Wishing and Hoping, and Thinking and Praying

Carpe Diem by Autumn Cornwell
Goodreads Summary: "I've got my entire life planned out for the next ten years--including my PhD and Pulitzer Prize," claims sixteen-year-old overachiever Vassar Spore, the daughter of overachiever parents, who, in true overachiever fashion, named her after an elite women's college. Vassar expects her sophomore summer to include both AP and AAP (Advanced Advanced Placement) classes. Surprise! Enter a world-traveling relative who sends her plans into a tailspin when she blackmail's Vassar's parents into forcing their only child to backpack with her through Southeast Asia.

On a journey from Malaysia to Cambodia to the remote jungles of Laos, Vassar is faced with things she isn't prepared for--adventure, danger, a Malaysian cowboy-slash-bodyguard her own age--and in learning to "live in the moment" uncovers a family secret that turns her world upside down.

Vassar Spore can plan on one thing: She'll never be the same again.

Tempest Rising by Tracy Deebs
Goodreads Summary: Tempest Maguire wants nothing more than to surf the killer waves near her California home; continue her steady relationship with her boyfriend, Mark; and take care of her brothers and surfer dad. But Tempest is half mermaid, and as her seventeenth birthday approaches, she will have to decide whether to remain on land or give herself to the ocean like her mother. The pull of the water becomes as insistent as her attraction to Kai, a gorgeous surfer whose uncanny abilities hint at an otherworldly identity as well. And when Tempest does finally give in to the water's temptation and enters a fantastical underwater world, she finds that a larger destiny awaits her—and that the entire ocean's future hangs in the balance.

Wither by Lauren DeStefano
Goodreads Summary: What if you knew exactly when you would die?

Thanks to modern science, every human being has become a ticking genetic time bomb—males only live to age twenty-five, and females only live to age twenty. In this bleak landscape, young girls are kidnapped and forced into polygamous marriages to keep the population from dying out.

When sixteen-year-old Rhine Ellery is taken by the Gatherers to become a bride, she enters a world of wealth and privilege. Despite her husband Linden's genuine love for her, and a tenuous trust among her sister wives, Rhine has one purpose: to escape—to find her twin brother and go home.

But Rhine has more to contend with than losing her freedom. Linden's eccentric father is bent on finding an antidote to the genetic virus that is getting closer to taking his son, even if it means collecting corpses in order to test his experiments. With the help of Gabriel, a servant Rhine is growing dangerously attracted to, Rhine attempts to break free, in the limited time she has left.

What are you wishing and hoping, and thinking and praying for today? Let me know! :D