Wild Cards by Simone Elkeles
From Booklist
Everything is sliding into place for kicker Ashtyn Parker. She was just voted captain of her high-school football team, which ups her chances at a scholarship to a Big Ten college, and she’s dating Landon, the quarterback. Then bad-boy Derek Fitzpatrick shows up in her life, and everything Ashtyn has planned for is suddenly called into question. Thrown together by awkward family circumstances, Derek and Ashtyn fight their attraction for one another. When everything lines up to place them alone together on a road trip from Chicago to Texas, Derek and Ashtyn have to make some difficult choices when their passion threatens to overwhelm them both. Although this story has been told many times, award-winner Elkeles is very adept at creating three-dimensional characters and setting them up to make life-changing discoveries about themselves in believable ways. She also doesn’t shy away from realistic teen sexuality or language. In alternating first-person points of view, this start to the Wild Cards series shows that sometimes the person you’d least expect can make a huge difference in your life.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: New York Times best-selling author Elkeles created a massive following with her Perfect Chemistry and Leaving Paradise books, and fans will be clamoring for this promising start to a new series. Grades 9-12. --Charli Os
Wait for You by J. Lynn
From Publishers Weekly
A young woman must come to terms with the secret horror in her past to find love and happiness in this predictable new adult romance by the pseudonymous Lynn (Obsession author Jennifer L. Armentrout). After five hellish years of being called a lying whore in her small Texas town, 19-year-old Avery Morgansten is more than happy to leave for college in West Virginia. There she meets gorgeous, blue-eyed Cameron Hamilton, a fellow student who seems as attracted to her as she is to him. Haunted by her traumatic past, Avery is torn between protecting herself and finding love. The path to romance is long and rocky, and Cam has dark secrets of his own, but eventually both lovers come clean and all loose ends are neatly wrapped up. While Lynn's peripheral characters are fairly one-dimensional, Avery and Cam are compelling. Fans of stories about characters healed by love will find this one moderately satisfying. Agent: Kevan Lyon, Marsal Lyon Literary Agency. (Sept. 3)
Morning Glory by Sarah Jio
From Publishers Weekly
Jio's fifth novel, following The Last Camellia, explores the degree to which time and distance give comfort to those who have experienced loss. In 2008, Ada Santorini's life in New York as deputy editor of Sunrise magazine is shaken by personal tragedy. She leaves her job and rents a houseboat on Seattle's Lake Union, hoping a change of location will provide the healing she needs. Yet her new home has its own tragedy—the disappearance in 1959 of a local woman, Penny Wentworth, which no one in the small, tight-knit community will discuss. When Ada finds a trunk in her houseboat and realizes it belonged to the missing woman, she and her new friend Alex, a neighboring houseboat renter, decide to uncover the truth. The growth of Ada and Alex's relationship as they work together is satisfying, but the beautifully rendered setting emerges as an equally important character. However, the flashbacks to 1959 are so strong that readers may lose patience with the present-day narrative, while the town's secret is too easy to figure out. Fans of Jio's previous works should find that the depth of feeling in her writing overcomes the drawbacks. Agent: Elisabeth Weed, Weed Literary. (Dec.)
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