The Golden Lily by Richelle Mead
It is the second book in the Bloodlines series. It’s an easy read for 12+. The book follows a girl whose job it is to keep the vampire world undercover and protect a royal. She struggles to keep the line between work and becoming friends with the vampires. The main girl is sensible and responsible, semi-socially challenged. Since the girl is so smart, it’s easy for a reader to learn things just from the conversations she has. The book also includes relate-able teen problems like weight/appearance and love interests. The action starts a little before halfway through the book. One of the secondary characters smokes and drinks. The book mentions rape and sex, but doesn’t dwell on it.

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Rootless by Chris Howard

     Rootless  by Chris Howard
15+ because of the drug use, violence, cursing and more mature content. It’s set in a sort of post-apocalyptic world, where there are no books or trees as they were all burned during the Darkness. Everything relies on corn because cornstalks are the only thing left after the locusts came. The main character’s dad has been taken, although he’s not sure under what context, and he carries on his father’s work as a tree builder. The plot starts when a girl he’s working for has a picture of his father chained to a tree. So he sets out to find him in the so-called Promised Land. On the way he runs into pirates, a slaver ship, Gen Tech agents, and locusts. He also finds numerous connections to his dad and uncovers secrets about the world around him along the way.