Cheryl Rainfield
Stained
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (US: 1st October 2013)
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Sixteen-year-old Sarah Meadows longs for “normal.” Born with a port wine stain covering half her face, all her life she’s been plagued by stares, giggles, bullying, and disgust. But when she’s abducted on the way home from school, Sarah is forced to uncover the courage she never knew she had, become a hero rather than a victim, and learn to look beyond her face to find the beauty and strength she has inside. It’s that – or succumb to a killer.

Contest

Saundra Mitchell (ed.)
Defy the Dark (Anthology)
HarperCollins Teen (US & CA: 18th June 2013)
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A creepy guy who stares too long. The secrets of the core of the earth. Dreams of other people’s lives. A girl who goes mad in the darkness. Monsters in Bavaria. A generational spaceship where night doesn’t exist. And other mysteries and oddities. The contributors are: Sarah Rees Brennan, Tessa Gratton, Rachel Hawkins, Christine Johnson, Valerie Kemp, Malinda Lo, Myra McEntire, Saundra Mitchell, Sarah Ockler, Jackson Pearce, Aprilynne Pike, Dia Reeves, Beth Revis, Carrie Ryan, Jon Skovron, Courtney Summers, and Kate Espey, winner of the Defy the Dark new author contest.

Jessica Spotswood
Star Cursed (Cahill Witch Chronicles, Book 2)
Penguin (US & CA: 18th June 2013)
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With the Brotherhood persecuting witches like never before, a divided Sisterhood desperately needs Cate to come into her Prophesied powers. And after Cate’s friend Sachi is arrested for using magic, a war-thirsty Sister offers to help her find answers – if Cate is willing to endanger everyone she loves. Cate doesn’t want to be a weapon, and she doesn’t want to involve her friends and Finn in the Sisterhood’s schemes. But when Maura and Tess join the Sisterhood, Maura makes it clear that she’ll do whatever it takes to lead the witches to victory. Even if it means sacrifices. Even if it means overthrowing Cate. Even if it means all-out war.

SPOILER WARNING: Lots of spoilers here. Maybe ALL of the spoilers. Read at your own risk
TRIGGER WARNING: Child abuse, child sexual abuse, incest, and suicide. Read at your own risk. Yeah, all the spoilers are in the trigger warning, but people who might be affected would want to know.

It’s a difficult book to rate, because it seems to have two distinct parts. The first half is cutesy-faff; the second half is issue-based. The second is much stronger; the first is annoying.

Dean Holder. Especially in the second half, he treats Sky Davis well. A little too well to be believable, but this is a romance novel, so that’s to be expected. Thing is, I don’t believe he’s eighteen or nineteen. He seems like a man. Maybe because I’ve seen the cover for Book 2, and the model is clearly in his twenties. And I didn’t know teenagers were legally allowed to get tattoos in the US. Or rent hotel rooms. And how did Six track down Holder’s phone number?

Anyhoo, Holder bashes up things, and even people. He bashed up a guy so badly that his victim will likely be deaf in one ear for the rest of his life. Readers are supposed to think this is noble, because Holder was defending his dead sister, but I’m not a fan of violence. It’s not what happens to you that defines you; it’s how you deal with it. And if you deal with it with violence, then you, dear sir, are a violent d-bag.

He’s also a stalker. Even Sky is smart enough to realise this: “…you admitted to looking me up on Facebook right after meeting me. Then you insist on running with me, even though it’s out of your way. Now you somehow know how long I’ve been in public school? And that I was homeschooled?” But she still doesn’t tell him to nick off, so does that make her an enabler, or just someone who thinks with her cooch more than her brain? That’s likely, because Sky orgasms simply from dry-humping, with everyone’s pants on. Magical Peen.

I guess that’s my biggest problem with this novel. That because Sky has Holder and his Magical Peen, she can heal fast from the revelations that she was routinely raped as a child. There’s this Family Guy skit that explains most of my issues with romance novels: “All your problems can be solved by my penis.” If Sky was single, would she have healed as well or fast? That seems rather insulting and condescending to sexual assault victims.

And I don’t believe Holder has loved her since Sky was five years old. Do five-year-olds even know what love is? I believe friendship. But that Holder’s loved her all this time seems…paedophiliac, or idealised, or just plain creepy. I don’t know what love is, but I know what it isn’t.

Also, I’m not sure in which situation a neighbour’s kid would be alone with the police chief so he could sexually assault her. Especially considering Lesslie and Dean were inseparable. That just seems too much of a coincidence.

