Title: New Girl
Author: Paige Harbison (Twitter)
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Publish Date: January 31, 2012
Genre: YA, Contemporary
Pages: 304 Pages
Source: Publisher

They call me 'New Girl'...Ever since I arrived at exclusive, prestigious Manderly Academy, that’s who I am. New girl. Unknown. But not unnoticed—because of her. Becca Normandy—that’s the name on everyone’s lips. The girl whose picture I see everywhere. The girl I can’t compare to. I mean, her going missing is the only reason a spot opened up for me at the academy. And everyone stares at me like it’s my fault.

Except for Max Holloway—the boy whose name shouldn’t be spoken. At least, not by me. Everyone thinks of him as Becca’s boyfriend but she’s gone, and here I am, replacing her. I wish it were that easy. Sometimes, when I think of Max, I can imagine how Becca’s life was so much better than mine could ever be. And maybe she’s still out there, waiting to take it back.

She’s the New Girl. It’s hard to be that girl, in and of itself, but it’s even harder when the It girl disappears and her absence opens the spot for the new girl at the prestigious school. Life is complicated and messy at Manderly Academy with conniving, lying and deceitful students, dark secrets and a messy underbelly that, for some reason, the new girl has become a part of. For some reason though, the New Girl is slipping into Becca’s shoes. It’s both a gift and a curse though because if, God forbit, Becca ever returns, the New Girl is going to have to retreat into the shadows again because Becca rules Manderly…and a new girl is always a new girl.

New Girl is a treacherous take on contemporary fiction, brimming with twists and turns that threaten to send the story spiraling out of control at any given second. This is the second novel I’ve read by Paige Harbison, and it’s no less challenging than the first. The author is skilled at crafting artfully dislikable characters, which I’m assuming was her intention. There’s a deep-seeded animosity that fuels New Girl along, spreading the characters thin through intense angst and discord. Rather than give us the calm before the storm that we seek, New Girl thrusts the reader into a full-on onslaught of bitter teenage rivalry and sinks its teeth into you from the start.

New Girl was quite the challenging read for me. I’m going to state that outright because I have an extremely difficult time becoming invested in largely unapproachable characters. That said, there were a few breaths of fresh air throughout. The “New Girl,” herself, was actually a rather sweet character. Though we don’t learn her name until the very end of the book, which was either really clever or completely convoluted (I haven’t quite decided), the new girl shields us from the torment that Becca and her cronies wield daily. Becca was one of those characters that I wanted to kick in the face…multiple times. Her cruelty, manipulative nature and overall foul demeanor made me loathe her from the start, and I struggled to reconcile with the fact that everyone seemed entirely content to continue doing her bidding despite it. She, quite literally, reigned over the school, and that was difficult for me to read. Furthermore, there was a lot of weakness going on with many of the characters. For instance, the new girl very frequently caved to Max’s insistence, making her appear weak. I wanted to like Max and the new girl’s blossoming romance, but because of the stop-and-go nature of it, the dominant vs. submissive personalities and the weakness I saw throughout, I just couldn’t relate. At times, New Girl was over-the-top outrageously dramatic, then completely flat at other times. I felt that changing from the past to the present, as well as the switch between perspectives was a gutsy move for a novel like New Girl and, ultimately, it lost me because I felt the novel was too stunted to carry the weight of the challenge.

Overall, New Girl was a pretty well-written novel, though I struggled to find the true meaning of the book. I enjoy a challenge, but for me, it was too messy to carry the weight of such heavy drama. Clever in much of its approach to bullying and teenage relationships/drama though, New Girl will definitely find its place in many a YA shelf. I give it a 2 out of 5, and I recommend it to fans of YA, especially those who enjoy contemporary fiction and the novel, Here Lies Bridget.

I received this book free of charge from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This, in no way, affected my opinion or review of this book.

Title: Fracture
Author: Megan Miranda (Twitter)
Publisher: Walker Children's
Publish Date: January 17, 2012
Genre: YA, Contemporary
Pages: 262
Source: ARC Trade

Eleven minutes passed before Delaney Maxwell was pulled from the icy waters of a Maine lake by her best friend Decker Phillips. By then her heart had stopped beating. Her brain had stopped working. She was dead. And yet she somehow defied medical precedent to come back seemingly fine - despite the scans that showed significant brain damage.

