Not If I Save You First by Ally Carter

Maddie thought she would be best friends with Logan forever.  That is until her decides to move her to Alaska with no warning. 

It's been six years without one word from Logan -- even though she wrote him every day for two years. 

She accepted that he no longer wanted to be friends. 
She accepted that her life only includes two people -- herself and her dad.
She accepted that she'll always be alone.

Then Logan shows up on her front step and he's brought trouble with him. 

Now they're trying to survive kidnappers and a wild Alaskan blizzard in the woods.  Will they make it through alive or will Maddie end up killing Logan?

This is a great stand-alone book by the author of the Gallagher Girls, Heist Society, and Embassy Row series.  I would highly recommend it to those who enjoy survival stories as well as those who like romances.

Teenage Assassins

This past weekend I watched the movie Hanna about a teen girl who was trained by her father to assassinate the woman who killed her mother.  This led me to thinking how many teen books feature teen assassins.  Here's just a few of them . .  .

Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick by Joe Schreiber
Perry's parents insist that he take Gobi, their quiet, Lithuanian exchange student, to senior prom but after an incident at the dance he learns that Gobi is actually a trained assassin who needs him as a henchman, behind the wheel of his father's precious Jaguar, on a mission in Manhattan.

Graceling by Kristin Cashore
In a world where some people are born with extreme and often-feared skills called Graces, Katsa struggles for redemption from her own horrifying Grace, the Grace of killing, and teams up with another young fighter to save their land from a corrupt king.

Boy Nobody by Allen Zadoff
Sixteen-year-old Boy Nobody, an assassin controlled by a shadowy government organization, The Program, considers sabotaging his latest mission because his target reminds him of the normal life he craves.

Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas
After she has served a year of hard labor in the salt mines of Endovier for her crimes, Crown Prince Dorian offers eighteen-year-old assassin Celaena Sardothien her freedom on the condition that she act as his champion in a competition to find a new royal assassin.

Grave Mercy by Robin La Fevers
In the fifteenth-century kingdom of Brittany, seventeen-year-old Ismae escapes from the brutality of an arranged marriage into the sanctuary of the convent of St. Mortain, where she learns that the god of Death has blessed her with dangerous gifts--and a violent destiny.