Words We Don’t Say – K.J. Reilly

High school junior Joel Higgins has a hard time speaking his truth, so instead he writes texts to people: his principal, his best friend, Andy, and Eli, the girl on whom he has a major crush. He doesn’t actually send the texts, though.

Joel lives with his parents and five-year-old brother, Jace. He hasn’t really found his niche yet. He says “Basically the things that I am good at, they don’t teach in high school.” Other than Eli, Joel is pretty solitary. “I’m always surrounded by people, but I have no real friends. […] The things most kids care about don’t matter to me.”

Joel (and Eli) volunteer at the local soup kitchen as part of their graduation requirements. Many of the people who come in for food are veterans who have been abandoned by the system. Joel forms a sort of attachment to one of these men, and this relationship – although this man does not speak – starts to crack through Joel’s protective shell.

Words We Don’t Say cares very much about words, actually. When Joel’s English teacher suggests his students read all the banned books they can get their hands on (after ranting about how books like Winnie the Pooh have been banned because the bears are anthropomorphized and don’t wear pants), Joel realizes that

free speech [was] something we should protect even if that means sometimes we had to hear stuff that made us uncomfortable and how lucky we were to read whatever we wanted to read even if that only meant sitting on the curb and reading a book out loud to a man who has a Purple Heart that came with delusions and a heartbreak of an illness that nobody could fix.

This book is quite often very funny, but also filled with heart and empathy for a wide variety of characters. Joel eventually starts to understand that he is not the only person who has to carry a broken heart around with him, and it is only when he really starts to reach out to people that he starts down the path to healing.

This is a great book.

Goodbye Days – Jeff Zentner

Oh, Jeff, what are you doing to me?

The Serpent King, Jeff Zentner’s YA debut, was one of my favourite books of 2024. I figured I couldn’t go wrong with reading his follow-up, Goodbye Days. Geesh. Who is this Jeff Zentner guy and why does he insist on breaking my heart?

Carver Briggs, aka Blade, would have been pretty excited about his final year at Nashville Arts Academy if he hadn’t just buried his three best friends: Blake Lloyd, Eli Bauer and Mars Edwards. Now, though, he has to navigate this last year of high school without the rest of the Sauce Crew and deal with the overwhelming guilt that he is, in fact, responsible for their deaths.

He doesn’t think he killed them on purpose. And he knows that no one thinks he “slipped under their car in the dead of night and severed the brake lines.” But he did text Mars, who was driving, and the authorities did find Mars’s phone at the crash scene with a “half-composed text” to Carver. That was right before his friends slammed into the semi.

Now Carver is having panic attacks and debilitating feelings of guilt which are compounded by the fact that he is growing closer to Jesmyn, Eli’s girlfriend. It’s all too much. And he knows that he is not the only one who is suffering.

When Blake’s grandmother suggests that the two of them share a “goodbye day” for Blake, Carver is initially reluctant. She proposes that they spend a day together, doing the things that Blake used to love to do, and sharing their stories about him. A ‘goodbye day’ of sorts.

“Funny how people move through this word leaving little pieces of their story with the people they meet, for them to carry. Makes you wonder what’d happen if all these people put their puzzle pieces together.”

Goodbye Days is my first five star read of 2025. In all the ways I loved The Serpent King, I loved this one just as much. Zentner is so gifted at writing teenagers who are thoughtful and funny and broken and hopeful. This book was profoundly moving and yep, I cried.

For the most part, you don’t hold the people you love in your heart because they rescued you from drowning or pulled you from a burning house. Mostly you hold them in your heart because they save you, in a million quiet and perfect ways, from being alone.

I will read anything this guy writes.

Wink Poppy Midnight – April Genevieve Tucholke

I knew I was going to love Wink Poppy Midnight pretty much from the opening line when Midnight tells us that “The first time I slept with Poppy, I cried.” Midnight isn’t much at sixteen but Poppy, the school’s icy queen bee, tells him

You’re going to be so beautiful at eighteen that girls will melt just looking at you, your long black lashes, your glossy brown hair, your blue blue eyes. But I had you first, and you had me first. And it was a good move, on my part. A brilliant move.”