Everyone wants Delaney to be all right, but she knows she's far from normal. Pulled by strange sensations she can't control or explain, Delaney finds herself drawn to the dying. Is her altered brain now predicting death, or causing it?

Then Delaney meets Troy Varga, who recently emerged from a coma with similar abilities. At first she's reassured to find someone who understands the strangeness of her new existence, but Delaney soon discovers that Troy's motives aren't quite what she thought. Is their gift a miracle, a freak of nature-or something much more frightening?

Delaney died that night. She was standing on the ice, and the next thing she knew, she was waking up in the hospital with only brief memories of what happened to her. Eleven minutes. That’s how long it took for her to be rescued from the icy water below the surface, and in those eleven minutes, Delaney touched the other side. But things are different now. Delaney is drawn to the dying, and she feels a sort of pull towards the other side. Everything’s changing, and Delaney needs to make sense of what’s happening to her – and why her feelings for her best friend, Decker, have suddenly changed.

I like drama. It’s no secret. I like it when things are messy and in disarray (in novels, of course, not real life). Fracture is one of those novels that touches on everything that is a little bit messy and out of place. Focusing more on nature of relationships and sense of self than anything else, Fracture touches on the very soul of humanity and brings it to light. Author Megan Miranda has crafted a delicate novel that perfectly merges dark with light, broaches difficult topics such as death and dying and captures a host of beautiful characters in a poignant and powerful novel. Merging a beautiful story line with sweet, poignant prose, Fracture stands out. .

I’m not a huge fan of love triangles or quadrangles, and that’s no secret, so having read a few reviews for Fracture, I was a bit concerned. Once I was about halfway through the novel though, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the nature of Fracture focused more heavily on Delaney, her condition and the aftermath of the trauma of her accident than anything else. Delaney was a great character. She was so relatable and honest, painful and pure. There was an innocence about her that resonated throughout the events of the story and fueled the plot forward. Decker, too, was a brilliant character, perfectly embodying the loyal best friend role. I will say, however, that the numerous secondary characters, including Janna, Troy felt a bit flat for me. There were so many issues, actions and inactions that felt unresolved when I closed the final pages on Fracture that I felt a bit let down. While I loved that Fracture stepped boldly into a realm of God complexes, survivor’s guilt, stress and everything messy that has to do with death and dying, I think it could have been fleshed out a bit for more power. The novel was hard-hitting, indeed, but I felt it moved too fast to leave any strong, lasting emotions in me. .

Overall, I think Fracture is going to make a powerful in the statement in the YA community. It’s a rich idea with great writing, and though there were some flaws, in my humble opinion, it wasn’t a bad book by any means. I give it a 3.5 out of 5, and I recommend it to all fans of YA, especially those who enjoy contemporary and paranormal fiction. .

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Jill from Breaking the Spine, and specifically spotlights upcoming novels we can't wait to read. As always, there are some amazing upcoming books, but this week I'm particularly excited for...

Title: 172 Hours on the Moon
Author: Johan Harstad, Tara Chace
Publisher: Little, Brown BYR
Publish Date: April 12, 2012
Genre: YA, Thriller, Sci-Fi
Pages: 355

Three teenagers are going on the trip of a lifetime. Only one is coming back. It's been more than forty years since NASA sent the first men to the moon, and to grab some much-needed funding and attention, they decide to launch an historic international lottery in which three lucky teenagers can win a week-long trip to moon base DARLAH 2 - a place that no one but top government officials even knew existed until now.

The three winners, Antoine, Midori, and Mia, come from all over the world. But just before the scheduled launch, the teenagers each experience strange, inexplicable events. Little do they know that there was a reason NASA never sent anyone back there until now - a sinister reason. But the countdown has already begun...

There are three ways I would absolutely hate to die. The first would be drowning because, heck, I'm a swimmer. That would blow. The second would be fire because, frankly, it's not like freezing to death, where you just go to sleep. The third would be to die all alone in an endless vacuum like space. 172 Hours on the Moon sounds ridiculously creepy, a touch sadistic and like it might just have that horror element I'm loving so much lately. From what I can tell, it's a translated/edited version in English, and I'm certainly thrilled to get lost in this one. That cover, alone, is eerie! What do you think, and what are you waiting on this week?