So Fetch! New Trends Part Three: Getting Incepted!

Welcome back, and get ready for part three of what's new and hot in YA!

We've already told you about killer girls.

And then we told you about psychological thrillers.

Today, prepare for the weird. Because today Gretchen Weiner says:

to...Living Double Lives/Getting Incepted!

There are several books we saw at ALA--and probably some we missed--that turn the whole idea of sleep, dream, and life in general upside down. If you read David Levithan's EVERYDAY and you liked it, then these books are probably for you.

Here are some upcoming titles that are going to make your brain do this:

OTHERBOUND by Corinne Duyvis
From Goodreads: "Nolan longs for a life uninterrupted. Every single time he blinks, he’s transported into the mind of Amara, a girl in another world. As a mute servant who’s tasked with protecting a renegade princess, Amara lives a life of magic and danger and pain; she’s completely unaware that Nolan can see through her eyes. Until he becomes more than an observer. Until he learns to control her—and the two of them communicate for the first time. Amara is terrified. Then furious. She’s already spent a lifetime as property and punching bag. The last thing she needs is another force controlling her. All Amara and Nolan want is to be free of each other. But Nolan’s breakthrough has dangerous consequences. Now, they’ll have to work together to survive . . . and discover the truth about their connection."

WHITE SPACE by Ilsa J. Bick
From Goodreads: "Seventeen-year-old Emma Lindsay has problems: a head full of metal, no parents, a crazy artist for a guardian whom a stroke has turned into a vegetable, and all those times when she blinks away, dropping into other lives so ghostly and surreal it's as if the story of her life bleeds into theirs. But one thing Emma has never doubted is that she's real. Then she writes "White Space," a story about these kids stranded in a spooky house during a blizzard. Unfortunately, "White Space" turns out to be a dead ringer for part of an unfinished novel by a long-dead writer. The manuscript, which she's never seen, is a loopy Matrix meets Inkheart story in which characters fall out of different books and jump off the page. Thing is, when Emma blinks, she might be doing the same and, before long, she's dropped into the very story she thought she'd written. Trapped in a weird, snow-choked valley, Emma meets other kids with dark secrets and strange abilities: Eric, Casey, Bode, Rima, and a very special little girl, Lizzie. What they discover is that they--and Emma--may be nothing more than characters written into being from an alternative universe for a very specific purpose. Now what they must uncover is why they've been brought to this place--a world between the lines where parallel realities are created and destroyed and nightmares are written--before someone pens their end."

ONE PAST MIDNIGHT by Jessica Shirvington
From Goodreads: "For as long as she can remember, Sabine has lived two lives. Every 24 hours she Shifts to her ′other′ life - a life where she is exactly the same, but absolutely everything else is different: different family, different friends, different social expectations. In one life she has a sister, in the other she does not. In one life she′s a straight-A student with the perfect boyfriend, in the other she′s considered a reckless delinquent. Nothing about her situation has ever changed, until the day when she discovers a glitch: the arm she breaks in one life is perfectly fine in the other. With this new knowledge, Sabine begins a series of increasingly risky experiments which bring her dangerously close to the life she′s always wanted... But just what - and who - is she really risking?"

Honorable Mention: 
MY REAL CHILDREN by Jo Walton
**MY REAL CHILDREN is actually an adult novel, but it looked so good that I picked it up at ALA. Bonus points, it fits into this new trend so perhaps will have some crossover for those of us that like books with a more literary feel!**

Synopsis from Goodreads: "It's 2015, and Patricia Cowan is very old. "Confused today," read the notes clipped to the end of her bed. She forgets things she should know—what year it is, major events in the lives of her children. But she remembers things that don’t seem possible. She remembers marrying Mark and having four children. And she remembers not marrying Mark and raising three children with Bee instead. She remembers the bomb that killed President Kennedy in 1963, and she remembers Kennedy in 1964, declining to run again after the nuclear exchange that took out Miami and Kiev. Her childhood, her years at Oxford during the Second World War—those were solid things. But after that, did she marry Mark or not? Did her friends all call her Trish, or Pat? Had she been a housewife who escaped a terrible marriage after her children were grown, or a successful travel writer with homes in Britain and Italy? And the moon outside her window: does it host a benign research station, or a command post bristling with nuclear missiles?"

And with every new, there must be an old, and so today Regina George is saying:

to...Love Triangles!

Just like real life, every once in awhile a love triangle pops up in the YA world. Except in the past couple of years, when EVERYONE and their mother was in a love triangle. I'm happy this trend is over because if you think about it, a love triangle is extremely difficult to write. It's hard enough to come up with a compelling main character. It's doubly hard to come up with a compelling and fully fleshed out love interest. And then you go and try to add another equal-but-different fully fleshed out love interest? I can only think of a few books that really did this successfully (::cough::VampireAcademy::cough::). For this reason, I'm glad to see this trend go. Why make writing even harder than it already is? I'm looking forward to some quality, one to one ratio love stories in the future.

Stay tuned for the conclusion of our new trends series!