I don’t particularly like the science fiction/fantasy genre. I’m sorry, but that elaborate building of nether-worlds and time travel and future shock doesn’t really do it for me. But I can’t say that now and then, I haven’t enjoyed some of the reads that have that sci-fi/fantasy twist, but are still grounded in a little thing we like to call reality. Some people are super serious about science fiction and fantasy books. That’s cool, and I respect all reading tastes, but I’m just not one of them. My picks tend to feature real-life teen situations that are set off by just enough of the fantastic to make the story fun and fictional. But whether you’re a total Trekkie or just surf over the sci-fi titles once in a while, I think you’ll find at least a few books that you can “beam-up” to your bedroom!
It’s been two years since Fever Crumb fled post-apocalyptic London and the Order of Engineers after finding out she had some dubious memories rolling around in her head that weren’t hers. But don’t let’s spoil that story, which starts here. In this second volume of the Fever Crumb series, Fever has taken a job with Persimmon’s Electric Lyceum, a mobile theater that desperately needs her lighting expertise and has provided a safe haven for Ruan and Fern, the two orphan children that she took under her rational wing. When the Lyceum stops over in the temperate vacation city of Mayda-at-the-World’s-End to stage a performance, Fever discovers quite by accident a mad young inventor named Arlo Thursday who claims to have rediscovered the ancient secret of heavier-than-air travel. But in world where big cities like London are becoming mobile military fortresses, with the only possible threats coming from above, such ideas are dangerous. Nevertheless, Fever’s engineering brain can’t help but fall in love with Arlo’s brilliant plans, and maybe even a little bit with Arlo. But when she uncovers a London-based plot to suppress air travel at all costs, Fever must decide whether to listen to her logical head or her traitorous heart when it comes to deciding Arlo’s fate. Upon finishing this book in one breathless evening, I have to ask: How do you do it, Philip Reeve? How do you write such inspired, edge of your seat adventure stories with exceptional world building that just seems to happen in throw away descriptions (Mayda is a city of funiculars, houses built on the side of cliffs that move up and down on rails using water ballasts–LOVE) and original characters that I’m deeply concerned for by page 10 that are less than 300 pages long? HOW? Start with Fever Crumb, get your paws on A Web of Air , and then be just as miserable as me as we all wait for word on Fever’s next big adventure.
Bad luck seems to be dogging Mara Dyer wherever she goes. First, she loses her best friend, boyfriend and his sister in a freak building collapse that she alone survives. Then, after her family moves to Miami to help Mara’s post-traumatic stress over the accident, she attracts the unwanted attention of her new school’s alpha bee-yatch, Anna, who is furious that gorgeous alterna-boy candy Noah has focused his laser lover eyes on Mara instead of her. In addition, Mara is seeing lots of scary things that aren’t really there, like the gray face of her dead boyfriend, who actually wasn’t all that nice. Oh, and did I mention that people she doesn’t like are also starting to drop dead around her? What’s happening to Mara? Is she really going crazy, like her psychologist mom believes? Or is there something, shall we say, more supernatural at work? It’s only when Mara and Noah begin to dig deep into the horror movie that has become her life that Mara discovers that the personal destruction that surrounds her is springing from a place that is disturbingly close to home. Unfortunately, just as all is revealed, the book ends on an abrupt cliffhanger. There had better be a sequel, or heads are going to roll! Though this thriller was a little too long for me, newbie author Michelle Hodkin’s prose is ridiculously addictive and I couldn’t wait to find out what was going to happen next. Plus, I have to say, Noah is biggest dreamboat since Romeo. I was seriously swooning on every page -*fans self* And if you want to swoon too, order up this hot chiller at your local library, bookstore or e-reader pronto!
