The Coldest Winter Ever by Sister Souljah

Streetwise, smart, and tough Winter Santiaga is the daughter of a Brooklyn drug kingpin. She and her sisters have grown up used to a life of luxury afforded by her father's protective but lavish attentions on them. The life all comes crashing down around them when her father is arrested and locked up and the government takes all the family's money and possessions. How will they all survive The Coldest Winter Ever?

Souljah, Sister . The Coldest Winter Ever: A Novel. New York: Pocket Books, 1999. Print.

Gossip Girl by C. Von Ziegesar

“She was the girl every boy wants and every girl wants to be” and most of the girls aren’t glad when Serena Van Der Woodsen is kicked out of her boarding school and comes back an elite private school in Manhattan. She starts tongues wagging with gossip about why she’s back and soon finds out that the friends she thought she had she doesn’t have. All anyone cares about is “What’s the Gossip Girl?”

Von, Ziegesar C. Gossip Girl. New York, NY: Warner Books, 2002. Print.

Twilight by Stephanie Meyer

Bella has to leave sunny Phoenix. Her mother has remarried and travels a lot with her new husband. So Bella picks up and moves to Forks, Washington, one of the rainiest places on earth. She doesn't really expect too much from the town. She’s spent a lot of time there growing up. But when she begins school, she is drawn to a handsome, almost too handsome, and pale young man. Things might be looking up after all. But Edward and his family have secrets and it is up to Bella to figure out what they are so that she and Edward can spend their Twilight years together.
Meyer, Stephenie. Twilight. New York: Little, Brown and Co, 2005. Print.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

America as we know it and its fifty states are gone. In its place is Panem and its twelve districts. Each year one boy and one girl from each of the districts are nominated and sent to the Capitol to participate in a fight to the death. In the competition, known as the Hunger Games, the competitors must kill off each other until only one person is left alive. When Katniss’s sister is selected for the Hunger Games Katniss refuses to let her go and volunteers to take her place. But what Katniss doesn't expect is to become a contender in the games herself. Together with fellow District 12 tribute Peeta, Katniss becomes the one to watch. But who will survive when there can only be one winner? Find out in the Hunger Games.

Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games. New York: Scholastic Press, 2008. Print.

Hate List by Jennifer Brown

Brown, Jennifer. Hate List. New York: Little, Brown, 2009. Print.

On May 2nd, Valerie Leftman's boyfriend, Nick, released a barrage of bullets into their school’s Commons. Valerie stopped the massacre and was shot in the process, but with Nick gone she is the only one left to blame for the list she helped Nick create and that he used to kill—a list of all the people that Valerie and Nick hated.

After spending her summer in seclusion Valerie must learn how to navigate alone the world that she and Nick abhorred and figure out how to get off the top of everyone else’s Hate List.

Parrotfish by Ellen Wittlinger

Wittlinger, Ellen. Parrotfish. Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2011. Print.

Angela Katz-McNair is a Boy! Oh, boy! Never comfortable as a girl Angela Katz-McNair decides to cut her hair short, buy some boy’s clothes, and ask everyone to start calling her Grady. Grady never expects his transformation to be as easy as that of the Parrotfish, a species of fish that naturally changes its gender over the span of its life, but he also didn’t think that anyone would be quite as cruel as some of the kids at school. Despite the taunts that Grady faces he manages to come out on top with the help of an initially befuddled family and best friend and the love of the hottest girl in school.

Go Ask Alice by Beatrice Sparks

Go Ask Alice is a controversial 1971 work credited to Beatrice Sparks who claimed that the book was the true diary of one of her troubled, drug-addicted female patients. In the first pages of the book the protagonist, who is never named, is presented as a typical teenager, concerned with her appearance, school, and boys. Soon, though, the girl is introduced to LSD at a party and her journey into the drug world begins. Both sober and straight episodes for the girl follow and the reader is taken along for the wild ride that her life becomes. The story culminates in the girl getting off the drug roller coaster only to overdose and die three weeks after writing her final diary entry.

Go Ask Alice was one of my favorite books as both a preteen and as a teenager and continues to be one of my favorite stories to this day. Although I realize that the book was probably not the diary of one of Beatrice Sparks’ patients but the work of Beatrice Sparks, herself, Go Ask Alice is still a story that sucks you in and makes you hold your breath until it is done. The logic of two sixteen year old girls opening their own store or the rationality of the main character holding on to scraps of paper and keeping her diary intact during her cross country trials seem irrelevant while you read it and become caught up in the train wreck that is the protagonist’s life.