Junior Kazi Bhuiya recommends: “Anxious People” by Fredrik Backman.

“[Anxious People] is about a lot of things, but it centers around a bank robbery and how it affects, like, all the people around it,” Bhuiya said. “[Anxious People] has a really big emotional impact, and that author, unlike any author I’ve ever read before, is able to really render emotions in a really cool, unique way and really bring meaning to situations that wouldn’t have meaning otherwise. I felt like that made the characters all feel very real.”

Sophomore Tilly Gebhardt recommends:  “My Sister’s Keeper” by Jodi Picoult.

“The main character’s sister has leukemia, and her parents were obviously very desperate to find out how to help save their child, so they basically have another child in order to save the older sister by helping with the donation of blood and that kind of thing to help her sister fight cancer, and it’s kind of just about the morals of that decision. The younger daughter is resisting [her parents wanting her to donate] her body parts and stuff like that, so it gets very complicated,” Gebhardt said. “I just think that it’s such an interesting and tough subject to write about, and the author did it really well. [The topic] is just something I wouldn’t have ever thought of to write about or even read about.”

Junior Andy Waltman recommends: The Watchmen series written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons and John Higgins.

“It’s about these superheroes during the 60s and 70s, and it’s sort of like a more realistic way of how superhumans would have interacted with the world. They become illegal because [they’re considered] vigilantes, and vigilantes become illegal, and some of them become government agents. That’s the background, so it all happens before the book, and then one of them gets murdered– so it’s sort of a murder mystery,” Waltman said. “It was different than most of the other graphic novels I’ve read because it was more realistic. [The author] would kill off a character so fast you just didn’t see it coming, and they didn’t feel apologetic about it.”

I recommend: “It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over” by Anne de Marcken.

This book follows a girl in the afterlife as she goes on a journey to rediscover her name and her past. The main character is a zombie, slowly falling apart on her journey to the other side as she learns to accept her death. She goes on to learn about the relationships she was a part of in the past in a beautifully unique, allegorical way. This book was so short but so profound, and the way that the main character considers grief and the feeling of squandering your time is so meaningful. This book will undoubtedly stick with me for a while.