Best Fiction for Young Adults

Woolston, B. (2012). Catch & release. Minneapolis: Carolrhoda Lab.  Catch and Release begins with a story about a girl named Polly.  Polly was in high school and life was great for her.  As she planned to finish high school and continue to college, which would soon lead to her marriage to her longtime boyfriend, suddenly her life was striked with a sudden disease.  Polly contracted a flesh eating infection named MRSA.  Though it killed several people, Polly was lucky enough to be saved; however, she was left with a deformity on her face.  Unfortunately, her life changed.  Her boyfriend shockingly leaves her and now she if left to wonder what will become of all this?  Polly soon finds comfort in a friendship with a boy named Odd, who had also survived the infection.  Trying to escape reality, together they take a trip where they will find in each other the support and the connection that will bring them back to the happiness of life.  The book really does a great job expressing the effects of a sudden change that comes into anybody’s life.  Regardless if it’s an event or sickness, life brings you many obstacles that brings to light that challenges that come of it.  Through Catch & Release the reader can appreciate how life’s impacts can bring an unexpected happy ending.  This book would be most appropriate for ages 14 and up and can be used to elaborate on reading genres and elements of a fictional story such as symbolism.  Criteria: The central conflict of the story and theme is finding yourself again and accepting that things have changed, but yet it is essential that you move forward.