Lonely Castle in the Mirror

This is one of these books that pulls you in and gets better and more compelling as it progresses. It deals with some very serious issues (all the protagonists are Japanese teenagers who for one reason or another do not go to school), and is part fairy tale, part YA fiction, part magic realism, part fantasy, but really quite hard to categorise.

It's very cleverly plotted, with a number of plot twists that come thick and fast towards the end, and involves a truly moving denouement.