What YA book are you reading RIGHT NOW?

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Sarah G

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ive just finished reading Vampire Diaries by LJ Smith the latest book, now onto vampire academy
 

Smish

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Moving on to Book 4 of the Wicked Lovely series. :D

ETA: Actually, I've decided to read Fixing Delilah, by Sarah Ockler. Then I'll read the next Wicked Lovely book. What can I say? I need a contemporary-YA fix. ;)
 
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Jehhillenberg

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Just finished reading "Cracked Up to Be" by Courtney Summers. It was alright. "Looking for Alaska" is on my to-read list though.
 

Smish

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Just finished reading "Cracked Up to Be" by Courtney Summers. It was alright. "Looking for Alaska" is on my to-read list though.

I love Courtney Summers. Cracked Up to Be is my least favorite of her books, though. Some Girls Are is my favorite.

And Looking for Alaska is always a good read, even if you have read it five or six times. ;)
 

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Finished The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian last night (Absolute Brilliance) and also read a FANTASTIC YA Thriller manuscript and now i'm about to start Raw Blue by Kristi Eagar, an Australian author. Can't wait for this one!!! My friend sent it to me in the mail so I can borrow it as you can't buy this book in the states. Grrrr...So much great Aussie brilliance that we can't get our hands on right here in the states. NOT FAIR!
 

mellymel

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Just finished reading "Cracked Up to Be" by Courtney Summers. It was alright. "Looking for Alaska" is on my to-read list though.

I've read her other two books, Some Girls Are and Fall for Anything (her latest) which were both FANTASTIC. Haven't read Cracked Up To Be yet and have heard it's not as strong as her other books, but i am a huge fan of CS and I will read it and I'm sure I'll enjoy it. I love her writing style. Looking for Alaska is also on my TBR list. I read John Green's Paper Towns and it was REALLY good.
 

adktd2bks

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I'm reading What Happened to Goodbye.

I love Sarah Dessen. She's always been a huge inspiration to me, and she's one of the reasons I started writing YA. She's a talented writer. BUT...I am starting to get tired of her formula. Her books are comforting to me because they are similar and familiar. I know what I'm going to get when I start one of her books. She writes great boys, smart dialogue, and interesting, quirky characters. Her narrators, however, seem to be mostly the same. Act the same, think the same, speak the same. Boring.

I'm growing a little tired of her heavy-handed writing. I'd love to see her to try something different, but I doubt she will because her formula works and sells books.

It feels almost blasphemous saying all this because I'm such a big fan and I love her so much.

I feel much the same way about SD. I've read 5-6 of her books so far, and as I'm reading them, I really enjoy them, especially the unusual characters. But then afterwards I tend to forget which story was which because the basic style and narration is always so similar.
 

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New to the forum, but a HUGE YA fan. Currently reading The Book of Lost Souls Michelle Muto, still pretty early in the book but I'm enjoying a couple of the characters thus far.
 

ryannj5

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I just finished Giving Up the V.
It's a really cute high school drama/ friendships, etc. type of story. Oh, and about losing your virginity.
 

Kitty Pryde

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Finished reading Gone. The premise is intriguing, but the characters are all 1 dimensional unrealistic walking cliches and the action is straight out of a CW channel tv show. Not sure i can push through 5+ more 500 page tomes to find out what's going on. Not sure I can read "Your brother's a retard!" "No, he's autistic!" yet one more damn time. Seriously, the book was not improved by saying that 300 different times. WTF??? I know it's the apocalypse and the kids are not that concerned with using nice language...but that's literally the only slur used in the whole book. they dont even swear at each other. How is that ok?

My library finally got Invincible Summer so I read that. Huzzah! It was damn good as evidenced by me reading it in one sitting. I did feel like one character was redshirted from the beginning, but the end was quite powerful despite that.
 

DonnaDuck

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The Fairy Godmother by Mercedes Lackey. It's a retelling of Cinderella but I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. I'm a chapter and then some in now and I'm not really feeling one way or another.
 

DrummerGirl

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I'm reading What Happened to Goodbye.

I love Sarah Dessen. She's always been a huge inspiration to me, and she's one of the reasons I started writing YA. She's a talented writer. BUT...I am starting to get tired of her formula. Her books are comforting to me because they are similar and familiar. I know what I'm going to get when I start one of her books. She writes great boys, smart dialogue, and interesting, quirky characters. Her narrators, however, seem to be mostly the same. Act the same, think the same, speak the same. Boring.

I'm growing a little tired of her heavy-handed writing. I'd love to see her to try something different, but I doubt she will because her formula works and sells books.

It feels almost blasphemous saying all this because I'm such a big fan and I love her so much.

i really did not enjoy WHAT HAPPENED TO GOODBYE. i think her hard-core fans will but i struggled to get through it :( nothing really happened...

ETA: Actually, I've decided to read Fixing Delilah, by Sarah Ockler. Then I'll read the next Wicked Lovely book. What can I say? I need a contemporary-YA fix. ;)

would love to know what you think of FIXING DELILAH :D Patrick was swoon-worthy ;)

I love Courtney Summers. Cracked Up to Be is my least favorite of her books, though. Some Girls Are is my favorite.

And Looking for Alaska is always a good read, even if you have read it five or six times. ;)

I really liked CRACKED UP TO BE. I am a little sentimental about it as it was my first book of hers and it felt very different to most contemp I read. I haven't re-read it though as I am scared without my feverish first reading buzz, I will not like it as much and the memory will be wrecked (if you get what I mean :))

Finished The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian last night (Absolute Brilliance) and also read a FANTASTIC YA Thriller manuscript and now i'm about to start Raw Blue by Kristi Eagar, an Australian author. Can't wait for this one!!! My friend sent it to me in the mail so I can borrow it as you can't buy this book in the states. Grrrr...So much great Aussie brilliance that we can't get our hands on right here in the states. NOT FAIR!

