Debut YA Book Birthdays ~ Week of July 30th

I have 3 distinct debut YA reads to share with you this week.  I love the sound of All Our Pretty Songs.  What sounds good to you?

ALL OUR PRETTY SONGS by Sarah McCarry

This is a story about love, but not the kind of love you think.  You’ll see…

In the lush and magical Pacific Northwest live two best friends who grew up like sisters: charismatic, mercurial, and beautiful Aurora, and the devoted, watchful narrator.  Each of them is incomplete without the other. But their unbreakable bond is challenged when a mysterious and gifted musician named Jack comes between them.

His music is like nothing I have ever heard. It is like the ocean surging, the wind that blows across the open water, the far call of gulls.

Suddenly, each girl must decide what matters most: friendship, or love. What both girls don’t know is that the stakes are even higher than either of them could have imagined. They’re not the only ones who have noticed Jack’s gift; his music has awakened an ancient evil—and a world both above and below which may not be mythical at all.  We have paved over the ancient world but that does not mean we have erased it. 

The real and the mystical; the romantic and the heartbreaking all begin to swirl together in All Our Pretty Songs, Sarah McCarry's brilliant debut, carrying the two on journey that is both enthralling and terrifying. 

And it’s up to the narrator to protect the people she loves—if she can. 

CANARY by Rachele Alpine

In this debut novel, a high school girl tries to understand the world, figure out where she fits in, and learn how to stand up for herself when everything falls apart. With the passing of her mother, Kate Franklin’s life unravels at the seams as she loses the only emotional mooring in her family. Her dad shuts down completely, and her brother enlists in the army. Things start looking better when her dad is hired to coach at Beacon Prep, home of one of the best basketball teams in the state. In a blog of prose and poetry, Kate chronicles her new world—dating a basketball player, being caught up in a world of idolatry and entitlement, and discovering the perks the inner circle enjoys. Then Kate’s fragile life shatters once again when one of her boyfriend’s teammates assaults her 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 once welcoming community has betrayed Kate, her family is disintegrating, and she’s on her own to grapple with whether to stay quiet or speak out and expose a town’s hero and destroy her father’s career.

IF I EVER GET OUT OF HERE by Eric Gransworth

Lewis "Shoe" Blake is used to the joys and difficulties of life on the Tuscarora Indian reservation in 1975: the joking, the Fireball games, the snow blowing through his roof. What he's not used to is white people being nice to him -- people like George Haddonfield, whose family recently moved to town with the Air Force. As the boys connect through their mutual passion for music, especially the Beatles, Lewis has to lie more and more to hide the reality of his family's poverty from George. He also has to deal with the vicious Evan Reininger, who makes Lewis the special target of his wrath. But when everyone else is on Evan's side, how can he be defeated? And if George finds out the truth about Lewis's home -- will he still be his friend?

Acclaimed adult author Eric Gansworth makes his YA debut with this wry and powerful novel about friendship, memory, and the joy of rock 'n' roll.