(RE)CYCLER

Jill has more reason than most recent high-school graduates to be both thrilled and terrified to leave home: Once a month, instead of having her period, she turns into a boy. Throughout high school, Jill’s mother helped Jill sublimate her boy self so thoroughly that he became an entirely new personality, Jack. Now Jack and Jill, freed from the constraints of a whitewashed Massachusetts suburb, are ready to take on each other, Brooklyn and the world. In theory, anyway. In practice, Jill can’t stand that Jack’s dating her best friend, and Jack hates Jill’s long-distance bisexual boyfriend. Moreover, Jack despises the sketchy Brooklynite Jill might be dating, and both Jack and Jill feel a little lost in the wilds of New York. Packed with realistically emo adolescent pain, Jack and Jill’s journey of self-discovery is funny, heartwarming and just a little bit smutty. It won’t make sense without Cycler (2008), but it’s well worth the effort of reading both. (Fantasy. YA)