Tag Archive | medical

Long-lived lies unravel – THE UNDOING OF THISTLE TATE, #yalit by Katelyn Detweiler (book review)

Jul23
book cover of The Undoing of Thistle Tate, by Katelyn Detweiler. Published by Holiday House | recommended on BooksYALove.com

Deadline time!
Final book manuscript due to her editor now…
but she’s not the author, not by a long shot!

Floundering in his own publishing woes after the car crash that killed Thistle’s mom, her dad puts the homeschooled young teen’s name on his big, big manuscript based on her short, short story – and it’s a hit!

A few years down the road, with the last book of the series almost complete, Thistle can almost see the finish line – no more book tours in ‘Lemonade Skies’ themed outfits, no more questions about ‘her’ plots and ‘her’ characters.

Thankfully, she’s always had neighbor Liam to talk to – best friend and secret-keeper ever, now maybe more…

During an appearance at her hometown Philly bookstore, Thistle is asked by a young man to visit his very ill sister, and she veers off Dad’s script by going to the hospital.

Is she falling for Oliver and his family?
Will Dad meet the deadline for the final book in time?
Why did she ever let all this get started?

Happy book birthday to The Undoing of Thistle Tate ! Ask for it NOW at your local library or independent bookstore.

Ever have a ‘little secret’ burgeon into something uncontrollable?
**kmm

Book info: The Undoing of Thistle Tate / Katelyn Detweiler. Margaret Ferguson Books: Holiday House Books, 2019. [author site] [publisher site] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.

Teen doctor diagnoses SYMPTOMS OF A HEARTBREAK, #YAlit by Sona Charaipotra

Jul16
book cover of Symptoms of a Heartbreak by Sona Charaipotra, published by Imprint/Macmillan | recommended on BooksYALove.com

Graduated from med school at 16,
the youngest doctor in America!
(still no driver license…)

As “Genius Girl” Saira begins her internship in pediatric oncology, she expects to be challenged by medical situations – not a hostile hospital supervisor or or failing the driving test yet again or falling in love with a patient.

Link thought she was another ‘cancer kid’ and doesn’t react well when he finds out she’s actually a doctor on his ward. Maybe he’ll let her help with his music competition online anyway.

Chemo, radiation, bone marrow donation – the terms and realities and after-effects play out among the young patients in the three interns’ caseload. And there are only 2 spots in the residency to follow…

How can she reconcile how the accounting department and medical teams see patients’ cancer treatment options so differently?

If Link’s treatment doesn’t work, how can she deal with being his last love when he is her first?

How will her extended Indian-American family react when they discover that Vish has been her ‘boyfriend’ so long because he’s not ready to come out?

Cancer has touched us all – what are you doing to help?
**kmm

Book info: Symptoms of a Heartbreak / Sona Charaipotra. Imprint (Macmillan), 2019. [author site] [publisher site] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.

With her math journal & new friends, she’s SOLVING FOR M – #MGlit by Jennifer Swender, illustrated by Jennifer Naalgichar (book review)

Jul6
book cover of Solving for M, by Jennifer Swender, illustrated by Jennifer Naalgichar, published by Crown Books for Young Readers | recommended on BooksYALove.com

Mom rushes to doctor appointment not on their calendar,
The fifth grade art teacher thinks drawing isn’t important,
Mika isn’t in any classes at all with her BFF!

But Mr. Vann’s math class turns out to be more fun than she could imagine -“One to a customer! Bonus points! Show your work, thinkers!” Mika really likes sketching her artistic math journal entries and makes new friends who love science puns and ballet.

Uh-oh…that small mole on Mom’s leg isn’t a small problem after all – how many cancer treatments until everything is okay?

Why does the principal always come by Mr. Vann’s class when they’re loud and moving around to demonstrate a math problem?

Why is their school advertising for a new fifth grade math teacher?

Grab this debut novel now and see Mika’s math journal as she works out problems numeric and otherwise. Read a sample chapter free here at the publisher’s website = one of my favorite 2019 titles!

If old friends don’t equal now-friends, how do you solve for new friends?
**kmm

Book info: Solving for M / Jennifer Swender, illustrated by Jennifer Naalgichar. Crown Books for Young Readers, 2019. [author site] [illustrator site] [publisher site] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.

The link between WILD AND CROOKED surprises everyone, #YAlit by Leah Thomas (book review)

Jun29
book cover of Wild and Crooked, by Leah Thomas. Published by Bloomsbury | recommended on BooksYALove.com

Old scandals have their own life span,
roles of tragic hero and heartless villain already set –
but what if there’s more to the story?

Son of a murdered man, Gus tries to push past cerebral palsy‘s effects on his body and small-town gossip about his moms, but high school is still brutal.

