Library Journal: Verdict: Bear (Steles of the Sky; Blood and Iron) pumps fresh energy into the steampunk genre with a light touch on the gadgetry and a vivid sense of place. Karen has a voice that is folksy but true, and the entire cast of heroic women doing the best they can in an age that was not kind to their gender is a delight. Ably assisted by a U.S. Marshal and his Comanche posseman, Karen and the ladies kick ass.
The Gold Rush town of Rapid City is just about what you would expect in a frontier community catering to the mining trade: rough, violent, and full of prostitutes. Karen is a “soiled dove” working at Madame Damnable’s establishment, where she and her sisters in trade serve a more respectable crowd than the poor girls who work the cribs at the waterfront. When one of those young women escapes and runs to Madame’s for help, she brings the wrath of the crib owner, Peter Bantle, on the house. Bantle, in addition to bring a vicious bully seems to have a device that can control people’s minds.
Congratulations to Alex Gordon on her debut novel being 
Booklist: Hutchinson’s latest is an unflinching look at loss, grief, and recovery. Seventeen-year-old Drew Brawley has been hiding from death for months in the Florida hospital where the rest of his family died. He passes the time working at the cafeteria and making friends with teen patients in the oncology ward. Drew has been working on a graphic novel, a disturbing story called Patient F that hints at the trauma he has been desperately trying to keep buried. The comic, interspersed throughout the text, provides a visual punctuation mark to Drew’s guilt and self-loathing. When he begins to fall for Rusty, a hate-crime victim admitted to the hospital after having been set on fire, Drew’s resolve to live his life ghosting about the hospital begins to waver. Dark and frequently grim situations are lightened by realistic dialogue and genuineness of feeling. The rapid-fire back-and-forth snark between Drew and his hospital “family” rings true, and the mystery of Drew’s past will keep readers turning the pages. This is a heartbreaking yet ultimately hopeful work from a writer to watch.
Library Journal: The family dynamics between Finn and his brothers are well done, and the author (winner of Writers of the Future’s 2014 Golden Pen Award) excellently shows Finn as an emotionally stunted teenager suddenly middle-aged and having to deal with the family and friends he left behind. A promising writer to watch.
Kirkus: An enterprising loser hustles his way to ultimate popularity, at a cost. Adam’s older brother, Sam, was a star hockey player in his high school years, and by all rights, his younger brother should have been a high school god. Instead, Sam is paralyzed after a nasty body slam, and Adam is a wannabe in off-brand clothes who can’t score an invite to a single party. Tired of sitting at home playing video games and watching Scarface—the plot of which is handily and self-consciously summarized for readers who haven’t seen it—Adam launches a scheme to make himself useful to the school’s elite, initially by doing homework for pay. As his empire of term papers, booze and fake IDs grows, so does his status. The third-person narrative voice is slick, breezy and highly stylized, littered with hashtags and phrases like “our boy” and “Achievement Unlocked.” Chapters are short—none more than a couple of pages and some only a single line—creating a fast-moving and suspenseful tale. The unquestioned intensity with which the narrative voice despises Adam’s nerdiness and pities Sam for his disability is at first troubling, but it soon becomes clear that these views are Adam’s and that the overall story offers a more complex view. For all its slick hipness, surprisingly substantive.
Boing Boing: “Jacobs isn’t afraid to take YA horror into dark places, and this book has some chilling glimpses into sinister sexuality, violence, and psychological torture — but, amazingly, this stuff is never played for cheap thrills or shocks. … Jacobs is a master of racheting up the tension and never offering release.”
Booklist: Recommended for readers seeking the thrill of the chase. Minnesota BCA agent Kirk Stevens (Kill Fee, 2013) is camping with his family when he’s called to the nearby scene of a rural deputy’s shooting. A young woman found next to the body could be either killer or witness; she’s hysterical and barely speaking English. When they finally convince the girl, Irina, to trust them, they learn that she’s escaped a ring of human traffickers who still hold her teenage sister captive. Stevens and his partner, Carla Windermere, get the case, and, assisted by FBI Agent Derek Mathers, they track the ring through a maze of shell companies and a string of bodies left like breadcrumbs as they race to find Irina’s sister before she’s sold beyond their reach. True, the human-trafficking story isn’t breaking new ground, but Laukkanen is gifted at creating relatable characters, and readers will happily tear through his version of this familiar plotline. The combination of breakneck pacing, scarily plausible evils, and steadily rising stakes culminates in an explosive, and only slightly improbable, finale.