Book Recommendations: YA Edition

I'm finally getting around to some of my promised book recommendations. I read so many good books in 2012 that I have to split my recommendations up between YA and not YA. I read each of the below books for my YA literature course. I think only one of them was actually published in 2012, but they were all new to me. They're listed in the order in which I read them.

• The Fault in Our Stars by John Green - This was the first book I read for the course and it set a really high bar for the 23 books that came after it. This book found its way to a lot of "best of the year" lists and deservedly so. Teenagers Hazel and Augustus meet at a support group for young cancer patients and fall in love. You'll laugh (yes, really), you'll cry, you'll be glad you read it. I also fully intend to read everything else John Green has ever written.
• Princess Academy by Shannon Hale - I've read Hale's first not YA book, Austenland, several times, so I decided to check out one of her YA books for the course. I'm glad I chose this one. Miri is a fourteen-year-old girl who doesn't know where she fits in her village until she and the rest of the village girls are forced to attend a so-called princess academy. It's a sweet story with a happy ending and sometimes that's all you want from a good book.
• The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick - I'd seen the movie Hugo in the theater, so I had a pretty good idea of the story. But I was completely unprepared for the way Selznick tells the story in the book. There's a visual aspect to the storytelling that is unlike anything I'd ever seen before and is incredibly compelling. I'd probably recommend this book on that alone, but the story is also very good.
• The Giver by Lois Lowry - I was so entranced by this story that I read the book in one day (practically one sitting). Apparently this book is often assigned in high school, but it wasn't in mine. And more's the pity. This is a deceptively simple story about a deceptively perfect world and it stayed with me long after I finished it.
• Amy & Roger's Epic Detour by Morgan Matson - Of the 52 books I read last year, this is the one most likely to be slapped with the dreaded "chick lit" label. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I don't mind reading chick lit any more than I mind watching chick flicks or listening to emo. I do wish we could strip the pejorative connotation from "chick lit," though (and "chick flicks" and "emo," for that matter). The odds that I will re-read this book someday are high, which is one of the highest forms of praise I can give a book.
• Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson - This historical novel is set during the yellow fever outbreak in Philadelphia in 1793. This is a really good, fast-paced story, but I'm also recommending it because I feel like this is an episode in early American history that isn't well-known. I'd never heard of it until I read this book and I'm a native of the Delaware Valley; heck, I was in middle school during the 200th anniversary, it should at least have been mentioned in passing. The author blurb on the book states that Anderson first became aware of the outbreak when she saw something about the anniversary on the Philly local news, but she must have been watching PBS or something (we got all of our news from 6ABC).

I also really enjoyed Suzanne Collins' Catching Fire and Mockingjay.