Thing is, Poppy doesn’t want Midnight, not really. She wants Leaf Bell (yes, everyone in this novel has a weird name.) Poppy fell in love with Leaf “the day he beat the shit out of DeeDee Ruffler.” The fact that Leaf doesn’t want anything to do with Poppy; he “saw right through the pretty, saw straight through it.”

Leaf’s younger sister, the dreamy red-haired Wink lives at a farm across the road from the house Midnight moved into with his antiquarian book-seller father after his mother and half-brother, Alabama, move to Paris so she can write her latest novel. One day, Wink shows up on Midnight’s doorstep and in her odd presence, Midnight feels peaceful because “Wink wasn’t taking stock. She wasn’t trying to figure out if I was sexy, or cool, or funny, or popular. She just stood in front of me and let me keep on being whoever I really was.”

April Genevieve Tucholke’s (Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea) YA novel is dreamy and other worldly. These teens inhabit a world outside of the halls of a high school, but their imaginations, petty cruelties and longings will be recognizable. I enjoyed my time with them and loved the way this book was written.

Every Single Lie – Rachel Vincent

Beckett Bergen’s life is about to get a whole lot more complicated -and it was pretty complicated to begin with. For starters, she just dumped her boyfriend, super-hot-star-baseball player, Jake, because she’s convinced that he’s cheating on her. He insists it’s not true, but there’s definitely something he is not telling her.

Then there’s her complicated home life. Her mom, Julie, is a detective on the teensy police force in their small Tennessee town, and she’s barely at home – meaning that Beckett and her older brother, Penn, are responsible for looking out for their younger sister, Landry, 13. Beckett’s dad died several months ago, and it turns out there’s lots Beckett and her siblings don’t know about the circumstances of his death.

But Rachel Vincent’s YA novel Every Single Lie really kicks off when Beckett makes a shocking discovery in the locker room at her school.

There’s something sticking up out of the open duffel. I step closer, then I stumble to a shocked halt.

It’s a hand. A tiny, tiny little red hand.

And it isn’t moving

This discovery sends shock waves through Beckett’s small town and without really quite knowing how, she finds herself at the center of a lot of attention. Rumours start spreading like wildfire – many of which are spread by an anonymous Twitter account, Crimson Cryer, which asserts that perhaps Beckett is more closely linked to this baby than just being the person who discovers the body.

I really liked Beckett and her tenacity. She is determined to find out who this baby belongs to, even though the rumour mill is making it very difficult, and potentially dangerous, for her to do so. There are lots of clues which lead her to some very surprising places, but this book is more than just a solid page-turning mystery. This is also a book about grief, secrets and the damage social media can do.

Lock the Doors – Vincent Ralph

Sixteen-year-old Tom’s mother has had a string of bad luck with men, but now she is married to Jay, who is exactly who he says he is – a nice guy – and they have recently moved into a brand new house. Not everything is perfect. Jay’s daughter, Nia, is also living with them. She’s a year older and clearly hates Tom. And although the house is Tom’s mom’s dream come true, Tom soon makes an odd discovery. It looks like someone had installed locks on the outside of two of the bedroom doors. Weird, right?

At school, Tom is tagged to show new girl, Amy, around and although Tom is slightly awkward and not all that good with the ladies, he and Amy sort of hit it off. Then Tom discovers that Amy used to live in his old house. As bits and pieces of Amy’s life are revealed Tom starts to think that things just don’t add up. But the more he pushes Amy, the stranger things get. When Tom meets Amy’s family, June and Chris and Amy’s younger brother, Will, and makes some new discoveries in his new home, well – it all makes for page-turning fun.

Tom is a clever and likeable character who suffers from OCD.

