Top 5 YA Books For 2011 - Guest Blogger Eleni

Thank you to Hayley for asking me to guest post on her lovely blog! Next year, will be a fantastic year for YA readers. There are so many upcoming releases I am dying to get my hands on. I am so excited to see how vast this genre will develop into for future generations to come. In this guest post, I will be listing my top five picks that I am anticipating in 2011. It's at the point where I want 2010 to hurry up and end so these books can land in my presence. Now, these are only a few books, but my actual list of books to buy is continually growing everyday! (In no particular order):

1) Tempest Rising by Tracy Deebs (Walker Books for Young Readers, May 10, 2011)

Summary: Tempest Maguire wants nothing more than to surf the killer waves near her California home; continue her steady relationship with her boyfriend, Mark; and take care of her brothers and surfer dad. But Tempest is half mermaid, and as her seventeenth birthday approaches, she will have to decide whether to remain on land or give herself to the ocean like her mother. The pull of the water becomes as insistent as her attraction to Kai, a gorgeous surfer whose uncanny abilities hint at an otherworldly identity as well. And when Tempest does finally give in to the water's temptation and enters a fantastical underwater world, she finds that a larger destiny awaits her - and that the entire ocean's future hangs in the balance.

2) Die for Me by Amy Plum (HarperTeen, May 10, 2011)

Summary: Die For Me is the first of three books about Kate, a sixteen-year-old American who moves to Paris after the death of her parents. She finds herself falling for Vincent, who she discovers is not the typical French teenager he appears: he is something else entirely.

3) Dead Rules by Randy Russell (HarperTeen, July 1, 2011)

Summary: Sometimes falling in love means you've got to kill somebody. Jana Webster and Michael Haynes were destined to be together forever. Of that, Jana was sure. But Jana just died - in a bowling accident. And now she’s trapped in Dead School. Jana is certain that it won’t be long before Michael kills himself in order to spend eternity with her - but the days are passing and Michael is, inexplicably, still alive. So Jana decides to take matters into her own hands. And nothing - not even Dead School bad boy Mars Dreamcote’s enticingly warm touch or the devastating secret he holds about her death - will stop her from making her dreams come true.

4) City of Fallen Angels (Mortal Instruments, #4) by Cassandra Clare (Margaret K. McElderry, April 5, 2011)

Summary: City of Fallen Angels is the fourth book in the bestselling series The Mortal Instruments. (No description or cover yet!)

5) Wither (Chemical Garden, #1) by Lauren DeStefano (Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing, March 22, 2011)

Summary: The book is the first in a trilogy in a dystopian world, the result of a failed effort to create a perfect race, which has left all males with a lifespan of 25 years, and females with a lifespan of 20 years, following a sixteen-year-old girl sold as a polygamous bride - yet her husband is hopelessly in love with her and opens her to a magical world of wealth and illusion she never thought possible.

Visit Eleni on her blog La Femme Readers