I really enjoy finding new authors, and will be looking for more by Shelley Hrdlitschka in the future. Her YA books tackle all kinds of interesting questions, and she is sensitive to the needs of her readers, as well.

In Sun Signs, we meet several teens who are enrolled in correspondence courses for their high school. Each has a different reason for studying by correspondence, and those reasons become clear as you read the book, so I won’t spoil that discovery for you.

The story is told through the e-mails of the young adults and their science teacher. We don’t even know everyone’s real names at the beginning.

The premise is simple: One of the students has a science project to complete, and she convinces her teacher to allow her to study astrology. She asks for other correspondence students who are a specific sign to participate and gets three participants. Her data is looking promising until she learns that someone’s been lying to her.

It’s a sweet little book about relationships: the ones we have with other people and the one we have with ourselves. It’s also about how we deal with difficult situations and how we perceive ourselves as a result of those situations.