Amy & Roger's epic detour, by Morgan Matson

This may be the best road trip story ever. Amy has been living alone in California since her Dad's death and her Mom's new job forced Mom to relocate to Connecticut a month before school was out for the summer. One of Mom's friends has a son, Roger, who has agreed to drive Amy to Connecticut, since Amy can't bear to drive since the car accident that took her father's life. Roger has his own motives for agreeing to the trip - like catching up with the girl who just dumped him without any explanation. So the two who barely know each other set out across country on an adventure that quickly hits detours as the planned cross-country itinerary gets tossed out the window and two good people start getting back on their feet with each other's help.

Summer romance, yes, but also friendship and healing, humor, and a good time.

Paper towns, by John Green

I didn't read this book for a long time after it arrived at CHS, mainly because I couldn't get any kind of take on what it is about. Now I've read it, and loved it, and am at a loss for words to explain what it is about without giving up the entire thing. Hmmm. Love - loss - the things that keep us going and the things that break our hearts. I can't explain it either. But I think John Green is one of the best authors out there writing.

Trouble, by Gary D. Schmidt

This story is set on the Massachusetts coast, a social setting well removed from central Illinois, and it's important in that the main characters are "old money" - their families have been wealthy for 300 years, living in the same historic house, attending the same snobish prep schools, their lives bound by traditions that extend to what sports they go out for (crewing) and naturally what college they will attend and what professions they will study for. But money can only insulate people to an extent, and trouble can enter anyone's life.

The story follows Henry through the storm of trouble stirred up when his older brother is hit by a truck belonging to a Cambodian refugee, Chaun. Class conflict, racial prejudice, sibling rivalry, and, most of all, grief play a part in Henry's perfect storm of a summer between 8th grade and freshman year.

The book gets off to a slow start as the reader gets to know the personalities of the main characters, but once that's established, the reader is hooked into having to know how the storm will resolve itself and who else will fall victim. And a road trip that includes a lovable clown of a black lab doesn't hurt, either.

Going bovine, by Libba Bray

This is a wild road trip - kicked off when teen slacker Cameron gets the bad news that he is going to die from Creutzfeldt-Jacob's (mad cow) disease. Every anti-hero needs a sidekick, and Cameron's sidekick is germ-phobic dwarf, Gonzo. And then there's punk angel (or maybe halucination) Dulcie - pink hair, torn black fishnets, and attitude to spare. The lines between reality and halucination are never clear, and in the end it doesn't really matter. Because Cameron really needs to LIVE before he dies, and live he does - reality be damned.

Aftershock, by Kelly Easton

In a state of shock, 17-year-old Adam walks away from the scene of the car accident that has killed his parents. Stranded on a lonely road in rural Idaho, he heads east, on foot, as random snippets of memory wander in and out of his mind. Too traumatized to speak, his silence is misinterpreted by the succession of characters he meets on the odyssey home to Rhode Island. Stumbling upon a Wiccan meeting in a forest, he is taken in by one of the chatty young women and takes a job as a dishwasher in a local diner, where he is treated as deaf. Weeks later, he hitchhikes with a trucker and finds backbreaking work in Colorado fields with Mexican migrant farmers. He struggles to survive as he devours a frozen pizza found in a taxidermist's cabin, sleeps in a Dumpster, crashes a picnic, and steals a car. The adventures intertwine with thoughts about his girlfriend, locker-room antics, his parents, their bookstore, and his autistic cousin–spontaneously, as if his mind has short-circuited from the crash.
Adam, before the crash, is a normal and likable young man. His cross-country journey home from the scene of the crash parallels his emotional journey back to sanity, and the reader hopes that at the end of that journey he will find a life that feels like home.

An abundance of Katherines, by John Green

I love guy humor, and this book has it in spades. Always being dumped by girls named Katherine, Colin Singleton, a washed-up child prodigy with a Judge-Judy obsessed best friend, embarks on a quest to prove The Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability, which will impact all of his future relationships and change his life. By the same author as Looking for Alaska, but this time John Green trades in the drama for humor, and does it every bit as well. And what is more fun than a road trip?