Secrets, suffering, vampires, horses

The sun is out, the flip-flops are on, and this spring has produced a bumper crop of young-adult novels. Here's a handful worth looking at:

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The Girl With the Mermaid Hair
nolead ends nolead begins By Delia Ephron

(Harper Teen, $16.99)

nolead ends In this funny and nuanced novel, Delia of the Ephron media empire takes on some interesting subjects, starting with that teen phenomenon, the taking of a "selfie."

Fifteen-year-old Sukie is obsessed with her phone - with taking pictures of herself with the thing, mostly, but also with waiting for a text from Bobo, the improbably named football hottie she's always hoping to hear from.

With a knowing, saddish sense of humor, Ephron details the excruciata of waiting for a guy to call, elevating the subject to its own sort of literary form - one first popularized by Dorothy Parker decades ago.

Sukie lives in a development mansion, goes to a fancy school, and is vain and silly and obsessed with her hair, her nose, her grades. In a sense, this is a classic it's-not-as-perfect-as-it-looks story. But Ephron shows us Sukie's privileged life from the inside looking out, so where another YA book might be ham-handed on the subject, this one gets it just right. We see things from the girl's perspective all along - her borderline self-loathing, her parents' rotten marriage - so we never thought things were perfect to begin with. You'll root hard for little Sukie, whose family's secrets are starting to make her sick.

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The Secret Year
nolead ends nolead begins By Jennifer R. Hubbard

(Viking, $16.99)

nolead ends More secrets, this time between two teens. With her first novel, Philadelphia-area writer Hubbard introduces us to Colt, a kid from the not-swanky part of town, and Julia, the rich girl who was in love with him. They spent a year meeting secretly in the woods to be together, but when the novel opens, Julia has just been killed in a car accident. Stunned, Colt eventually inherits a notebook full of letters she wrote to him but never sent, which promises to let him get to know her a little better.

The Secret Year is not a perfect book - Hubbard relies too much on narration to move the story forward, which would make it drag if it were any longer - but there's a real heat between these two characters, and the class rage has a nice, quiet S.E. Hinton sadness to it.

nolead begins After Ever After
nolead ends nolead begins By Jordan Sonnenblick

(Scholastic Press, $16.99)

nolead ends Sonnenblick is another area writer who, with After Ever After, tells the lovely story of Jeffrey Alper, who had leukemia at 5. It's the continuation of the family story in Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie, which won a YALSA award for Best Book for Young Adults.

Now, Jeffrey is in eighth grade, and his illness and treatment have left him with some side effects, so on top of the usual young-teen discomfort, he's afraid he'll always be "that kid who had cancer." His thoughts have turned to ordinary things like the new girl (she's pretty and cool), and the math class he's always in danger of bombing.

But some elements of his life are still painfully serious, like his best friend Tad, the other kid who had had cancer, and whose health did not recover as well as Jeffrey's did. Sonnenblick endows Jeff and Tad with a really marvelous deadpan sense of humor. You'll feel the sadness in this novel like a gut-punch, but at the same time, it is flawlessly sweet.

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The Georges and the Jewels
nolead ends nolead begins By Jane Smiley

(Alfred A. Knopf, $16.99)

nolead ends Abby is a seventh grader from a sternly religious family who lives on a small California ranch, where their business is training and selling horses. Abby's dad names all the males George and the females Jewel so Abby won't get too attached, but the whole family has deep, surprising relationships with the horses. The book turns out to be set in the '60s, which we know from just one or two clues, but it feels timeless, with a stillness deep at its center; it could have taken place yesterday or 100 years ago.

Smiley, a Pulitzer Prize winner, is a master storyteller, and this novel has all the atmosphere and intelligence of an Alice Munro. It already feels like a classic.

nolead begins Twilight: The Graphic Novel, Vol. I nolead ends nolead begins (The Twilight Saga)
nolead ends nolead begins By Stephenie Meyer and Young Kim

(Yen Press, $19)

nolead ends I expected to like this, then I expected to dislike it - oh, what a complicated relationship a person can have with this ridiculous franchise. Well, if you're a Twilight groupie you're going to get this book no matter what anybody says about it. For the record, I did like it, though some elements of it are schlocky, like the big, ugly voice balloons that crowd the pages. The drawings are lovely though, all done in muted gray-purples, the colors of rainy days and primordial forests. It's interesting to see that artist Kim took visual cues from the movie, but thankfully, she hasn't tried to make her Bella and Edward look like the actors. It's a pretty book. Go ahead, buy it, I won't tell anyone.

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Foiled
nolead ends nolead begins By Jane Yolen

Illustrated by Mike Cavallaro

(First Second, $15.99)

nolead ends Jane Yolen has written more than 300 picture books and novels for middle grade and young-adult readers, which must make her some kind of grande dame of children's literature. This happens to be her first graphic novel, but she's a natural. The story is told with a skilled sense of pacing and suspense, and a depth that's reflected in illustrator Cavallaro's charming drawings.

Foiled is the story of Aliera Carstairs, a high school junior who has been fencing since the age of 11. She goes to a tiny academy in Manhattan, and she has known her classmates for years, though she has never really fit in - not with the goths or the jocks, and definitely not the preps ("ugh," is all she says about that). But don't worry; as the story unfolds, she and her weapon (don't call it a sword) find their place - Aliera's true, if very unexpected, calling. Good fun.