The Snack Cake Chronicles
Standalone Christian young adult novels about growing up: finding one’s place in the world, healing from childhood wounds, navigating romance, and living in faith.
Tiny Tacy turned his world on its head
Rescuing Tacy comes at a price…
Her history is a secret. She doesn’t know phones, videogames, even snack cakes. She’s underweight, afraid of everything, and now his next-door neighbor’s foster daughter. As a computer geek who never talks to girls, sophomore Cody Highland didn’t expect to be asked to play guardian to a teenage girl on her first day of school, but the neighbors ask anyway, putting their most precious possession in his hands.
He says yes, and so it begins. Life with Tacy is exciting, dangerous, emotional, and gives his life meaning. Suddenly the computer geek is singing in the choir and auditioning for school plays. Through it all he becomes her protector, her teacher, and her friend.
But when her past comes knocking, being Tacy’s protector will become the hardest thing Cody has ever attempted, because of all the changes she’s made in his life, this one will come the closest to taking him down. Tacy herself may be the only one to save him, if she can find the strength to do it.
Cody Bear is part of The Snack Cake Chronicles, Christian young adult novels. Read them in any order, tales about growing up, growing in faith, and learning to love.
To keep his sanity, he had to go a little crazy.
When he was eight, Riven was kidnapped from his yard. Ten-year-old Lily, his next-door neighbor, had always considered him a pest and had never been very nice to him, but his disappearance shattered her.
Five years later he came back: darker, broken, mysterious, and yet still the little boy who’d disappeared. He brought with him pain and secrets and challenges, and Lily decided she would be the friend to this version of Riven that she hadn’t been to the younger one, no matter the cost.
And that’s when she met Fairyland, the world in Riven’s head…
Finding McHenry is part of the Snack Cake Chronicles, Christian young adult novels.
Spray paint and secrets...
Noah was a soccer player at school. When he lost his parents, he moved in with his aunt, uncle, and cousin, across the street from me. His pain called, since I lived with my grandmother and had some idea what he was going through. But would a school athlete want to talk to one of the invisible girls?
The power of a good peanut butter cookie brought him into my sphere, and I developed a friendship with the guy. Sort of. He had secrets. I mean, we all have secrets. But I was boring Madelyn with normal secrets. This guy—He hated his dead parents, sneaked out of the house every night, and had beautiful bare feet.
Oh, wait, that’s not really a secret. It’s just another reason I liked to visit Noah Oliver.
Then some of the secrets came out, and they were my secrets, too. Beautiful, illegal art painted on the abandoned warehouses, terrible truths about his dead parents… I’m not sure I like keeping Noah’s secrets, but I have to say I do like Noah. Friendship makes a few dangerous secrets worth the risk.
Or I hope they do. The truth of that remains to be seen.
Prompting Noah is part of the Snack Cake Chronicles, standalone Christian young adult novels about growing up, growing in faith, and learning to love.
Pete doesn't need a mother
After his mom suffers a brain injury and his dad walks away, Peter Stafford, his big sister Star, and their broken mother move to a small town to live with Pete’s grandmother. While Star fights the changes every step of the way, Peter wants to make this work, but what do you do when your mom thinks like a ten-year-old?
Wendy Pickens knows she mothers people. Smothers people. Her younger sister and everyone else point that out all the time. But how can she stop being who she is? Meeting a new guy in town who’s hiding in the park gets those maternal feelings going, feelings she wishes she could turn off.
Pete takes care of his broken family, and she’s drawn to take care of him, not always with the best results. Why does nobody understand her heavy-handed mothering is how she cares? And why did God send her Pete, who thinks he doesn’t need one mother, let alone two?
But their issues are their strengths, and his loss and her smothering might lead them to rescue one another and a few other lost souls along the way.
Part of the Snack Cake Chronicles young adult novel series, Peter and the Water Tower is a Christian teen read that’s just as appealing to adults. Read them in any order, tales about growing up, growing in faith, and learning to love.
Running was his only peace...
Coming 2026
He can’t outrun his secrets…
After his family falls apart and he finds himself in a new town with his mom and brothers, Jonas takes up running. Seems the demons from his past let go when he races through the neighborhoods, and it’s the only peace he can find.
Odette spends the summer watching some kid run through her neighborhood, never expecting that he would show up in her church in the fall. She meets him, loving the idea of digging into someone’s story, and she discovers he might be a kindred spirit, a guy with a dark past and no idea how to deal with new people.
That year their lives change. Jonas’s dad has left and now threatens to return. Odette’s dad, a widower, meets the worst kind of lady and settles her in their lives. Some days all they have is one another, and some days the adults in their lives take even that comfort from them. They’ll have to stick together, along with Jonas’ and Odette’s siblings, to survive the troubles and danger their parents bring to their lives. Maybe they’ll even come out stronger because of it.
Jonas Runs is part of the Snack Cake Chronicles, Christian young adult novels. Read them in any order, tales about growing up, growing in faith, and learning to love.