The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey

Cassie isn't your typical "run for your life" teen, but evaluates her next moves mindfully, anticipating danger around her as she fights for her survival. This book takes place in a post-apocalyptic Earth. Extra-terrestrial beings invade Earth to exterminate the human race through a variety of attacks we humans call Waves--the worst thing next to death is surviving these waves when all hope is lost.
 
In this book, Yancey exceptionally expresses hopelessness, desperation and loneliness. He is a brilliant story-teller with the ability to make readers experience the story first-hand because he uses the first-person point of view. I love how the book is set in a wartime-like setting--broken buildings, fallen ceilings, cracked floors, and rotting corpses that lay unburied. The author makes death seem ubiquitous to the Cassie's environment. The mystery of finding out what the fifth wave is, is what kept the fire of my attention burning bright.

Rating: 4

The Maze Runner by James Dashner

Thomas has no last name and no memories. He comes to consciousness in a cold, dark, metal elevator, making a slow and noisy ascent to the Glade, acreage surrounded by 100-foot-high stone walls that grind closed each night, keeping the occupants in and keeping out the nocturnal monsters known as Grievers who roam the enormous Maze outside the Glade.

In the Glade, he finds teenage boys like himself, boys who don't know why they are there, cannot remember where they came from, or who they used to be. All Thomas has is questions, and all the boys in the Glade have to offer is a rigidly controlled life of survival with strict rules. Rules for which there are harsh penalties for breaking. The biggest rule? Don't go out of the Glade after dark.

Each boy in the Glade has a job, and Thomas is supposed to spend his first weeks in the Glade rotating from occupation to occupation until he finds his niche. But, he knows right away what he wants to be. He wants to be a runner, one of the boys who leaves the Glade each morning and runs the miles of the Maze, trying to uncover the exit that will mean freedom for the boys of the Glade.

From the very first, readers of this book will be filled with questions, the same questions that Thomas has. Why do the Glade and the Maze exist? What happened to the boys' memories? What are the Grievers? Why are the boys imprisoned there? The promise of answers to those questions keep you turning the pages. The ending will have you smacking your forehead and eagerly searching for the sequel, The Scorch Trials.

Rating: 4

Double Identity by Margaret Peterson Haddix

Bethie had a older sister named Elizabeth who died at age 13. Bethie actually never knew anything about her sister. Bethie is now 13 and her mother calls her Elizabeth. Bethie's mom is having a mental breakdown, and her parents drive Bethie to her aunt's house in a different town and they leave her there. Bethie starts wondering why they left her there.

Her aunt, her cousin, and people in the town act strangely around her. Bethie tries to figure out why. What she finds out confuses and angers her.

I felt as puzzled as Bethie when she was left at her aunt's house without knowing what was happening. I would be shocked also to know that I had a sister that I didn't know about for 13 years.

Nimsi Canales, Grade 8

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

Have you ever wanted to travel back in time so you could change something bad to good?

Miranda and Sal have been best friends since they were little, but everything changed when Sal got punched in the stomach. After that, Sal acted like he didn't want to be friends anymore, Miranda's extra house key goes missing, and her father's shoe disappears. Then a mysterious note comes for Miranda that says, "I am coming to save your friend's life, and my own. I ask two favors. First, you must write me a letter." The notes keep coming and they say things that no one else knows, events that happen in the future. Miranda does as the notes say and she begins writing the letter, but she doesn't know who the letter is for until the end.

When You Reach Me is also related to a book called A Wrinkle in Time. Miranda is reading A Wrinkle in Time, which is also about time traveling. A Wrinkle in Time is a book you can check out in the library.

Jason De Leon, 12 years old, 7th grade

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Katniss and Peeta are selected to play The Hunger Games, a grisly reality TV show sponsored by the totalitarian state of Panem.  Twenty-four players between the ages of 12 and 18 are selected by lottery, then forcibly taken from their families to prepare for the Games. Only one will return. The rules are simple. The last player left alive wins.

Katniss and Peeta know they have to kill to win, but there is a connection between these two. Peeta kept Katniss and her family from starving during the terrible time following the death of Katniss's father, so she owes him a debt of gratitude. And Peeta loves Katniss.

How can they kill each other?

Airborn by Kenneth Oppel

Imagine a world which is almost like ours. Airplanes do not exist. Instead, people travel in leisurely luxury to their destinations on huge airships. Matt Cruse is a cabin boy on one of these magnificent airships named the Aurora.

One night, when Matt is on watch in the Aurora's crow's nest, he and the crew rescue a balloonist, who dies, leaving behind a puzzling journal filled with drawings and detailed descriptions of a strange, never-before-discovered flying animal. Much to Matt's surprise, on their next voyage out, one of the passengers, young Kate de Vries, turns out to be the grand-daughter of the dead balloonist. She is intent on proving the truth of her grandfather's story of the strange new animal, even though her parents and scientists think her grandfather was hallucinating when he wrote of his find.

Kate enlists Matt in her quest for evidence that will prove her grandfather right. Along the way, they battle Kate's domineering but dim-witted chaperone and crafty and evil pirates.

The author takes you from one edge-of-your-seat, hold-your-breath adventure to the next in this strange and beautiful parallel world.

The Angel Experiment and School's Out Forever by James Patterson

Seems that someone (we don't know who) thought it would be a good idea to meld the DNA of human children with bird DNA. Their most successful effort is Maximum Ride, the protagonist of the series. She and five other hybrids--the flock--all have wings and can fly. They escape "the school" where they were made, studied, and imprisoned, and try to find out the big "why." Why were they made, why were they made, and why won't these people leave them alone?