“We are hunters all. We are, all of us, monstrumologists.” The third book in the crazy good and wonderfully gruesome Monstrumologist series takes plucky young protagonist Will Henry to a far darker place than ever before, and this time it’s not the monsters outside he fears so much as the monster within. After receiving a mysterious package that contains a grisly nest made of shredded human tissue and bone, Will and Dr. Warthrop are launched on a grim new quest to find and capture Typhoeus magnificum, The Father of All Monsters. This mysterious beast has never been seen, and its only calling cards are the flesh nests it makes of its victims and it’s corrosive spit that if touched, turns men into cannibalistic zombies. Every monstrumologist who has tried to track it down it down has never been seen or heard from again. Naturally, Warthrop has second thoughts about taking Will Henry on such a dangerous mission, and ends up leaving him with his mentor Dr. von Helrung in New York. But when von Helrung receives word that Warthrop is dead, Will Henry decides to take matters into his own young hands and find out the truth—even if it means losing his life. Sailing from America to darkest Africa and meeting such literary luminaries as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (you didn’t know he was such a fan of monstrumology, did you?) and Arthur Rimbaud (with an encore appearance of fan favorite, the dastardly Jack Kearns) along the way, Will’s gripping globetrotting journey is nothing compared to the long bleak road he is walking within. As Warthrop slowly begins to give his humanity more airtime than his burning ambition in this most excellent third volume, Will disturbingly begins to slide the other way. “I thought I knew the cost of service to the one whose path lies in the darkness. I did not.” Always pure of heart in the past, now Will finds himself committing not one but two desperate and irrevocable acts that will have consequences he can’t quite understand, but that the world weary Warthrop knows all too well. Will has always served as Warthrop’s moral compass (“You are the one thing that keeps me human”) but now it may be the egotistical but ultimately good doctor’s turn to help Will expunge the darkness that has begun to take deep root in his soul. Oh, how I love these books! Oh, how I wish there was a real Society for the Advancement of the Science of Monstrumology, and that I could sit down and have Darjeeling tea with Will and Dr. Warthrop! Like The Historian
What would you do if you had a fear that was bigger than you were? Run away? Hide? Or would you call for help? Thirteen-year-old Conor is keeping a terrible secret about his mother’s illness, one that is so awful he doesn’t dare speak it aloud. So when a giant monster shows up outside his window one night and threatens him, he isn’t even scared. Because no monster is equal to the rage and sorrow he has locked away inside. But when the monster tells Conor that the reason it’s there is because Conor called it, he doesn’t understand. How could he have brought the monster without knowing? And is the monster there to help or to hurt him? As the monster continues to make its nightly visits and Conor’s mother gets sicker, Conor becomes desperate to put an end to the mystery of the monster’s presence. When the truth is finally revealed, it is both wonderful and terrible. This intriguing modern day fable about the lies we tell ourselves in order to survive tragedy was actually thought up by British author and activist Siobhan Dowd, who died before she could complete it. It was then passed into the hands of her colleague Patrick Ness, who in his own words, “took it and ran with it.” The result is a lyrical, melancholy tale, lushly illustrated with haunting images by debut illustrator Jim Kay, that provides no easy answer to the question of human suffering, but is full of hope nevertheless.
Aurora (Rory) Deveaux is definitely a Louisiana catfish out of water. Due to her professor parents’ European sabbatical, the gawky Southern teen has just started her senior year at a tony English boarding school called Wexford in the heart of London. Small town Rory couldn’t be more different than her brisk British classmates, and struggles at first to fit in. But soon she is surrounded by new friends and even starts a mild flirtation with Jerome, the cute prefect from the boy’s dorm. Rory’s getting along so well that even the news that a serial killer who models himself after Jack the Ripper is on the loose in London seems more interesting than scary. Until a body shows up on Wexford’s supposedly safe school grounds, and Rory is the only one to see a strange man hovering nearby. Suddenly Rory finds herself at the heart of a terrifying investigation that has even the police baffled. The new Ripper leaves no trace, and even the many closed circuit cameras that are everywhere in London can’t seem to capture him. How can Rory see what the cameras can’t? And what does that mean when it comes to keeping herself and her friends safe from the Ripper’s knife? To say anymore would ruin the shocking secret at the heart of this romantic thriller that starts out like a traditional boarding school romp and then morphs into something that is part horror, part mystery and all quirky, cool Maureen Johnson. Rory, sort of a country cousin to Scarlett Martin, is full of heart and wit, and pitting her against the top serial killers of all time guarantees surprises, shivers and Johnson’s inevitable trademark sarcasm. By the end of book one, Rory discovers her true destiny and let’s just say it’s not a talent for needlework or languages. I can’t wait for the sequel of this projected trilogy! And you won’t be able to either after Star comes to a library, bookstore or e-reader near you.
