it appears, and when Jules slips away with a group of classmates, Emma finds herself mesmerized by a strange, tantalizing boy whose chilling kiss upends not only her world but threatens her very life. In a single night, Emma loses everything she was and had as the carnival’s mysterious curse overtakes her, making her an intrinsic player in its complicated game.

Benjamin Singer wants nothing more than to escape LeGrand’s Carnival Fantastic. Apprentice to the carnival’s master carpenter—aka, his mother—Ben seeks reprieve from the demands of the carnival, from the predictable cocoon his life has become. The trouble is, his mother won’t allow him to leave, for the carnival is bound by a charm—a magical enchantment that prevents its people from illness, harm, or aging, and Audrey Singer seeks to protect her son from the abuses of the outside world. But for Ben, he’s willing to risk his life for freedom. Until he meets Emma.

Now keeper of the curse, Emma is little more than a walking, talking puppet, unfeeling as a corpse and just as cold. The curse has trapped her within the confines of the carnival, and since it serves as a counterpart to the charm, Emma cannot leave, unless she passes the curse onto another poor rube. Unless she robs someone else of his or her life.  For as the novel’s title suggests, the carnival is bound by both a charm and a curse in equal measure, the symbiotic nature of each maintaining life and prosperity for its employees—at the expense and sacrifice of the curse’s bearer. The curse, horrendous as it appears, maintains balance, harmony. Safety. But when things begin to go awry—when lightbulbs burst, vehicles break down, and performers begin to suffer horrible injuries—Emma and Ben determine to seek a way to break the curse, whatever the cost.

And the cost, they discover, is higher than they could have imagined.

Told in alternating first-person perspectives, Questell’s contemporary fantasy is ripe with intrigue, humor, love, terror, and heartache. It’s full of enigmatic fortune tellers, brazen equestrian stunt-girls, and death-defying tumblers that will leave you with bated breath. But most of all, this novel explores humanity at its most vulnerable—and its most beautiful.

 By a Charm and a Curse releases tomorrow, February 6, from Entangled: Teen Publishing, and we couldn’t be more excited! For more about Jaime Questell, check out her Twitter and website.

Night of Cake & Puppets (Laini Taylor)

A companion novella to Laini Taylor’s popular Daughter of Smoke and Bone series, Night of Cake & Puppets follows two lovable favorites from the original series on the night they fell in love. Zuzana is a ‘rabid-fairy-carnivorous-plant’ puppeteer who’s usually pretty fearless—but not when it comes to Violin Boy. She’s been crushing on him for months and he doesn’t seem to know she exists, but she’s determined to change all that. So she borrows some magic from her best friend Karou and plans one of the most enchanting first dates you’ll ever read about. It takes place during a winter night in Prague, and Taylor’s writing (as well as her husband Jim DiBartolo’s accompanying illustrations) will make you wish you were right there to watch how it all ends.

Salt to the Sea (Ruta Sepetys)

World War II is rife with tragedy and triumph, and while this book about a historic maritime disaster may be one of many, it carries a weight that is hard to shrug off. Sepetys’ masterful storytelling gives voice to four characters and their struggle for survival and escape culminates in the freezing waters of the Baltic Sea. You’ll be grateful to read this in a warm and cozy place, but its themes will definitely jolt you out of your comfort zone and make you face your own dark moments.

Lovely, Dark and Deep (Amy McNamara)

‘Lovely’ is one way to describe the way McNamara writes this story of isolation and recovery. Wren has lived through a tragic accident, and survivor’s guilt and other trauma have led her to retreat to her father’s studio in the woods, trying to escape parental concern and small-town gossip. Her father encourages her to work for a local boy, and it’s this tenuous thread of human contact that becomes her lifeline. While the story takes its time to unfold, McNamara’s elegant turn-of-phrase and her believable characters make the journey worth it.

Love and Other Train Wrecks (Leah Konen)

This book will make you glad you aren’t trudging through the snow and looking for a bus station with a guy you’ve just met. Ammy and Noah are both headed for the same place when they meet on the Amtrak. But certain mishaps find them lost and train-less, and they have to rely on each other to get back to the lives they think are waiting for them. Elements of insta-love here may turn some readers away, but others may enjoy the serendipity. Even in the winter, anything is possible.

