Young adult fiction

So I spent over an hour at Barnes and Noble with my Twilight-obsessed friend Meredith today. She reads a lot of YA fiction now, so she recommended a few that are a cut above the usual offerings of the genre (most have no vampires).

The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins; with an interesting "political" angle - dystopic future, Brave New World type stuff, definitely more substantial than typical teen fiction - The Hunger Games & Catching Fire & Mockingjay

The Iron King by Julie Kagawa, and the sequel, The Iron Daughter, and the third book, due in early 2011, The Iron Queen; these may be the most fun - the young lady in the story turns out to be the daughter of the "faery king" and faces many adventures and challenges; very popular on goodreads

My vote for best title: The Forest of Hands and Feet, and the sequel, The Dead Tossed Waves, by Carrie Ryan; more dystopian future, this time with zombies, but apparently very well written
These two are a bit lighter, part of the burgeoning "supernatural romance" genre ~

Evermore by Alyson Noel; this time the girl turns out to be the immortal! Sounds promising, but it got a lot of one star reviews on goodreads - "cliched" and "poorly written" were frequent comments

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater; this is basically Jacob and Bella without Edward; apparently very popular in the genre

So I've got my summer reading list all set. She's going to loan me some of these, but she reads a book in about 3 hours, while it probably takes me closer to 30 hours, so her loans will keep me busy for the rest of the year at least!