49. Wild Bird by Wendelin Van Draanan

read on my iPhone
2017 Knopf
320 pgs.
YA CRF/Survival
Finished  June 6, 2018
Goodreads rating:  4.22 - 966 ratings
My rating: 5
Setting: Contemporary southern Utah desert

First line/s:  " 'Wren...'
     My name is floating around me.  Bounding on the clouds in my mind.
     'Wren, wake up Wren.....'
     Everything's cocoony.  Drifty.  The clouds are so soft."

My comments:  What a story!

I can’t decide what the best part of this book was, but I know I really enjoyed all its “layers,” the way it unfolded, how the past was revealed in bits and pieces.  And it was a truly believable story, both the bad stuff and the good stuff.  Setting and description – wonderful. Characterization – also wonderful, getting to know the protagonist and all the side characters was pitch perfect. Plot – mesmerizing.And as much as I would love to know exactly what happens next, I’m pretty sure it’s already accurately represented in my mind. There should be more books like this. And lastly, I’m really, really grateful that this book had a FEMALE protagonist.

Goodreads synopsis: 3:47 a.m. That's when they come for Wren Clemens. She's hustled out of her house and into a waiting car, then a plane, and then taken on a forced march into the desert. This is what happens to kids who've gone so far off the rails, their parents don't know what to do with them any more. This is wilderness therapy camp. 
          The Wren who arrives in the Utah desert is angry and bitter, and blaming everyone but herself. But angry can't put up a tent. And bitter won't start a fire. Wren's going to have to admit she needs help if she's going to survive.
          In her most incisive and insightful book yet, beloved author Wendelin Van Draanen's offers a remarkable portrait of a girl who too a wrong turn and got lost--but who may be able to find her way back again in the vast, harsh desert. 

43. The Odds of Loving Grover Cleveland by Rebekah Crane

read on my iPhone
2016, Skyscape
260 pgs.
YA CRF
Finished 7-26-2017
Goodreads rating:  3.96 - 8256 ratings
My rating: 4.5
Setting: Contemporary summer at a summer camp on a lake in Michigan

First line/s:  "The doorknob locks with a single key from the inside of the cabin.n  My bag hangs over my shoulder as I stare at the silver knob like it might start talking.  This can't be legal."

My comments:  Welcome to Camp Padua, where, on a lake in Michigan troubled teenagers spend the summer in cabins: living, eating, sharing (or not sharing) their problems and quirks and oddities.  Most of the story is told from the protagonist, Zander's, (or Z for short) point of view.  It's a good story, though a troubling one.  It's also the story of friendship between four young adults, two guys and two girls, all suffering from different mental problems.  Friendship.  Caring.  Trusting.  Loving.  that's what these kids ultimately found, but it wasn't easy.

Goodreads synopsis: According to sixteen-year-old Zander Osborne, nowhere is an actual place—and she’s just fine there. But her parents insist that she get out of her head—and her home state—and attend Camp Padua, a summer camp for at-risk teens.
          Zander does not fit in—or so she thinks. She has only one word for her fellow campers: crazy. In fact, the whole camp population exists somewhere between disaster and diagnosis. There’s her cabinmate Cassie, a self-described manic-depressive-bipolar-anorexic. Grover Cleveland (yes, like the president), a cute but confrontational boy who expects to be schizophrenic someday, odds being what they are. And Bek, a charmingly confounding pathological liar.
          But amid group “share-apy” sessions and forbidden late-night outings, unlikely friendships form, and as the Michigan summer heats up, the four teens begin to reveal their tragic secrets. Zander finds herself inextricably drawn to Grover’s earnest charms, and she begins to wonder if she could be happy. But first she must come completely unraveled to have any hope of putting herself back together again.

40. The Lost Causes by Lisa Koosed Etting and Alyssa Embree Schwartz

read on my iPhone, my first netgalley read
2017 (Sept 5) Kids Can Press
344 pgs.
YA Fantasy/SciFi
Finished 7/15/17
Goodreads rating:  3.89 - 37 ratings
My rating: 1 / A waste of time
Setting:  contemporary US

First line/s:  "The Cedar Springs High campus looked Photoshopped that morning."

