From their trip to Amsterdam to meet the reclusive Van Houten to their hilariously flirty repartee, readers will swoon on nearly every page.

The two become connected at the hip, and what follows is a smartly crafted intellectual explosion of a romance. He agrees to read the Van Houten and she agrees to read his-based on his favorite bloodbath-filled video game. She’s smart, snarky and 16 she goes to community college and jokingly calls Peter Van Houten, the author of her favorite book, An Imperial Affliction, her only friend besides her parents. He’s a gorgeous, confident, intelligent amputee who always loses video games because he tries to save everyone. Sparks fly when Hazel Grace Lancaster spies Augustus “Gus” Waters checking her out across the room in a group-therapy session for teens living with cancer. She’s fighting the brown fluid in her lungs caused by tumors. He’s in remission from the osteosarcoma that took one of his legs. This formidable story will haunt those who ask hard questions about the past as it reveals the hopes and dreams of individuals in a nation trying to lie its way to the future. Meticulous research is presented through believable, complex characters on the brink of adulthood who personalize the questions we all must answer about our place in the world.Ī stunning novel that exposes modern fascism and elevates human resilience. (author’s note, research and sources, glossary, photographs) (Historical fiction. Their lives run parallel and intersect as each tries to answer questions about truth and the path ahead within a regime that crushes any opposition, murders dissidents, and punishes their families while stealing babies to sell to parents with accepted political views.

Daniel is a white Texan who wants to be a photojournalist, not an oilman Ana is trying to work her way to respectability as a hotel maid her brother, Rafael, wants to erase memories of an oppressive boys’ home and Puri is a loving caregiver for babies awaiting adoption-together they provide alternating third-person lenses for viewing Spain during one of its most brutally repressive periods.

Sepetys ( Salt to the Sea, 2016, etc.) begins her novel in 1957. The Spanish Civil War lasted from 1936-1939, but Franco held Spain by its throat for 36 years. The pitiless dictatorship of Francisco Franco examined through the voices of four teenagers: one American and three Spaniards.

Ruta sepetys the fountains of silence