Wildlife by Fiona Wood

Australian author Wood sets this drama about teen relationships and challenges in an isolated wilderness camp for privileged youth. There are two main protagonists who tell their stories in alternating chapters: Sibylla, newly popular but uncomfortable with the way her friend Holly pushes her to hook up with the school's most dreamy guy, and new girl, Lou, who is attending the program as a way to reconnect with the world following the death of her boyfriend. The girls' stories intersect as Lou observes how Holly manipulates Sib and wonders how or whether to intervene. Lou, in turn, is a mystery to others in her cabin, and Sib tries to protect her against Holly's bullying. Supporting characters Holly and Michael challenge Sib to learn what friendship really means. There's a lot of entertaining stuff about life in an outdoor education school--learning to get along with your bunkmates, griping about food and chores, and playing pranks on other cabins. The events and personal struggles ring true; I totally enjoyed Wildlife.

Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman and Deadly Design by Debra Dockter

These two exciting books deal with death-defying challenges for two teens, one who is facing a complete psychotic breakdown and the other who knows his heart is programmed to fail and he won’t live beyond his seventeenth birthday.

In Challenger Deep, Caden Bosch is becoming increasingly unstable and unpredictable. In his more cognitively aware moments he knows his parents are really his parents, that no one at school wants to kill him, but forces beyond his control have created a bizarre world driving him further and further away from his family and friends. The author draws on the experiences in his own family with his own son to describe the descent into mental illness and the process of healing.

Deadly Design takes on the idea of genetic manipulation of eggs in a fertility clinic to create seemingly perfect children. Kyle McAdams and his identical twin brother (but born 2 years earlier) are two of these children. Connor becomes a star football and basketball player, track star and honor student while Kyle lags behind--spending most of his time playing video games. Then Connor and several other astonishingly beautiful and talented teens die of heart failure upon their eighteenth birthday. After tracing all of them back to the same fertility lab, Kyle needs to figure out why they died and how he can avoid the same fate. Full of intrigue and evil scientists,

All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

Theodore Finch meets Violet Markey when both climb to the school's bell tower to contemplate what it would mean to jump.  Forever searching for a way to justify living, Finch combines two projects--a geography class assignment to visit special places in the state (Indiana) and helping Violet to deal with her despair at the recent loss of her older sister.  The pair's developing relationship is told in alternating viewpoints that contrast Finch's irrepressible nature and attraction to Violet with her reluctance to be associated with someone commonly known as Freak.  The dialog is witty and the teens are sympathetic and engaging. The book deals with  love, responsibility,  family dysfunctions, school bullying and peer pressure, and mental illness.  This is both a satisfying and heart-wrenching story.

The Fault in Our Stars

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green has provided one of the most satisfying reads so far this summer. Teen Hazel Grace, diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer, confronts issues of life, death and love. Hazel meets cancer survivor Augustus Waters at a group therapy session which her mother forces her to attend. Attraction is mutual and immediate. Hazel's narration of their developing relationship is loaded with witty dialog and dark humor as well as explorations of what it means to die unremarked or forgotten. The plot turns around Hazel's need to contact the reclusive author of her favorite book, An Imperial Affliction, which is about a young girl who dies of cancer. The books ends abruptly, leaving exasperating questions about what happened to Anna's mother, her friends and her hamster. Hazel, with Gus's help, is determined to discover the answers, even though the author now lives in Amsterdam and has never acknowledged her many letters. Although Green emphasizes that the book is fiction, it nonetheless thoughtfully explores what life for a teenager dealing with cancer can be like. It is both serious and light-hearted: "Hazel GRACE!" he[Gus] shouted. "You did not use your one dying Wish to go to Disney World with your parents. . . . I can't believe I have a crush on a girl with such cliche wishes."