Three Reviews for Young Adult Readers
BOOK REVIEW
Reviews by CAROLINE NICHOLSON
About our Reviewer
Caroline Nicholson studies French at the University of West Georgia. Since she was a young girl, she has loved disappearing behind a book and falling into fictional worlds. It started with the Goosebumps books by R.L. Stine and has been evolving ever since. After she graduates with her bachelor’s degree, she plans to pursue a master’s degree in English to become a college English and creative writing professor. In time, she hopes to publish her own young-adult novel.
Picking books to read has become a lot easier in the age of social media. TikTok videos sometimes provide surprisingly good recommendations. By following the Goodreads accounts of readers with similar sensibilities, avid fans can narrow down what books they would like to read.
With all that said, not much beats browsing the shelves and picking books out the old-fashioned way. No matter the manner that you find your book recommendations, the cover is something you can use to guide you. Look for covers that speak to your sensibilities and aesthetic style. When picking out books, read what you intuitively gravitate towards. After all, life is too short to read a book that you’re not interested in.
Here are three of my Best Young Adult Books of All Time, in no particular order:
“I’ll Give You the Sun”
by Jandy Nelson
Dial Press, 2014
Noah and Jude are twins and as close as it gets. So what happens in the span of a couple of years to change everything? Noah, the quirky artist who had always come up with portrait and painting ideas in his head, is no longer drawing. Jude, the boy-crazy rebel who wore scandalous clothes and went to parties all the time, now wears baggy clothes and is on a strict boy boycott. When a handsome stranger and mysterious mentor come into Jude’s life, the story of what happened begins to unravel, and Noah and Jude’s paths come together once more after much time and distance apart. “I’ll Give You the Sun” is a story saturated in beautiful metaphors and lyrical writing that explores love, loss and rebirth from a teenage perspective.
“Salt to the Sea”
by Ruta Sepetys
Penguin Books, 2016
A Lithuanian nursing student, a Prussian soldier with a huge secret, a young and pregnant Polish girl, and a German deckhand with a distorted sense of reality all cross paths on their journey to board the Wilhelm Gustloff, a German cruise liner ferrying refugees away from the encroaching Red Army amid World War II. Their different journeys allow insightful perspectives on the horrors of the Second World War. When their paths lead them aboard the German cruise ship, along with 10,000 other refugees, they are ready for the journey to safety. But an accident only nine hours into the trip makes safety seem impossible. “Salt to the Sea” is well-researched and sheds light on a tragedy that history has forgotten.
“North of Beautiful”
by Justina Chen
Little Brown Books for Young Readers, 2009
What does it mean to be beautiful? Well, Terra is sure that whatever beautiful is, it doesn’t involve her. Everyone in her life has told her over and over again that she can never be beautiful and that she just needs to stop trying. It isn’t until she meets Jacob, who is also self-conscious, that she starts to reconsider everything her life has been up to that point. On a trip to Japan, everything starts to change for the teenagers. Jacob is going to visit the orphanage where he once lived, and Terra is happy to be away from home, exploring a world she didn’t realize existed. This physical journey lends itself to an emotional journey for them. Maybe beauty is different than what the world told them it was. “North of Beautiful” is a coming of age story done in the best way.
NCM
