We've heard all the sayings: Family comes first. Family is forever. You can't choose your family! But the reality isn't always so simple. Benway's unforgettable novel explores the paradoxes and entanglements of unconventional families through the story of three biological half-siblings who don't meet until their teens. When 16-year-old Grace - A.P. chem student, cross-country runner and allaround good girl - gets pregnant and gives up her infant for adoption, it leaves her both emotionally shattered and motivated to find her own biological family, whom she knows nothing about. Enter Maya and Joachim, who have been growing up in neighboring towns but in very different circumstances. Fifteen-year-old Maya was also adopted as a baby, but has always felt the odd one out in her wealthy family. Lately, her mom's drinking is out of control and her parents are splitting up. Seventeen-year-old Joaquin, meanwhile, never even got adopted; still in foster care, he has been bumped around the system "like a set of keys someone had misplaced." As the three gradually bond over shared quirks and feelings of abandonment, Grace convinces the other two that they need to find their birth mother. It's a melodrama, to be sure, but with as much brain as heart. Benway ("Emmy & Oliver") writes with remarkable control and has the rare talent of almost vanishing as an author as she inhabits each character's perspective. Grace, Maya and Joaquin leap off the page as living, breathing teenagers, individual down to their fingerprints. The novel is also a brilliant exercise in empathy: As the siblings share their secret stories, we see them develop outrage, love, tenderness and sympathy for each other. As readers, we can't help doing the same. DEAR MARTIN By Nie Stone 210 pp. Crown Books for Young Readers. $17.99. (Ages 14 and up) As the success of Angie Thomas's "The Hate U Give" makes clear, Y.A. readers have a hunger for stories dramatizing racial profiling and the quest for social justice. Nie Stone's powerful debut about a striving black teenager trying his hardest to play by society's rules introduces Justyce McAllister, a scholarship student at an elite private school in Atlanta. Ranked fourth in his senior class, he's captain of the debate team and a contender for Yale. But when he's roughed up by the police who assume he was trying to steal his ex-girlfriend's Mercedes he realizes that he'll never stop being judged by his skin color. Tensions rise when one classmate accuses him of unfairly benefiting from affirmative action and another dresses as a Klansman for Halloween. (It's a "massive political statement about racial equality and broken barriers," explains the privileged bro.) All hell breaks loose when Justyce and his best friend get into a deadly altercation with an off-duty police officer. Stone packs an impressive spectrum of characters and viewpoints into 210 fastpaced pages: from Manny, the son of wealthy black professionals who tells Justyce he's being overly "sensitive" and confesses that he's "scared of black girls," to SJ, Justyce's civil rights-crusading Jewish debate partner (and guilty crush). While not all the characters are well developed, the smart, soul-searching Justyce is a hero readers will enjoy rooting for. "I thought if I made sure to be an upstanding member of society, I'd be exempt from the stuff THOSE black guys deal with, you know?" he writes. (The novel's title come from his journal entries, which are written in the form of letters to Martin Luther King Jr.) "Really hard to swallow that I was wrong." I AM NOT YOUR PERFECT MEXICAN DAUGHTER By Erika L. Sánchez 344 pp. Knopf. $17.99. (Ages 14 and up) Don't be fooled by the dreary title. This gripping debut about a Mexican-American misfit is alive and crackling - a gritty tale wrapped in a page-turner. The story begins when Olga, the seemingly "perfect" older sister of 15-year-old Chicagoan Julia Reyes, is killed in a bus accident. Olga was quiet, modest and infuriatingly devoted to their traditionbound parents - the opposite of Julia, an aspiring writer and rebellious smartmouth whose worst fear is that she'll "end up working in a factory, marry some loser, and have his ugly children." After Julia finds evidence that "Saint Olga" may have had a less-than-holy double life, she becomes obsessed with uncovering her dead sister's secrets. Part detective story, part coming-ofage tale, Sanchez's novel doesn't shy from heavy subject matter. Julia lives in a world where teenagers are no strangers to poverty, sexual assault,, domestic violence and fear of deportation. And Julia's relationship with her mother, who calls her a "huevona" and a "malcriada" (bonus: readers get a crash course in Spanish insults) is a sticky stew of anger, love, guilt and resentment. The story spirals into dark territory when Julia begins to suffer from clinical depression. But she's so blunt, funny and brave that she never becomes an object of our pity. And her moments of joy - as during a visit to her parents' hometown in Mexico, when she sits under the stars while her aunt braids her hair, "her fingers cool against the back of my neck" - are transcendent. LITTLE & LION By Brandy Colbert 327 pp. Little, Brown. $17.99. (Ages 14 and up) Set in the privileged climes of boho Los Angeles, Colbert's novel depicts the type of America that keeps hard-core traditionalists up at night. The central family consists of a black mom (a screenwriter), a white dad (an artisanal woodworker), and their two kids from previous relationships : 15-year-old Suzette and 16-year-old Lionel. Suzette (aka Little) is black and just figuring out she's bisexual. Lionel is white, bipolar and a fan of The New Yorker. And oh yeah, the parents aren't married and the whole family is Jewish. Arriving home for the summer after her first year at boarding school, Suzette is desperate to regain her old closeness with Lion, who's been keeping her at arm's length since his diagnosis. She's also racked with guilt about something that happened back at school between her and Iris, the first girl she's ever slept with. Suzette doesn't even know if she's 100 percent gay; she finds herself equally attracted to a guy (Emil, a half-black, half-Korean childhood pal) and a new girl (Rafaela, a sexy-tough Texan). Adding to the hot mess, Lionel falls for the same girl as his sister. Colbert writes about physical attraction with a real sizzle and she has concocted her bizarre love rectangle so ingeniously, readers will be dying to know - on the most basic level - who will end up with whom. And though its prose can be a bit stilted (Suzette says things like, "We hustle to our respective sides of the car") the book feels urgent and true. NOTHING By Annie Barrows 212 pp. Greenwillow Books. $17.99. (Ages 14 and up) Fans of the beloved middle grade series "Ivy + Bean" may feel a flush of familiarity upon meeting the 15-year-old bestfriend duo at the center of Barrow's first Y.A. novel. Charlotte is light-brownhaired and introspective, with literary aspirations; Frankie is a dark-haired, impulsive go-getter. Think: Ivy and Bean, now with angst and four-letter words. The novel's name comes from Charlotte's assertion that "nothing" happens in their safe, dull lives. And so she decides to write a book called "Nothing," tracing the course of her and Frankie's year: "It'll be, like, a searing document of today's youth and how incredibly boring our lives are!" In chapters that bounce between thirdperson perspective and Charlotte's confessional pages, the best friends gab, text, do homework, get high, buy burritos and mascara, humor their parents and obsess over their love lives (or lack thereof). Frankie considers applying to private school and learns to drive. Charlotte develops an intense textual relationship with a boy she's never met named Sid (she doesn't know what he looks like because Sid has a "no-picture rule"). But just because the stakes are low doesn't mean the book lacks depth. Barrows captures the highs and lows of her characters' emotional lives with remarkable feeling, revealing how even the most joined-at-the-hip BFFs inevitably have secrets and resentments. Best of all is Charlotte's voice, a hyperactive streamof-consciousness gush . Spending time with these two is a lovely, low-key pleasure. CATHERINE HONG, a contributing editor at Elle Decor, blogs about children's books at mrslittle.com.