The Smell of Other People’s Houses (Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock)

Any self-respecting Alaskan tasked with creating a winter reads list should be proud to include a book set in Alaska written by an Alaskan. Here’s one: Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock’s The Smell of Other People’s Houses. Set in Fairbanks during the seventies, it takes a hard look at poverty, abuse, and fractured relationships as seen through the eyes of four teens with diverse backgrounds. Each story is sharp and infused with so much sense of place that it would be a shame to let this one pass. Pick it up for the unique flavor, but stay for the emotional upheaval that these characters will take you on.

And Both Were Young (Madeleine L’Engle)

When Flip’s father sends her to a Swiss boarding school, she’s far from thrilled. She’s clumsy and socially awkward, and her bad knee from an old accident keeps her from making friends among girls crazy about boys and sports. Paul, a young man she meets during one of her solitary walks, is the only one who makes her feel at ease, but he’s battling his own demons as well. But over the winter term, his friendship and the encouragement of her art teacher will slowly draw Flip out of her shell. The romance is low-key and the plot can meander more leisurely than most, but it’s got skiing, hot chocolate, chalets, Byron, and secret rendezvous—everything that makes it perfect for a winter read.

Filling my evenings and an appetite for literature that could not be satisfied by curriculum-assigned classics, reading young adult writing was a habit young adult me could never shake and one she never quite wanted to. It followed me through middle and high school, through countless dances and sports events and final exams. I read on the bleachers during soccer games, before shifts at my first job, on bus rides, and after the final bell of the school day rung. For a teenager living in a small town amidst cornfields and not much else, the books became a way to find role models, to learn who I was and should be, and to experience a world beyond my own.

I recall when I finished Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment by James Patterson at the age of thirteen. Admiration for the protagonist, Max, had molded her into an ideal over the course of the book. After turning the final page, I so intensely wanted to emulate her that I used my allowance to get blond highlights to match hers. Max was everything I aspired to be: strong, funny, intelligent, a capable leader. Although other YA protagonists had exhibited similar characteristics, I latched onto her with passion that I’d never exhibited before, realizing only much later the reason for this attachment: she had brown hair (with blond highlights) and brown eyes. I had rarely, if ever, seen even this minute representation of myself in a character of the YA genre, and despite the fact that we were different in almost everything from race to culture to favorite color, it was enough to allow me to believe that part of me was or could be a hero like Max. For a long time after I read those books, what would Max do? circulated in my head constantly, and in the end I became a more confident and courageous person because of it.

Eventually, other protagonists of other novels came to share Max’s position of role model in my life, and although I cannot remember all of them, I know they helped me through my teenage years and made me who I am today. Furthermore, I am so excited to see the YA genre’s increasing inclusivity, with characters like Xifeng (Forest of a Thousand Lanterns), Taj (Beasts Made of Night), and Starr Carter (The Hate U Give) providing POC representation and allowing young people to see their stories being told, because I know how valuable having that was for me.

YA books also provided me knowledge about the world that I would have never been able to learn in a classroom or my limited life in Minnesota. From Unwind by Neal Shusterman I learned about systematic dehumanization, resistance organization, and how economic industries benefit from oppression. From The List by Siobhan Vivian, I saw the subjective, problematic ranking of beauty as it exists for high school students. From Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson I came to understand the outcome of epidemics and underdeveloped medical technologies on a personal level, as well as the nature of life during this time in history. Furthermore, because these lessons were so heavily imbued in such stories, they stayed with me longer than any abstract theory reading or textbook passage. Indeed I believe that young adult novels, particularly in the modern day, serve to subtly inform and empower teenagers through a relatability denied to them by their surroundings. As I continue on through higher education, I must at the very least appreciate how much they enabled me to engage with difficult concepts and face a variety of conflicts and challenges.

