Top Ten Tuesday - Beach Reads

This week's TTT theme over at Broke and Bookish is beach reads. Since the Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial start of summer and since many of my colleagues across the country are already out for summer, I am going to start the list with two I read this weekend.

The Geek's Guide to Unrequited Love by Sarvenaz Tash. Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, June 14, 2016. I am participating in a blog tour for this fun read next week. This is the book to read if you're looking for a humorous romance or are into comic conventions. 

Doreen by Ilana Manaster. Running Press Book Publishers. June 7, 2016. My review of this is scheduled for tomorrow. This one features a tony boarding school, mean queens, broken hearts and revenge.

These are the top of my pile for the summer:

Home Sweet Motel Welcome to Wonderland #1 by Chris Grabenstein. Random House Children's Books, October 4, 2016.

Publisher synopsis: Eleven-year-old P. T. Wilkie may be the greatest storyteller alive. But he knows one thing for a fact: the Wonderland Motel is the best place a kid could ever live! All-you-can-eat poolside ice cream! A snack machine in the living room! A frog slide! A giant rampaging alligator! (Okay, that last one may or may not be made up.) There’s only one thing the Wonderland doesn’t have, though—customers. And if the Wonderland doesn’t get them soon, P.T. and his friend Gloria may have to say goodbye to their beloved motel forever. 

They need to think BIG. They need to think BOLD. They need an OUTRAGEOUS plan. Luckily for them, Gloria is a business GENIUS, and OUTRAGEOUS is practically P.T.’s middle name. With Gloria’s smarts and P.T.’s world-famous stories and schemes, there’s got to be a way to save the Wonderland! 

BONUS: Includes fun extras like P. T. Wilkie’s outrageous (and sometimes useful) things you learn living in a motel. Installment 1: How to say “Help! The toilet is clogged!” in over twenty languages!

Two Summers by Aimee Friedman. Scholastic Inc. April, 2016.

Publisher synopsis: ONE SUMMER in the French countryside, among sun-kissed fields of lavender . . .

ANOTHER SUMMER in upstate New York, along familiar roads that lead to surprises . . .

When Summer Everett makes a split-second decision, her summer divides into two parallel worlds. In one, she travels to France, where she’s dreamed of going: a land of chocolate croissants, handsome boys, and art museums. In the other, she remains home, in her ordinary suburb, where she expects her ordinary life to continue — but nothing is as it seems.

In both summers, she will fall in love and discover new sides of herself. What may break her, though, is a terrible family secret, one she can't hide from anywhere. In the end, it might just be the truth she needs the most.

When We was Fierce by e.E. Charlton-Trujillo. Candlewick Press, August 9, 2016.

Publisher synopsis: In an endless cycle of street violence and retribution, is there any escape? A powerful verse novel by e.E. Charlton-Trujillo.

We wasn't up to nothin'
new really.
Me and Jimmy, Catch and Yo-Yo.
We just comin' down the street keepin' cool.
We was good at stayin' low
Especially around the Wooden Spoon.
Guys hang around there, they got teeth on ’em
Sharper than broken glass.
Words that slit ya’from chin to belly. And that’s just their words.

Fifteen-year-old Theo isn’t looking for trouble, but when he and his friends witness a brutal attack on Ricky-Ricky, an innocent boy who doesn’t know better than to walk right up to the most vicious gang leader around, he’s in trouble for real. And in this neighborhood, everything is at stake. In a poignant, unflinching novel of survival told largely in street dialect, e.E. Charlton-Trujillo enters the lives of teenagers coming of age in the face of spiraling violence among gangs, by police, and at home.

You and Me and Him by Kris Dinnison. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, July, 2015. 

Publisher synopsis: “Do not ignore a call from me when you know I am feeling neurotic about a boy. That is Best Friend 101.” —Nash
        Maggie and Nash are outsiders. She’s overweight. He’s out of the closet. The best of friends, they have seen each other through thick and thin, but when Tom moves to town at the start of the school year, they have something unexpected in common: feelings for the same guy. This warm, witty novel—with a clear, true voice and a clever soundtrack of musical references—sings a song of love and forgiveness.

Be Light Like a Bird by Monika Schröder. Capstone Press, August 15, 2016.

Publisher synopsis: After the death of her father, twelve-year-old Wren finds her life thrown into upheaval. And when her mother decides to pack up the car and forces Wren to leave the only home she's ever known, the family grows even more fractured. As she and her mother struggle to build a new life, Wren must confront issues with the environment, peer pressure, bullying, and most of all, the difficulty of forgiving those who don't deserve it. A quirky, emotional middle grade novel set in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, Be Light Like a Bird features well-drawn, unconventional characters and explores what it means to be a family—and the secrets and lies that can tear one apart.

The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater. Raven Cycle #4. Scholastic Inc., April, 2016.

Publisher synopsis: All her life, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love's death. She doesn't believe in true love and never thought this would be a problem, but as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she's not so sure anymore.

Falling Over Sideways by Jordan Sonnenblick. Scholastic Inc., September 27, 2016. 

Publisher synopsis: It's not easy being Claire. (Really.)

Claire's life is a joke . . . but she's not laughing. While her friends seem to be leaping forward, she's dancing in the same place. The mean girls at school are living up to their mean name, and there's a boy, Ryder, who's just as bad, if not worse. And at home, nobody's really listening to her -- if anything, they seem to be more in on the joke than she is.

Then into all of this (not-very-funny-to-Claire) comedy comes something intense and tragic -- while her dad is talking to her at the kitchen table, he falls over with a medical emergency. Suddenly the joke has become very serious -- and the only way Claire, her family, and her friends are going to get through it is if they can find a way to make it funny again.

A Tragic Kind of Wonderful by Eric Lindstrom. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, January, 2017.

Publisher synopsis: In the vein of It's Kind of a Funny Story and All the Bright Places, comes a captivating, immersive exploration of life with mental illness.

For sixteen-year-old Mel Hannigan, bipolar disorder makes life unpredictable. Her latest struggle is balancing her growing feelings in a new relationship with her instinct to conceal her diagnosis by keeping everyone at arm's length. But when a former friend confronts Mel with the truth about the way their relationship ended, deeply buried secrets threaten to come out and upend her shaky equilibrium.

As the walls of Mel's compartmentalized world crumble, she fears the worst-that no one will accept her if they discover what she's been hiding. But would her friends really abandon her if they learned the truth? More importantly, can Mel bring herself to risk everything to find out?

In A Tragic Kind of Wonderful, Eric Lindstrom, author of the critically acclaimed Not If I See You First, examines the fear that keeps us from exposing our true selves, and the courage it takes to be loved for who we really are.