Coming of Age

Sep 14

Review of Learned by Heart by Emma Donoghue

Donoghue's captivating historical fiction centers around two real-life young women in an early 1800s British boarding school who fall...

Aug 16

Review of Fourth Wing (The Empyrean #1) by Rebecca Yarros

The first in this dragon rider series by Yarros is full of dramaaaaatic teen angst, a cutthroat path to becoming a warrior, bucking...

Aug 1

Review of Better Than the Movies by Lynn Painter

I LOVED this young adult book. It's perfectly charming, funny, quirky, and sweet, yet it deals with grief and fear, hope and forgiveness,...

Jul 11

Review of The Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donoghue

Caroline O'Donoghue's coming-of-age story celebrates friendship, young love, and life-changing decisions and missteps that shape the...

Jun 29

Review of Lucky Red by Claudia Cravens

Claudia Cravens's story of a young brothel worker in late nineteenth-century Dodge City, Kansas, offers up a tough young heroine who...

Jun 28

Review of Beyond That, the Sea by Laura Spence-Ash

Beyond That, the Sea is a lovely character-driven historical fiction story about complicated relationships, found family, growing up, and...

Jun 15

Review of Boys I Know by Anna Gracia

Gracia's young adult debut digs into teenaged June's messy, sometimes disastrous, and ultimately heartwarming teen exploration of...

May 24

Review of Dimestore: A Writer's Life by Lee Smith

ICYMI: Smith evokes a vivid sense of the regional South in her fiction, and in this memoir she traces her Appalachian youth, offering...

Apr 6

Review of You Wouldn't Dare by Samantha Markum

Samantha Markum's young adult novel is set in a small town in the Florida Keys, with plenty of teen angst, tests of friend loyalty, burst...

Mar 21

Review of Foster by Claire Keegan

Keegan offers a gorgeously wrought Irish story of childhood, hope, love, and loss that is spare, lovely, heartbreaking, and that brought...

Mar 16

Review of The Golden Enclaves (Scholomance #3) by Naomi Novik

The more somber tone of book three and the focus on logistics feel appropriate as the recent graduates of the Scholomance desperately...

Feb 2

Review of Maame by Jessica George

Jessica George's debut Maame takes on big issues of race, culture, and the challenges of growing up between two cultures while shining in...

Jan 6

Review of Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

Kingsolver offers an epic story of a faulted, unlikely hero in danger of being crushed by exceptionally difficult circumstances. His...

Nov 23, 2022

Review of True Biz by Sara Nović

True Biz is a coming-of-age story, a beginner's primer on Deaf culture, and a captivating novel about romance, disappointment, fury, and...

Nov 22, 2022

Review of Now Is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson

Kevin Wilson's wonderfully odd 1990s coming-of-age novel centers around teens Frankie and Zeke, their mysterious artistic creation, and...

Oct 11, 2022

Review of I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

Former child actress McCurdy's account of her mother's narcissistic, harmful, abusive behavior and how it has shaped the author's life is...

Sep 28, 2022

Review of Stay True: A Memoir by Hua Hsu

Hsu's memoir remembers his friend Ken, who was tragically killed during college. He reflects on friendship and on their connection,...

Sep 22, 2022

Review of Every Summer After by Carley Fortune

Carley Fortune offers a satisfying story of coming home, young love, mistakes and redemption, romance, lake life, and some past and...

Jul 26, 2022

Review of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

A book about childhood friends making a video game is an unexpected, captivating setup for this wonderfully deep, epic dive into...

Jun 1, 2022

Review of Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart

Young Mungo offers a striking story of disappointment, abuse, Protestant-Catholic conflict, and a young, gay love forged in the intensely...

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