Kimberly Giarratano

Sixteen-year-old Odile first meets the famous Doctor Henry Jekyll in a Paris zoo, where she has tried a magical spell on the monkeys—with disastrous results. To distract the doctor from her bloody business, Odile promises to procure elephant steaks from her butcher boyfriend. The Franco-Prussian War is raging and meat is scarce, so the wealthy are dining on slaughtered zoo animals while Odile sells dead rats for those desperate enough to eat anything.

When Odile worries that her witch powers will not save her younger brother from a degenerative eye disease, she turns to the gracious doctor for help. But she isn’t done experimenting, and in Doctor Jekyll’s laboratory, she creates a magical potion that transforms her brother into a monster. What she doesn’t know is that the shrewd doctor has been spying on her, and that his interest in her well-being springs not from charity, but from his fascination with magical transformation. Thus begins a retelling of the famous Doctor Jekyll’s story, as seen through the eyes of a poor orphan girl, who unintentionally gives the doctor the resources he needs to become the dangerous Mr. Hyde.

Best-selling author James Reese has created an enigmatic story. Odile’s first-person narrative is engaging and the descriptions of 19th-century Paris are historically authentic, despite the novel’s fantastical bent. Readers needn’t be familiar with the original Robert Louis Stevenson text to understand the message of this fresh take: that to mess with human nature welcomes disastrous and often deadly results.

In this sweet, albeit heart-wrenching debut, 16-year-old Brie Eagan dies from a broken heart just after her boyfriend declares he no longer loves her. Devastated and bitter, Brie ends up in a funky pizzeria, an odd limbo, with a few other souls who aren’t ready to move beyond the hereafter. There she meets the charming and sarcastic Patrick, who helps her navigate the afterlife and accompanies Brie as she spies on the living. But when she discovers painful truths about her friends and family, Brie’s actions become her undoing. (At one point, she crashes a Halloween party and terrifies her ex-boyfriend.) When she unexpectedly meets a long-lost friend, Brie has the opportunity to return to her old life for one day—but at a great cost. As she reluctantly moves through the five stages of grief, all the while trying to piece together the fractured lives of those she left behind, Brie discovers that life is too short and too precious to deny those who love you.

Set against the backdrop of a misty San Francisco, this tragic tale of a life cut short never borders on morose (as one could expect) but is rather hopeful and celebratory. Brie’s first-person narration is often light and funny. She’s a fan of Kate Winslet and cheesy '80s songs. She and Patrick banter like Sam and Diane or Chuck and Blair, which only turns up the heat on their suppressed feelings and intensifies the swoon-worthy romantic twist at the end. Despite all this, the author still manages to tackle tough issues such as teen suicide and social isolation that will strongly resonate with the target audience.

With The Catastrophic History of You and Me, her impressive debut offering, Jess Rothenberg shows great promise as an author worth following.

Seventeen-year-old Aria is a Dweller, a girl of privilege who lives in a sheltered city with no disease, conflict or threat of starvation. She spends most of her time in Realms, multidimensional virtual environments that surpass the imagination, whose motto is “Better than real.” Aria explains, “If you go to a party, you feel the people dancing around you, and you can smell them and hear the music. And you can change things, like choose more comfortable shoes to dance in. You can do anything you want.” Thus, Aria has never needed to rely on (or even develop) survival skills until she’s banished and thrown out into the wild.

Eighteen-year-old Perry is an Outsider. He is a hunter and second in line to lead his tribe, but he too is unwanted by his people. When Perry’s young nephew is kidnapped by the same people who betray Aria, the two become allies and embark on a treacherous journey in search of answers. As they fight off cannibals and dodge deadly electrical storms, they begin a desperate romance. But the answers they seek lead to larger questions, particularly involving Aria’s mother, that thrust them apart.

The first in a trilogy, Under the Never Sky is a captivating and atmospheric read. Debut author Veronica Rossi has created compelling, multifaceted characters—from Aria’s ambitious mother to Perry’s audacious best friend to the heart-wrenching Cinder, an orphan who holds more power in his body than the swirling skies above them—whose relationships to each other are complex and dynamic. Comparisons to The Hunger Games are inevitable; like Suzanne Collins’ groundbreaking novel, this well-written and well-plotted story is intense, dark and hopeful. Set to be published in more than 20 countries, Under the Never Sky will capture fans and hold them until the next installment is released.

Seventeen-year-old Karou is an unusual girl. She speaks foreign languages without any effort, is handy with a knife and sports naturally blue hair. By day, she is an art student in Prague, but during her off hours, she runs questionable errands for Brimstone, the father-like demon who raised her. Traveling through portals to the underground markets of Paris and Marrakesh, she buys human and animal teeth, which Brimstone strings together into necklaces in his magical shop. Despite her downworld upbringing, Brimstone is the only family Karou has, so when she is suddenly locked out of the shop, she resorts to dangerous tactics to get back home. Then she meets Akiva, an angel in the middle of an otherworldly battle. Fated and forbidden, Karou and Akiva struggle to be together when their sides are at war.

Laini Taylor’s beautifully written novel features a well-drawn cast of characters. From Karou’s serpent-bodied nanny to her arrogant actor ex-boyfriend, each character is alive in the reader’s imagination. Even the city of Prague feels personified, as Taylor describes it: “The wind carried the memory of magic, revolution, violins, and the cobbled lanes meandered like creeks. Thugs wore Mozart wigs and pushed chamber music on street corners, and marionettes hung in windows, making the whole city seem like a theater with unseen puppeteers crouched behind velvet.”

The first in a trilogy, Daughter of Smoke and Bone is a romantic, incredibly imaginative and gripping story; readers will find themselves heavily invested.