Candymakers by Wendy Mass

Found by Margaret Peterson Haddix

Lucky T by Kate Brian

Echo by Kate Morgenroth (YA novel)
Justin witnesses a horrific accident involving his younger brother and struggles daily with the consequences. He desperately wants to forget the whole thing ever happened. He wants to go back in time. He wants to change things, but he can’t. He can’t do any of those things. He hears a voice in his head and the voice makes him relive the accident over and over again. Only through an attempted suicide does he finally get the help and the attention that he so desperately needs. A sad, but powerful story, addressing a type of accident that happens a lot more than it should in today’s world.

Cures for Heartbreak by Margo Rabb (YA novel)
Mia Pearlman is 15 years old when she loses her mother to cancer. Her mother goes in for a stomachache and finds out she has ovarian cancer…she dies 12 days after the diagnosis. This story tells the tale of a young teenager trying to move on after such a tragic event. After her older sister leaves for college, it is only she and her dad. They spend quality time together and grow closer (especially after he lands in the hospital too) While he was in the hospital, however, he meets a woman with whom he falls in love and wants to marry. Mia doesn’t approve and now has a new struggle with which to deal. Through it all, Mia makes extraordinary friends and learns so much about herself, so much about loss, so much about love. Two thumbs up for this debut novel by Margo Rabb.

Stuck in Neutral by Terry Trueman

Imagine if you will being trapped inside your own body. Imagine being able to everything you hear, but not being able to communicate back. Imagine life as a baby forever. Imagine being spoon fed at fourteen years old and slobbering most of it back out like a baby. Imagine having to wear diapers at age fourteen. Imagine being confined to a wheelchair every day all day, not able to control one part of your body not matter how hard you try. So it is for Shawn McDaniel. Shawn suffers severely from cerebal palsy and can’t control himself or communicate with others. The doctors and psychologists test him every year and even though he knows the answers to most of the questions, he can’t tell them that! So he fails, year after year after year. He is retarded and no one thinks he knows or understands anything. His father can’t bear to watch him suffer and contemplates ending his misery. The author of this book has a son with cerebral palsy, but the story is fiction. It is an amazing read and one that puts things into perspective.

Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen

Auden is about to start college in the fall, and decides to escape her control-freak professor mom to spend the summer with her novelist father, his new young wife, and their brand-new baby daughter, Thisbe. Over the course of the summer, Auden tackles many new projects: learning to ride a bike, making real connections with peers, facing the emotional fallout of her parents’ divorce, distancing herself from her mother, and falling in love with Eli, a fellow insomniac bicyclist recovering from his own traumas.