Plot: In two earlier novels, Theresa Schurman, the Viennese violinist/sleuth who passes herself off as a man for the chance to play music professionally, has solved mysteries in the age of Haydn and Mozart. Now, at age 18, she's dispatched to Paris by Emperor Joseph II to observe and suss out a potential court conspiracy against Marie Antoinette. Schurman's undercover adventures in pre-revolutionary Paris encompass a stay in a marvelously described brothel, visits to balls and salons, a night in the Bastille, and a potential romance with the violin virtuoso the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, the best swordsman in Paris. The settings and situations are enchanting and varied; Dunlap is adept at on-the-fly description and at lacing intrigue with romance. This novel's central mystery, though, takes quite a number of chapters to come into focus, and the stakes feel low for Theresa throughout the novel's first half.

Prose/Style: Dunlap proves an arresting tour guide through this rich milieu, summoning up the past without slowing down the storytelling. Author and protagonist alike boast an epigrammatic wit. The touch is light, but the scenery and chatter are sumptuous.

Originality: There's much that's delightful in Dunlap's evocation of court life and dressmaking in late 18^th-century Paris. The author’s eye for compelling detail and ear for memorable dialogue keep "The Paris Affair" fresher than its somewhat generic title promises. The mystery itself, ultimately, proves less engaging than the characters and revelations that Theresa encounters as she chases down the truth. Theresa's musings about music, or the power of fine lace, or her eavesdropping on the dishing of a pair of seamstresses, are the heart of the novel's appeal.

Character Development: Theresa stands as a fascinating protagonist, a woman whose nimble navigation of society's expectations and several burgeoning romances are exciting and inspiring, even more so than the sleuthing that drives the novel's plot. The people she encounters are likewise memorable, complex, and surprising, especially the chevalier.

Blurb: This sparkling historical mystery conjures up the salons, fashion, and gossip of Marie Antoinette's Paris, with a winning emphasis on the power of music and the roles that society allowed women.

Plot: Engle's Metal Mouth ties a compelling romance to an unpredictable mystery and finds in both thoughtful contemporary resonance. After getting struck by lightning, teen Mahlorie begins hearing the thoughts of a boy named Dyson in her head, and Dyson likewise hears hers. As the two grow intimate, Mahlorie considers urgent questions about whether she could love someone she hasn't seen or who might not be conventionally attractive. Also strong are the hints at a scientific explanation (involving metal braces!) for the teenagers' connection and the suggestions that it might actually be supernatural. The climax of the book's first section is rushed and abrupt, and readers will wonder why Mahlorie doesn't search for information about Dyson online much earlier than she does, but Metal Mouth overall stands as a sharply plotted pleasure.

Prose/Style: The chatter of Engle's teen characters is buoyant and appealing. Her descriptions are brisk and clear, and she deftly charts Mahlorie's consciousness, keeping the flow of thought strong and memorable. Engle's prose, like the protagonist, has the spark of electricity to it, and the author excels at the surprising joke or the on-the-fly observation that invites readers to linger. Once in a while, though, in scenes of action, that flow of thought gushes too quickly, and readers don't always receive a clear image of what's physically happening in Mahlorie's world, as in the scene involving a swamp and an alligator.

Originality: Readers may guess at some of the surprises that Engle has in store, but certainly not all of them. Other familiar YA novels take on some similar elements involving comas, car accidents, and possible supernatural connections, but Engle imbues the material with new life, heart, and inventiveness. The author is especially good at seizing the comic possibilities of trying to get through a family dinner or math class when the voice of a teenage boy is talking away inside the protagonist's head.

Character Development: Protagonist Mahlorie is an appealingly independent spirit with strong opinions and the good sense to know that she doesn't actually need a makeover. Her best friend Shai and creepy cousin Phillip both are well-defined presences, and Mahlorie's mother, a romance novelist, is an amusing (though static) creation. The novel's mystery structure, unfortunately, keeps Dyson from fully flowering as a character, as the plot's integrity depends upon him not revealing too much about himself to the young woman whose brain his mind has touched.

Blurb: Jaimie Engle's Metal Mouth is a wry and wise romantic heartbreaker touched with mystery, lightning, and shivery hints of the supernatural. 

Plot: Tully’s story centers on a slow-burning mystery that takes many pages to really get going and ultimately involves more lengthy monologues about adult disappointment, infidelity, and local history than readers might expect from a YA novel. But the book’s heart is in the tangled relationship between its three point-of-view characters, Zoe, Parker, and Ethan, which proves so arresting from the start that, by the time the dead body turns up, readers might have forgotten the book is a mystery at all. Tully is adept at playing her POVs against each other, structuring the chapters in interesting ways. The mystery plot is engaging, but most of its significant action occurs in the past – Tully’s leads get told what happened. Instead, what’s most compelling here are those leads’ hearts and secrets, which we discover along with them, as they observe (sometimes spy on!) and get to know each other.

