Top 10 Contemporary Books

1. The Perks of Being a Wallflower: This is my favorite book of all time so it's no surprise that it tops this list as well. I love that this is book where we just follow the main character Charlie through his freshmen year of high school because the plot is simple but this allows for a bunch of great character stories through out the book. I also just really love the way that Charlie thinks because it's so lovely and not like any other character that I've ever read.
2. Impulse: I really Ellen Hopkins books in general and this is my favorite book of her's that I have read so far. I love that this story starts with our three main characters recovering from attempting suicide and I love how we slowly learn what led them to the point of wanting to kill themselves. I really love that the three characters each have distinct voices and I really love the poetry form the story is told through.
3. Looking For Alaska: I really love how this story starts off as a going off to boarding school and just general teenage issues but half way through the book the story becomes darker and deeper. I also just really love the characters who had so much life to them and I love the way that the book was written as well.
4. Perfect: This book is a companion novel to Impulse and I like that it gave more depth to one of the characters stories in that book and also introduced us to the stories of 4 new characters. I love that this book dealt with the idea of trying to achieve perfection and how since perfection is impossible it's a very damaging thing to do and some of the characters learned this and other didn't.
5. Heist Society: I really love this fun light story about teenage con-artist that has lots of travel, heists, great characters and a nice dose of romance that at no point overtakes the plot which is a nice change compared to most YA novels.
6. Gallagher Girls: This is a nice fun story about girls spy school that has plenty of great friendship moments and mixes teenage girl and spy pretty much perfectly. As the series goes on the story gets more complicated and darker which I'm really enjoying. There's also a bit of romance that I enjoy quite a bit as well.
7. Tricks: This is a story about five teens who somehow end up having to sell themselves for various reasons and I really enjoyed how different each of their stories were and how they were told as well. I feel like this is a book that sounds a bit strange to say that I loved it but I thought it had a really good story to it although it was by no means a happy one.
8. The Fault in Our Stars: This is a book that is known for it's sweet romance and it's sad ending and while I agree that both those things are great parts of the book I also think that it's wicked sense of humor is also one of the major things that makes me love the book.
9. Tilt: While I always love the beautiful poetic writing of Ellen Hopkins I admit that the reason this book makes the list is only because of Shane's story(I didn't care much for Hardly's and Mikayla's stories). His story went in a way I never expected it to and I really loved him having a crisis of faith and just basically slowly falling apart wanting someone to notice and not wanting to bother anyone with his problems at the same time, it was a complicated story and one that I completely adored.
10. It's Kind of a Funny Story: This is the story about how the pressures of achieving became too much for a boy named Craig and how when he couldn't meet the especially high standards that he set for himself he became depressed to the point of being suicidal so he checked himself into the mental health wing of the hospital and slowly began the process of recovery.