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In the world there are many cycles, and sometimes they exist between you and you. The inner commentator never letting you speak, too afraid you’ll only mess things up. The outer prtoector, trying to make you less visible, generally only make you more conspicuous. The friends who aren’t real, but are better than loneliness. The truths buried in closets, because it’s easier for some to pretend they never happened, even if nothing has been the same since, and the damage is still everywhere. Worrying that your haunted past will become your daunting future.
This is Lacie’s world.
Her father’s dead, he mother hides away in endless work, and Lacie is lost between the cracks of herself and a world in which she doesn’t belong. Can’t seem to fit in. Can’t seem to get it right.
Bit by bit, her best friend’s cruelness starts to become more apparent. Forced into agreeing to meet a boy, she soon realizes Benji is just about the only real thing in her life. Except for the ghosts.
Bit by bit, things get harder, and some get easier. Best friend Jenna is lost, but Lacie is found. Her mother begins to slowly come back, she begins to slowly move away. Away from the fake and the meanness she used to emulate. Away toward who she really is, and should be. Away towards Gretchen, returned to town after disappearing for years. Away into a perfect world, in which she does belong.
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Rating: 
I ran into this book while setting up one of the lists on the Read Something New page and the title cracked me up, so I went out front and picked it up.
Jess Jordan seems pretty sure of her station in life: she’s got a big bum, and no boy will ever notice her because her best friend, Flora, looks like a blonde goddess. Two goddesses, in fact. Venus and Flora. But this is alright by Jess, as she wants nothing to do with boys in that fashion anyway.
She’s rather fond of daydreaming away, instead of completing in-class assignments, and has a very vivid and active imagination. She also has quite the crush on Ben Jones. Only when he starts talking to her, she has no idea what to do with herself. In fact, she eventually comes to the conclusion that he’s not interested in her at all, and only talks to her in order to get information on his true interest. Flora.
Amidst all this confusion, over some miscommunication, Jess has also had a falling-out with her other best friend, Fred. Every time she wants to make it right, back circumstance intervenes, generally in the form of Ben. When Fred is asked to edit a school newspaper and doesn’t ask her to participate it seems things can’t get any lower. Until Flora confesses she’s left the boy she’d been seeing because she’s crazy for someone else. That someone being, not Ben, but Fred.
Suffice it to say Jess has quite the end of a year. And though the task of being the one to feel Fred out for Flora is harsh and unwelcome, she meets it head on. The outcome is most unexpected.
Quick read, full of British humor, good for a lot of laughs.
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Rating: 
A quick read, packed with laughs, Storky tells the story of a gaingly, couch-potato nerd who wants little more than to leave his nickname behind.
A freshman in High School, Mike Pomerantz can’t quite seem to get a handle on life. His sister seems to have split personalities, he’s not sure how to relate to girls, he can’t see past his love for his friend Gina, and he thinks his sour relationship with his father is his fault.
When he starts to accompany his mother now and again to the local Seniors’ home, and plays games of Scrabble with an old man named Duke, he feels like he’s hit a new low. But after a fight, he comes to realize he’s grown to like his time with Duke, and that it’s about a lot more than Scrabble.
When his mother starts dating his dentist, he can only hope the relationship with “Dr. Vermin” won’t last, yet the more time he spends with Berm, the more he gets to like it. He even joins his bowling league.
Though he keeps trying with his father, he can’t seem to please him. Nor can he make him understand he’d like to see him alone, without his babe of the month. When good old dad refuses to teach him to drive after promising to do so, Mike starts to see the light.
And such is the life of a high school Freshman—full of trials and some more trials. But Mike prevails, and comes out much better for it on the other side.
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