Prose/Style: Tully tells her story with clarity and confidence. The descriptions are quick and precise; her dialogue is memorable; and her characters’ observations about class and their milieu feel both insightful but also true to their youthful ages. Zoe’s perspective starts as the novel’s most interesting, especially as she rages against her mother, faces small humiliations at a new job, and seems to have no idea how much attention she’s paid by the men and boys around her.

Originality: Tully’s milieu, characters, and twists are singular. The motives behind the mystery are less fresh, as is a late-book twist right out of Dickens’ work, but overall The Lake Never Tells stands out in the field of YA novels. The pleasure in Tully's story comes from meeting her tender, damaged, funny trio of young heroes as they solve a summer mystery and discover each other's hearts.

Character Development: Tully’s three point-of-view characters are each unique, convincing, compelling creations, and they’re more fascinating, in the end, than the mystery in which they get embroiled. Each is a logical product of their upbringing, and each is capable of surprising themselves – and readers. If the adults around them seem less well rounded, well, isn’t that what the world feels like for young people?

Plot: Phillip, the new kid in school in Harwood's coming-of-age novel, faces realistic and relatable student and teen problems. The only thing that's going well for him is his English class, where he reads Ender's Game and discovers an outlet for his frustrations in the teacher's daily "jam sessions," free writing exercises that jump off from a creative prompt. Harwood's novel makes the everyday dramatic and urgent. Here, Phillip's fear of disappointing his mother, or his worry about what will happen when a suspended bully returns to school, prove gripping.

Prose/Style: Harwood's prose is clear and unadorned, offering little in the way of description. Instead, it's highly sensitive to Phillip's feelings as he bumbles through his school days and slowly discovers who his friends are. The kids' dialogue is sometimes flat, lacking the inventive weirdness of actual child-chatter, but the adults' speech is ideal: authority figures who soothingly help point Phillip (and possibly young readers) toward strategies for handling anxiety. Some passages of action falter, and more rigorous proofreading would standardize distractingly inconsistent product names. For most of the book, though, the prose persuasively connects Phillip's feelings to the scenes around him.

Originality: Harwood invests familiar character types with fresh power: spitball-blowing bullies; a fantasy-obsessed band of social outsiders; and a sensitive and observant English teacher. The embarrassments and minor disasters that Philip experiences in Jam Sessions aren't new, but through his eyes they feel fresh. Classroom scenes of Phillip and other students writing and sharing their own creative works based on a teacher's prompt are especially strong, as each kid's writing is unique and revealing of their personas. (That's true, also, of the instructor's sensitive responses.)

Character Development: Phillip, his friends, his teachers, his mother, and even his bullies all feel alive on the page. These seem like real kids, in a convincing world, facing real problems that readers might learn from – but that aspect of the book never interferes with the narrative's momentum or excitement.

Plot: O’Farrell's novel boasts a clever mystery plot with satisfying twists and surprises and inspired sleuthing from its heroine, twelve-year-old Simone, in a variety of appealing Parisian settings. This middle grade mystery is buoyant and inviting, but its pacing is inconsistent, and quite a few chapters pass before the plot really kicks in and Simone is tasked with outwitting Le Volpe Russo, a thief of counterfeits. The novel's structure and plotting resembles that of a later book in a series rather than the first, as Simone here already is a respected agent of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, along with her mother. With that status quo already established, the novel's first third offers little suspense or narrative momentum as it introduces Simone's double life, where she already knows everyone, excels at her duties, and faces little conflict.

Prose/Style: Much like the pastries and the Paris he describes, O'Farrell's prose is rich, striking, and memorable -- if occasionally a little indulgent. Simone's world is rendered with wit and vigor, and O'Farrell understands that young readers shouldn't be talked down to. He presents a clever girl's clever thoughts and lets them barrel on. Sometimes, the description becomes a little thick, as in the multi-page introduction to Simone's father's patisserie, and O'Farrell's tendency to overload dialogue tags with description slows some scene's momentum.

Originality: The setting, the characters, the witty mystery, the surprising clues -- simply put, Simone LaFray and the Chocolatiers' Ball stands alone as a young readers' novel of vigorous comic invention.

Character Development: Confident, brilliant Simone is a standout creation, a young girl so certain of her extraordinary nature that she takes pains at all times not to stand out. O'Farrell mines warm humor from the contrast between patient, observant Simone and her pastry chef father, and the story gains power and excitement when Simone's father seems to become a target of Le Volpe Russo. That's essential, because Simone starts the novel as an established spy, respected by the government, and never really has much to prove to herself or to readers. The revelation, late in the book, that she's also one of the most bewitching singers in Paris, might be one extraordinary trait too many for a relatable protagonist.

