New YA: March 1-14.

New hardbacks:

Breaking Sky, by Cori McCarthy:

The one element that makes Breaking Sky stand out as more than just a semi-forgettable retelling of Top Gun—side note: does the fact that there’s now a retelling mean that Top Gun is viewed as a modern-day fairy tale?—is the gender swap. It made me realize two things: 1) that we very rarely see female characters take on a true Maverick role (Starbuck in the BSG reboot is one of the few), and 2) that when female characters DO take on that role, we often criticize them for exhibiting the very self-absorbed, dangerous, costly behavior that we expect from male Mavericks, the very behavior that, in male Mavericks, is so often lauded as “independent.”

Tether (Many-Worlds), by Anna Jarzab

Teresa of the New World, by Sharman Apt Russell

Women Heroes of the American Revolution: 20 Stories of Espionage, Sabotage, Defiance, and Rescue (Women of Action..., by Susan Casey

Magnificent Minds: 16 Pioneering Women in Science and Medicine, by Pendred E. Noyce

Disappear Home, by Laura Hurwitz

The Bunker Diary (Fiction - Young Adult), by Kevin Brooks

Prairie Fire (Fiction - Young Adult), by E. K. Johnston

Infandous (Fiction - Young Adult), by Elana K. Arnold

Biggie, by Derek E. Sullivan

Love & Profanity: A Collection of True, Tortured, Wild, Hilarious, Concise, and Intense Tales of Teenage Life, by Rachael Hanel and Geoff Herbach

Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poets for the Next Generation, by Brett F Lauer and Lynn Melnick

Read Between the Lines, by Jo Knowles

Down from the Mountain, by Elizabeth Fixmer

Painless, by S. A. Harazin

The Tragic Age: A Novel, by Stephen Metcalfe

Sorceress (Spellcaster), by Claudia Gray

The Memory Key, by Liana Liu

Remnants: Season of Fire (A Remnants Novel), by Lisa Tawn Bergren

The Dark Water: A Well's End Novel, by Seth Fishman

The Dead I Know, by Scot Gardner

How to Win at High School, by Owen Matthews

Silence, by Deborah Lytton

Not Otherwise Specified, by Hannah Moskowitz

Positively Beautiful, by Wendy Mills

Femme (Lorimer SideStreets), by Mette Bach

Fight Back (Lorimer SideStreets), by Brent R. Sherrard

Mosquitoland, by David Arnold

Bone Gap, by Laura Ruby

The Storyspinner (The Keepers' Chronicles), by Becky Wallace

Dead to Me, by Mary McCoy

Death Marked (Death Sworn), by Leah Cypess

Tagged, by Diane C. Mullen

The Bullet Catch: Murder by Misadventure, by Amy Axelrod and David Axelrod

The Glory, by Lauren St. John

The Infinite (Gates of Thread and Stone Series), by Lori M. Lee

The Agency 4: Rivals in the City, by Y.S. Lee

Everybody Knows Your Name, by Andrea Seigel and Brent Bradshaw

Little Peach, by Peggy Kern

Game Seven, by Paul Volponi

The Dickens Mirror: Book Two of The Dark Passages, by Ilsa J. Bick

Seed, by Lisa Heathfield

The Brilliant Light of Amber Sunrise, by Matthew Crow

In a Split Second, by Sophie McKenzie

Shadow Scale (Seraphina), by Rachel Hartman

Vanishing Girls, by Lauren Oliver

Burning Kingdoms (The Internment Chronicles), by Lauren DeStefano

The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B, by Teresa Toten

New paperbacks (that I've read):

Mafia Girl, by Deborah Blumenthal:

Pros: Gia's sexual appetite. Props to Blumenthal for allowing Gia to lust after someone and for allowing her to pursue that feeling without branding her a slut. I do have some issues with that storyline, but I did appreciate that aspect of it.

Tandem (Many-Worlds), by Anna Jarzab:

Unfortunately, that’s the most positive thing I have to say about Tandem, so if A) you read it and loved it, B) you’re planning on reading it and want to keep an open mind, or C) you suspect it’ll be a good fit for you, you might want to skip the rest of this column. Then again, based on the premise—and especially my love of parallel universe stories—I thought that I was firmly in category C, so it’s possible that my experience might be a good barometer for you.

Previously: 

February 22-28.

February 15-21.

February 1-14.

January 25-31.