The Evolution of Nora O’Brien Pacheco by Kevin O’Flaherty is a coming-of-age story with an engaging twist: the main character is an American expat’s daughter who lives in Spain and travels for school and adventure. As she’s finishing her growing-up years, she discovers secrets about her family and comes to realizations about her own boundaries.
Annie’s Odyssey: The Dragon’s Gift by K.A. Plouffe tackles many difficult themes, particularly mental health. While a fantasy novel, it starts off in the real world, with a young sixteen-year-old named Annie. Annie is living a lost, transient, dangerous, and lonely life. She finds herself unmoored, without anyone to take care of her but with plenty of people to take advantage of her. She goes from dreams of being a popstar to being transported to a magical, alternate world where she encounters a journey she never could have expected to be on.
Meet Ameline and Landry, a couple of teens who have known each other virtually all their lives. To call these two High School sweethearts, though, would be to understate their relationship in Mark Meade’s Finders Keepers. Ameline and Landry may live in Panama City Beach, Florida, but theirs has not been an idyllic childhood. Landry’s father and Ameline’s mother have been dope heads and just all-around crummy parents since the kids were little. Their parents were constantly together in one drug haze or another, so Ameline and Landry pretty much grew up on their own, with help from a couple of well-meaning neighbors who did their best to help the kids out.
