Welcome to the Baltimore County Public Library.

Bridget Zinn’s Poison is an entertaining teen fantasy novel about Kyra, a sixteen year-old potions master who is on the run after attempting to kill the princess. Before her failed assassination attempt, readers learn that Kyra ran away from home as a child, and discovered not only was she gifted at making potions, but she also had the power to see the future, which she has since kept as a closely guarded secret. Thanks to her skill at potion brewing, Kyra is hired by the Queen to teach Princess Ariana the art of cosmetic potions, and the two become instant friends. They remain friends for years, until Kyra has a vision of Ariana bringing ruin upon the kingdom. Kyra sees it as her duty to save the kingdom by killing her best friend.

When Kyra’s usual steady shot misses, she must run from the royal army, as she continues to search for a way to stop ruin from befalling the kingdom. She enlists the help of Rosie, a magic pig, to sniff out the princess’s hiding place, hoping her shot won’t miss a second time. As she and Rosie journey across the countryside, trying to find the princess, they meet a young man, Fred. Fred joins Kyra and Rosie as they travel, though he has no idea who Kyra is, or that she’s trying to kill the Princess. As they move through the kingdom, Kyra and Fred run into witches and other fantastical beings and creatures, making their journey all the more difficult. Despite her best efforts, Kyra begins to fall for Fred, almost distracting her from her mission. A mix of fantasy, romance, and adventure, readers will enjoy following Kyra as she tries to save the kingdom in Poison.

Husband and wife team Michael Grant and Katherine Applegate, the authors of the popular Animorphs series, team up once again to write Eve & Adam. The novel might seem as though it’s about any other teenage girl, but there’s a lot more to Evening Spiker, better known as Eve, than it first seems. As the book begins, Eve is in a car accident, after which she is sent to Spiker Biopharm, the medical facility run by her controlling (and slightly scary) mother. There, Eve meets the mysterious Solo Plissken, who she eventually befriends and teams up with to investigate Spiker Biopharm.

Meanwhile, trying to keep Eve complacent, her mother gives her a genetics project to work on while she’s recovering. The project, nicknamed the Adam Project, sets Eve to work creating the perfect human boy—the Adam to her Eve. As she works on her project, and begins to spend more time with Solo, she forgets about her injury, so much so that she doesn’t realize how suspiciously fast she’s healing until Solo points it out to her. This revelation pushes Eve to help Solo investigate the genetic experiments her mother is running at Spiker Biopharm, and the two learn that the experiments are much closer to them than they ever could have expected.

Eve & Adam is a mix of science fiction and teenage romance. Despite some of the far-fetched aspects of the novel, the relationships between the characters are relatable. Though the novel begins slowly, it eventually becomes a page turner that the reader cannot put down. Grant and Applegate have written another novel that teens are sure to enjoy.

The Evolution of Mara Dyer, the second in Michelle Hodkin’s Mara Dyer trilogy picks up just one day after the first book ends. Mara has been committed to a psychiatric unit after her outburst in a police station, in which she announced that her dead ex-boyfriend was alive, and assumed responsibility for the deaths of her friends and others. This may sound outlandish, but in the world of Mara Dyer, it’s actually true.

The Mara Dyer books are a mix of high school drama, fantasy, paranormal romance, and mystery. Mara is not an average high schooler—she has paranormal abilities, which have caused her heaps of trouble. After realizing the extent of her powers in the first book, Mara has struggled with the knowledge that she has the ability to imagine people’s deaths and cause them to happen. In The Evolution, Mara has to act as though nothing is wrong in front of her family so that she can stay out of the psych unit. Meanwhile she and her boyfriend Noah, who also has powers (albeit different ones), investigate what happened to cause the deaths of her friends, and why they have paranormal powers. As they learn more, the mystery deepens, and they realize their connection goes much further back than high school.
 

Fans of the Pretty Little Liars series will enjoy the mystery and romance this series has to offer, while those looking for something a bit different will enjoy it as well. The second book in the trilogy is just as suspenseful as the first (The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer). New mysteries appear along the way, and it includes an ending that leaves readers eagerly awaiting the final book of the trilogy, The Retribution of Mara Dyer.