Promises Hurt


Elle Brooks - 2014
    He’s the most popular guy at school and a complete player. Me; I’m the perpetual good girl, trying to carry out one last request. But when you make a promise, how far do you go to see it through? ~ BlairIt’s a running joke that I’m a terrible liar, if only people knew the truth. My whole life has been spent making excuses and deflecting questions. I was pretty good at it until Blair Thomas entered my world. She saw through the mask that everyone is so willing to accept. She makes me want to tell her all my secrets, but can she promise to keep them?~ Ethan

Canary


Rachele Alpine - 2013
    She begins to date a player on the team and quickly gets caught up in a world of idolatry and entitlement, learning that there are perks to being an athlete. But those perks also come with a price. Another player takes his power too far and Kate is assaulted at a party. Although she knows she should speak out, her dad’s vehemently against it and so, like a canary sent into a mine to test toxicity levels and protect miners, Kate alone breathes the poisonous secrets to protect her dad and the team. The world that Kate was once welcomed into is now her worst enemy, and she must decide whether to stay silent or expose the corruption, destroying her father’s career and bringing down a town’s heroes.Canary is told in a mix of prose and verse.

Dare You to Lie


Amber Lynn Natusch - 2018
    As the threats gain momentum, Ky finds an unlikely ally in the rookie FBI agent sent to keep an eye on her.Determined to expose the town's hidden skeletons, Ky unwittingly thrusts herself into a much bigger plot. They thought she’d forgive and forget. They’re about to learn they messed with the wrong girl.

Love Always, Kate


D. Nichole King - 2014
    Now, six years later, I want my life back. Only I’m not sure what that is. The test results came back today. 22,000. Which means I’m officially out of remission—again. I have three options: 1) Another round of chemo. 2) A super-new experimental drug. 3) Dump it all— forget the meds and treatments and enjoy the time I have left. I think I know what I want. Then, in walks Damian, changing everything. I mean, everything… He’s got his own set of issues. It binds us together, you know? We understand what it’s like to lose what matters most in seconds. Still, the last thing I need is to have someone else to crush if I can’t fight hard enough. And the last thing he needs is someone else to grieve. Never mind. I’m down to two options now. Somehow I know that whichever one I choose, the result will be the same. With the sand in my hourglass seeping to the bottom, I hope there’s enough left to show Damian that life’s worth living. Worth fighting for. Worth dying for. Love Always, Kate

Playing Patience


Tabatha Vargo - 2013
    Being a punching bag for his alcoholic father has turned him into stone. Not even the dodgy trailer park he lives in can scare him. Fighting is his release and sex, drugs, and his guitar bring him peace, but deep down Zeke isn't quite as hard as he makes himself out to be. When he meets Patience, she finds all his broken pieces and puts him back together. She's a ray of light in his shadowed life and the last thing he wants to do is bring her into his dark world. Playing careless is easy, playing the bad guy can be fun, but playing Patience is impossible, especially when she can see right through him. Zeke isn't the only one who's broken, and for the first time in a long time, Patience feels alive. Her black and white world gets a shot of color when she meets Zeke. With his tattoos, piercings, and blunt honesty, he's unlike anyone she's ever met. She wants nothing more than to let go and ride the wild side with him, but some wounds never heal and the broken pieces of Patience aren't so easy to find.

Escape from Eden


Elisa Nader - 2013
    In Edenton, a supposed “Garden of Eden” deep in the South American jungle, everyone follows the Reverend’s strict but arbitrary rules—even the mandate of whom they can marry. Now sixteen, Mia dreams of slipping away from the armed guards who keep the faithful in, and the curious out. When the rebellious and sexy Gabriel, a new boy, arrives with his family, Mia sees a chance to escape. But the scandalous secrets the two discover beyond the compound’s façade are more shocking than anything they ever imagined. While Gabriel has his own terrible secrets, he and Mia bond together, more than friends and freedom fighters. But is there time to think of each other as they race to stop the Reverend’s paranoid plan to free his flock from the corrupt world? Can two teenagers crush a criminal mastermind? And who will die in the fight to save the ones they love from a madman who’s only concerned about his own secrets?

I Dare You


Shantel Tessier - 2018
     Austin Lowes is new to town. She's running from a mom who hates her to her dad who cares nothing about her. Only a few months and she will be free, or at least, that's what she hopes ... until she meets him. Cole Reynolds is the devil disguised as a man. He wants her fear, he wants her blood, and he wants her soul. Just a little game, he says, I dare you. Will Austin survive him, or will she lose herself and the game? Secrets are revealed and justice will be served, but at what cost? Who survives and who doesn't?

Charm & Strange


Stephanie Kuehn - 2013
    It’s impossible to see anything, really. Not without bars . . . Andrew Winston Winters is at war with himself. He’s part Win, the lonely teenager exiled to a remote Vermont boarding school in the wake of a family tragedy. The guy who shuts all his classmates out, no matter the cost.He’s part Drew, the angry young boy with violent impulses that control him. The boy who spent a fateful, long-ago summer with his brother and teenage cousins, only to endure a secret so monstrous it led three children to do the unthinkable. Over the course of one night, while stuck at a party deep in the New England woods, Andrew battles both the pain of his past and the isolation of his present. Before the sun rises, he’ll either surrender his sanity to the wild darkness inside his mind or make peace with the most elemental of truths—that choosing to live can mean so much more than not dying.