Ilsa J. Bick: White Space: Buy (US) Buy (UK) Buy (CA) Buy (Worldwide)

Lauren DeStefano: Perfect Ruin: Buy (US) Buy (UK) Buy (CA) Buy (Worldwide)

Megan Shepherd: Her Dark Curiosity: Buy (US) Buy (UK) Buy (CA) Buy (Worldwide)

Lila Veen: Drowning in a Dream

Jackson Pearce‘s middle-grade The Doublecross (And Other Skills I Learned as a Super Spy) to Bloomsbury (World Rights) in a two-book deal. Publication set for 2015. Hale Jordan is the big-boned child of two spy parents, and is often overlooked by his spy-school classmates. But when his parents are kidnapped, he might be the only one (with a little help from his younger sister) who can save the day.

Kim Savage‘s After the Woods (2015) in a two-book deal to Farrar, Straus and Giroux (World English). A psychological thriller about two friends in the aftermath of an abduction, where one risked her life to save the other and spent a night in the woods she wants to forget. Now, nearly a year later, a girl’s body is found, and dark secrets are tearing the best friends apart.

Laura Tims‘ Please Don’t Tell (2015) in a two-book deal to HarperCollins (NA). The YA contemporary thriller follows a girl who seeks revenge on the boy who ruined her sister’s life, but who finds herself falling for the one guy who’s off limits, and is blackmailed by a stalker who knows her secret.

Marta Acosta
Dark Companion
Macmillan Tor Teen (US: 11th June 2013)
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Orphaned at the age of six, Jane Williams has grown up in a series of foster homes, learning to survive in the shadows of life. Through hard work and determination, she manages to win a scholarship to the exclusive Birch Grove Academy. There, for the first time, Jane finds herself accepted by a group of friends. She even starts tutoring the headmistress’s gorgeous son, Lucien. Things seem too good to be true. They are. The more she learns about Birch Grove’s recent past, the more Jane comes to suspect that there is something sinister going on. Why did the wife of a popular teacher kill herself? What happened to the previous scholarship student, whose place Jane took? Why does Lucien’s brother, Jack, seem to dislike her so much? As Jane begins to piece together the answers to these puzzles, she must find out why she was brought to Birch Grove – and what she would risk to stay there…

Kate Karyus Quinn
Another Little Piece
HarperCollins Teen (US & CA: 11th June 2013)
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On a cool autumn night, Annaliese Rose Gordon stumbled out of the woods and into a high school party. She was screaming. Drenched in blood. Then she vanished. A year later, Annaliese is found wandering down a road hundreds of miles away. She doesn’t know who she is. She doesn’t know how she got there. She only knows one thing: She is not the real Annaliese Rose Gordon. Now Annaliese is haunted by strange visions and broken memories. Memories of a reckless, desperate wish…a bloody razor…and the faces of other girls who disappeared. Piece by piece, Annaliese’s fractured memories come together to reveal a violent, endless cycle that she will never escape – unless she can unlock the twisted secrets of her past.

Eve Silver
Rush (Game, Book 1)
HarperCollins Katherine Tegen (US & CA: 11th June 2013)
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Miki Jones’s carefully controlled life spirals into chaos after she’s run down in the street, left broken and bloody. She wakes up fully healed in a place called the lobby – pulled from her life, pulled through time and space into some kind of game in which she and a team of other teens are sent on missions to eliminate the Drau, terrifying and beautiful alien creatures. There are no practice runs, no training, and no way out. Every moment of the game is kill or be killed, and Miki has only the questionable guidance of Jackson Tate, the team’s alluring and secretive leader. He evades her questions, holds himself aloof from the others, and claims it’s every player for himself. But when he puts himself at risk to watch Miki’s back, he leaves her both frustrated and fascinated. Jackson says the game isn’t really a game, that what Miki and her new teammates do now determines their survival. And the survival of every other person on this planet. She laughs. He doesn’t. And then the game takes a deadly and terrifying turn.

Amy Rose Capetta: Entangled: Buy (US) Buy (UK) Buy (CA) Buy (Worldwide)

Katie McGarry: Crash into You: Buy (US) Buy (UK) Buy (CA) Buy (Worldwide)

Kristopher Reisz: The Drowned Forest

Veronica Rossi: Into the Still Blue: Buy (US) Buy (UK) Buy (Worldwide)

Jeri Smith-Ready: This Side of Salvation: Buy (CA)

Claire Merle
The Fall (Glimpse, Book 2)
Faber Children’s (UK: 6th June 2013)
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In the not-so-distant future, society has been divided into Pures and Crazies according to the results of a DNA test. But Ana has uncovered dangerous evidence that the tests are false. Determined to expose the lies, Ana escapes her Pure Community and makes it to the Enlightenment Project. Back in the arms of Cole, nothing is simple. Some believe her presence in the protest camp jeopardises their safety, others believe she is the Angel from their prophetic Writings… As Ana struggles with her past and her identity, she must take greater and greater risks for the truth. Threatened with losing everyone she cares about, can she finish what she’s started?