Called back to dad’s hometown after Grandma’s stroke, Kalyn enrolls in school using another name, her dad being a murderer in prison and all that.

Of course, Gus and Kalyn meet and become friendly before they figure out the connection… and that’s just the start of this wild ride of secrets, outright lies, tangled friendships, and squinting at the truth.

Ever befriended someone whose past needs forgetting?
**kmm

Book info: Wild and Crooked / Leah Thomas. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019. [publisher site] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.

Also by this author: Because You’ll Never Meet Me – no-spoiler recommendation here

How can he love her, the most WICKED FOX? by Kat Cho (YA book review)

Jun25
book cover of Wicked Fox, by Kat Cho. G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers | recommended on BooksYALove.com

An evil man’s soul sucked dry under Seoul’s full moon,
a human teen attacked by a goblin nearby,
who exactly is the new girl at his school?

Jihoon’s carefully cultivated disdain for schoolwork and academic status hides his insecurities about being abandoned to grandmother’s stern and loving care.

New student Miyoung tries to be unremarkable, but her supernatural beauty and strength alert the haters, like at the half-human spirit-fox’s last school.

Only by feeding on the gi life-force of humans can Miyoung and her full-gumiho mother stay immortal – now a detective is finding a pattern in ‘random’ murders during each full moon.

Both fatherless, their mothers distant, feeling so alone in the world… as their paths cross and recross – during full moons and at school – Jihoon and Miyoung start to fall for one another.

But Miyoung uses her greatest secret strength to save Jihoon during an attack which leaves his grandmother in a coma and both teens vulnerable to forces seeking to destroy them!

The legend of the nine-tailed gumiho’s origin threads through this tale of love and sacrifice – Happy #bookbirthday to The Wicked Fox!

How much would you give up to save someone you loved?
**kmm

Book info: Wicked Fox (Gumiho, book 1) / Kat Cho. G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, 2019. [author site] [publisher site] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.

Gone?! How?! Audiobooks make compelling reading

Jun13

This week’s pair of free audiobooks from AudioSYNC are disappearance tales, one a mystery, the other filled with researched facts, both great for summer reading with your ears!

Download before Wednesday 19 June 2019 for free by clicking on the title and following the simple instructions. You have these free AudioSYNC titles as long as you keep them on your device.

You can also check them out from your local library or buy through an indie bookstore – explore all the audiobook titles available so you can read while you ride, run, walk, or work – please stay aware of your surroundings!

CD cover of The Golden Day, by Ursula Dubosarsky | Read by Kate Rudd Published by Candlewick on Brilliance Audio | recommended on BooksYALove.com

The Golden Day, by Ursula Dubosarsky.

Read by Kate Rudd, Published by Candlewick on Brilliance Audio

On a mysterious field trip, their teacher disappears! Who can the 11 girls tell? Who is the poet they once met with their teacher?

As the Vietnam War rages on the nightly news, the girls fret about events closer to home… perhaps too close!

CD cover of Gulp, by Mary Roach | Read by Emily Woo Zeller Published by Tantor Audio | recommended on BooksYALove.com

Gulp, by Mary Roach

Read by Emily Woo Zeller , Published by Tantor Audio

The science of chewing, swallowing, digesting, and eliminating what we eat mixes with stories of exorcists, pet-food taste-testing labs, mad scientists, and terrorists in this well-researched and humorous look at food, nutrition, and our alimentary canals from one end to the other.

Disappeared? Gone forever? or not…
**kmm

FOUR THREE TWO ONE…survivor’s guilt may explode, by Courtney Stevens (YA book review)

Jun11
book cover of Four Three Two One, by Courtney Stevens. Published by Harper Teen | recommended on BooksYALove.com

An art installation,
recreating the NYC bus bombing
where they almost died with the others…
almost.
Is almost enough or too much?

A year after an angry white boy explodes himself on a sightseeing bus, the four teen survivors are still trying to piece their lives together:

Golden and Chan – young sweethearts from the same Kentucky commune,
Caroline – from New York wine country, unable to escape vicious Simon,
Rudy – former athlete, now wheelchair-bound in Florida.

A medic who helped them away from the burning bus has spent the past year honoring the victims online and will soon unveil the rebuilt bus with their families’ memories – on the very street where it happened.

He asks people who can’t attend to donate scholarship money for the survivors and invites Golden, Chan, Caroline, and Rudy to be there.

Can they really face that bus where 19 others died?
Can they undo their connections to the bomber’s choice to bomb that bus at that moment?
Can they move forward, alone or together, ever?

Golden’s tennis partner Becky arranges the road trip that will get them all to NYC for the ceremony…ready to remember or not.

How have you worked through being a survivor?
**kmm

Book info: Four Three Two One / Courtney Stevens. Harper Teen, 2018. [author site] [publisher site] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.

