The Knife of Never Letting Go (Ness)

Oh, good gosh, that was pretty intense. The Knife of Never Letting Go is YA SF, and begins in a town that is solely made up of men all of whom can hear each other's thoughts. I liked it a lot and it goes at rather a breathless pace, but not so breathless that it can't also have some nice character arcs and say interesting things. Most of the plot (including the very end) was pretty transparent to anyone older than YA (though there was at least one plot element (the sacrifice, for those who have read it) that caught me by surprise, if only because I was so deeply engaged in the book at that point), but it was still very much worth reading to get there. The only thing that really annoyed me was a somewhat blatantly manipulative tearjerker moment. (It did, in fact, accomplish its purpose; there were definitely tears in my eyes in that part. However, there are other emotional moments in the book that are less obviously manipulative.)

However, julianyap should consider himself warned that (although I think you would quite like it; it reminds me a little of a cross between M.T. Anderson and The Hunger Games) it is book 1 of a trilogy, the third of which comes out in September, and ends on a cliffhanger.