Jude Farraday is a helicopter parent and she knows it. She does everything she can to protect her kids, assuming that if she keeps their home a welcoming place then her children and their friends will remain safe under her watchful eye. This becomes increasingly difficult, though, as twins Mia and Zach get older, start [...]

Tags: coming of age, family life, friendship, grief, incarceration, social classes
Filed under: Book Review

Arranged marriages are history, right? The kind of thing that only happens in movies. Or maybe still in India. But not in America. And not to Jasbir. Jasbir, known as Jazz by her friends, is shocked and upset when her parents tell her that they will be setting her up with a husband. After all, [...]

Tags: dating, family life, race, road trip, secrets, social classes
Filed under: Book Review

Carlie loses nearly everything: Her father dies of cancer, her mother can no longer afford their house and moves the family to an apartment in a seedy neighborhood, and her school zoning changes and she must attend an urban high school that’s a far cry from her elite suburban school. While she is grieving the [...]

Tags: family problems, friendship, grief, high schools, social classes, theater
Filed under: Book Review

In Lauren DeStefano’s Wither, the first book of the Chemical Garden trilogy, women are bought and stolen as breeding stock in hopes that natural births will prolong the lifespans of the next generations. Genetic engineering has caused a fatal disease which kills women at age 20 and men at age 25. This futuristic dystopian novel [...]

Tags: coming of age, death, dystopian, romance, sex, social classes
Filed under: Book Review

It’s ten years from now and the United States is running out of gas and oil. It costs too much to make most products, and shipping food and other items is expensive, so the stores are quickly going empty, while the black market is going strong. Few people can afford to drive or fly anywhere. [...]

Tags: activism, nature, science fiction, social classes
Filed under: Book Review