In My Mailbox April 20-25

In My Mailbox was created by the lovely Story Siren. This week, I received the package of books I ordered from Book Closeouts. 🙂

Carter Finally Gets It – Brent Crawford (signed!)

Meet Will Carter, but feel free to call him Carter.  (Yes, he knows it’s a lazy nickname, but he didn’t have much say in the matter.)

Join Carter for his freshman year, where he’ll search for sex, love, and acceptance anywhere he can find it.  In the process, he’ll almost kill a trombone player, face off with his greatest nemesis, suffer a lot of blood loss, narrowly escape death, run from the cops (not once, but twice), get caught up in a messy love triangle, meet his match in the form of a curvy drill teamer, and surprise the hell out of everyone, including himself.

Flightsend – Linda Newbery (BookDivas)

Flightsend is Charlie’s new home, whether she likes it or not. Her mother sees it as an end to all that’s gone so tragically wrong, but for Charlie it’s the end of her family, not to mention her social life. They had been a proper family. Mum, Sean and Charlie, with a new baby sister on the way. But the baby died before she was born and everything changed. Gradually, her mother pushed Sean away, before resigning from her job and selling the house, forcing Sean to find somewhere else to live.Although Charlie believes her mother is making a terrible mistake, she can only offer support – but who will support Charlie, with Sean cut out of their lives? She’s certain that the move to a ramshackle cottage, miles from anywhere, can only make things worse. She couldn’t be more wrong. This first summer at Flightsend proves to be a turning point for them both. For Charlie’s mum there’s a new business and the fresh start that she knew she needed. And for Charlie there’s a new job, new friends, a newly discovered talent for art and new feelings for two very different men. It’s a summer of beginnings, not ends; a summer that Charlie will never forget.

Fox Girl – Nora Okja Keller

Nora Okja Keller, the acclaimed author of Comfort Woman, tells the shocking story of a group of young people abandoned after the Korean War. At the center of the tale are two teenage girls-Hyun Jin and Sookie, a teenage prostitute kept by an American soldier-who form a makeshift family with Lobetto, a lost boy who scrapes together a living running errands and pimping for neighborhood girls. Both horrifying and moving, Fox Girl at once reveals another layer of war’s human detritus and the fierce love between a mother and daughter.

The Book of Luke – Jenny O’Connell

Emily Abbott has always been considered the Girl Most Likely to Be Nice — but lately being nice hasn’t done her any good. Her parents have decided to move the family from Chicago back to their hometown of Boston in the middle of Emily’s senior year. Only Emily’s first real boyfriend, Sean, is in Chicago, and so is her shot at class valedictorian and early admission to the Ivy League. What’s a nice girl to do?

Then Sean dumps Emily on moving day and her father announces he’s staying behind in Chicago “to tie up loose ends,” and Emily decides that what a nice girl needs to do is to stop being nice.

Cotton – Christoper Wilson

Lee Cotton is a black boy born white-skinned in segregated Eureka, Mississippi, in 1950. Over the course of Lee’s first twenty years, he will fall in love with the daughter of a local Klansman, get kicked senseless and left for dead on a freight train headed north, end up in St. Louis as a white man, and be drafted into the psych-ops corps in Nevada. There, a drunken accident will separate Lee from another part of his identity and change his fate yet again. Before he returns to Mississippi, he will experience up close and personal the women’s liberation movement and the dawn of the Lesbian Nation.

Saving Zoe – Alyson Noel

In Alyson Noël’s newest teen novel, one sister’s secrets save the other’s life–in more ways than one. Meet fifteen-year-old Echo, a typical teen trying to survive high school without being totally traumatized by boy trouble, friend drama, and school issues.  As if she didn’t have enough on her plate, Echo is also still dealing with the murder of her sister Zoë.  Although it’s been over a year, Echo is still reeling from tragedy that changed everything.  Beautiful and full of life, Zoë was the glue that held her family together, and although the two sisters were as different as night and day, they still had a bond that Echo can’t let go of.  When Zoë’s old boyfriend Marc shows up one day with Zoë’s diary, Echo doesn’t think there’s anything in there she doesn’t already know.  But as she gives in to curiosity and starts reading, she learns that her sister led a secret life that no one could have guessed–not even Echo.

I Love You, Beth Cooper – Larry Doyle

Denis Cooverman wanted to say something really important in his high school graduation speech. So, in front of his 512 classmates and their 3,000 relatives, he announced: “I love you, Beth Cooper.”

It would have been such a sweet, romantic moment. Except that Beth, the head cheerleader, has only the vaguest idea who Denis is. And Denis, the captain of the debate team, is so far out of her league he is barely even the same species. And then there’s Kevin, Beth’s remarkably large boyfriend, who’s in town on furlough from the United States Army. Complications ensue.

Chenxi and the Foreigner – Sally Rippin

Love in the time of the Tiananmen Square.

Anna never imagined living in such a foreign place. Fresh out of high school, she has joined her father, who works in Shanghai. She’s eager to see China beyond the bicycle-crowded streets between their apartment, her father’s expatriate community and the art school she’s attending. That’s why she’s thrilled when her father hires a cute local — a fellow student named Chenxi — to be her translator and guide.

In Ecstasy – Kate McCaffrey

A best friend sinks into a quicksand of teenage addictions.

Sophie and Mia have been best friends for most of their 15 years. Sophie is popular, so when she suggests they try ecstasy Mia figures it can’t hurt her own chances with the in crowd. Mia is elated when the drug lives up to its name and amazed when Lewis, the hottest guy in school, kisses her goodnight.

Soon Lewis is Mia’s boyfriend, and she and Soph are running with his fast, rich friends, until Sophie is sexually assaulted by Lewis’s drug-dealing buddy. Reluctant to say what happened, Sophie grows distant, leaving Mia to conclude she’s jealous of her popular boyfriend. But to keep Lewis’s attention, Mia grows increasingly dependent on the confidence that only E seems to give her. When things worsen, it is the girls’ strained but solid friendship that finally helps bring Mia back from the brink.