Jellicoe Road is a layered contemporary with a carefully-woven-in mystery. It’s beautifully written. But I have to admit, it’s also just the kind of book that makes me feel a little dumb, because I regularly felt like I didn’t fully understand everything that was going on (especially in the beginning). This can happen with complex books—I am often a lazy reader and don’t always pick up on very subtle nuances, which abound in this book. Still, that doesn’t make it a bad book and I did enjoy it (things made sense for me by the end).

Taylor Markham is 17 and she’s now the leader of all the houses at her boarding school outside a small town in Australia. She’s kind of an unlikely leader and isn’t overly confident in her abilities, but she’s stubborn enough to want to try. She’s had to learn to be kind of tough, as her mom abandoned her at a 7-11 when she was 11.

There’s an alternating storyline that takes place 20 years earlier about five kids around the same age as Taylor. Three of them survived a terrible car wreck on Jellicoe Road and ended up at the school, with the others being a local and a cadet. It’s not clear how this relates to Taylor, though naturally you suspect it must in some way.

Being the leader matters for Taylor because one of the main focuses of the book is the “war“ fought between the Jellicoe School kids, the “Cadets” (city kids who camp out for 6 weeks at the beginning of the school year for some outdoor experience), and the “Townies” (self-explanatory). The war is really about territory, thought there being teen boys involved, there’s also a spatter of physical violence. Who has what territory limits the areas the different groups can go. The first quarter to third of the book is full of complicated negotiations for territory and hostages.

Taylor’s main adult confidante is Hannah (who’s more of a friend than anything—and the one who found her at the 7-11). Hannah lives at a house very close to the school and is in the process of writing a book that Taylor’s curious about but has never read—at least not until Hannah mysteriously disappears near the beginning. The disappearance is very distressing for Taylor, but Hannah’s book ties into the history of the kids from the car wreck.

Things do come together very nicely at the end, and although it felt inevitable (as all good endings do), it wasn’t really predictable. I don’t want to give anything away, so I’m not going to say any more about the story, but if you enjoy nuanced and lovely storytelling you could very well love this book.

For full disclosure, this author is going to be my faculty mentor for the first semester of my MFA, which is why I picked up her books. However, I haven’t met her yet so I figured I can still be trusted with a review.

This book packs a lot in just a few pages (my copy is just over 160 pages). It really captures how much it can suck to be a teen girl nowadays—how unfair the world is with its conflicting rules about behavior. Jessica is fourteen and she’s suddenly discovered boys—and that they’ve noticed her, too. She takes walks along a busy road and when a man looks at her, she swings her hips and lifts her eyes.

I know this is stupid, inviting trouble. But it feels so good to be wanted, I can’t help myself.

All she really wants is to go out with Jason, but he doesn’t seem to care about her even though she keeps trying to insert herself into his life. She has an encounter with him at a party and

…after being kissed by Jason Reilly, I feel as if nothing can penetrate me. It’s like he put an invisible shield over my body with his wandering hands.

But he doesn’t feel the connection she does, or the specialness of what they did. She wonders,

How can I feel such longing for what was between us, and he doesn’t? I wish more than anything I could go back in time, fix the ugly parts of me that made him turn away.

But he’s not happy with just tossing her to the side. No, he spreads a story about her (that isn’t really true, anyway) and overnight she’s got a “reputation.” She also has met (on one of her walks, no less) a 20-year-old named Ted who’s clearly interested in her even if he doesn’t hold a candle to Jason. He believes her when she says she’s 18 and she ends up messing around with him and regretting it. She keeps Ted a secret from everyone.

In addition to her boy troubles, Jessica’s dealing with family drama and growing apart from her best friend, Elisabeth. Her dad is marrying his new girlfriend and her mom hasn’t gotten over the fact that he cheated and left her. Elisabeth is pissed off at the way Jessica is putting herself out there for Jason, when Elisabeth knows he’s not worth it.

Note that this book is not anti-sex. It’s all about self-respect and knowing who you are and what you actually want. It’s just not subtle, and felt almost like a fable to me, partially because of the shortness and partly because it was so message-heavy. But it still didn’t feel preachy. It’s just that there was no question what the point of each scene was. I suppose this is really more of a novella than a novel, with its laser-focused plot.

Although I enjoyed it, I think Easy would be a perfect read for younger teens who are more on the reluctant reader side. Short and easy to understand with a positive message about self-worth. It’s appropriate for boys, too, because of the questions it raises. A perfect opportunity to ask boys why they do that thing—why after someone has done something nice for you, do you feel compelled to do the meanest thing possible to that person and try to ruin their life? Why not at least say thank you like your mom taught you and leave it at that? I seriously don’t understand.

Who knew you could write a book set almost entirely at a comic con? Apparently you can because Tash managed it.

Graham is in love with his best friend, Roxy, who’s also his next door neighbor. She’s either oblivious or in denial. But not only are they friends, they’re also a comics-generating partnership. She’s the artist and he’s the writer. And they are massive super-fans of a somewhat obscure sci-fi comics series that had a short-lived life. Think Firefly in terms of fandom, though the story is about an alien who comes to Earth and meets a man. There’s love involved.

The comics were written by a genius who’s made himself a hermit since the series ended. There is a lot of speculation about him. Right before their very own New York Comic Con starts, Graham and Roxy find out the elusive man is coming to do a talk, and they pretty much freak out. Graham plans to impress Roxy by getting exclusive tickets to the event and decided he will confess his love over the weekend.