Literary Fun Fact: Victor Frankenstein had a twin! Well, at least Kenneth Oppel imagines so in this brilliant, twisted prequel to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Victor, his twin Konrad and their distant cousin Elizabeth live the good life in Chateau Frankenstein outside of Geneva, Switzerland around the mid-1790’s. The Frankenstein family is wealthy, their digs are humongous, and the teenagers, along with their best bud Henry spend their summer days hiking or riding around the Jura Mountains and Lake Geneva. Then Konrad falls mysteriously ill, and no doctor from miles around seems to know how to help him. So Victor takes it upon himself to secretly employ a dodgy local alchemist to assist him in concocting the Elixir of Life from a recipe he finds in an ancient book hidden in the Frankenstein library. Victor is determined to use the Elixir to save his brother’s life, though his motivation is not entirely pure: he also hopes to win great acclaim for his discovery, while capturing the romantic admiration of his beautiful cousin Elizabeth–who just happens to be in love with Konrad. Soon, Victor, Elizabeth and Henry are lying like rugs and sneaking out at night to track down the rare, obscure ingredients that the Elixir requires. They are willing to break every taboo known to science and religion in their race to save Konrad. But will Victor’s own selfish nature undo all their desperate efforts in the end? And how will this experience shape the man who ends up creating the most famous monster of all time? As usual, Oppel is a master of pacing, taking readers on a freaky cool adventure that starts off with a BANG on the very first page. In addition, all the characters are fully realized (especially tortured Victor, who tells the dark tale in first person), the love triangle is loads more exciting and bitter than this one, and the action never stops. I have no doubt that you will enjoy this incredibly well executed Gothic/horror/historical novel immensely.
Jamie has a pill problem. It started innocently enough with a track injury. But then her teacher Mr. Ryan (“I’d called him Sean, a couple of times, in the end.”) told her that they had to stop meeting in the back booth of Ruby Tuesdays, so she needed more painkillers for her broken heart. Soon any pill would do—pain pills, her mom’s allergy pills, her dad’s sleeping pills. What kind didn’t matter, as long as they helped Jamie forget Sean, uh, Mr Ryan. Now she’s about to leave home to take a ritzy summer nanny job, hopped up on her parents’ prescriptions and feeling utterly alone. But the island of Little Bly and Isa, the girl she has been hired to care for, are charming and sweet. Maybe Jamie will finally be able to relax and leave the pills behind. Except then she hears the disturbing rumors of Isa’s last nanny, a wild girl named Jessie who died in a plane crash with her boyfriend. Worse yet, she starts SEEING the dead girl and her man on the cliffs near Isa’s house. As the doomed pair draw ever nearer, Jamie begins to lose her already tenuous grip on reality. Are the capsules she can’t seem to stop popping causing her to see the dead lovers? Or are the ghosts real? This hum dinger of a homage to Henry James’ classic The Turn of The Screw will have you breaking into chills even without the air conditioning this summer. Deliciously creepy, with a shocking ending that doesn’t disappoint, this is one hardcover worth toting with you to summer camp. Just don’t be surprised if you lend it to a bunkmate and never see it again. It’s THAT AWESOME. Pair it up with Lauren Myracle’s equally suspenseful Bliss for more good old-fashioned scary summer reading fun.
, get your paws on 
, and then be just as miserable as me as we all wait for word on Fever’s 
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will have you breaking into chills even without the air conditioning this summer. Deliciously creepy, with a shocking ending that doesn’t disappoint, this is one hardcover worth toting with you to summer camp. Just don’t be surprised if you lend it to a bunkmate and never see it again. It’s THAT AWESOME. Pair it up with 