Where She Went
By Gayle Forman
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary
Personal Rating: 7/10

This is the sequel to If I Stay, a story about a girl who gets in a terrible car accident and has an out-of-body experience as she contemplates the consequences of staying in a world her family will no longer be in. I read If I Stay about two years ago and actually really enjoyed it, I'm really glad I finally picked up the sequel. There isn't much I can say about this book without spoiling the first one, but the story is told in Adam's point-of-view, and takes place in New York three years after the accident.

I love Gayle Forman's writing style and I found the plot of this sequel heart wrenching. Which was actually no surprise because, well, it's Gayle Forman. This would definitely be a 10/10 but I did have to knock off quite a few points for use of the F-word. There was quite a bit of language and some alluding to sex, but nothing graphic.

The Cage
By Megan Shepherd
Genre: Young Adult Sci-Fi
Personal Rating: 9/10

When Cora Mason wakes up in the middle of a desert, she has no recollection on how she got there. Even stranger is the fact that next to the desert is a town, a swamp, a jungle, snow covered mountain, and an ocean. And she is not alone. Five other kids have been dumped into the odd environment: a gorgeous model, a genius, an army brat, a tattooed smuggler, and a dead girl floating in the ocean. As the group tries to make sense of their surroundings, they discover that they hadn't been stranded, they had been captured. They were trapped in a cage--a human zoo on an alien planet. Their captors believe that they are doing these humans a favor by putting them in the cage, by saving them from the unpredictability of human society. And as Cora forms a forbidden attachment to one of her jailers, she realizes that her best chance for escape may be in the arms of her own captor.

I loved this book! I reminded me of a mix between The Maze Runner and Lord of the Flies but I also thought it was incredibly unique in it's own sense. All of the characters were diverse people with interesting pasts, and I loved how the book was told in multiple perspectives. This book was full of suspense and mystery, I could not put it down. I didn't feel like any of the plot was predictable  and the ending left me in total suspense for the next book.

An Ember in the Ashes
By Sabaa Tahir
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Rating: 8/10

This is a new book that just came out this last April. It's been getting a lot of hype on Goodreads so I thought I'd give it a try.

This story takes place in a harsh dystopian wold and is told is in the perspective of two people from opposite backgrounds. Elias is a student at Blackcliff--a harsh and deadly training school. Laia is a rebel spy working undercover at Blackcliff in order to save her brother. Both of these characters have one wish: to escape Blackcliff. But if Laia will have any hope of rescuing her brother she will need to stay there under the rule of a vicious master, and Elias's plans for deserting the school was foiled when he was chosen to complete in a competition to choose the next emperor. As the stories of these two characters intertwine, everything they thought they new about their world and those they trust will be challenged.

This was definitely a very interesting and unique book. It was fast paced and the plot was complex. My only real complaint about it was that it got really bloody at parts, so much so that I needed to take a break every now and then from reading it. There's nothing overly graphic in the book, but there is still a bit of a Hunger Games feel to it. The characters where wonderfully developed--especially the villains.It was a real worth while read, and I can't wait for the sequel.