Three Recent YA Reads

I've decided I don't really want to write whole reviews for books unless I've accepted them for that purpose or unless they were really ridiculously outstanding and I have loads to say about them. Instead I'm going to do what I said I would do ages ago and try grouping books together and talking about them that way. Despite my constant comments about not really reading YA, I've been on a bit of a binge lately. This primarily has to do with the YA section at the library being in the same room with the children's section so I can easily browse while the boys are looking. To look at adult books and nonfiction I have to leave the room and go somewhere else and they're not often willing to come so yes, YA is the easy grab.

A while ago I was at my old library (which is still the library that has my heart, although the new one is lovely) and grabbed The Diviners by Libba Bray and Burn for Burn by Jenny Han & Siobhan Vivian, which I'd read an extract from in the back of We'll Always Have Summer. I asked twitter which I should read first and Andi prompted me to read The Diviners which I absolutely devoured. I finished it in two days (two because I'm easily freaked and had to stop reading whenever it got near bedtime) and immediately put myself on the hold list for the sequel which isn't even out yet!


Basically The Diviners is a murder mystery set in 1920s New York with strong supernatural elements and just so many speakeasys and flappers and jazz references that I couldn't not read it. Libba Bray's writing is fantastic and the plot was always engrossing and unexpected. Honestly it's probably not that creepy if you read creepy stuff a lot but I don't so it was creepy for me. Mostly that there's a song about a murderer which reoccurs throughout it and is just pretty chilling, but there are also a fair few pretty unpleasant characters, as well as some awesome ones. I've been hearing about Libba Bray for a few years now and I really wish I'd picked up some of her books sooner!

After I finished that I pretty much immediately started Burn for Burn which, if you're unfamiliar, is the first in a trilogy of stories about three girls trying to get their revenge on three people they feel have wronged them in some way. It's pretty different from The Diviners being set in a high school on a small island and most of the action focuses on teenage friendships/relationships and who did what to whom type tales. It was a really fun read with a lot of action and some interesting characters who I'm looking forward to finding out more about in the next book.


Finally, for the 24 hour readathon last weekend I picked up a few books to add to my TBR stack last minute, and Charlotte suggested Every Day by David Levithan would be really good for the readathon. Apparently it's all about blogger friends telling me to read stuff recently because it was really really good for the readathon. I loved this book so so much. A wakes up in a different body each day - always the body of a sixteen year old but that's about the only similarity. Each day A is someone different, until he meets someone he wants to be with every day...

The premise of this books is so unusual and intriguing and it deals with some crazy issues surrounding identity and what affects who you love. As I'd expected from reading Dash and Lily's Book of Dares and Will Grayson, Will Grayson, Levithan's writing was beautiful and the story was told in such a unique and brilliant way that it gave me hope and broke my heart at the same time. I honestly can't urge you enough to read this book, and I just found out that there's a companion book which I will be getting hold of as soon as I possibly can.

So for someone who doesn't read YA, that's quite a bit of awesome YA in a pretty short space of time. Maybe I should just stop lying to myself, do you think?