Once Was Lost by Sara Zarr

Samara Taylor is the fifteen year old daughter of a pastor workaholic and a mother who has been drinking so much, that she has landed herself into New Beginnings Recovery Center; her father wants to “officially tell” the congregation when he feels it is right, which is never. Sam is at a point in her life that she is questioning everything; the air conditioning is broken in their house, her ceiling fan is not working, it is the middle of a heat wave, the outside of the house looks like a disaster, all the while her father plunges himself into his congregation while Sam’s world is falling apart. Sam has been the one who has seen her mother drink because of the stress of being a pastor’s wife. Since Sam is the pastor’s daughter, she is part of the youth group and she is afraid of sharing, thinks she might be depressed, and is questioning why now that she is in high school, she is not feeling the understanding, friendship and bonding that she grew up believing existed in her community. Just as Sam is at her lowest, Jody Shaw, a sweet thirteen year old, disappears and the whole town is rocked to the core. There are searches in fields, house to house, and suspicions about suspects begin to permeate throughout the town. As Sam worries about what once was lost, she is also determined to talk to her mother in rehab, bring her home, and faithfully work on a family unit. This is a story of a young teen able to weather an internal storm of doubt and emerge a more secure, stronger daughter and friend. Students will love Zarr’s masterful storytelling, she weaves an engrossing tale of love and the power to heal.

Hate List by Jennifer Brown

What a great debut novel by Jennifer Brown! Imagine you are madly in love with a brooding bad boy and you list the names of everyone you hate in a notebook. Valerie Leftman is this girl, a junior at Garvin High, who has loved Nick Levil for the last few years. They are outcasts and bullied by the popular teens in their school. Only problem is, Nick takes the hate list and begins shooting on May 2 of their junior year after one bully, Christy, breaks Val’s MP3 player. Val desperately tries to stop the shooting, only to be accidentally shot by Nick, who then turns the gun on himself. As Valerie recuperates in the hospital with her leg wound, and also in the in-patient psychiatric ward, she continually replays her relationship with Nick and how she didn’t see what he was planning. Nick had an unhappy home life and Val’s parent’s fights had become very bitter. Her mother is suffocating and distrustful after the shooting and her father is furious with her total lack of judgment. After spending her summer recuperating and seeing a shrink, Dr. Hieler, Valerie decides to return to her high school “to see what’s out there.” There are many students who hate her, but one student, Jessica (who Val dove in front of and saved) continually reaches out and gets Val involved in the senior time capsule project. Throughout her senior year, Val slowly lets go of her love for Nick, realizes her parent’s marriage will not survive, owns up to her role that tragic day, and how to move forward, forgive, apologize, and heal. This is a sad, depressing book with a truly redemptive ending.