WAITING FOR NORMAL by Leslie Connor

Addie's mom creates a life for herself and Addie which resembles a roller coaster. Either the frig is full or there is only toast for supper. Either Mommers is home giving Addie pointers on upping her vocabulary--or she is out "job interviewing" and doesn't return before midnight.

Addie longs for a life like her sixth grade contemporaries, with clothes that match and freedom from heckling by the other kids. Instead, she faces daily challenges and must hone a hopeful spirit. She gets help from unlikely people including neighbors across the vacant lot. Her stepdad, Dwight, who is parenting Addie's half sisters, comes by when he can. He's always on her side but must work outside the community, leaving Adddie to fend mostly on her own.

Sometimes courage and a hopeful spirit need a boost. Readers will want to find out how Addie's life changes in ways that cause both sadness and relief.

Story of a Girl --a novel by Sara Zarr

This amazing first novel by author Sara Zarr begins like this:
"I was thirteen when my dad caught me with Tommy Webber in the back of Tommy's Buick, parked next to the old Chart House down in Montara at eleven o'clock on a Tuesday night. Tommy was seventeen and the supposed friend of my brother, Darren.
I didn't love him. I'm not sure I even liked him.

The car was cold and Tommy was stoned and we'd been doing pretty much the same thing a dozen times before, and I could smell the salt air from the beach, and in my head I wrote the story of a girl who surfed the cold green ocean, when one day she started paddling in the wrong direction and didn't know it until she looked back and couldn't see the shore."
In a brief moment, Deanna Lambert's life is changed forever, at home, at school, and in her own mind and heart. This is the powerful story of her longing and her exertions to escape a life that is defined by one past indiscretion.

This is definitely a book for older teens.