Burning

Gr 9 Up—When Angela takes the rap for her thieving boyfriend at 15, her sentence is three years in Brunesfield, a juvenile correctional facility in upstate New York. Here, rough girls pick on weak girls, and the few who are "crazy as…" live in Seg Ward, short for segregation, or solitary confinement. While this thriller's coarse language, setting, and ambitious agenda—an evil doctor deceives inmates, who then begin disappearing—vie for readers' attention, it is the portrait of Angela that stands out. Sensitive to her cellmates, she takes solace in their company when offered and steers clear of their rages. Angela is up for parole in three months and desperate to reconnect with her younger brother, Charlie. Typically teenage, she's also pretty hard on herself: dyslexic, she needed three tries to earn a GED, but instead of taking pride in this, Angela feels only embarrassment. With her parole in the balance, she's forced to bodyguard someone new to Seg Ward, a 10-year-old diagnosed pyretic who starts fires telepathically. Angela, realizing Dr. Gruen's manipulations, must weigh her cooperation against the possibility of her release. As this too-twisty plot fizzles, readers will stay with the story of Angela's teen angst instead. When prison guard Ben Mateo asks for her help with a crossword puzzle, it's the start of an attraction that both of them want—and want to avoid. Their forbidden romance is compelling, believable, doomed, and quite fitting, given the novel's gritty context.