Plot: A young heroine uncovers the truth about her family legacy while attending a mysterious boarding school in Scotland in Samuels's familiar, but beautifully constructed YA supernatural mystery.

Prose: Samuels displays a striking instinct for crafting authentic young adult voices. Phoebe's narration is expressive, layered, thoughtful, and intimate. Descriptions are immediate and evocative, while dialogue is artfully crafted and real.

Originality: The concept of a remote boarding school for individuals gifted (or cursed) with exceptional abilities, is a common trope. Despite the unoriginal conceit, Samuels delivers a YA novel that expertly weaves themes of troubled friendships, identity, and family changes with an evocative paranormal mystery.

Character/Execution: Phoebe's social struggles, changing sense of self, and relationship with her grandmother are poignantly conveyed. Samuels tells an engaging story that, while it adheres to genre conventions in terms of concept, ultimately stands apart. Readers will find themselves immediately engaged with the narrative, as Phoebe is not just telling her story--but speaking truly and directly to the reader.

Plot: In Nathaniel’s Got the Blues, Heaney has crafted an engaging and surprising narrative with a streamlined plot, solid pacing, and endearing characters.

Prose/Style: Heaney's clearly-composed, witty, and sophisticated writing allows the unique story to shine. 

Originality: Though Heaney's novel calls to mind classic works of children’s literature, the story of a rat facing ennui and grappling with existential questions is refreshing, fun, and wholly original. 

Character Development: Nathaniel is a charming, relatable protagonist, and the work introduces a number of other distinctive animal characters who, while not as finely developed, nevertheless strongly benefit the narrative.

Plot: Kerelyn Smith's wise, inventive, playful fantasy sets poetry-loving ogre Mulrox on a mission with the malcognitos, bizarre creatures who are the manifestation of his bad ideas. Their quest: to pass through a portal and stop the Vaccus from destroying all ideas, good and bad alike. Spirited misadventure abounds, featuring a lavish menagerie of memorable creatures and characters. Molrox's journey is more chatty and amusing than suspenseful, and the novel sags in its extended middle section. The climax, though, is clever and stirring, as Mulrox triumphs not by violence, or by being the best at any particular thing, but by being undeterred by a crowd heckling his creative work.

Prose/Style: Smith's vibrant comic prose distinguishes Mulrox and the Malcognitos. Her sentences and dialogue bounce along, telling the story with sharp clarity and seemingly boundless imagination. The author is adept at fantastical coinages and excels crafting character names that are a pleasure to linger over. Also strong are Smith's descriptions of her ogre village and its rituals; the flora and fauna of the Mercurial Woods; and her tender explications of the hearts of Mulrox and the occasional other point-of-view characters; and most especially her moving evocations of the power of the creative impulse. It's hard not to wish that this superior prose was telling a tighter story.

Character Development: Sensitive, creative ogres Mulrox and Yahgurkin stand out as singular creations, and Smith shrewdly crafts her story so that the two discover each other and eventually find the courage to embrace being out of step. The other ogre characters make amusing comic foils, and Smith's raucous cast of toads, malcognitos and squirrelmonks keep each page lively, even when the story itself gets lost in the woods for a lengthy stretch.

Plot: This inventive, allegorical fairy tale centers on a villager who pulls down the moon. Magical realism and gentle romance allow the brief, whimsical narrative to shine.

Prose: Lamperti writes in a graceful, matter-of-fact matter and with moments of piercing lyrical beauty.

Originality: Lamperti's fanciful novel is tonally reminiscent of classic fairy tales, but in a modern context, the narrative is decidedly unusual in style and execution.

Character/Execution: The characters in Moon & Shadow are more archetypal in nature than emotionally or psychologically nuanced. The manner of character development is appropriate for the fableistic quality of the story.

Plot: L.B. Lillibridge's Dragon Brothers stands as an uncommonly wise and empathetic fantasy, an adventure story whose royal heroes prevail not through heroic violence but by listening, questioning, and daring to upend the inequitable caste system that rewards them but punishes others. That heartening narrative, though, doesn't surge along the way the best fantasy adventures might, and the story develops little narrative momentum or continuity from chapter to chapter. The continual capturing and rescuing of hostages between the novel's two castes, the Shaynen and the Klor, feels repetitive rather than like suspenseful escalations.

Prose/Style: Lillibridge excels at dialogue scenes, at the stirrings of conscience inside her characters, and at the invention and depiction of magic. Sometimes her paragraphs run long and lose some focus, detailing action after action without fully emphasizing any particular one. She knows her characters' hearts and gets them onto the page, but Dragon Brothers doesn't always tap into those characters' desires and fears for storytelling momentum.