I’m worse when I’m worried. On good days, I can touch everything once and sleep like a baby. On the worst days, I check everything twenty or thirty times and only make it halfway up the stairs before doing it all again. I know it’s silly, I know it’s irrational. But it’s part of me, and it’s not going anywhere.

It is perhaps partly his OCD that makes Tom so dogged when it comes to figuring out the truth. It might also be, in part, because of the horrors his mother faced prior to meeting Jay. What if Amy is in trouble? Tom can’t imagine not helping her even if it means getting himself into some scrapes.

Of course, it all comes together perhaps a tad too easily in the end, but I had a good time reading and I think teens who like mysteries will really enjoy this one.

Blackwater – Jeannette Arroyo & Ren Graham

Blackwater, a YA graphic novel, by Jeannette Arroyo and Ren Graham has a lot going for it. First of all, lots of representation including POC, trans, teens with health issues, werewolves, ghosts. Yes, you read that last part right.

Tony is a high school track star with a side of delinquent. Eli is the new kid who misses a lot of time because of an autoimmune disorder. Neither of these boys has the world’s best home life (Tony’s father works a lot and doesn’t seem all that invested in Tony’s life and Eli’s mother just seems completely checked out, perhaps worn down by her son’s health issues.)

A tentative friendship begins to develop between the two boys. Eventually, Tony has to admit that his feelings towards Eli might be something more than “friends.” Then, there’s an incident in the woods and suddenly Tony is dealing with a lot more than just his feelings.

Blackwater is part ghost-story, part high school drama, part m/m romance. I did feel that it was a little top heavy-so the end felt rushed. That said, it’s an hour of your time and it delivers on themes of acceptance, family and friendship.

Everything We Never Said – Sloan Harlow

Ella’s senior year of high school is complicated. For one thing, she has to make her way through the days without her bestie, Hayley, by her side. Hayley died in a car accident and Ella is still trying to process her grief and her guilt -she was at the wheel when the car crashed, although she remembers virtually nothing about the accident.

Then there’s the problem of Sawyer, Hayley’s over-the-top hot boyfriend. The three had always been together, but since Hayley’s death she can feel the waves of anger and hate coming off Sawyer and she knows it’s all directed at her. And yet – there’s something else smoldering underneath and pretty soon Ella and Sawyer can’t keep their hands off each other. Of course, they are both aware of the optics of this development, and the fact that they are meeting secretly only heightens their feelings for each other.

But then, plot twist, Hayley’s mother asks Ella to come clean out Hayley’s room – a task she can’t bear to do. It is there she finds Hayley’s diary and although she does deliberate about whether or not she is doing the right thing, Ella gives in to her curiosity and starts to read. What she discovers throws another wrench into her growing feelings for Sawyer and also puts her in danger.

Sloan Harlow’s debut novel Everything We Never Said attempts a lot and succeeds on many levels. I thought I had it figured out early on; there are plenty of red herrings. The book does make some attempt at tackling the topic of domestic violence. It also looks at grief and friendship. Sometimes the characters seem a bit shrill and other times way too passive. I found the sex scenes a bit much – not that I don’t believe that seventeen-year-olds are intimate, but I found some of the dialogue a little cringe-y. The last third moves at a quick pace, with one or two surprises in store.

It’s a solid debut.

Hell Followed With Us – Andrew Joseph White

Andrew Joseph White claims his debut novel Hell Followed With Us was written because he was angry. On his website, we’re told “His work focuses on the intersection of transgender and autistic identity through the lens of horror, monstrosity, violence, and rage.” Got that right.

Benji is on the run. His father has just been killed and the Angels and their Graces are hunting him down, except that there is not really any place to go. That’s because these people – part of the cult that raised Benji – have unleased Armageddon via The Flood, decimating the world’s population.

