7 YAs That Look at Life Through the Camera Lens

The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen, by Katherine Howe
A camera is part of the meet-cute in Howe’s novel, jumping between a modern-day ghost story and the 1800s-set mystery that created said ghost. Aspiring filmmaker Wes, in a summer program at NYU, meets the ethereal Annie while filming a séance in the East Village. At first he only sees her through his camera; it’s when he meets her again, in real life, that a mystery told on dual timelines starts to emerge. Complicating matters is Maddie, the equally alluring, flesh-and-blood girl Wes also meets at the séance.

The Girl with the Wrong Name, by Barnabas Miller
Theo is also an aspiring filmmaker, also living in Manhattan, but her methods and motives are different: wearing a hidden button cam, she discreetly records random subjects. Is this secret filming an effort to discover what happened on The Night in Question, which left her with no memories but a nasty scar? Theo’s classmates ignore the scar and her, leaving her to her strange obsession with the lives of strangers, particularly those featured in New York Times wedding announcements. But when she befriends a stranger she deems the “Lost Boy,” she finally steps out from behind her camera to help him find a missing girl…and perhaps learn more about her own mystery.

Born Confused, by Tanuja Desai Hidier
The American-born child of Indian parents, Dimple Lala struggles to straddle both identities simultaneously. The irony is that while she chafes at her parents’ control over her life, she’s actually a mostly model daughter: a good student with small rebellions (smoking pot), with two ex-boyfriends but still a virgin. On top of that, her parents don’t understand her art, encouraging her to take color photographs when she prefers black-and-white. One of her primary subjects is her best friend Gwyn, who’s slim, blonde, and has a hot boyfriend. Dimple can’t help but base her ideas of what a “normal” girl should be doing on Gwyn—completely missing the fact that Gwyn comes from a troubled home life and craves Dimple’s stability.

Shutter, by Courtney Alameda
Like Wes, Micheline Helsing captures spirits on film—but in her case, it’s exactly what she wants to do. As one of the last descendants of Van Helsing and a tetrachromat, she captures ghosts’ auras on film. But when a curse called a soulchain infects Micheline and her team, her analog SLR camera might as well be a weapon against her, and she’s branded a renegade agent unless she can break the curse in a week. With her father, Leonard Helsing, on her trail, Micheline must move to the other side of the camera lens to be free of this haunting.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, by Jesse Andrews
Greg hides on both sides of his camera, re-creating cult movie classics, with partner in crime Earl, as incomprehensible amateur films. His strict policy of noninvolvement with his peers’ lives is compromised when his mother forces him to get back in touch with old friend Rachel, who has just been diagnosed with leukemia. As her condition worsens, he’s convinced by a classmate to make a film celebrating her life, the bittersweet outcome of which is no less than the Worst Film Ever Made.

Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future, by A.S. King
While her classmates look ahead to life past graduation, Glory doesn’t believe she has much of a future; her mother’s suicide hangs over her head, making her doubt she has anything to live for. The only bright spot is her passion for photography, and the time spent in a darkroom watching photographs slowly develop. But after she impulsively consumes petrified bat remains (like you do), Glory is struck with a very different type of sight—the ability to see into the future, glimpsing a Handmaid’s Tale-esque regime in which women are enslaved. In a desperate effort to stop that future from happening, Glory uses her affinity for recording images in a new way: she takes notes, hoping her written “history of the future” will prevent the horrific visions from becoming a reality.

You Look Different in Real Life, by Jennifer Castle
A year before Richard Linklater unveiled Boyhood—but 11 years into his secret production—Castle imagined a very similar project: five children’s lives are documented, with a new film being released every five years. But by the time we get to Five at Sixteen, Justine doesn’t want to be the center of attention, despite being at an age where she should relish it. After taking on the role of the “edgy” one in the two previous films, she no longer feels that’s her identity. Even worse, she’s not friends with the other four subjects anymore. Yet she can’t deny wanting to see them again, as they are the only ones who share her odd coming-of-age. You Look Different in Real Life will remind you more of a fascinating sociology study than a scandalous reality tell-all.