Trio of Book Reviews!

Intensely Alice by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
It's the summer before Alice's last year of high school, and it starts off just like all the others, with the gang hanging out at Mark Stedmeister's pool. But this summer turns out to be full of surprises, both exhilarating, challenging, and devastating. Alice's cousin Carol is getting married in Chicago, which just happens to be where Patrick is starting school (at MY alma mater, the University of Chicago), so Alice visits him on campus. Lester busts out of town for a week, allowing Alice and her friends to stay at his place, and of course, this doesn't go exactly as planned. And at the end of the summer, something happens that no one expected, that changes the gang forever. Phyllis Reynolds Naylor does it again with the latest Alice book, a compulsively readable book for fans of the series, and one that could certainly pique interest for those that don't know every detail about Alice McKinley...yet. YA FIC NAY

Queen of Everything by Deb Caletti
Watching the evening news, do you ever wonder about the grisly lead stories, the ones where a seemingly normal person does something you can't even comprehend. Do you wonder, who was this person, and what kind of family did he/she have? Well, this is one of those ripped-from-the-headlines stories, told from the perspective of the headline-maker's daughter, Jordan. Jordan's parents have been divorced for awhile. Her mother runs a bed and breakfast, and her dad's your average eye doctor... until he meets Gayle. Jordan notices that her dad's become completely unlike himself ever since he met Gayle, and not in a good way. Gayle has taken his life by storm, and Jordan's unsettled. As his behavior becomes more erratic, one wild, stormy night changes everything. Jordan's life will never be the same. Fans of Deb Caletti's other work will appreciate her realistic, nuanced take on a story like this -- though it's not my personal favorite of hers. Recommended also to fans of Sarah Dessen's books. YA FIC CAL

The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams
I'd been hearing a lot of buzz about this one, so I devoured it last night watching the Red Sox-Yankees game. Thirteen year old Kyra has grown up in an isolated, polygamist community, where no one questions the authority of the Prophet, even as he leads his community's members to do what anyone else would consider, horrible, reproachable things. But Kyra has recently started to come into her own, first when Joshua, a guy around her age, shows interest in her, and in her trips to the library bookmobile. (Her community had a cleansing years ago when they burned every book there, except for the Bible.) She has passing thoughts about wanting to leave, but they become more serious when the Prophet comes to visit her family. She has been chosen to marry Hyrum, her sixty year old uncle. The rest of the book oscillates between Kyra thinking she can escape, and realizing how difficult, and potentially suicidal it could be. The gripping end will keep you on the edge of your seat, or at the very least, up past your bedtime. The writing is spare, at times poetic, and completely true to the thirteen year old narrator. Recommended for those who read Sister Wife and are fascinated by the reality of polygamous compounds existing in certain areas of the United States right now. YA FIC WIL