THE TRAGEDY PAPER, by Elizabeth Laban

The Tragedy Paper is a boarding school novel with a slightly new twist.  We are still reading about the rich and privileged, but we see a little suffering enter their world.  The story is told through the lens of a senior English assignment-the Tragedy paper.  All seniors must write one, and the English teacher who assigns it is portrayed as kindly, if more than a little eccentric.  We enter at the beginning of Duncan’s senior year, learning through him  the traditions of the Irving School, one of which is that seniors are bequeathed their rooms in the dorm by the previous class members.  Duncan gets his room from a student named Tim MacBeth.  (Yes, there are multiple allusions to tragic novels and plays throughout the book, especially The Sorrows of Young Werther, which I can appreciate, but suspect that any students other than the prep school types the book is about would miss.)  Duncan receives his “treasure,” a stack of CDs from Tim which tell his own, you guessed it, tragic story, in his very own voice (literally).  Tim is an albino, and has always been an outsider.  He comes to the Irving School as a senior, in an attempt to have a better year than any he has previously had in school.  Leaving aside the constant mentions of items like the dining hall serving only local sustainable food, and obscure boarding school traditions, Tim’s story is compelling, Duncan’s less so.  Duncan suffers through the usual teen romance, but Tim experiences a tragedy of  his own making, and the reader is assured by the  less than subtle hints of the author, that it is due to his fatal flaw.  I will leave it to you to discover what that flaw is.  Not bad for a first novel, this will appeal to students who enjoy an angsty romance or boarding school mishaps.  Much less affecting than Looking for Alaska, but also less possibly objectionable material. 
June Cleaver’s Ratings:  Language: PG; Nudity: PG13; Sexual Content: PG13; GLBT Content: G; Violence: PG13; Substance Use and Abuse:  PG13--some scenes involve underage drinking and there is a female student who overdoses on her mother’s Xanax, but she recovers.  Overall:  PG13
Robin’s Comments:  Booklist puts this book at 7-12 and SLJ at 9-12.  I would not recommend it to students under 8th grade due to some mature themes and the fact that the references to literary works are all high school texts, most middle school students will not get it. It is mostly fluff, but at least the writing is interesting and there are always games the reader can play, like how many tragic allusions can I find in this book? 

THE 5TH WAVE, by Rick Yancey

As a fan of Rick Yancey, I was prepared to enjoy this book and he did not disappoint.  The aliens are coming!  The first wave:  an EM pulse, the second: tidal waves, the third: pestilence, the fourth:  silencers to pick off the few remaining humans.  With over 7 billions humans dead, Cassie, our heroine, can only guess what the fifth wave will be.  The narrative switches perspectives from Cassie to Ben, her high school crush, Sammy, her brother, and Evan, a mysterious stranger who saves her from a snow bank.  Yancey’s major theme is how people lose or maintain their humanity in the face of terrible loss and the breakdown of society.  He does a little too much explaining, almost as if he is afraid his teen readers won’t get it if he doesn’t spell it out. He would have been better off using a more subtle approach.  Otherwise, the plot moves along fairly rapidly to the final reveal of the horrifying alien plans for the eradication of the human species.  Along the way, there is a lot of soul searching, a little human/alien romance and a lot of consideration of the question of what makes us human.  An entertaining and thought provoking read for fans of science fiction or dystopia.

June Cleaver’s Book Ratings:  Language: R; Violence R; Nudity:  PG13;  Sexual Content: PG; GLBT Content: G; Substance Use and Abuse: G Over all:  R

Robin’s Comments:  I already told you I liked this book, but I would not recommend it under 9th grade.  Booklist and SLJ both  place it 9-12. There is quite a lot of foul language and more than a little graphic violence, including stabbing, shooting, bombs and a lot of mental anguish.  There are graphic depictions of an Ebola type illness that causes victims to bleed out. Not for the squeamish...

THE STATISTICAL PROBABILITY OF LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT, by Jennifer E. Smith

The story: Missing your flight on the way to your dad's wedding as he marries the woman who broke up your home--what could be worse? Meeting the guy of your dreams on the next flight, losing him, then finding him again at last--what could be better? Fate seems to have brought Hadley and Oliver together. When they unexpectedly lose track of each other at a crowded airport, could they ever have expected that fate would intervene again?

NAVIGATING EARLY, by Clare Vanderpool

The story: Jack and Early are outsiders at Morton Hill Academy: Jack's mother died over the summer and he's been uprooted by his dad, who just wants to forget. Early is just...weird...and the other kids ignore him. Together, they set out on a journey to bring someone back from the dead--and Jack learns more from Early Auden than he ever thought possible. Maybe, just maybe, he'll even learn how to let his mother go.

PRINCESS OF THE MIDNIGHT BALL, by Jessica Day George

Princess The story: Rose and her eleven younger sisters are doomed to spend their nights dancing in the palace of the evil King Under Stone unless someone can free them from the spell. No one expects that a common soldier will be able to do it--but after all the "available" princes try, and end up dead, there's no one else to take on the task. Will Galen be able to outfox the King and win the hand of Princess Rose? Jessica Day George takes on a famous fairy tale and gives it new life in "Princess of the Midnight Ball."

SECONDS AWAY, by Harlan Coben