However, things do not go as planned at all. They are so off-plan that Graham goes a little crazy, especially when he angry-drinks a few beers. It looks like maybe everything is damaged beyond repair. But is it? Sometimes the plan isn’t the right thing, after all.

This is a cute book, very light even though it deals with the pain of unrequited love (I’m not giving anything away since it’s in the title). It’s also fun and there are loads of pop culture references, some of which I think are made up, even though there were some I got. Still, the sense of fun is there throughout, and anyone who’s a bit of a fandom geek will recognize themselves and their friends, and will appreciate the book.

Everybody Sees the Ants is outwardly about bullying, but it’s really about many things, including masculinity, self-respect, and standing up for yourself. It’s really creative and like many of King’s books, has more than a touch of magical realism.

Lucky Linderman is a passive Pennsylvania kid. Unfortunately, he’s also got a big target on his back because the meanest bully in town has made it his personal mission to punish Lucky just for existing. Nader favors physical punishment, and the book’s inciting incident is when he injures Lucky significantly enough that Lucky’s mom takes him away to Arizona after school’s out. This introduces Lucky to two more adults—his aunt and uncle—who become important in his life.

Prior to the book starting, Lucky managed to get himself in hot water over an assignment. He was supposed to create a survey question for a class, and his offering was, “If you were going to commit suicide, what method would you choose?” Not the most well-thought-out thing, since it got the school and his parents all freaked out and convinced he was suicidal. And he isn’t overtly suicidal, even if he is supremely unhappy with his life. But there are definitely red flags that go up throughout the book that indicate to the reader that things aren’t quite healthy in Lucky’s head, even if he doesn’t see it himself.

It is significant to the story that none of these supposedly well-meaning adults seem to think anything needs to be done about Nader, or at least they don’t do anything about it. His father avoids Lucky and his mom by spending all his time at work; his mom avoids dealing with anything—including her own marital troubles—by swimming lap after lap at the pool.

Passivity is a major theme in the book, and Lucky has to learn to overcome his. His grandfather helps him through his dreams, where Lucky attempts to rescue the man who’s officially MIA in Laos from the Vietnam War. It’s in the dreams where Lucky actually feels powerful. His grandfather even helps him see that he’s not crazy even though he sees ants—a little group of characters that appeared because of all the stress with Nader. They follow Lucky around and comment on his life, giving voice to his fears. As the name of the book implies, everybody’s got a little bit of the crazy in them because that’s part of being alive—all people have some things in their lives that make them feel out of control.

One of the great strengths of the book is the numerous supporting characters. As you’d expect in a book from King, the characters are all deeply drawn and interesting. The adults especially are as flawed as Lucky (if not more). The writing style is uncomplicated and it fits Lucky’s voice perfectly. There isn’t really a strong plot per se, but the story doesn’t suffer for it as we live Lucky’s complicated life with him.

Overall, Everybody Sees the Ants is a solid exploration of bullying and building self-respect—and it’s funny, too.

Dessen is one of my favorite YA authors because she paints such realistic teens. Yes, they’re white and usually reasonably well off with mostly functional families around them. But still, she digs deep into their lives and makes even an average girl interesting.

Eighteen-year-old Louna Barrett is the daughter of a very successful wedding planner and works most of the weddings herself. She doesn’t necessarily love it but it’s what she knows and she’s good at it, and she only has to do it until she goes off to college. Louna is incredibly guarded, due to a tragedy that we know very little about for the first part of the book. When she meets Ambrose, she can’t stand him because he’s an irresponsible hassle. When her mom hires him to work for the company for the summer, Louna can’t believe it. She’s got to work with this idiot.

Louna and Ambrose first meet at his mother’s wedding, where she has to retrieve him for pictures with his mother and the rest of the family. Her first thought is that he’s really good-looking, but her second thought is that he was too annoying. She says:

He was like that upside-down exclamation point at the beginning of a sentence in Spanish, the mere appearance of which warned of something complicated ahead.

He’s outside flirting with a couple girls instead of inside where he needs to be, and Louna strong-arms him inside. Later he asks her to dance and makes it clear he’s interested in her even though she turns him down. So she isn’t happy to be stuck working with him, but she tries to make the best of it by offloading some of her work to him.

Once it gets going, the book alternates between the current day, where Louna’s dealing with Ambrose, and flashbacks to her time with Ethan, her first real love. We know something really bad happened to him and it takes a little while before we get the full story. Still, we know that Ethan was a great guy and it’s no wonder Louna can’t get over him and move on. In the present day, Louna and Ambrose make a bet that requires him to date just one girl for seven weeks and her to date multiple guys over the same period.

I have to admit that this wasn’t my favorite Dessen novel. I never really warmed up to Ambrose. I mean, it’s not like he was a horrible guy, but he did do some jerky things, even if sometimes it was passively—by not doing or saying something he should have. And Louna herself is a little on the bland side.

That’s not to say that the book doesn’t have strengths. A lot of people will love the background of all the weddings, and I admit even though I find weddings tedious, those elements were actually interesting to me because it went totally behind the scenes and aired some of the dirty laundry. And Louna’s best friend, Jilly, is entertaining and very likable. And supportive. Louna’s mom and her business partner, William, are both good characters, too.

So I’d definitely recommend this for Dessen’s fans, as well as anyone who really digs weddings.