Love and Other Foreign Words

Love and Other Foreign Words by Erin McCahan 352 pages

Josie Sheridan thinks too much - perhaps that's just a consequence of having a high IQ.  But sometimes over-thinkers dwell on the things that bother them.  Josie is a brilliant 15-year-old taking college classes - struggling to relate to both her college and high school peers.  At home, her family relationship is strained when Kate, her closest sibling, gets engaged to someone Josie can't stand.  And she can't stop thinking - or talking - about it.

Intellectually Josie is an adult, but emotionally still a child - a stubborn one!  She is hilarious and witty (she'll have you laughing out loud), but she has the uncanny ability to make a bad situation worse.  As the year goes on in this story, Josie is able to reconsider some of her opinions about love (among other things) when she begins to finally experience it for herself.

This title is a nominee for the 16-17 Gateway Readers Award for readers grades 9-12.  In my middle school collection I expect it to be popular among my 7th and 8th students.  Students will be recommending this one to each other.

Starters, by Lissa Price

Starters, by Lissa Price 336 pgs.

During the Spore Wars, genocide spores killed every person between twenty and sixty years of age, thus reducing the population to Starters and Enders, those who were once most vulnerable. Teen Callie, the main character, and her younger brother Tyler have no living grandparents or any other family older than sixty to claim them.  Callie and the Starters like her live as fugitives, squatting in a ruined building, hiding out from the marshals. In order to make some money to care for her sickly brother, Callie makes a difficult decision to sell herself to company called Prime Destinations that rents the bodies of young people to the elderly/Enders who then can take full control of the teen’s body to enjoy doing things that a young, healthy person would be able to do.

The middle of the book fell a little flat and became predictable.  Happily some unexpected plot twists resurrected the suspense of the story and brought it to an interesting ending.

YA Gateway Award Nominee 2014-2015