📚📚 Don’t Miss These Late 2019 YA Books!

Hey YA Readers!

I don’t know about you, but I find the “best of” list creep annoying. Do we need to know the BEST books of 2019 in October? I don’t — and I don’t know if I really understand the point beyond getting to claim being the first. Publishers Weekly released their “best of” last week and as a reminder, that’s not the end of the year.

We’ve got two full months left.

I think December “best of” lists, even end-of-November, is far more acceptable. And the big reason?

There are still so many books to come in November and December.

Certainly, editors read those books while making their lists. But those lists overshadow the books still to come.

So to do a little making up for that, let’s highlight a few upcoming YA book releases in November and December. This newsletter will be a bit longer than normal, as I want to pack in a wide range of titles.

I’ve read only one of these (so far!) since I don’t tend to read ahead more than a month or so. That means I’m using Amazon descriptions. I’ve stuck to quieter books, since it’s probably the case you’re well aware there’s a new Maggie Stiefvater (Call Down The Hawk) book, as well as the sequel to Children of Blood and Bone (Children of Virtue and Vengeance) hitting shelves in November and December. Oh, and the last book in Holly Black’s new series, The Queen of Nothing. Maybe you also know about Neal Shusterman’s The Toll.

Go ahead and save those “best of” lists in your to-read lists for later in the year. For now, get excited about these books coming soon!

A * means it’s a new entry into a series.

All-American Muslim Girl by Nadine Jolie Courtney (Nov 12)

Allie Abraham has it all going for her–she’s a straight-A student, with good friends and a close-knit family, and she’s dating cute, popular, and sweet Wells Henderson. One problem: Wells’s father is Jack Henderson, America’s most famous conservative shock jock…and Allie hasn’t told Wells that her family is Muslim. It’s not like Allie’s religion is a secret, exactly. It’s just that her parents don’t practice and raised her to keep her Islamic heritage to herself. But as Allie witnesses ever-growing Islamophobia in her small town and across the nation, she begins to embrace her faith–studying it, practicing it, and facing hatred and misunderstanding for it. Who is Allie, if she sheds the façade of the “perfect” all-American girl? What does it mean to be a “Good Muslim?”And can a Muslim girl in America ever truly fit in?

This one was fabulous! 

Crying Laughing by Lance Rubin (Nov 19)

Winnie Friedman has been waiting for the world to catch on to what she already knows: she’s hilarious.

It might be a long wait, though. After bombing a stand-up set at her own bat mitzvah, Winnie has kept her jokes to herself. Well, to herself and her dad, a former comedian and her inspiration.

Then, on the second day of tenth grade, the funniest guy in school actually laughs at a comment she makes in the lunch line and asks her to join the improv troupe. Maybe he’s even . . . flirting?

Just when Winnie’s ready to say yes to comedy again, her father reveals that he’s been diagnosed with ALS. That is . . . not funny. Her dad’s still making jokes, though, which feels like a good thing. And Winnie’s prepared to be his straight man if that’s what he wants. But is it what he needs?

Caught up in a spiral of epically bad dates, bad news, and bad performances, Winnie’s struggling to see the humor in it all. But finding a way to laugh is exactly what will see her through.

Dangerous Alliance by Jennieke Cohen (Dec 3)

Lady Victoria Aston has everything she could want: an older sister happily wed, the future of her family estate secure, and ample opportunity to while her time away in the fields around her home.

But now Vicky must marry—or find herself and her family destitute. Armed only with the wisdom she has gained from her beloved novels by Jane Austen, she enters society’s treacherous season.

Sadly, Miss Austen has little to say about Vicky’s exact circumstances: whether the roguish Mr. Carmichael is indeed a scoundrel, if her former best friend, Tom Sherborne, is out for her dowry or for her heart, or even how to fend off the attentions of the foppish Mr. Silby, he of the unfortunate fashion sensibility.

Most unfortunately of all, Vicky’s books are silent on the topic of the mysterious accidents cropping up around her…ones that could prevent her from surviving until her wedding day.

*Daughter of Chaos by Sarah Rees Brennan (Dec 26)

Half-witch, half-mortal sixteen-year-old Sabrina Spellman has made her choice: She’s embraced her dark side and her witchy roots. Now her power is growing daily… but will it come at too high a price?

 

*Girls of Storm and Shadow by Natasha Ngan (Nov 5)

In this mesmerizing sequel to the New York Times bestselling Girls of Paper and Fire, Lei and Wren have escaped their oppressive lives in the Hidden Palace, but soon learn that freedom comes with a terrible cost.

