Trial By Fire by Josephine Angelini (Worldwalker series)

I'm a witch. And witches burn.

Josephine Angelini. Why. Why must you do this to me? First it was Starcrossed, which I basically devoured, and now you've gone and written this. Arghhhh.

Lily Proctor is allergic to everything. She can barely survive a day without developing a fever or a rash due to an allergic reaction, and then there is the difficulty breathing, nausea and life-threatening seizures, meaning she may not even be able to attend college next year.

But then Lily is dragged into a new world. A world where she goes from being completely helpless to the most powerful woman in the land. Where witches rule and science is all but obsolete. Where she is literally fighting a war with herself.

She was still in Salem. She just wasn't in her Salem anymore.

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart

Frankie, you are a kick-ass girl, okay? You top my list of absolute favourite fictional girls ever (which is impressive, because I spend way to much time reading for it to be healthy) just for your sheer intelligence and determination. Congratulations! 

I actually wish I was friends with someone like Frankie, no joke. Why, you ask? Because she seriously has (metaphorical) balls - even though she has the same insecurities every single other girl on the planet has. 

After a miraculous transformation over the summer which leaves her with a 'knockout figure' (sigh ... as if these actually happen), Frankie finds herself with a gorgeous senior boyfriend, Matthew Livingston. But trying to fit in with his group of friends is more difficult than she expected, and she soon realises that Matthew just isn't telling her everything. Most importantly, that he's part of an all-male secret society at their boarding school. Obviously, Frankie can't join, because a) she shouldn't even know about it and b) she's not a guy. But being the kind of kick-ass girl she is, Frankie refuses to take 'no' for an answer.

Which leads to all sorts of equally ingenious and hilarious escapades. 

This book began like a typical beach-read, chick-flick romance where the super lucky girl has a super great boyfriend who actually turns out to be not that great at all. But don't be deceived. This book is SO much more than that and I love it all the more for that. 

Frankie is the literal embodiment of what it means to be a strong female to me - she is clever, stays true to herself without being insanely stubborn and isn't afraid to take control of things. Some of the things she says made me laugh out loud when I read them because they simultaneously made complete sense and no sense at all. E. Lockhart has done a fantastic job at making her both incredibly relatable and admirable for girls my age. 

And E. Lockhart has such a flawlessly clever writing style. Discussions on society, grammar, everything was woven in seamlessly to the story, so subtly that you almost didn't realise that she was trying to address these other topics. The idea of the panopticon particularly messed with my head for a few days (in the best way, of course).

This book is about way more than it appears to be, and was all in all, a pretty amazing read.

(I apologise for this terrible summary, I really struggle to condense my thoughts that much)

Dangerous Girls by Abigail Haas

One moment. One picture. One glimpse - that's all it takes to make someone think they know the truth.

I practically inhaled this book, it was so good – I'm not going to lie, I may have almost fallen asleep in class today because I was up half of last night trying to finish it. This book is my definition of unputdownable, and I suffered this morning because of it. It was 100% worth it.

Anna and her best friend Elise go on holiday with a group of friends to Aruba. It’s pretty much a typical high school student holiday: lots of parties, drinking and general fun, until Elise is found stabbed in their apartment. The primary suspect? Anna.

I originally picked this up because it reminded me a little bit of Pretty Little Liars, which I seriously LOVE, but it ended up being darker and a lot more serious (obviously, because it's about a murder investigation). I recently read The Girl On The Train and the layout of the book actually reminds me a lot of that, with the different trial scenes interspersed with flashbacks from the holiday, before and after Elise’s murder, and Anna looking back on the events from where she is now. Honestly, I usually find this sort of thing really confusing and difficult to follow, but this book was brilliant in that it was always clear which point of the story I was reading, nothing felt disjointed, and it was ordered really well so that I felt like it all flowed and tied in together. On top of that, you get this really amazing juxtaposition (ooh, fancy word there) of the events from Anna’s point of view as they happened, and what’s being said about them at the trial, and it’s just so freaking clever.