The hellscape of the world White imagines is unlike anything I have ever read before. This is a world devoid of humanity, where goods are bartered with the exchange of human ears, where the monsters are

made of corpses and the Flood – sharpened ribs lining its back in a row of spines, eyeballs blinking between sinew, muscles so swollen they split the skin

At the beginning of the novel, when Benji is recaptured by the Angels, it is not so they can kill him: he’s important to the cult because he is a Seraph, or about to become one anyway. He has the power to control the Graces and The Flood and also, his mother is kind of a big deal at New Nazareth. Before they can get Benji back to New Nazareth, though, he is rescued by a ragtag group of teen resistors from the local Acheson LGBTQ+ Centre (ALC). It is his relationship with these people, specifically the handsome sharp-shooter, Nick, that propels Benji on a dangerous mission to take down New Nazareth once and for all.

Hell Followed With Us is an allegorical tale. Before Benji was Benji, he was Esther, betrothed to Theo. At their engagement ceremony, Benji’s mother tries to find a passage about marriage, something that would “hammer home” Benji’s role as a wife, something that could “beat the boy” out of him. Throughout the novel, Benji struggles to find acceptance and while the monsters might be dreamt from Whites very scary imagination, the big ideas- of acceptance, or personal autonomy, of the dangers of blindly following are anything but fiction.

Great read.

Suffer Love – Ashley Herring Blake

When his parents separate, and his father moves to Boston, Sam’s mother takes Sam and his younger sister, Olivia, to Woodmont, a suburb of Nashville to regroup. Sam just wants to get on with life, play baseball, and graduate.

Hadley St. Claire has been looking for love in all the wrong places ever since she found out that her father cheated on her mother. Now her parents are barely speaking to each other and she can’t stand to look at her father. Her most meaningful relationship is with her bestie, Kat. That is, until she and the new kid get paired together to rewrite an act from one of Shakespeare’s plays. (And, no, they don’t choose Romeo and Juliet.)

Sam and Hadley connect almost immediately. Perhaps they sense in each other that deep well of hurt, but Sam knows something that Hadley doesn’t and so he does his level best to keep his distance.

I want her to come with me and I want her eyes on mine and her words to fill up the space in my car. There are a million voices in my head right now, screaming about what a delusional idiot I am, but with her standing right in front of me, her lashes fanning her pink cheeks, they’re easy to ignore.

And, as is the way of books like this, these two can’t stay away from each other – try as they might.

Suffer Love is a book about messy family relationships, forgiveness and first love. Sam and Hadley are both likeable characters just trying to figure it all out. The book is a little bit sweet and a little bit angsty and I appreciated that Ashley Herring Blake didn’t try to go for a happily ever after, even though you really hope these two young people actually manage to get theirs.

Darkmere – Helen Maslin

I love a ghost story, especially if it takes place in a creepy castle on a windswept British coastline. Helen Maslin’s YA novel Darkmere offers readers two stories, one more successful than the other.

Seventeen-year-old Kate has been invited to Darkmere for the summer holidays by Leo, the boy she has a bit of a crush on. Darkmere is a castle he’s inherited, although he suggests “it isn’t a posh castle. It’ll be in a shit state because no one’s lived there for years. But it’s still a castle. And best of all it’s supposed to be haunted.”

Kate agrees to join Leo and his friends Beano, Hat-Man Dan and his girlfriend Lucie (who is only allowed to go if there will be another girl) and Jackson. The castle turns out to be remote and without any modern comforts or access to the Internet.

Darkmere Castle was built in 1825 by George Francis St Cloud as a wedding present for his young bride, Elinor. Tragically, Elinor took her own life during the second year of her marriage, and local legend has it that she died cursing her husband and his male heirs.

It is Elinor’s story that makes up the other part of the story. We learn about how she comes to be St Cloud’s bride and what her life is like when she arrives at Darkmere. As we learn more about her story – and it’s definitely the more interesting of the two narratives – things start to go sideways for the teens in the modern setting.

Maslin’s story, while not particularly scary, is atmospheric and filled with the requisite secret passages, strange sightings, and things that go bump in the night. I could have done without Kate’s story, really, although I guess without her arrival things at Darkmere would never have been stirred up.