Friday Finds! (Jan. 29, 2010)

Credit goes to MizB from Should Be Reading

My Candlelight Novel by Joanne Horniman
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
Release Date: June 1, 2010
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Pages: 186

Summary: I am a reading girl, with a pale face, and glasses. People who become enthralled by the world of books, as I am, are often thought to have dull lives, but I feel that my own life is made of the stuff of myth. Or anyway, I intend to make it so. So this is my story. It will be about birth & death and love & sex. I will make it something after my own heart, tender and dark, a little candlelight novel, started this late summer night. Sophie is a 21-year-old single mother and this beautifully written novel explores her relationships in all their surprising and sensuous complexities.

Crash Test Love by Ted Michael
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
Release Date: June 8, 2010
Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers
Pages: 352

Summary: The last thing Henry Arlington wants is a girlfriend. He's just very, very good with girls—reading their body language, knowing what they want to hear, and more importantly: getting them into the backseat of his car. But all that changes when he meets Garrett Lennox at one of the many Sweet Sixteen parties he crashes. Garrett thinks she's done with guys. She was dumped by her ex when she moved from Chicago to Long Island, and now she realizes that she needs to find out who she is by herself, instead of with a boyfriend. What she really needs is some good friends. Fortunately for Garrett, the J Squad—the "it" girls of East Shore High School—want her in their clique. All she has to do is pass one little test: get East Shore god Henry Arlington to take her to one of the biggest Sweet Sixteens of the year, then dump him in front of everyone. Garrett has promised herself not to fall for another guy, so playing with Henry's heart shouldn't be hard. Right? And Henry doesn't fall for girls, so when he and Garrett start to click, it doesn't matter. Does it? As William Shakespeare once said, "Love is blind," or in this case, the lovers may be, as Henry and Garrett fall in love—and into the trap that awaits them. Because neither of them can even begin to see what the girls of Henry Arlington's past have in store. This hilarious, sharp, and surprisingly thoughtful novel is the teen Wedding Crashers, filled with love, hope, laughs, and surprising insights about the terrifying process of falling in love.

A Little Wanting Song by Cath Crowley
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
Release Date: June 8, 2010
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
Pages: 272

Summary: A summer of friendship, romance, and songs in major chords. . . .CHARLIE DUSKIN loves music, and she knows she's good at it. But she only sings when she's alone, on the moonlit porch or in the back room at Old Gus's Secondhand Record and CD Store. Charlie's mom and grandmother have both died, and this summer she's visiting her grandpa in the country, surrounded by ghosts and grieving family, and serving burgers to the local kids at the milk bar. She's got her iPod, her guitar, and all her recording equipment, but she wants more: A friend. A dad who notices her. The chance to show Dave Robbie that she's not entirely unspectacular. ROSE BUTLER lives next door to Charlie's grandfather and spends her days watching cars pass on the freeway and hanging out with her troublemaker boyfriend. She loves Luke but can't wait to leave their small country town. And she's figured out a way: she's won a scholarship to a science school in the city, and now she has to convince her parents to let her go. This is where Charlie comes in. Charlie, who lives in the city, and whom Rose has ignored for years. Charlie, who just might be Rose's ticket out. Told in alternating voices and filled with music, friendship, and romance, Charlie and Rose's "little wanting song" is about the kind of longing that begins as a heavy ache but ultimately makes us feel hopeful and wonderfully alive.

My Ultimate Sister Disaster by Jane Mendle
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
Release Date: June 8, 2010
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Pages: 224

Summary: A loveable, acerbic heroine navigates friendship, love and sibling rivalry in this young adult novel from the author of Better Off Famous? If there were a way to pick your family, fourteen-year old Franny might not pick her own. Her father is a hipster boutique owner, her mother is off in Kenya jumpstarting her career, and her sister Zooey is a precocious prima ballerina. Lately, Zooey’s so absorbed with her ballet career that she barely notices Franny. And since Zooey attends a top ballet conservatory, Franny’s on her own navigating the brutal hallways of her Manhattan prep school, a first-year trying to get noticed on the newspaper (and by its soulful, long-lashed editor-in-chief). But everything changes when Zooey breaks her leg and her ballet dreams come to a grinding halt. Unable to practice, Zooey begins to hone in on Franny’s “normal” life and friends. Franny feels terrible for Zooey, but when Zooey’s encroachment starts to extend to her long-time crush, Franny begins to wonder if her sister might just be her worst competition.