The Rule of Thirds


Chantel Guertin - 2013
    She and her best friend/supermodel-in-training Dace long ago mapped out their life plan: Pippa will be the noted fashion photographer, and Dace the cover girl. But ever since last spring, things have changed for Pippa — and her junior year at Spalding High proves to have its own set of challenges. Not only is Vantage Point, the statewide photography competition, in three short weeks, but her mandatory volunteer placement lands her at St. Christopher’s Hospital, a place Pippa never wanted to set foot in again. With humour and pluck, she navigates her new role as a candy striper (watch out for Code Yellows), her changing relationship with her best friend (goodbye Honesty Pact), and — perhaps most stressful of all — her new love interests (yes, love interests plural).Will Pippa make it to Vantage Point without having a panic attack? Will either one of the guys prove less sketchy than her last boyfriend? Can she and Dace figure out a way to dream big and be best friends? One thing is certain: real life is a lot more complicated than a photograph.

Bellissimo Fortuna


Leigh Ann Lunsford - 2015
    Devoted to one girl and willing to do everything in his power to ensure her safety. Beautiful, trusting, damaged, daughter of the underboss, Callie Locati has Bronson’s heart. She gave herself to him when they were kids and will sacrifice all she is to protect him. Divided by the greed of one of the most trusted members of the familia, a father’s sins, and secrets kept, they struggle to overcome the obstacles life has thrown their way. Is their bond strong enough to conquer the forces trying to keep them apart? Is a father’s betrayal more than their love can survive? Will the family secrets ruin them or will their devotion stand the test of time?

Between the Lives


Jessica Shirvington - 2013
    For as long as she can remember, she's had two lives. Every twenty-four hours she "shifts," living each day twice. In one life, Sabine has everything: popular friends, perfect grades, expensive clothes, and the guy everyone wants. In the other, Sabine's family struggles financially, and her friends are considered rebels. But then she meets Ethan. He's gorgeous and challenging, and he makes her feel like she's never felt before.All Sabine really wants is the chance to live only one life. But when this finally becomes possible, is she willing to risk everything - including losing the one person who might actually believe her - to make it happen?

Songs About a Girl


Chris Russell - 2016
    She's happiest out of the spotlight, behind her camera, unseen and unnoticed. But when she's asked to take backstage photos for hot new boy band Fire&Lights, she can't pass up the chance. Catapulted into a world of paparazzi and backstage bickering, Charlie soon becomes caught between gorgeous but damaged frontman, Gabriel West, and his boy-next-door bandmate Olly Samson. Then, as the boys' rivalry threatens to tear the band apart, Charlie stumbles upon a mind-blowing secret, hidden in the lyrics of their songs...

The Fragile Ordinary


Samantha Young - 2018
    That she’ll be effortlessly cool and light up a room the way a comet blazes across the sky.But from the shyness that makes her book-character friends more appealing than real people to the parents whose indifference hurts more than an open wound, Comet has never wanted to be the center of attention. She can’t wait to graduate from her high school in Edinburgh, Scotland, where the only place she ever feels truly herself is on her anonymous poetry blog. But surely that will change once she leaves to attend university somewhere far, far away.When new student Tobias King blazes in from America and shakes up the school, Comet thinks she’s got the bad boy figured out. Until they’re thrown together for a class assignment and begin to form an unlikely connection. Everything shifts in Comet’s ordinary world. Tobias has a dark past and runs with a tough crowd—and none of them are happy about his interest in Comet. Targeted by bullies and thrown into the spotlight, Comet and Tobias can go their separate ways…or take a risk on something extraordinary.

Sugar


Deirdre Riordan Hall - 2015
    I’ve always been too much and yet not enough. Sugar Legowski-Gracia wasn’t always fat, but fat is what she is now at age seventeen. Not as fat as her mama, who is so big she hasn’t gotten out of bed in months. Not as heavy as her brother, Skunk, who has more meanness in him than fat, which is saying something. But she’s large enough to be the object of ridicule wherever she is: at the grocery store, walking down the street, at school. Sugar’s life is dictated by taking care of Mama in their run-down home—cooking, shopping, and, well, eating. A lot of eating, which Sugar hates as much as she loves.When Sugar meets Even (not Evan—his nearly illiterate father misspelled his name on the birth certificate), she has the new experience of someone seeing her and not her body. As their unlikely friendship builds, Sugar allows herself to think about the future for the first time, a future not weighed down by her body or her mother.Soon Sugar will have to decide whether to become the girl that Even helps her see within herself or to sink into the darkness of the skin-deep role her family and her life have created for her.

Naked or Dead


A.E. Murphy - 2019
    Already she hates it despite its beautiful landscape.Between riding her dirt bike through the sacred lands of the natives, plotting against those she meets, and holding greasy truckers at gunpoint, Lilith makes no time for love or friendship. Forever the walking mystery (read misery) of her new home and school.That is until Nokosi Locklear catches her eye with his arrogance and a hard, toned body that she’s certain she doesn’t want to climb.Shoved up against a locker by him in her first week, she sets him in her wicked sights.Life is only fun when you have somebody else’s pain to focus on. So long as you stay detached. Something Lilith will find is impossible to do when it comes to Nokosi. A guy with looks but no charm. Strength but no power. Love but no morals. With a serial killer roaming the States, taking victims one by one, a past in Nokosi’s eyes that he tries to hide, and a mother that would rather work than keep her daughters happy, Lilith finds plenty of time to spare and plenty of things to keep herself occupied. Note: This is your only trigger warning. Read at your own risk.