Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsI’ll give you the sun, Jandy Nelson

Jude and her twin brother, Noah, are incredibly close. At thirteen, isolated Noah draws constantly and is falling in love with the charismatic boy next door, while daredevil Jude cliff-dives and wears red-red lipstick and does the talking for both of them. But three years later, Jude and Noah are barely speaking. Something has happened to wreck the twins in different and dramatic ways . . . until Jude meets a cocky, broken, beautiful boy, as well as someone else—an even more unpredictable new force in her life. The early years are Noah’s story to tell. The later years are Jude’s. What the twins don’t realize is that they each have only half the story, and if they could just find their way back to one another, they’d have a chance to remake their world. (Goodreads)

First lines: This is how is all begins.
With Zephry and Fry – reigning neighbourhood sociopaths- torpedoing after me and the whole forest floor shaking under my feet as I blast through air, tree, this white-hot panic.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsLies my girlfriend told me, Julie Anne Peters

When Alix’s charismatic girlfriend, Swanee, dies from sudden cardiac arrest, Alix is overcome with despair. As she searches Swanee’s room for mementos of their relationship, she finds Swanee’s cell phone, pinging with dozens of texts sent from a mysterious contact, L.T. The most recent text reads: “Please tell me what I did. Please, Swan. Te amo. I love you.”
Shocked and betrayed, Alix learns that Swanee has been leading a double life–secretly dating a girl named Liana the entire time she’s been with Alix. Alix texts Liana from Swanee’s phone, pretending to be Swanee in order to gather information before finally meeting face-to-face to break the news. Brought together by Swanee’s lies, Alix and Liana become closer than they’d thought possible. But Alix is still hiding the truth from Liana. Alix knows what it feels like to be lied to–but will coming clean to Liana mean losing her, too?(Goodreads)

First lines: An earthquake shakes the ground beneath me and I swim to consciousness, grasping for a handhold. Mom’s voice slithers into my dream state.
“Alix? Honey?”

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsUncaged, John Saniford and Michelle Cook

Shay Remby arrives in Hollywood with $58 and a handmade knife, searching for her brother, Odin.
Odin’s a brilliant hacker but a bit of a loose cannon. He and a group of radical animal-rights activists hit a Singular Corp. research lab in Eugene, Oregon. The raid was a disaster, but Odin escaped with a set of highly encrypted flash drives and a post-surgical dog.
When Shay gets a frantic 3 a.m. phone call from Odin—talking about evidence of unspeakable experiments, and a ruthless corporation, and how he must hide—she’s concerned. When she gets a menacing visit from Singular’s security team, she knows: her brother’s a dead man walking. What Singular doesn’t know—yet—is that 16-year-old Shay is every bit as ruthless as their security force, and she will burn Singular to the ground, if that’s what it takes to save her brother.(Goodreads)

First lines: The naked girl stared at herself in the motel mirror, a little sick with what she was about to do. She was slender, with muscles in her arms and shoulders, and red hair that fell to her waist.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsIllusions of fate, Kiersten White

Jessamin has been an outcast since she moved from her island home of Melei to the dreary country of Albion. Everything changes when she meets Finn, a gorgeous, enigmatic young lord who introduces her to the secret world of Albion’s nobility, a world that has everything Jessamin doesn’t—power, money, status…and magic. But Finn has secrets of his own, dangerous secrets that the vicious Lord Downpike will do anything to possess. Unless Jessamin, armed only with her wits and her determination, can stop him.(Goodreads)

First lines: Dear Mama,
I am most certainly not dead. Thank you for your tender concern. I will try to write more often so you don’t have to worry so between letters. (Because a week’s silence surely means I have fallen prey to a wasting illness or been murdered in these boring, grey streets.)

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsMessenger of Fear, Michael Grant

I remembered my name – Mara. But, standing in that ghostly place, faced with the solemn young man in the black coat with silver skulls for buttons, I could recall nothing else about myself.
And then the games began. The Messenger sees the darkness in young hearts, and the damage it inflicts upon the world. If they go unpunished, he offers the wicked a game. Win, and they can go free. Lose, and they will live out their greatest fear. But what does any of this have to do with Mara? She is about to find out…(Goodreads)

First lines: My eyes opened. I was on my back. A mist pressed close, all around me, so close that it was more like a blanket than a fog. The mist was the colour of yellowed teeth and it moved without a breath of breeze, moved as if it had a will.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsMisty Falls, Joss Stirling

Misty is a one-girl disaster zone. Born with a Savant ‘gift’ that means she can never tell a lie, her compulsive truth-telling gets her into trouble wherever she goes.So when she meets Alex: gorgeous, confident, and impossibly charming, Misty instantly resolves to keep her distance . . . Someone so perfect could never be hers, surely? But a dark shadow has fallen across the Savant community. A serial killer is stalking young people who have these special mental powers. Soon one of them will be taken to the edge of death . . . and beyond.(Goodreads)

First lines: “On the Misty scale of disasters, one to ten, where would you put it?” Summer asked me.
I stared miserably at my two best friends as they clustered together on the screen of my laptop. Summer looked sympathetic, Angel amused.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsCity of halves, Lucy Inglis

London. Girls are disappearing. They’ve all got one thing in common; they just don’t know it yet…
Sixteen-year-old Lily was meant to be next, but she’s saved by a stranger: a half-human boy with gold-flecked eyes. Regan is from an unseen world hidden within our own, where legendary creatures hide in plain sight. But now both worlds are under threat, and Lily and Regan must race to find the girls, and save their divided city.(Goodreads)

First lines: “Okay, so what have we got?” Lucy’s Dad paced the kitchen in his shirt and tie, running his fingers through his fading blond hair.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsFalls the shadow, Stefanie Gaither

When Cate Benson was a kid, her sister, Violet, died. Two hours after the funeral, Cate’s family picked up Violet’s replacement. Like nothing had happened. Because Cate’s parents are among those who decided to give their children a sort of immortality—by cloning them at birth—which means this new Violet has the same smile. The same perfect face. Thanks to advancements in mind-uploading technology, she even has all of the same memories as the girl she replaced. She also might have murdered the most popular girl in school.
At least, that’s what the paparazzi and the anti-cloning protestors want everyone to think: that clones are violent, unpredictable monsters. Cate is used to hearing all that. She’s used to defending her sister, too. But Violet has vanished, and when Cate sets out to find her, she ends up in the line of fire instead. Because Cate is getting dangerously close to secrets that will rock the foundation of everything she thought was true.(Goodreads)

First lines: I took some of the flowers from my sister’s funeral, because I thought her replacement might like them as a welcome-to-the-family present. An hour’s drive later, most of the velvety petals had little tears and creases in them, because I couldn’t seem to get my fingers to hold still.