 

Gravity by Sarah Deming (Nov 12)

Gravity “Doomsday” Delgado is good at breaking things. Maybe she learned it from her broken home.

But since she started boxing with a legendary coach at a gym in Brooklyn, Gravity is finding her talent for breaking things has an upside. Lately, she’s been breaking records, breaking her competitors, and breaking down the walls inside her. Boxing is taking her places, and if she just stays focused, she knows she’ll have a shot at the Olympics.

Life outside the ring is heating up, too. Suddenly she’s flirting (and more) with a cute boxer at her gym–much to her coach’s disapproval. Meanwhile, things at home with Gravity’s mom are reaching a tipping point, and Gravity has to look out for her little brother, Ty. With Olympic dreams, Gravity will have to decide what is worth fighting for.

Reverie by Ryan La Sala (Dec 3)

All Kane Montgomery knows for certain is that the police found him half-dead in the river. He can’t remember anything since the accident robbed him of his memories a few weeks ago. And the world feels different… reality itself seems different.

So when three of his classmates claim to be his friends and the only people who can truly tell him what’s going on, he doesn’t know what to believe or who he can trust. But as he and the others are dragged into unimaginable worlds that materialize out of nowhere―the gym warps into a subterranean temple, a historical home nearby blooms into a Victorian romance rife with scandal and sorcery―Kane realizes that nothing in his life is in accident, and only he can stop their town from unraveling.

Sisters of Shadow and Light by Sara B. Larson (Nov 5)

The night my sister was born, the stars died and were reborn in her eyes….

Zuhra and Inara have grown up in the Citadel of the Paladins, an abandoned fortress where legendary, magical warriors once lived before disappearing from the world―including their Paladin father the night Inara was born.

On that same night, a massive, magical hedge grew and imprisoned them within the citadel. Inara inherited their father’s Paladin power; her eyes glow blue and she is able to make plants grow at unbelievable rates, but she has been trapped in her own mind because of a “roar” that drowns everything else out―leaving Zuhra virtually alone with their emotionally broken human mother.

For fifteen years they have lived, trapped in the citadel, with little contact from the outside world…until the day a stranger passes through the hedge, and everything changes.

Song of the Crimson Flower by Julie Dao (Nov 5)

Will love break the spell? After cruelly rejecting Bao, the poor physician’s apprentice who loves her, Lan, a wealthy nobleman’s daughter, regrets her actions. So when she finds Bao’s prized flute floating in his boat near her house, she takes it into her care, not knowing that his soul has been trapped inside it by an evil witch, who cursed Bao, telling him that only love will set him free. Though Bao now despises her, Lan vows to make amends and help break the spell.

Together, the two travel across the continent, finding themselves in the presence of greatness in the forms of the Great Forest’s Empress Jade and Commander Wei. They journey with Wei, getting tangled in the webs of war, blood magic, and romance along the way. Will Lan and Bao begin to break the spell that’s been placed upon them? Or will they be doomed to live out their lives with black magic running through their veins?

In this fantastical tale of darkness and love, some magical bonds are stronger than blood.

A Thousand Fires by Shannon Price (Nov 5)

10 Years. 3 Gangs. 1 Girl’s Epic Quest…

Valerie Simons knows the Wars are dangerous―her little brother was killed by the Boars two years ago. But nothing will sway Valerie from joining the elite and beautiful Herons with her boyfriend Matthew to avenge her brother. But when Jax, the volatile and beyond charismatic leader of the Stags, promises her revenge, Valerie is torn between old love and new loyalty.

Where The World Ends by Geraldine McCaughrean (Dec 8)

Every time a lad went fowling on the stacs, he came home less of a boy and more of a man. If he went home at all, that is.

Every summer Quill and his friends are put ashore on a remote sea stac to hunt birds. But this summer, no one arrives to take them home. Surely nothing but the end of the world can explain why they’ve been abandoned―cold, starving and clinging to life, in the grip of a murderous ocean. How will they survive such a forsaken place of stone and sea?

This is an extraordinary story of fortitude, endurance, tragedy and survival, set against an unforgettable backdrop of savage beauty.

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Thanks for hanging out, and we’ll see you again on Saturday with a roundup of excellent YA book deals. It’s a new month, so we’ll see a whole host of new and exciting finds.

— Kelly Jensen, @heykellyjensen on Instagram and editor of (Don’t) Call Me Crazy and Here We Are.