Want to Go Private? | Sarah Darer Littman | 336p.

This book made me understand the decision that my parents made to put monitoring software on the computers/laptops when I was in junior high and high school--something I resented at the time (and convinced my tech-saavy cousin to remove from my computer when I was a junior). When I first heard about WTGP?, I knew that it was going to be an intense read--and let me tell you, it most definitely was.

Abby is such a normal freshman high school student, from her friends to her grades to her insecurities.  But she's lonely--a feeling exacerbated by her shyness and her fear of disappointing those around her.  When she meets Luke online, he makes her feel special.  They have the same tastes in music, they share opinions, and Luke always backs up Abby when she's upset with her friends or family.  She finds herself falling for this man that she barely knows but feels this very intense connection to.  When he asks her to meet him, Abby's upset with her parents so it's an easy decision--of course she'll meet him, if only to get back at her parents.

Abby is an incredibly relateable characters, which makes this story all the more realistic and terrifying.  She's very introverted, quite unlike her best friend, Faith, and she feels like her life is changing too much and falling apart at the seams.  It's easy to see how she might fall prey to a man like "Luke."  Watching her downward spiral into what strikes me as a co-dependent relationship with this online man is heart-breaking.  She has so much going for her in real life, but she can't see it through the fog of her loneliness and (self-imposed) isolation.

This book succeeds in showing what an intense situation this can become for a girl like Abby--how quickly one can become a victim without even realizing it.  However, what it really hits home is how much a decision like the one Abby makes affects everyone else--her friends, her sister, her parents.  Their grief, despair, and anger show the reader what it's like on the "other" side--how those closest to the victim suffer right alongside her in their own way.

After Abby's return to her family, the aftermath of her decision comes to full light for her.  She sees how it affects those around her and she has to deal with the incredibly unfortunate consequences that it has on her personal life.  I appreciated that Ms. Littman doesn't let the situation fade to black but shows us all the shocking details.  This is a book that I don't think I'd recommend that most teens read alone but WITH their parents. It's a book that I would recommend that parents of teenagers, teachers, librarians--anyone who works with teens on a regular basis--read because it's message is important.

There are fabulous resources that go alongside this book that I definitely recommend checking out if you're an adult who is going  to read this and share with teens (something I HIGHLY recommend doing, in case you didn't catch it).

http://wanttogoprivate.com/
http://chezteen.com/

Between Here and Forever / Elizabeth Scott / 256 p

When Tess falls into a coma, Abby finds her life put on hold in her sister's absence.  Living in Tess's shadow is one thing...but it's unbearable now that she's in a coma. As Abby works through a plan to bring her sister back (involving the handsome love interest, Eli), she has to learn a lot of hard truths about who here sister really is.

Abby is a fairly typical self-deprecating younger sister living in the shadow of her "amazing" older sister.  Throughout the story, I honestly wanted to slap her more times than I can count and tell her to open her eyes.  Her insecurity is pounded into your head throughout the entire book, and honestly, it made me almost completely unable to get behind her as an main character.

Tess is, in Abby's mind, the girl who everyone likes and I have to admit that I felt like I got to know her more through the story that I did Abby.  As Abby learned about the Tess she didn't know, I did too and I really liked her.  She was a teenager dealing with a lot of emotional difficulties and tough choices.  I loved how Tess was unveiled slowly throughout the story.

Eli....oh Eli.  Eli was such a real, fabulous love interest and friend.  His character was beyond well-developed and I loved the dynamic that he brought to the story.  Again, I don't want to give too much away, but suffice it to say that Eli is awesome.  You will fall in love with him.

What this book does fantastically is bring in diversity and sexuality in such a seamless way that it doesn't come across as preachy or forced or any of the things that often happen when an author tries too hard to do those things.  I don't want to spoil anything so I'll leave it at that but be prepared for a well-rounded cast of characters.

Shine / Lauren Myracle / 376 p.

Shine is the story of a small-town with backwards thinking.  When a young boy is the victim of a hate-crime, his former best friend will stop at nothing to get to the truth and find out who hurt him. From the moment I read the opening newspaper article to when I read the final page, Lauren Myracle's Shine pulled me in. It was a truly spell-binding read--one that I put off for far to long. I know I won't be the first to say that some of Myracle's other popular novels don't hold a lot of appeal to me--not that they're not probably fantastic reads, just not my type. I guess it just goes to show Myracle's diversity as a writer because Shine was my "type" of book.

From the start, I felt completely sucked into the atmosphere the author creates. The bigotry was so indicative of the small-mindedness that is often engendered in that setting. I could connect so well to the characters that I felt stifled right along with them - stuck in a world where my ideas didn't fit in.

The main character, Cat, was incredibly relatedable in all her flaws. She's far from a perfect character, but I fell in love with her more and more every page. She became my best friend. I wanted to know on a personal level why she had separated herself from all her friends. I wanted to understand and I wanted to be there for her as she worked through years of pain and separation. When the description calls this a coming-of-age story, it's spot on. Watching Cat essentially grow up in the span of just over a week is harrowing and beautiful all at the same time--watching her open back up to people in her life and even the possibility of a new friend/love.

All the characters in this novel were really well-done. They were so dynamic and did things that you didn't expect. It was truly refreshing. It made every turn of the page a new adventure because the characters could turn out to be or do something different than you expected at every turn.

The mystery is, of course, the plot focus, but I really felt that the atmosphere and character were the driving force. They created the mystery and moved it along and created the twists that made the story unpredictable and kept me turning page after page.

Evergreen - Belva Plain 593 p.

Evergreen is one of those novels that span several decades as seen through the eyes of generations of a family.  Such books always contain themes of continuity and change, personality and situation, and how every person's combination of inner self and social world sets her on a trajectory that overlaps and intersects with the trajectories of others, and produces a vast alone-ness in each individual life.

The other major theme in this book is: what is love, and what is its relationship to personality experience, to loss, to truth, to religion, to money and to family?   The central impact that causes the ripples forming that theme in Evergreen is the two very different loves of Anna, the main character.  Paul is the man with whom she feels an instant bond, and Joseph is the man who adores her.  Both men remain in different ways in her life, and so she is doomed never to be whole.  But in this early-to-mid-20th-century world of Jewish immigrants fighting to make their own place in New York, of wars and the Holocaust in Europe, turmoil and tragedy everywhere, is anyone really whole?  Anna's are not the only hard choices that must be made.

Though it was published in 1978, this novel did not feel the slightest bit dated to me, but warm-blooded and real.