In spite of Young Adult Literature having a reputation for being mindless or superficial, it was an indispensable contributor to my development as a young adult, as I’m certain it was for many others. It gave me hope, knowledge, and virtues whose effects continue to shape my life and perspective. It allowed me to surpass my circumstance, a teenager with little control over her surroundings, and experience what I would otherwise be unable to. Moreover, although I continue to spend nights curled under the covers with a good YA book, I know that it will never be as transformative as it was during that time in my life, back when I had a bed time I was breaking to finish a good book.

And then she died.

To this day, I had never known guilt the way I did after she died. It was a very ugly thing that gnawed at me and left me empty. I tried to fill that emptiness with books. I was looking for something—an escape, a distraction—but I did not expect to find something akin to forgiveness. “Your mind will believe comforting lies while also knowing the painful truths that make those lies necessary,” Ness writes, and it was like someone had answered all the questions I never had the courage to ask. I took his words to bed, wrapped myself in their blanket, repeated them over and over like a mantra. I was twenty-eight and heartbroken, and nothing could comfort me as much as that YA book did.

When people ask me why adults still read YA, I am quick to answer. I think YA literature reminds us of the times when we were at our most vulnerable. And I’ve always felt that we are at our most vulnerable as young adults.

Sure, little kids aren’t strong. But our physical weaknesses as children are counterbalanced by an innocence that shields us from the world’s pains, and we were marked by a fearlessness that did not know any consequence. As young adults though, we begin to lose that shield. We start to think for ourselves. We act. We feel. We understand consequence but we go for it anyway. And for a few years before the cynicism of the world hardens our backbones or our fists—or worse, our hearts—we are entirely vulnerable, souls laid bare. That’s what YA captures for me.

It is ironic that I read most of my YA books when I wasn’t a young adult. I was in the third grade when I discovered my friend’s copy of The Witch of Blackbird Pond and offered to trade it for another book. After that, I tore through our school library’s collection of Cynthia Voigt and Judy Blume and Zilpha Keatley Snyder. I read every Newbery Award winner I could get my hands on. I went old school. While my appetite for YA petered out in high school, I found it again after college, marveling at the number of titles and sub-genres that I had missed out on. It is such a disservice to YA authors and readers to dismiss these books as lighter fare. They can be as textured and as nuanced as any other genre. Just because their protagonists can’t legally order alcohol doesn’t make them less credible sources of the human experience. To me, YA books are a source of strength, empathy, and affirmation at any age.

In a way, YA defined me. More importantly, it gave me a language that I could define myself by. English is not my mother tongue. You will catch it in my unguarded moments–the accent that slips past the studied flatness, the turn of phrase that sounds just slightly off. But through my YA books, I discovered words that were not originally my own, and I found that I could make them mine. I mastered a language and learned stories that made my world bigger and richer. I filled my empty spaces—am still filling them—with other people’s words. Words that, on closer scrutiny, turn out to be not much different from my own.

Snowbirds follows the quest of Lucy Zimmer after her best friend, Alice, goes missing during a party. The biggest draw to the novel is that Lucy comes from a community of Beachy Amish in Florida (FYI, they’re the Beachy Amish because the name of the founder is Beachy, not because they live by the beach), and Lucy’s appearance at the party arouses suspicion that her community wants to push back down. Growing up protected by the church and the people with whom she’s lived her whole life, Lucy has rarely ventured outside of the Beachy Amish settlement, and never by herself. However, after Alice’s bloody cell phone is found on the beach soon after her disappearance, Lucy teams up with a shunned teenage boy named Faron to find her. Breaking out of her sheltered life, Lucy ends up seeing much more than she set out to find.

I think this book is wonderful because it breaks the mold of a young adult novel. While Lucy does end up falling in love and going on an adventure with Faron, the book ends (no spoilers) with her figuring out her own life and trying to pursue her own passions. In an ultimate feminist twist, the same goes for Faron. I really liked the strong individualistic choices made by the characters of Snowbirds and how the story stays interesting throughout the book. The Beachy Amish are way more interesting than I would expect, and I’d recommend this book to anyone looking to learn more about a little known sect of the greater Amish community.