Summer 2014 Book List

     Happy Tuesday, my internet friends! Every time I sit down to write a new blog post, the prospect of sharing my life, opinions, and ideas with you all is very exciting. Today, I wanted to let you in on a not-so-big secret: I'm a bit of a bookworm. I love, love, love to read, and I usually try to go through two or three books a week. Every few months I go to my local library and do a huge book haul (I grab a least 15 books each time). I make my way through the young adults section like nobody's business, not to brag. Just yesterday I took a trip to pick up some books, and I want to share them with you!
     Summer is right around the corner (literally next month, wahoo!), so hopefully you spark an interest for a few of these books, and they become a part of your summer reading list. I'll post the title, author, and the synopsis of each book (the synopsis is usually found on the back cover), along with an image. The books range in genre, I wasn't looking for any specific type of story! Also, I have not read any of the books I've chosen yet, so feedback is much appreciated!
These are what I grabbed:

1. Eleanor & Park 
By Rainbow Rowell
Synopsis on the back of the book: "'Bono met his wife in high school,' Park says. 'So did Jerry Lee Lewis,' Eleanor answers. 'I'm not kidding,' he says. 'You should be,' she says, 'we're 16.' 'What about Romeo and Juliet?' 'Shallow, confused, then dead.' Set over the course of one school year in 1986, this is the story of two star-crossed misfits - smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try. When Eleanor meets Park, you'll remember your own first love - and just how hard it pulled you under."



2. Everything is Illuminated
By Jonathan Safran Foer
Synopsis on the back of the book: "With only a yellow photograph in hand, a young man - also named Jonathan Safran Foer - sets out to find the woman who may or may not have saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Accompanied by an old man haunted by memories of war; an amorous dog named Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior; and the unforgettable Alex, a young Ukrainian translator who speaks in sublimely butchered English, Jonathan is led on a quixotic journey over a devastated landscape and into an unexpected past."



3. The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer
By Michelle Hodkin
Synopsis on the back of the book: "Mara Dyer doesn't think life can get any stranger than waking up with no memory of how she got there. It can. She believes there must be more to the accident she can't remember that killed her friends and left her mysteriously unharmed. There is. She doesn't believe that after everything she's been through, she can fall in love. She's wrong."
*This is the first book of a trilogy.



4. Go Ask Alice
By Anonymous
Synopsis on the back of the book: "It started when she was served a soft drink laced with LSD in a dangerous party game. Within months, she was hooked, trapped in a downward spiral that took her from her comfortable home and loving family to the mean streets of an unforgiving city. It was a journey that would rob her of her innocence, her youth - and ultimately her life."



5. Jellicoe Road
By Melina Marchetta
Synopsis on the back of the book: "At age eleven, Taylor Markham was abandoned by her mother. At fourteen, she ran away from boarding school, only to be tracked down and brought back by a mysterious stranger. Now seventeen, Taylor's the reluctant leader of her school's underground community, whose annual territory war with the Townies and visiting Cadets has just begun. This year, though, the Cadets are led by Jonah Griggs, and Taylor can't avoid his intense gaze for long. To make matters worse, Hannah, the one adult Taylor trusts, has disappeared. But if Taylor can piece together the clues Hannah left behind, the truth she uncovers might not just settle her past, but also change her future."



6. Wintergirls 
By Laurie Halse Anderson
Synopsis on the back of the book: "Lia and Cassie were best friends, wintergirls frozen in matchstick bodies. But now Cassie is dead. Lia's mother is busy saving other people's lives. Her father is away on business. Her stepmother is clueless. And the voice inside Lia's head keeps telling her to remain in control, stay strong, lose more, weigh less. If she keeps going this way - thin, thinner, thinnest - maybe she'll disappear altogether.
     "In her most emotionally wrenching, lyrically written book since the National Book Award finalist Speak, best-selling author Laurie Halse Anderson explores one girl's chilling descent into the all-consuming vortex of anorexia."



7. Tricks
By Ellen Hopkins
Synopsis on the back of the book: "Five teenagers from different parts of the country. Three girls. Two guys. Four straight. One gay. Some rich. Some poor. Some from great families. Some with no one at all. All living their lives as best as they can, but all searching...for freedom, safety, community, family, love. What they don't expect, though, is all that can happen when those powerful little words 'I love you'  are said for all the wrong reasons. 
     "Five moving stories remain separate at first, then interweave to tell a larger, powerful story - a story about making choices, taking leaps of faith, falling down, and growing up. A story about kids figuring out what sex and love are all about, at all costs, while asking themselves, 'Can I ever feel okay about myself?'
     "A brilliant achievement from New York Times best-selling author Ellen Hopkins - who is been called 'the bestselling living poet in the country' by mediabistro.com - Tricks is a book that turns you on and repels you at the same time. Just like so much of life."



8. Clean
By Amy Reed 
Synopsis on the back of the book: "Olivia, Kelley, Christopher, Jason, and Eva have one thing in common: They're addicts. Addicts who have hit rock bottom and been stuck together in rehab to face their problems, face sobriety, and face themselves. None of them wants to be there. None of them wants to confront the truths about their pasts. And they certainly don't want to share their darkest secrets and most desperate fears with a room of strangers. But they'll all have to deal with themselves and one another if they want to learn how to live. Because when you get that high, there's nowhere to go but down, down, down."



9. Will Grayson, Will Grayson
By John Green and David Levithan
Synopsis on the back of the book: "It's not that far from Evanston to Naperville, but Chicago suburbanites Will Grayson and Will Grayson might as well live on different planets. When fate delivers them both to the same surprising crossroads, the Will Graysons find their lives overlapping and hurtling in new and unexpected directions. With a push from friends new and old - including the massively fabulous, Tiny Cooper, offensive lineman and musical theatre auteur extraordinaire - Will and Will begin building toward respective romantic turns-of-heart and the epic production of history's most awesome high school musical."



10. Almost Lost
By Anonymous
Edited by Beatrice Sparks, Ph.D
Synopsis on the back of the book: " Fifteen-year-old Sam is in pain. He comes to the therapist's office unwillingly, angry, depressed and filled with guilt over his own self-destructive behavior. He is being drawn deeper deeper and deeper into a black hole of despair from which he sees no way out.
     "This is the real-life story of Sam' recovery, told from tapes of his therapy sessions. It tells what drove him to leave home, how he survived on the street, and why he was so desperate to escape from the brutality of the gang that had become his 'family' and from the torment of his own self-loathing. For every teen who has experienced the pain and loneliness of a no-way-out darkness, and for all those who love them, here is the light that can lead the way back."



     So, there you have it! I hope at least one of these books sounds interesting. If you've read any of them, share your thoughts in the comments below. My goal in creating this list was to offer a wider variety of books that are not tangled within the vortex of well-known books, because I think we are all quite bored of hearing about the same stories over and over again. Read the list, enjoy it, utilize it, share it with your friends.


(Photo credit: Google Images)