Friday Fives: Contemporary Young Adult Books

Okay, so I couldn’t come up with a clever title for today’s blog article. I think I exhausted all my creative resources on Wednesday. Oh well. Today’s Friday Fives at Paper Hangover wants to know: What are your FIVE favorite contemporary YA novels? Even though I haven’t read a lot of contemporary YA, I think I can come up with four, plus one that’s a bit of a cheat but I don’t see why it shouldn’t count…

LIKE MANDARIN by Kirsten Hubbard

From Goodreads: “It’s hard finding beauty in the badlands of Washokey, Wyoming, but 14-year-old Grace Carpenter knows it’s not her mother’s pageant obsessions, or the cowboy dances adored by her small-town classmates. True beauty is wild-girl Mandarin Ramey: 17, shameless and utterly carefree. Grace would give anything to be like Mandarin.”

Beautifully written and well worth your time.

AN ABUNDANCE OF KATHERINES by John Green

From Goodreads: “When it comes to relationships, Colin Singleton’s type is girls named Katherine. And when it comes to girls named Katherine, Colin is always getting dumped. Nineteen times, to be exact. On a road trip miles from home, this anagram-happy, washed-up child prodigy has ten thousand dollars in his pocket, a bloodthirsty feral hog on his trail, and an overweight, Judge Judy-loving best friend riding shotgun but no Katherines. Colin is on a mission to prove The Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability, which he hopes will predict the future of any relationship, avenge Dumpees everywhere, and finally win him the girl.”

If you’ve followed any of John and Hank Green’s vlogs, this book fits John’s personality so much. I can just see him trying to come up with a theorem just like Colin’s–though he would leave the actual math to someone else. A fun read. And a male protagonist with a cool first name!

THE MORGUE AND ME by John C. Ford

From Goodreads: “Christopher just needed a job to kill time the summer after high school graduation. He didn’t expect it to be in the morgue. Or that he would accidentally discover a murder cover-up. Or that his discovery would lead him to a full-blown investigation involving bribery, kidnappings, more murders . . . and his best friend. And he certainly could never have predicted that Tina – loud, insanely hot, ambitious newspaper reporter Tina – would be his partner. But all of that did happen. And Christopher’s life will never be the same.”

I enjoyed this a lot, partly because I like murder-mystery-detective type stuff, but also because I thought it was well written. My initial interest came through looking for YA books by males with a male protagonist (nothing against female writers or female protags–I just wanted to see what YA writers of my own gender were producing), and I thought this an interesting premise.

FLASH BURNOUT by L. K. Madigan

From Amazon: “Fifteen-year-old Blake has a girlfriend and a friend who’s a girl. One of them loves him; the other one needs him. When he snapped a picture of a street person for his photography homework, Blake never dreamed that the woman in the photo was his friend Marissa’s long-lost meth addicted mom. Blake’s participation in the ensuing drama opens up a world of trouble, both for him and for Marissa. He spends the next few months trying to reconcile the conflicting roles of Boyfriend and Friend. His experiences range from the comic (surviving his dad’s birth control talk) to the tragic (a harrowing after-hours visit to the morgue). In a tangle of life and death, love and loyalty, Blake will emerge with a more sharply defined snapshot of himself.”

Again, a male protagonist and an interesting premise. Blake doesn’t always make the wisest of decisions–in fact he makes a couple of really stupid, impulse decisions–but that’s part of what makes this book good. We talk on our blogs about flawed heroes, and Blake is certainly that. You root for him, but you slap your head from time to time. And I think that’s a good thing.

MY NOVEL by Me. I couldn’t come up with a fifth, but I really like the novel I’m currently querying, so why not include it? It’s a contemporary YA story, after all! If you want to know more about it, see the tab above that says “The Novel.”

I’m always up for book recommendations, so what contemporary YA books would you recommend to me? And visit Paper Hangover to see what others have said, or to participate in the fun!