YOU BETTER LOVE RAW BLUE (!) It is on my top ten list and one of my main inspirations for writing :) (as in, I want to write a book exactly as powerful as it...)

I haven't been on for ages... so I can't remember my last book update :/

BUT my fave recent read was EVERY LITTLE THING IN THE WORLD by Nina De Gramont. Oh my gosh ~ I am completely in love with it. I even gave it a little hug when I finished it. I just loved the voice and the sentiments and the setting and pretty much everything about it. If you enjoy (sometimes quiet) contemp reads with a compelling voice and prose that an author has taken their time with ~ I SO recommend it. Has anyone read it? <3 (gorgeous cover as well)
 

mellymel

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Nomes!!!! I hope I really love it. Just read the first chap last night and I can't say i'm in love yet, but i think it's cause there's a lot of talk and vocab about surfing that i just don't know. i'm sure things will pick up though cause she already does a great job of creating this odd tension w/what i'm assuming will be some sort of LI or a character that will at least have some sort of major impact on the MC.
 

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I'm reading Invincible Summer by our Hannah "Shady Lane" Moskowitz. Since I want to keep my copy clean for my muser/AWer shelf, I'm also reading The Shakespeare Stealer by Gary Blackwood for times when I want to stuff a book in a bag and take with me.
 

DonnaDuck

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Gave up on The Fairy Godmother. At almost 500 pages, and after 100 of going pretty much nowhere and having to contend with words italicized for emphasis in every other paragraph, I trunked it. Moving on.

Fat Vampire by Adam Rex. Teen vampire satire. Love it and I haven't even started reading it yet.
 

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I just started Dash & Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
 

vfury

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Finished Th3 Dem0n's Surrend3r last night. It was amazing, a fitting end to the trilogy. Can't wait for SRB's next trilogy. :)
 

jtrylch13

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Now reading Gone per the advice of the forum--so far feels more like MG but we'll see. It's a fast read anyways.

Although the MC's are all 15 or almost 15, I saw them as 12 and 13. I think it's the writing. I'd say this is somewhere between MG and YA. TWEEN? Writing and characters are MG but some of the action and themes are YA. I was surprised at the violence/gore factor. More than I expected.

The "Warriors" series by Erin Hunter
"Ranger's Apprentice", I don't remember who wrote it.

I've been tempted to check out Hunger Games, but the title turns me off.
And I want to read Pendragon, but I'm going to finish the above series first.

Ranger's Apprentice are written by John Flanagan. I've read the first one because my son reads them. They were nice, but I'll get to them later when I've run through my current TBR pile. As far as Hunger Games, what's wrong with the title? I actually put these off as well because I hate trends. If everyone else says they're the best, I usually don't want to jump on the wagon. Did the same thing with Harry Potter. Boy was I wrong in both cases. the Hunger Game series is ansolutley amazing!

Finished reading Gone. The premise is intriguing, but the characters are all 1 dimensional unrealistic walking cliches and the action is straight out of a CW channel tv show. Not sure i can push through 5+ more 500 page tomes to find out what's going on. Not sure I can read "Your brother's a retard!" "No, he's autistic!" yet one more damn time. Seriously, the book was not improved by saying that 300 different times. WTF??? I know it's the apocalypse and the kids are not that concerned with using nice language...but that's literally the only slur used in the whole book. they dont even swear at each other. How is that ok?

Yeah, I know what you mean. It was really written MG. I liked the story, though I didn't always like the writing. The characters gain more depth in the later books and boy do they suffer. Not the best series in the world, but I read the first 3 and will continue them later. Too many other things to read.

I read Dead and Gone and This World We Live In by Susan Beth Pfeffer last week. They are the sequels to Life as We Knew It. First of all, I read them out of order, which didn't really matter, but does affect how you feel about the ending. The first book is about Miranda and the apocolyptic end of the world we know. I read this one first, thankfully, but then you're supposed to read Dead and Gone which is about Alex, a completely unkown character and the same apocalypse from his location and point of view. I read this one last. The third book is from Miranda's POV again, but shows how Miranda and Alex meet and what happens to them together. It was a little frustrating, because I already knew which characters never make it to the next book and which one's will die in the next book. Not a real problem though, but what was really an issue is that the way This World We Live In ends, would have been satisfying if you knew it was the last one. As I thought there was another book about Miranda and Alex, I was disappointed to find out the book was Alex's backstory. Plus, I think I read that Pfeffer is writing another in the series, but with different characters. I really want to know what happens to Alex and Miranda and I never will except in my own imagination.

Now to the books: They are amazing. I love, love, love these stories! I actually feel like I am the MC while I'm reading them and my moods are reflective! They're YA and don't have a ton of action, but I think these are some of my favorite books ever. They're only beat out by Harry Potter, Hunger Games and anything by Jane Austen.
 

AlishaS

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I finished Midnight Alley and Feast of Fools by Rachel Cain the third and fourth in the Morganville Vampires series over the weekend.

Now I'm not sure what to read, I have quite a few books in my TBR pile right now, just have to choose :)
 

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I'm reading SAVING JUNE by Hannah Harrington. It is a YA debut and OH MY GOSH ~ you guys. I am in love with it o_O

For some weird reason it is out in Australia but not yet released anywhere else (it is a US author). It's in my top three reads this year ~ out of the 101 books I have read so far. I don't know exactly why I love it so much just that I do ~ it's everything I love about contemp.
 
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