We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

Cady loves to spend summers with her family on their private island with her two cousins and their "adopted" friend Gat. The summer they all turned fifteen was particularly memorable as that was the summer she fell in love with Gat. At the same time, however, it was also the summer of a traumatic accident that stole a number of her memories from that year. After a year of dealing with her amnesia, Cady and her family are back on the island. She's looking forward to reuniting with her best friend because together they make up the "Liars." But things are obviously different as the family home has been torn down and rebuilt, her Liars insist upon not having anything to do with the family that isn't quite the same as it had been, and nobody tells her what happened on the night she lost her accident. As she slowly remembers what happened the year she was fifteen, she recalls a family that constantly bickered, a family darkened with greed and prejudice, a family that tore each other apart. If only Cady could remember what happened to change everything.

It took me a while to get into this novel. It is a little disjointed in the writing. Come the start of the summer seventeen, it switches between the current summer and the one when they were fifteen and sometimes the transitions are not that clear. She throws in these fairy tales that she's rewritten. They don't necessarily add to the story, but through them you can see a reflection of her own story, which is interesting, especially later on when she starts to figure things out. The last one hundred or so pages are the most gripping. It's at that point that the clues to the past become clearer and the reader along with Cady start to figure out what's going on - then and now. I know for me I got an inkling of the truth and desperately wanted to finish just to see if I was right. The payoff is worth it. Come the last half of the novel, the characters become clearer - especially the grandfather and aunts as they fight for power and how the children don't want any part of it. It comes to a point that you can almost sympathize with Cady and her grand scheme - however twisted it may be. The novel builds nicely to the big reveal, once you get past the first hundred pages, although I disagree with the book flap that says it is full of suspense. While there is the mystery of what happened to Cady, it's not edge-of-your-seat like I imagine suspense to be.

Although it took me time to get invested in this novel, I was glad that I stuck with it to the end. 
MMK

Find Me by Romily Bernard

This teen mystery/romance fiction tale received a couple of state awards in the author's native Georgia.  It is not bad.  For me it was a little predictable but for a teen perhaps it might not be so.

Wicket and her sister Lily lost their mother to suicide (her escape from an abusive, criminal husband) and their father is running from cops.  They have bounced around from one foster home to another until their lives stabilized with Bren and Scott.  Lily is settling in nicely and enjoying new clothes, new friends, a safe environment.  Wick, who had become a hacker partly to protect herself from her father by helping him and partly to help others receives a message and a diary of a girl who recently committed suicide.  The message simply says find me.  Through a series of traps Wick finds out Lily told Tassy, the dead girl's sister about Wick.  Wick finds out the dead girl committed suicide because an older male "friend" then rapist has his sights set on Lily.  A cop, Carson and the father of the dead girl are both watching Wick's home.  Wick believes Carson is hoping she will lead him to her father.  Wick believes the father is watching Lily.  Wick, not trusting the foster parents, not trusting the law, not trusting anyone but herself has taken it upon herself to protect Lily from the rapist and their father, to find the rapist, to keep whatever Carson is trying to find out secret and to help her father's friend Joe with the latest scam believing she must to keep herself safe.  Enter Griff, who truly finds her fascinating and truly cares about her and truly tries to get her to trust him.  Griff knows Joe and is somehow in on the scam.  Griff keeps insisting on seeing Wick and inserting himself into all the twisted issues in her life.  How can she trust someone who is helping Joe?  All the different threads eventually untangle quite satisfactorily but not before Wick and Lily are both nearly killed by the rapist who has stolen Lily.  I'm kind of annoyed by all the teen girls taking on dangerous crime solving solo rather than trusting someone but this time it makes for an exciting storywith a happy ending.

Pushing the Limits by Katie McGarry

This is called a romance but it is very much more than that and it is not about pushing sex!

Echo and Noah are both traumatized teens who used to be very different from who they are as the book starts.  They were popular.  They were smart.  He was a jock, she an award winning artist.  They are now in an experimental counseling project hopefully to help them deal with their traumas and to move on. They do want to move on they say they want normal.  Initially, except for the counselor Echo's friends and probably former friends, her father, her step mother are all irritatingly clueless to her needs.  Noah has experienced something similar but has found a new group of friends who use marijuana and drink beer.  He is kept from the only thing important to him, his younger brothers, by equally clueless adults in his life.  Both are seniors only a couple of months from graduation.  After their counselor asks Echo to tutor Noah they unexpectedly fall in love.  Its a very special relationship that is enjoyable to read.  For Echo getting to normal means remembering what happened to her and for Noah it means letting go of anger.  His anger extends to abusive foster parents, the people in authority who refused to believe him and the foster parents of his little brothers who are trying to keep them from him.  I'll say right now that the adults only moved slightly towards understanding these two very likable, determined, hurt teens.  It is Echo and Noah who must change the most.  Noah has to stop fighting everyone so hard, apologize.  Echo remembers her trauma accepts that the person who caused it cannot change, accepts that she has been replaced in her family by a stepmother and her new half brother.  They move on, they are excited about their future, perhaps it will be together.  Noah's brothers will be in his and Echo's art is a part of her future.  I think the story ties up too neatly, still I enjoyed it.  Recommended JDW