A girl goes off to boarding school in Switzerland. She has trouble fitting in. She is seen as not good at sports, though she is good at drawing. With the help of a teacher, she gradually becomes more happy at school. She also meets a boy who she likes. Later some mystery man comes and claims to be the father of the boy. She has a plan to try to verify and ends up getting hurt. They later discover the man was a con artist and the boy's parents died in the holocaust.
The girl has been secretly training in skiing with the aid of the boy and the teacher that befriended her. She enters a ski contest (to the chagrin of the PE teacher.) She fails to win because she stopped to help a fallen classmate, but gets the grand trophy anyway. She sees her father friends with the teacher she liked - but he says it is too soon after her mother died for him to get serious.
It is a nice boarding school story that has conflict, but does not get too extreme.
Gilded is inspired by the story of Rumpelstiltskin, though it has many more details, twists and turns. The girl has the "gift" of lying and is a great storyteller. She is saved by a castle "ghost" that helps spin straw into gold. She befriends him and gives him more payments, up to the first born son (which he conceives in her.) The castle is inhabited by many ghosts and demons that she gets to know. She also learns from the people that a friendly ghost leaves gold for them.
Floods have devastated the world. Things are fairly dire, but there is hope for boys to be taken to "X-Isle" where they can supposedly have a better experience. Once they get there, they find things are not as nice as they expected. There are a group of capos, lead by "Preacher John" who control the other other boys. The book primarily follows Baz as he comes to the island. He and some others eventually hatch a plan to make a bomb by harvesting methane from farts. They also learn that there are animal and human "sacrifices", potentially of a few of the girls that have come to visit. (The girls had prior experience as it was once the location of a girls' school.) Baz feels reluctant to kill others, but has decisions made for him. It all sort of ends up happily ever after with him discovering the secret identity of one of the boys. The story feels very familiar and takes a long time to complete.
Two kingdoms don't like each other. One was more peaceful. The daughter of the queen is involved in the other kingdom. The leader of the "bad" kingdom had all family members of both ages killed at a wedding. There is bad blood and violence, but also romance between waring parties. It is just your typical YA female-driven fantasy book.
At the start, we learn that the protagonist is an imprisoned assassin. She has been given a special opportunity to compete to be the King's champion. If she wins, she can earn her freedom in a few years. She takes the opportunity. She knows she is good. Things get weird with the competition. Competitors die gruesome deaths. She meets up with the ghost of an old queen. She struggles on a test to identify poisons. These two events will come together to help her in the final chance to become champion. There are also various romantic intrigues. It found myself sometimes confused due to the similarity of various names. This is your typical female-driven young adult fantasy.
A bunch of "recruits" are set to join a space fleet. Some girl finds herself awake a few hundred years in the future. There are some different species. People fall in love with each other - and even have "attractions" across species. There are some national conflicts. There are places the fleet is not supposed to go, so of course they go there. Aurora Rising is a confusing mish-mash of different science fiction and young adult tropes.
Shadows Between Us takes place in a kingdom ruled by a shadow king. The culture requires a girl to wait until her older sisters are engaged before she can get married. This leads to the protaganist sleeping around as she waits for her older, favored sister to be wedded off. Once she is able to, she takes aim at the king. She works her way into his court with attempts to marry him and rule the kingdom. The King takes notice. However, he wants a "fake courtship" to get everyone else off his back. She takes it, but ends up spending time with other guys. Eventually, they do start to work together. However, there are also issues with the kingdom - a bandit and people trying to kill the king. There is some interesting "shadow" magic in place. People can "live forever", but without personal contact. However, the "magic" is just a sideshow for a romance work. Two young people try to use each other for their personal gain, yet end up falling in love.