Emily the Strange: the Lost Days by Rob Reger and Jessica Gruner

I must confess, I LOVE EMILY! I love her sarcasm, her attitude, her unflagging pessimism, her love of cats. This is not the graphic novel about Emily, but there are drawings and highlights in the story.

In this story, she becomes conscious in a strange town, on a park bench. She doesn't know who she is, why she is on the bench or where the bench is located. Practical girl, she starts making a list of things she's doesn't know and things she does. So begins the adventure of the girl who always wears black and likes the number 13.

A book for all of us who secretly wish we could wear black all the time...

The Patron Saint of Butterflies by Cecilia Galante

COULDN'T PUT THIS ONE DOWN! Ever have a book grab you, making you think about it even when you can't be reading it? This is one of those books. I don't want to spoil it, so I'll be brief about the plot: the story follows two girls that have been raised in a religious commune. They are now teens, and their carefully constructed existence is teetering on the brink.

After reading the whole book and pondering that mystery of why I couldn't put it down, I read the notes at the end. The author was actually raised in a similar commune, which explains the painful clarity of the story. Highly recommend this one.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

If you like dark books, this is one for you. It begins with a hand holding a knife in the darkness, literally bloody murder, and a baby boy getting adopted by ghosts that live in the graveyard. I really didn't expect to like this book, but it grabbed me. The ghosts name the boy Nobody Owens, Bod for short, and raise him as their own child. Bod grows to be a pre-teen in this strange place he calls home until the man who murdered his parents finds out he's still around and comes looking for him.

The scary man and the murder plot really play second-fiddle to the boy and his graveyard family. Although not raised by wolves, Bod has a lot in more in common with Mowgli from Jungle Book than with Oliver Twist. His caretakers adore him, he is able to make real-live friends and make sense of his strange graveyard world.

Even without the comic book style illustrations, this book is a keeper.

Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison

I tend to read a lot of sci-fi and post-apocalyptic fiction, so here's a review about a book that is HILARIOUS.

The main character is a teen girl, Georgia Nicolson. As you can tell from the title, the setting is Great Britain (where snogging=kissing). One of Georgia's issues is that she has "a three-year-old sister who may have peed somewhere in my room." Georgia also struggles with self-esteem ("I am very ugly and need to go into an ugly home"), owns a really big wild fat cat and has a crush on a boy. The best part about Georgia is she is FUNNY, in a really dry way.

Read this one for the lulz.

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

This is the first of a series by Rick Riordan, and I loved it. It's action-packed, sarcastic enough to not take itself too seriously, and full of characters that are at least two-dimensional. Even the table of contents is amusing (my personal fav is Three Old Ladies Knit the Socks of Death).

Riordan has taken the world of Greek mythology and seamlessly woven it into modern day life. That world has always held a fascination for me, with the immortals wreaking havoc and throwing tantrums, and the heroes saving the day again, so bringing it into the 21st century made for a very good read. The plot is compelling, beginning with the main character, Percy Jackson. Percy gets kicked out of school---A LOT---and appears to have a learning disability, dyslexia. As it turns out (and rather quickly), he is so much more than a kid with a reading problem. He is intimately related to Poseidon (god of the Sea), and has made several other gods angry quite by accident. Along the way he finds out exactly what he is capable of and who he can trust.

You might as well check out the second in this series (Sea of Monsters) at the same time as this one---you will read it really fast and want to keep going!