The Girl with Glass Feet by Ali Shaw

The Girl with Glass Feet is a beautiful, modern fairy tale.

Ida is slowly turning into glass and she has returned to St. Hauda's Land looking for a cure. What she finds instead is Midas, a shy boy who is determined to help her stop the curse that has made her feet heavy and fragile.

Shaw has created a world that hints at the horrible, but still seems beautiful and full of possibility, even in the face of the tragic reality of Ida's feet.

This is a love story of a different kind. It might break your heart, or it might give you a lightness of heart at the hope it provides for us.

Carve the Mark by Veronica Roth

In Roth's Carve the Mark, everyone is born with a currentgift. Akos and his brother are captured by a dangerous people who want what their currentgifts will offer them. Among those dangerous people lives Cyra,  a girl who must channel her own currentgift to serve her tyrannical brother in ways she despises. When the two are brought together, unexpected things happen that will change both of their lives and perceptions deeply.

Fans of Roth's Divergent series will expect this to be another action-packed dystopian sort of thing.  My son wasn't as drawn into this story, maybe because the pace is slower and the world takes some explanation at the start that might leave younger readers bored and confused.

But...for those of us who stuck it out, it becomes a character study of Cyra and Akos, revealing within them the struggle to remain true to who they are and a willingness to be changed. For those of you who'd like to see it, the story may also be a reminder to those of us currently sharing a planet with people who hate us for reasons we can't understand.