Monday, March 26, 2018

Young Adult Reading Challenge (April 2018)

Spring is here.

With this season comes new life. All around us we can see baby animals, new sprigs of plants, fresh growth on trees and rosebushes, and a crisp scent of hope in the air.



April's reading challenge ties into spring in this way:

Young adult books present coming-of-age stories in which young people must figure out how to adapt to living in a grown-up world. They're discovering how they want to spend the rest of their lives and learning a lot from the journey it takes to get there.

These books are typically geared towards folks between ages twelve and twenty-five, and they cover a variety of sub-genres such as romance, science fiction, fantasy, thriller, dystopian, utopian, and many others.


The challenge for this month is to read young adult books.

Need some suggestions?

Here are a few YA books on my radar:


Pulse by L.R. Burkard

Three teenage girls and their families must survive when America's worst nightmare actually occurs: The failure of the electric grid due to an electromagnetic pulse. 

To outsiders, Andrea Patterson has the American dream house and family. But when the unthinkable happens, the dream looks more like a nightmare--one from which she and her family may not wake up alive. 

Lexie Martin's homesteading family has never been cool like Andrea's, but they've been prepping for disaster for years. For them, the world didn't stop; it just slowed down. The one thing they didn't prepare for? A psycho school bus driver who wants what they've got. 

Sarah Weaver, friend of Andrea and Lexie, lives on the top floor of a ten-story apartment building. When things went black, she thought it could be romantic, like in the time of Jane Austen. 
She was wrong. 

Has the world collapsed forever? 
Who will survive when technology fails? Perhaps even more important, 
Who will get to eat? 



The Healer's Apprentice by Melanie Dickerson

Rose has been appointed as a healer's apprentice at Hagenheim Castle, a rare opportunity for a woodcutter's daughter like her. While she often feels uneasy at the sight of blood, Rose is determined to prove herself capable. Failure will mean returning home to marry the aging bachelor her mother has chosen for her—a bloated, disgusting merchant who makes Rose feel ill.

When Lord Hamlin, the future duke, is injured, it is Rose who must tend to him. As she works to heal his wound, she begins to understand emotions she's never felt before and wonders if he feels the same. But falling in love is forbidden, as Lord Hamlin is betrothed to a mysterious young woman in hiding. As Rose's life spins toward confusion, she must take the first steps on a journey to discover her own destiny.





Jonas and Olivia by Victoria Minks

Fourteen-year-old Olivia Wilkerson is left desolate and grieving when her patriot father passes away. Directed by his will to be placed in the care of an old friend, Olivia is forced to venture away from all she’s ever known to make her new life among people who are strangers to her.

Unaware of the new responsibility about to be thrust on him, Jonas Carmichael lives the life of a reclusive in an attempt to ignore the painful memories of the past. His heart has grown hard and bitter over the past thirty years of solitude, and his hatred towards people has only multiplied.


Suddenly burdened with Olivia, Jonas’s only burning desire is to shove the girl off on somebody else. But Olivia, still suffering from her loss, is only looking for someone to love her as her father did--and soon realizes that there is more to Jonas than meets the eye.


With the Revolutionary War pressing closer around Jonas’s secluded bubble of safety and threatening to burst it at any moment, Jonas discovers that there are choices to be made--choices that will not only affect himself but those around him as well.




Have suggestions?

Which young adult books have you enjoyed in the past?

Which ones are you reading for this challenge?


After you finish reading the YA books you choose, come back here and share what you thought about them in the comment section.


This challenge begins on April 1, 2018.
It goes through the entire month of April.



Remember, March's challenge continues this week.
Log in all your Movie Madness books and movies on this page.




Join the conversation!
I love hearing from you.

11 comments:

Rebekah said...

Oh, good! This genre I can do. :) I have a few books already that I want to read that will fit this. :)

Andrea Cox said...

Glad to hear it! Any particular ones you're especially looking forward to?

I have a bunch in my Kindle, but there's no way I'm getting to all the ones I wanted to when I created this challenge. I'll be aiming for two or three.

Dawn Cox said...

I finished MISTAKEN IDENTITY by Don and Susie Van Ryn and Newell, Colleen, and Whitney Clark with Mark Tabb. Thanks for helping me get through some of my books!

Andrea Cox said...

Whoa! That was really fast. Marvelous! You're well ahead of me on this one, because I haven't even started a young adult book this month.

Hannah Gridley said...

I’ll be trying to finish “Cherry Ames, Student Nurse,” a vintage mystery marketed to the Nancy Drew readers of a few decades past.

Andrea Cox said...

That sounds like a delightful book, Hannah! I hope you enjoy it.

Andrea Cox said...

I finished Pulse by L.R. Burkard tonight. It was a miss for me, though I enjoyed the first half and think it will find lots of fans.

Dawn Cox said...

I finished "A Stone's Throw from Paradise" by Linda Oatman High. I'm looking forward to next month's challenge!

Andrea Cox said...

Congratulations, Mom! You're officially ahead of me on this challenge. I might be stuck at only one title this time, since the month's nearly out. Next Monday (April 30) will be the reveal for the new challenge, by the way.

Rebekah said...

I managed to get 8 books read for the reading challenge this month even with being out of town for three days, and doing Camp NaNo. Here's my list.

Miss Dee Dunmore Bryant by Isabella Alden
Twenty Minutes Late by Isabella Alden
Bluegrass Champion by Dorothy Lyons
A 'Blue' for Illi by Nancy Hartwell
Golden Sovereign by Dorothy Lyons
A Horse Called Trouble by C.K. Volnek
The Seeing Heart by Janet Randall
Quest for Laviathan by Amanda Tero

I suppose I could count the 3rd Kitten Files that I beta read. It might be on the Young adult side. ;) But I still enjoyed it. :)

Andrea Cox said...

Well done, Rebekah! You blew this one away!