Teenage: Who wants to read about teens who always have boyfriends, look perfect and never feel insecure?
From Holden Caulfield to Willow Rosenberg, all the great teenage characters are outsiders. And rightly so, because that's how most teenagers see themselves. And at a time when even the best-looking, loved-up person feels like a bit of a freak, who wants to read about teens who always have boyfriends, look perfect and never feel insecure? We want underdogs, not overachievers. This is why Grace Dent's awkwardly titled LBD: It's a Girl Thing (Penguin £4.99) is initially unpromising. The LBD of the title are a trio of teenage friends who call themselves Les Bambinos Dangereuses, and as if that weren't annoying enough, they are, apparently, "the sharpest, funniest most switched-on minxes at Blackwell School". Once you get past all this, however, LBD is a surprisingly funny and sweet book. Dent is obviously trying to replicate the charm of Louise Rennison's wonderful Georgia Nicolson books, and while she only half-succeeds, this debut novel is still lots of fun.
Less fun is Garret Freyman-Weyr's My Heartbeat (Young Picador, £9.99). Ellen idolises her brother Link and is "madly in love" with his best friend James, but gradually she comes to realise that the two boys are more than just friends, and a complicated love triangle begins. My Heartbeat is a sensitive and honest look at teenage sexuality, and worth reading despite its rather humourless heroine. Sibling rivalry also features in Michael Morpurgo's excellent new novel, Private Peaceful (Collins, £10.99), in which a teenage soldier in the trenches of the first World War looks back on his rural childhood as he endures the longest night of his life. It reads like a more brutal, less lyrical version of Cider with Rosie, and it's enormously moving.
The relationship between two sisters is at the centre of Teresa Doran's debut novel Running Home (Chicken House, £10.99) which gets off to a shocking start when Cait and Effie witness their father killing their mother and then himself while the family are holidaying in Cornwall.
Thirteen-year-old Cait (who seems more like a ten year-old than a teenager) decides to take her sister back to their grandparents in Ireland, and their attempts to get home make for a well-written but strangely unconvincing book.
Fans of Kate Thompson's The Missing Link trilogy won't be disappointed with Origins (Bodley Head, £12.99), the final book in the series. Set in a dystopian future where the discovery of the "missing link" gene has enabled the breeding of talking, rational animals, Origins reads like a cross between Philip Pullman's Dark Materials and Wells's The Island of Doctor Moreau. Despite an overly confusing subplot set in the distant future, Origins is gripping, if unintentionally creepy, stuff.
While one trilogy for teens ends, another begins. Rites of Passage: Borderland (Oxford University Press, £4.99) is the first of a new trilogy by young Oxford author Rhiannon Lassiter.
According to the blurb, these books will appeal to fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but Borderland lacks that magnificent show's wit and charm. The central conceit - that four teenagers find their way into another world where they develop unique, sometimes magical alter-egos - is promising, but pretentious writing and a reliance on fantasy-novel cliché make this one to avoid.
Jennifer Donnelly's excellent début novel, A Gathering Light (Bloomsbury, £12.99), is based on the true story of Grace Brown, who was pregnant when she was murdered by her lover in a mountain resort town in 1906.
Donnelly tells the story of this famous case from the viewpoint of Mattie Gokey, a smart 16-year-old girl who's working in the resort to earn money that could take her all the way to New York City - and college. Beautifully written and peopled by utterly convincing characters, A Gathering Light is a summer must-read.
Also hoping to go to college is Raven Jefferson, resident of the Brooklyn housing projects and the heroine of Janet McDonald's Spellbound (Collins Flamingo, £4.99). Forced to drop out of high school after she becomes pregnant, Raven is offered a second chance at college when her successful older sister tells her about a spelling competition that could snag her a scholarship.
Raven's journey out of the ghetto is funny, sad and hopeful, and by the time she finally takes part in the competition, you'll want to cheer her through every round. That's the best thing about underdog heroes - it means a lot more when they finally win.
Anna Carey is a writer and critic