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Unreliable narrators are an interesting breed in fiction. The classic example of such a narrator is Holden Caulfield in “Catcher in the Rye.” Chris Lynch’s Keir in “Inexcusable” comes from the same mold. You’re not quite sure what to make of him at first, but steadily, bit by bit, you learn he might not be all he seems. But then again, he is who he purports to be because it’s in the telling of his stories — how he crippled a member of an opposing football team during a game, how he hazed other students — you learn he believes he is good, yet he is that guy. He is a high school football player who fancies himself a “lovable rogue.” But he’s more than that. He’s someone capable of violence. And in “Inexcusable” we see the story of a rape from the point of view of the rapist. Because ultimately that’s what the story is about — a searing portrait of how one young man does something inexcusable and rapes the girl he has an enormous crush on. The author doesn’t exonerate Keir, now does Keir exonerate himself. That, along with Lynch’s masterful look into the mind of a liar who wants to be good but can’t, is a fantastic read.

This was one of the first novels that hooked me into the young adult genre. Read it!

After reading Sarah Ockler’s “Twenty Boy Summer,” I feel like I’m 16 again, sunning on the beach, about to embark on an epic summer romance. OK, I’m definitely not 16, not even close, but my point is Ockler’s writing is so transportive I dare anyone to read her debut novel and not think they’re on a beach. I could literally smell coconut oil and pineapple shakes and salty sea air while reading. Summer and its attendant romances are infused in every single page of this simultaneously heartbreaking and joyful book about Anna and the secret she keeps from her best friend — Anna and her friend’s brother Matt were falling in love right before Matt died in a car accident. Fast forward a year later when the two girls arrive in Zanzibar Bay, Calif. for a summer vacation far away from upstate New York. They go in search of boys and summer lovin’  – hence the twenty boys in the title - but stop far short of that goal when Anna meets someone who takes her mind off Matt and what might have been. Whether the secret finally does come out, well, I’ll let you read and discover that for yourself. Along the way you’ll be treated to some lovely metaphors as Ockler likens the ocean at night to “licorice soup” and a lost notebook to a “banished mermaid.”