Top 20 List (to tide us over)

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

Don't Call Me Ishmael by Michael Gerard Bauer

Beauty Shop for Rent: ...fully equipped, inquire within by Laura Bowers

Evolution, Me, and Other Freaks of Nature by Robin Brande

Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale

The One Where the Kid Nearly Jumps to His Death and Lands in California by Mary Hershey

Kissing the Bee by Kathe Koja

Schooled by Gordon Korman

Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy

Tamar by Mal Peet

Red Glass by Laura Resau

Freak Show by James St. James

The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt

My Mother the Cheerleader by Robert Sharenow

Safe by Susan Shaw

General Winston's Daughter by Sharon Shinn

Peak by Roland Smith

Zen and the Art of Faking It by Jordan Sonnenblick

Love Meg by C Leigh Purtill

From the jacket cover:
Fifteen-year-old Meg Shanley knows two things: first, her older sister Lucie is the only family she has. Second, Lucie will uproot her to a new town and a new school at least once a year. This time, it's Hollywood.

Alone and lonely in LA, Meg settles into a familiar routine. She scopes out New Friend candidates and determines the shortest distance between home, school and Starbucks.

Then Meg discovers a secret that turns her whole world upside down. She has a family she never knew about--an uncle and a grandmother--in Queens, New York.

Meg is convinced she can have the dream life she's always wanted. She defies Lucie and flies to Queens.

---

Love Meg is more than just a beach read (or Nicholas Sparks alike) that the cover seems to depict. Meg is raising herself in the ebb and flow of her older sister's love and neglect. Meg writes letters to Jennifer Aniston as her source of comfort, advice and friendship. That nearly stopped me from getting through chapter one... So the book rises above the cover and Meg's Friends obsession, but not TU caliber.

NAY

(ok maybe the Sparks and Friends comments are snarky, but literary snarky)

The Innocent's Story by Nicky Singer

Cassina and her younger sister die in an explosion when a train station is bombed. Afterwards, Cassina becomes a "para-spirit" and rides around in people's brains by oozing up their noses.

Yes, you read that right.

No, I'm not joking.

Yes, I'm giving it a big fat NAY.

Farseed by Pamela Sargent

Apparently this book is a sequel to something the author wrote 20 years ago. I couldn't even make it through the prologue, I was so confused. I think that it was an attempt to recap what happened in the other book, but it was just bizarre and nonsensical. NAY.

Dragons from the Sea by Judson Roberts

Summary copied from the Library Network catalog because my brain has the consistency of milkshake today:

Fifteen-year-old Halfdan's skills as an archer and a blacksmith win him a position on the crew of a Viking ship in 845 A.D., but as war breaks out in western Frankia he becomes a scout, searching for the Frankish army--and taking captive a young woman who is preparing to be a nun.

Though it didn't blatantly suffer for being a sequel, I did feel it would have made more sense if I'd read the first one. Not a bad read, but not an award winner either. NAY.