From away to here? LOVE FROM A TO Z, by S. K. Ali (YA book review)

Jun1
book cover of Love From A to Z, by S.K. Ali, published by Salaam Reads/Simon & Schuster | recommended on BooksYALove.com

Hate-filled rhetoric in class – by the teacher!
Unwelcome diagnosis = uncertain future.
This isn’t the time to fall in love, but…

Zayneb clashes with her anti-Muslim teacher one time too many, is suspended from her Indiana high school, and sent early to visit her aunt in Doha for spring break – taking along her marvels and oddities journal – as her friends keep investigating the teacher’s extremist connections.

Adam has dropped out of university in London, devoting every moment to creating before multiple sclerosis robs the feeling from his hands, just as it did for his late mom – now heading home to Dad and little sister in Doha, with his marvels and oddities journal and guitar.

Her aunt and his dad work at the same school, so Zayneb and Adam officially meet each other at a teachers’ party, then socialize with his friends, as a group of course.

Adam keeps his diagnosis secret – how could Dad cope with another loss?
Zayneb mourns for her grandmother – what’s this new news about her death while in Pakistan for a wedding?
Spring break is short – can Adam finish the art installation for his sister before he cannot do anything with his hands?

Long-term, long-distance – their possibility of a forever-relationship might be an oddity or a marvel or impossible…start their story with chapter one, a free excerpt on the publisher’s website.

From the author of Saints and Misfits, which I recommended here.

When have you squeezed much happiness into a small timeframe?
**kmm

Book info: Love from A to Z / S. K. Ali. Salaam Reads, 2019. [author site] [publisher site] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.

Teens starting anew – strong stories to read with your ears (audiobooks)

May30

With a support network, difficult times can be easier – but what if you’re trying to reboot your life when those closest to you want to pull you back down?

This week’s pair of free audiobooks from AudioSYNC bring us the stories of teens who’ve hit rock-bottom and are trying to clamber back up from terrible relationships and hard circumstances.

Download by clicking on the title and following the easy instructions. If you save your AudioSYNC books during their free week, you can keep them as long as you want!

CD cover of The First Time She Drowned, by Kerry Kletter | Read by Jorjeana Marie Published by Penguin Random House Audio/Listening Library | recommended on BooksYALove.com

The First Time She Drowned – by Kerry Kletter

Read by Jorjeana Marie. Published by Penguin Random House Audio/Listening Library

Thrown into a mental hospital at 16 by her mother, Cassie is now a legal adult, ready to go to college and push aside her mother’s toxic ‘love’.

But memories try to pull her down, allow her mother to ooze into her life – can she survive it all again?

CD cover of Wild Bird, by Wendelin Van Draanen | Read by Alex McKenna Published by Penguin Random House Audio/Listening Library | recommended on BooksYALove.com

Wild Bird, by Wendelin Van Draanen

Read by Alex McKenna. Published by Penguin Random House Audio/Listening Library

Wilderness therapy camp is 14-year-old Wren’s last chance to find her way clear from the drugs and questionable relationships she dove into when her family moved to a small town.

Eight weeks in the desert – to clear her mind, to find her way back into her family, to find ways to be happy with herself….

How can you support someone trying to move forward in life from dire problems?
**kmm

DON’T DATE ROSA SANTOS or the sea will take you! by Nina Moreno (YA book review)

May18
book cover of Don't Date Rosa Santos / Nina Moreno. Published by Disney Hyperion | recommended on BooksYALove.com

Cursed by the inexorable ocean,
Claimed by the Cuban heritage never discussed,
where is Rosa called to go?

Their unborn daughters never knew their fathers who died in the tumultuous seas…her grandmother and mother are so alike, yet so different.

Mimi is the healer and solid cornerstone of their Florida town, where Mama occasionally wanders back from her art commissions, where Rosa decided to stay after a childhood on the road, where her grandmother’s beloved Cuba is the shared heritage of many, and the sea’s curse on men loved by the Santos women is very well-known.

Rosa is fast-tracking high school to make sure she gets into a college with study abroad in Cuba (why doesn’t Mimi want to go back or even talk about her homeland?) and will never, ever date a sailor (ever).

When Port Coral’s festival loses its sponsor and developers threaten to buy up the waterfront, Rosa’s legendary organizing skills help her neighbors find their own way to bring tourist dollars to town and bring young sailor Alex into her life.

Everyone knows you don’t date Santos women, yet baker Alex dares…and Rosa dreams of happy endings, for once.

When have you gone against ‘common wisdom’ and come out ahead?
**kmm

Book info: Don’t Date Rosa Santos / Nina Moreno. Disney Hyperion, 2019. [author site] [publisher site] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.