Best of 2014: Young Adult Fiction

This year I read thirty-three books that fall into this category.

They are:

My True Love Gave to Me edited by Stephanie Perkins
Vivian Versus America (Vivian Apple, #2) by Katie Coyle
Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour
Isla and the Happily Ever After (Anna and the French Kiss, #3) by Stephanie Perkins
Hex Hall (Hex Hall, #1) by Rachel Hawkins
Let it Snow by Maureen Johnson, John Green, & Lauren Myracle
Winterspell by Claire Legrand
The Summer I Became A Nerd by Leah Rae Miller
Tsarina by J. Nell Patrick (Jackson Pearce)
The Hate List by Jennifer Brown
I'm the King of the Castle by Susan Hill
Unbreakable (The Legion, #1) by Kami Garcia
Love in the Time of Global Warming (Love in the Time of Global Warming, #1) by Francesca Lia Block
Winger (Winger, #1) by Andrew Smith
Enchanter Heir (The Heir Chronicles, #4) by Cinda Williams Chima
Picture Me Gone by Meg Rosoff
The Falconer by Elizabeth May
Where She Went (If I Stay, #2) by Gayle Forman
The Madness Underneath (Shades of London, #2) by Maureen Johnson
Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell
Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
Flipped by Wendelin Van Draanen
How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
Meant to Be by Lauren Morrill
Beautiful Darkness (Beautiful Creatures, #2) by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl
Marcel and the Real World by Francisco X. Stork
Monstrous Beauty by Elizabeth Fama
Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black
The Diviners (The Diviners, #1) by Libba Bray
The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Anderson
Wicked Girls by Stephanie Hemphill
Falling Hard (Roller Girls, #1) by Megan Sparks
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #1) by Ransom Riggs

First place goes to . . . 

Nina LaCour has stunned me with every one of her books, but this is by far the best she's done yet. Everything Leads to You is filled to the brim with romance, beautiful writing, and a story that will make you want to come back again and again. It was everything I hoped it would be and more.







Second place goes to . . .

After falling in love with the first book in this series, I was worried that the second and final book wouldn't live up to my high expectations. I was so wrong that it's laughable. Everything about the ending to Vivian's story is so much better than I could have hoped for and I cannot wait to read even more from this awesome author.
Side note: Both books are out in the UK at the moment, but the first book is going to be released for the US on January 6, 2015 under the title "Vivian Apple at the End of the World." You need this book, random reader. You need it. So please go preorder it immediately.


And third place goes to . . .

This is a must-read for pretty much every nerd that is out there. Rainbow Rowell goes above and beyond in this lovely work about Cath, a nerdy fan fiction writer who has just gone off to college. I adored every part of this book. And Rainbow Rowell has recently announced that her next book is going to be about the very characters Cath writes about in the book, which might just be the coolest thing I've seen an author do in a very long time.





Honorable mentions . . .

How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff

Piper and Edmond and Isaac and I used to watch this lunatic fringe milling around every day around sunset and then Edmond and I would slip away up to the tiny bedroom at the top of the house or the big storage closet under the eaves or the lambing barn or one of about a thousand places we'd found where we could try and try and try to get enough of each other but it was like some witch's curse where the more we tried to stop being hungry the more starving we got.

It was the first time in as long as I could remember that hunger wasn't a punishment or a crime or a weapon or a mode of self-destruction.

It was simply a way of being in love.

I picked up “How I Live Now” while I was Christmas shopping late last year. It's a pretty well known fact that I can't leave a bookstore without at least one book for myself, so I already knew shopping books for Christmas presents was going to end up with me buying some for myself. Thankfully, I was in charge of stocking stuffers this year, so I could get away with convincing myself I needed it.

I spotted this lovely volume in the Young Adult section at my local (at the time) Half Price Bookstore. I'd been trying to find this novel for a while anyway, but had only ever managed to locate movie cover copies, so you can imagine how I snatched this one up.

In “How I Live Now” we meet Daisy, a fifteen year-old who has been sent to live in England with her cousins after her father marries a particularly foul stepmother. Though she has never met her cousins until now, she immediately fall in step with them and all their endearing oddities.

When her Aunt Penn goes of to give a talk on the impending war many believe England and much of the world are about to face, the children can't help but view it as a blessing. The five of them now have the huge house to do with as they will. Even when war does break out, it certainly doesn't seem real. And with Daisy falling madly in love with Edmond, well, how can she be expected to think of anything else? That is, until the military shows up at their doorstep and Daisy is separated from nearly everyone she has grown to love.

Edmond and Daisy promised each other they would find the other. Now it's up to Daisy to make sure she and her youngest cousin, Piper, make it back to their home before they become casualties of a war they never imagined could touch them.

Forbidden love, World War III, and coming of age all in one story? You can count me in.

Written from the perspective of Daisy as she tells the story long after it has happened, I fell in love with “How I Live Now” almost immediately. The writing style, which is almost like reading the protagonist's journal, fits the material like a glove. There are no word for word quotes, only Daisy's record of what she remembers them saying and, for some reason, that works phenomenally.

This book is about war and survival, falling in love and the breaking of hearts. It captures the helplessness a young person would feel in the midst of a battle they don't know how to fight or win, and it captures the triumph of good and heartlessness of evil one must come face to face with in those circumstances.

I fell in love with Daisy and the way she tells her story. I'm sure you will too.

Rating: ★★★★★

There never were seven more silent human beings in the back of a truck, we were too stunned even to cry or speak. When we reached Reston Bridge our driver, who I knew was a close friend of the Major's, got out of the truck and stood there for a minute trying to get up the courage to go inside and tell Mrs. M what happened, but first he turned to us and said in a voice that sounded broken and full of rage, In case anyone needed reminding This is a War.

And the way he said those words made me feel like I was falling.