Originality: "Dragon born" fantasy characters aren't new, of course, and stories of royal succession and rebellion in fantasy kingdoms have been familiar for centuries. But Lillibridge invests her fantasy with fresh, appealing characters, engaging moral dilemmas, and an inventive blend of science and magic. Especially welcome is the book's humanistic bent in an age of darker and darker fantasy books for younger readers. Flying, here, feels truly magical.

Character Development: Lillibridge’s dragon brothers are humble, big-hearted, and immediately appealing, as are the dragon toddler Haia, the apprentice Laney, and the sympathetic outlaw Rory. The adults are somewhat less vividly drawn, but, encouragingly, prove capable of change when the young people argue against longstanding injustice.

Plot: Bush crafts an immersive, often dark, and highly detailed story of warring animal kingdoms that unfolds in a distinct fantasy realm. With hints of parable, the work offers numerous layers of depth and complexity in addition to reading as pure fantasy.

Prose: The novel’s prose is clear, satisfying, and written in a bold storytelling voice reminiscent of classic works of children’s literature. The writing can at times rely too heavily on exposition, threatening to lose younger readers, but action, dialogue, and conflict effectively enliven the storytelling. The fine graphics also provide welcome visual texture.

Originality: Bush’s worldbuilding is unique, thorough, and dynamic, with precise exploration of the history, rules, and structure governing the society at-hand.

Character/Execution: The animal characters are well conceived, though anthropomorphic traits often overshadow more bestial characteristics. Jack, seemingly wise beyond his years, serves more as a guru from another realm than a fully sympathetic character.

Plot: Morin's smartly plotted novel has much to love. Eva's journey moves at a thrilling pace that pulls readers in and holds them there. The story is intense and dramatic but never overwrought.

Prose/Style: Morin's prose immediately captivates readers. The author’s word choice is dynamic and the tone of the novel remains unique and strong throughout. Readers will be immediately pulled in by Morin's voice and will be eager to stay on for the ride.

Originality: The dark plot builds on the strengths of the genre and protagonist Eva has a freshness of character that readers will enjoy.

Character Development: Eva's motivations are clearly established and is a strong, grounding force throughout the story. Lord Marcus is a thoroughly developed villain who readers will love to hate. The Fallen's Kiss, though an object not a person, is a character element whose hold on both the novel's plot and Eva's character arc makes for some compelling storytelling.

Idea: This gripping true story, of a young animal activist on a quest to free captive bears, will appeal to environmentalists, animal lovers, and casual readers alike.

Prose: The story is clear, direct, and easy to follow, without feeling simple or boring. There is a well-maintained level of suspense throughout.

Originality: Barker ignored the societal limits of his youth, fighting for animal rights from the time he was in seventh grade. The story’s originality stems from its inspiring unlikelihood and its message to children everywhere: that they can make a difference.

Character/Execution: Barker’s personal journey sometimes feels separate from his work with the bears, but his relationship with his parents, and their fluctuating approval of his activism, is one of the most intriguing parts of the memoir.

Plot: While older readers may find the plot here predictable, the fast-paced storyline melds magic and adventure to craft a heartwarming, satisfying fantasy.

Prose/Style: Polished and engaging, the writing perfectly captures the feel and voice of its ten-year-old protagonist, and effortlessly shares an entertaining story.

Originality: This middle grade fantasy possesses charm, emotion, and a distinct moral decision with high stakes for its heroine, as she journeys through a magical realm filled with turmoil.

Character Development: Amy’s desire to save her sick father might fuel this tale’s initial quest, but her empathy for other people lets her shine as a worthwhile, sympathetic heroine with whom readers can relate.

Plot: In a sequel to Boy from Berlin, McDonald delivers a fun, action-filled middle grade story with enough historical verisimilitude to meaningfully drive the narrative.

Prose: McDonald displays a strong sense for her target audience, effectively balancing dialogue, exposition, and action. Her central character, while faced with often nonstop conflict, is also afforded moments of introspection.

Originality: An adventure story with truly high stakes, this second in a series will capture readers while inviting further interest in historical circumstances.

Character/Execution: Young readers are unlikely to have encountered a hero like Käfer Avigdor. McDonald soundly develops the protagonist's historical setting, while providing him with a sense of agency and vulnerability.

Plot: Hooyenga's cathartic teen romance centers around two outsiders who readers will embrace individually while eagerly awaiting their coming together during a solar eclipse.

Prose: Effective dialogue and honest introspection drive this quiet story of a burgeoning relationship.

Originality: Hooyenga's grasp of teen voices is decidedly authentic and the novel uniquely focuses on the small moments of attraction.

Character/Execution: Hooyenga effectively builds romantic tension between the protagonists, while their individual struggles are sensitively conveyed. Side characters are particularly endearing and layered, and allow for the central relationship to gain sharper focus and significance.