My comments:  This was my first netgalley read, and they'll probably never let me read another one.  I'm so sad to say I didn't enjoy this book at all.  It took me forever to finish. And I almost didn't.  I really wanted to like it and I feel terrible giving it a bad review, but I must be honest.  It was ridiculous.  Nothing was believable in even the tiniest way, I found myself rolling my eyes over and over again. For so many reasons.  Stupid bad guys that did stupid things and still got away with them even though there were all sorts of (smart?) people investigating.  Using kids in the laid-back way they did. Having FBI agents totally unsupervised.  Uninteresting things going on and on and on and interesting things just mentioned quickly and done.  Boring writing, characters I didn't care about or that didn't seem based in reality.  I could go on, but would give away more spoilers.  Perhaps I feel this way because my usual genre is police procedurals and crime investigations and this is so far-fetched compared to them that you can't even compare them.

Goodreads synopsis: They're the kids that no one knows --- or no one wants to know. The rich depressive, the OCD chick, the hypochondriac, the drug abuser, the athlete with anger management issues. All chosen for intensive group therapy because they're out of other options. They're lost causes, the therapist tells them. She promises this support group will help them heal. 
          There's only one problem. She's not a therapist. And that water she offers? It contains a dangerous serum that gives each of the kids a psychic power. 
         Suddenly, they can think clearly, speak to ghosts, see the past, even move objects with their mind. Their earlier problems have vanished, but their new freedom comes with a price. 
Sabrina, Gabby, Z, Justin and Andrew are to help the FBI solve the grisly murder that has rocked their small town. Their new powers will help them uncover clues and follow leads that have eluded the authorities. Their outsider status gives them the perfect cover. 
          But the same traits that make them top investigators also make them vulnerable. As they close in on the murderer, they expose a much larger conspiracy that puts them directly in harm's way and makes them wonder who --- if anyone --- they can trust.

14. The Warden's Daughter by Jerry Spinelli

listened to on Audio cd in the car
6 unabridged cds, 7 hours
2017, Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers
352 pgs.
Middle grades Historical Fiction
Finished 3/6/17
Goodreads rating: 3.62 - 680 ratings
My rating: 4
Setting: 1959 Hancock County, (Pennsylvania?)

First line/s: (from Chapter 1, Cammie, 1959)
"Breakfast time in the prison.  The smell of fried scrapple filled the apartment.  It happened every morning."

My comments:  I listened to this book.  I don't know if I would have read it.  I seem to be getting particular about the way a story starts, and this one did not immediately draw me in.  But the reader, Carrington McDuffie, with her smoky almost male-sounding voice DID begin to draw me in.  The story takes place in 1959 in Brooklyn New York, where Cammie is being raised by her single dad, who happens to be the warden of the county jail.  This is the story of a motherless girl during the summer before seventh grade, the summer when the loss of her mother becomes too much to bear.  It was a mesmerizing story.  The ending takes place 50 years later, still told in the first person by the protagonist, and I almost wish that it had ended back in 1959.  I'm not sure why Spinelli decided to write it this way.  Perhaps the ending is for the adult readers....  This was definitely a marvelous book, once you get into it.

Goodreads synopsis:  From Newbery Medalist Jerry Spinelli (Maniac Magee, Stargirl) comes the "moving and memorable" (Kirkus Reviews, starred) story of a girl searching for happiness inside the walls of a prison.
          Cammie O'Reilly lives at the Hancock County Prison--not as a prisoner, she's the warden's daughter. She spends the mornings hanging out with shoplifters and reformed arsonists in the women's exercise yard, which gives Cammie a certain cache with her school friends. 
But even though Cammie's free to leave the prison, she's still stuck. And sad, and really mad. Her mother died saving her from harm when she was just a baby. You wouldn't think you could miss something you never had, but on the eve of her thirteenth birthday, the thing Cammie most wants is a mom. A prison might not be the best place to search for a mother, but Cammie is determined and she's willing to work with what she's got. 
           "Jerry Spinelli again proves why he's the king of storytellers" (Shelf Awarenss, starred) in this tale of a girl who learns that heroes can come in surprising disguises, and that even if we don't always get what we want, sometimes we really do get what we need. 
          "This book is never boring and never predictable. Fame, good and bad fortune, friendship and mental illness all make their way into [Cammie's] narrative."--The New York Times Book Review 
Praise for the works of Jerry Spinelli: 
          "Spinelli is a poet of the prepubescent. . . . No writer guides his young characters, and his readers, past these pitfalls and challenges and toward their futures with more compassion." --The New York Times 
          "It's almost unreal how much the children's book still resonates." --Bustle.com on Maniac Magee