By Anna Devarenne
WKTV Intern
The featured KDL books for this month focus on two teenagers both bent on getting what they want — one seeks revenge while the other seeks a boyfriend.
Award winning young adult author, Jason Reynolds, writes “Long Way Down”–a compelling novel of free verse poetry.
The story follows the life of 15-year-old Will and his inner turmoil when dealing with the recent death of his brother, who was recently shot in their neighborhood streets.
As the story begins to unfold, Will heads down the seven floors of his apartment building, on his way to seek revenge for his brother’s murder.
He is then joined by ghosts of his past at each floor the elevator stops at. As the elevator travels downward, the ghosts help Will to realize that his plan for revenge may not be as clear a picture as he assumed it would be.
Reynold’s novel addresses gun violence in a chilling yet powerful way. In a 2017 interview with NPR, he remarked that “it’s about us, a community, thinking about those of our family members and our friends who we’ve already lost to this thing, and allow their haunting to be the thing that creates our psyche and our conscience.”
Another absorbing Young Adult novel that KDL Youth Librarian Courtnei Moyses suggests is “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” by Maurene Goo.
The story follows the lovable protagonist, Desi Lee, and her journey as a high school senior.
After many attempts at flirting that turn into failures, adorably awkward Desi turns to the Korean Dramas on TV that she watches with her dad. She realizes that all K-Dramas have a special equation that they follow that consistently results in the boy falling in love with the girl.
Desi decides to implement these steps when she meets the artistic, mysterious, new boy at school named Luca. This plan to get a boyfriend works for a while, but soon things begin to go wrong.
Both of Goo’s most popular novels, “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” and “The Way You Make Me Feel,” feature strong father daughter relationships, which is appealing yet hard to find in most Young Adult fiction. As a Korean woman herself, Goo also features strong Asian girls as the protagonists in her novels.
For more great reads and other suggestions, visits your local KDL branch or visit kdl.org.
