Every January and August, tens of thousands of teenagers from around the world go on foreign exchanges.

The experience can be one of the most positive and beneficial aspects of young adult studies. The ability to learn from and appreciate differences in other cultures is something that can make us all better global citizens. The added benefits of language acquisition, knowledge of different countries and customs, personal growth and self-reliance often help exchange students become more successful in future life endeavors.

However, being an exchange student is almost never as easy or wonderful as it sounds. Homesickness, experimentation with cultural norms contradictory to one’s own, and integrating into different social environments can feel daunting at times and affects all participants at various levels.

Van Diemen at 17 walks the line between positive and negative aspects of the experience through the eyes of Kara Jagger, a seventeen year old American chosen to study in Tasmania for a year. Set in mid-nineteen eighties Australia, the novel is essentially the story of a girl who is not completely honest about or secure in who she is. Is she the perfect exchange student? No. But her story sounds like real life, the way that imperfect but well meaning people often get stuck in unexpected, messy situations.

Charlie West went to bed one night an ordinary high school student. He woke up a hunted man. Terrorists are trying to kill him. The police want to arrest him for the stabbing death of his best friend. He doesn’t know whose side he’s one or who he can trust. With his pursuers closing in on every side, Charlie makes his way back to his hometown to find some answers. There, holed up in an abandoned mansion, he’s joined by his friends in a desperate attempt to discover the truth about a murder he can’t remember-and the love he can never forget.

Libba Bray pens an intriguing and suspenseful tale in A Great and Terrible Beauty and even throws in a hint of passion (not too much – this is a Young Adult novel after all!). I thoroughly enjoyed it and will be on the look out for the other two novels in the Gemma Doyle Trilogy.

Fade to Blue is a teenage comic-scifi-thriller novel, filled with humour and enough twists and turns to keep you guessing that by the end of it all you’re not really too sure what actually happened!