Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception by Maggie Stiefvater

Deirdre is a 16 year old music prodigy and is also painfully introverted until she meets Luke and with a little magic, convinces her into a duet. She soon discovers some magic of her own that leads to the discovery that Luke is a gallowglass, a soulless assassin for the faerie queen. (Her family has been tormented by faeries for generations.) She eventually must choose to risk her own life to free his soul. Good book, great book to recommend to Twilight fans but not TU.

Hippie Chick by Joseph Monniger

Lolly is used to taking her sail boat out into the bay by herself, but when her boat founders and she is soon seperated from it. Just when she thought it was over for her she is rescued by a manatee and taken to a warm spring in a mangrove island. She was able to warm up and eat some vegetation. Her hippie mother and friends are frantically searching for her but they are following the currents never knowing the manatee took her in the opposite direction. She isn't missing for long though, on the second day she swims with her manatee once more out into the ocean where a helicopter spots her. When the rescuers spot the manatees they carefully rescues her with out scaring them away. But unfortunately a Miami news crew boat sliced into her rescuing manatee. This fictional book was designed as the book she wrote a couple of years after the incident to sell after she went on talk shows, and her story was optioned by a movie studio. I had expected the living with the manatees part of her story to be longer but in general it is a quick read that is definitely a book about the plight of the manatees. Good but I just don't see this as a TU.

The Smile by Donna Jo Napoli

Monna Elisabetta, 15, will soon be betrothed to a noble of Florence Italy. She betroths herself to Giuliano de'Medici but her father has other ideas. The whole time through her life's good times and bad, from her mother's death through the birth of her children, Leonardo da Vinci is just waiting for her to mature to paint her portrait that he'll never know how famous his Mona Lisa will become. For a portrait that little is known about Napoli presents a great historical what if, who could the woman be. well written and researched. Good book but I'm just not feeling TU.

Suckerpunch by David Hernandez

Marcus is a teenage boy who thinks about sex a lot - with his friend's mom, with his brother's girlfriend, with the news anchor . . .  he also gets wasted a lot. He feels - ineffectual? because he only once jumped his dad to get him to stop beating up his younger brother. At least half the book is about going with his brother to his Dad's apartment (he left the family a year ago) with a starter gun (used in sports to start races kind of gun) to confront their dad and stop him from coming home again. Told in almost a stream of consciousness, the time was continually being flipped here and back again. Marcus is five, he is sixteen, he is seven kind of deal. This was occasionally confusing. I'm surprised (after finishing) that I think that it was rather a good book - almost like a suckerpunch to my senses. However, I found many parts of it distasteful - and I really hope that not all teens live and think like this!  I vote maybe.

The Hunt for the Seventh by Christine Morton-Shaw

Jim and his family have moved to a new estate where his father has gotten a new job as groundskeeper in hopes that it helps all of them cope with Jim's mother's death. Jim and his sister have specific areas where they are allowed to go with in the house and if they are caught it means his father will be fired. Jim soon sees that the estate is haunted by six children and it is left to him to find the seventh to avert catastrophe. He makes friends with an autistic boy Einstein. Come to find out Einstein is the 7th ghost and was killed by Lord Minerva. Good suspenseful book but not TU. I'm nay.

Suicide Notes by Michael Thomas Ford

Chronicles the 45 day stay of 15 year old Jeff in a psychiatric ward because of an attempted suicide. He'll talk but he doesn't want to talk about his best friend Allie nor about dating and girls in general. But after death of a friend he made in the hospital and sexual encounters with a new guy in the ward, he finally admits to his doctor that he had kissed his best friend's boyfriend and was rejected then rejected again by an angry Allie. It was funny, it was sad, it was really good not great. I'm a nay

Cybele's Secret by Juliet Marillier

In this companion to Wildwood Dancing Paula has traveled with her father and a load of goods to Istanbul to trade and find "Cybele's Gift." A bodyguard, Stoyan, is hired primarily to protect Paula since one of her fathers friends was murdered. Of course a romance develops and adventure. It has a really slow beginning and I had trouble getting into it. I hadn't read Wildwood Dancing and didn't feel lost. Good not great. I'm nay.