In Barrows' (the Ivy + Bean series) new novel, Charlotte is out to prove that absolutely nothing ever happens to her and her best friend, Frankie. Charlotte starts chronicling their mundane sophomore year of high school as an ironic twist on the countless contemporary YA novels they've read. Though the focus of each chapter alternates between the two friends, their voices are similar enough that it's confusing to distinguish who is speaking from time to time. The novel's conceit that Charlotte is writing the entire thing could account for the homogeneous characterization, since both perspectives are filtered through Charlotte's writing. Infused with witty dialogue, Barrow's novel feels incredibly genuine to the high-school experience of two best friends. From finally getting the admiration of Frankie's older brother and his friends to supporting Charlotte on a road trip to meet her longtime pen pal, the two friends learn from Charlotte's reflective manuscript that unexpected, fulfilling things do happen to them.--Kling, Caitlin Copyright 2017 Booklist

Fifteen-year-old best friends Charlotte and Frankie believe that their lives are hopelessly dull compared to those of the characters in most of the YA literature they read. As if to prove her point, Char decides to write a novel based on their day-to-day existence. Though the girls are certain that the book will be as interesting as watching paint dry, they are surprised to learn that sophomore year can be exciting, if you pay attention. In her first work for teens, Barrows (the Ivy & Bean series) writes a realistic story about girls growing up in a suburban California town: Char and Frankie hang out, sometimes drink or smoke a bit, and think about kissing, growing up, taking chances, and feeling awkward. Their story unfolds through third-person chapters that alternate and overlap with Char's borderline stream-of-consciousness book project: some readers will love her brash honesty, while others will find it distractingly rambling. And while plenty happens to Barrows's characters, contrary to their own expectations, the book never exposes much about the secret lives of teenage girls. Ages 14-up. Agent: Liza Dawson, Liza Dawson Associates (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Charlotte and Frankie are typical high school sophomores struggling to be interesting in a land of boring. Nothing ever happens to them, so when Charlotte decides to write a book chronicling their lives, she suspects it's going to be pretty tedious. Shopping at the mall, hanging out with friendsthis is the stuff of life as a 15-year-old but perhaps not the stuff of great literature. Exceptin chronicling her life, Charlotte discovers that perhaps things aren't as boring as they thought. After all, the two white teens get to host their own New Year's Eve fancy dinner (even if it is attended by only the two of them), and they even embark on an epic road trip that might just lead to a longer adventure. The result is a charming novel about the daily ups and downs of school, love interests, friends, families, and social media. Barrows turns her keen observational eye toward teenagers, and the results are authentic and funny, filled with highly recognizable moments of teen angst and earned epiphanies. A moment in English class when some students of color question negative representation to their martinet of a teacher shines. Her charactersboth teens and adultsare endowed with smart, realistic (and realistically foulmouthed) dialogue, and the problems they encounter both are believable and feel like glimpses into lives beyond the written page. Anyone who suspects their life is the most boring ever? Check out this book. (Fiction. 14-18) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

High school BFFs Charlotte and Frankie lament that nothing happens to them; nevertheless, Charlotte decides to write their life story for a school project. There are plot points--Charlotte flirts via text with a boy she's never met; Frankie learns to drive--but the story, with its alternating narration, is mainly character-driven. Barrows has a knack for female friendships, and Charlotte and Frankie are a memorable pair. (c) Copyright 2018. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.