Hey YA Readers!
I hope that the new year is off to the start you hoped for. As for me, I’ve been reading and puzzling up a storm, so things are a-okay here. I’m in the midst of reading the forthcoming Stacey Lee book Kill Her Twice (April release) and loving it.
2024 is the tenth year of the Read Harder Challenge! Join us as we make our way through 24 tasks meant to expand our reading horizons and diversify our TBRs. To get book recommendations for each task, sign up for the Read Harder newsletter. We’ll also keep you informed about other cool reading challenges, readathons, and more across the bookish internet. If you become a paid subscriber, you get even more recommendations plus community features, where you can connect with a community of passionate, like-minded readers in a cozy and supportive corner of the internet. Sign up today!
Because we had no Monday newsletter and there’s no news to share from the previous week, I’m taking this newsletter in a little different direction. We’ll hit the new hardcover AND paperback releases in here since a lot of books hit shelves this week. The big, meaty new release roundups for winter will be hitting the site this week and next, too.
Let’s dive in.
Bookish Goods
My TBR Is Calling Sticker by OilandCraft
Pop this little sticker on your new planner as a reminder of what to schedule some time for attending to. $3.
New Releases
The first Tuesday of this month was a big release day. Here are two excellent YA titles out in hardcover this week.
Want the full list of YA hardcover releases for winter 2024? You’re in luck!
Okay, Cupid by Mason Deaver
Jude is a cupid. They think they’re good at it, too, even if they’ve made some mistakes. Even if they’re on probation for doing a not-great thing. But Jude is ready to prove themself once again.
Their assignment isn’t to set up two adults, though. It’s to set up two high schoolers—people Jude’s own age—who are meant to be more than the best friends they were before they had a big fight.
Jude feels confident in the assignment…until they’re thrown for a curve.
Stay with My Heart by Tashie Bhuiyan
Liana is obsessed with music and hopes to do like her father does and break into the industry. He’s in A&R, and he’s been putting his entire life into his job as a distraction from the loss of Liana’s mother.
But Liana does something bad and accidentally sabotages an up-and-coming band. Now she’s going to do everything she can to get the band back on course and prove she’s got the chops for the industry. She needs to do it without the band knowing the role she played in hurting them.
The closer Liana gets to the band, though, the harder she finds hiding the truth.
For a more comprehensive list of new releases, check out our New Books newsletter.
More New Releases
Because there are so many paperback YA titles out this week, I’m highlighting three. Here are new paperbacks for your TBR—two are new in paperback and one is a paperback original (i.e., it never had a hardcover version and likely will not).
The Davenports by Krystal Marquis
If you want a frothy, delicious historical novel featuring an all-Black cast at the beginning of the 1900s in Chicago, do not look further. This book DELIVERS and then some.
Inspired by the very real Black entrepreneur CR Patterson, this book imagines what it would be like to be the daughters of a successful businessman at the time, and in addition to the two sisters’ voices, we get to know another daughter of wealth, as well as the assistant of the Davenport daughters. All of the girls have dreams and passions that fall outside of what is expected of them, and all four seem to be falling for people who are outside of their appropriate circles, too. So what happens when they seek to get what they want rather than what’s expected of them?
The second book in the series releases soon.
The Immortal Games by Annaliese Avery
The Gods of Olympus select humans as their players in the Immortal Games, which take place during the Blood Moon. Ara, who is 16, hopes she is selected this year not because she wants to risk her life but because she wants revenge. Her little sister was killed in the games before.
But when Ara is selected, she finds that she’s not only putting her life in danger. There might be other feelings coming up, too, including the possibility of love.
This sounds a little like if you took Greek mythology and mixed it with the stakes of The Hunger Games.
Love Is The Drug by Alaya Dawn Johnson
So this book published in hardcover 10 years ago, and it’s getting a new look for 2024—I think this is going to make it land on a lot more radars, too! If you’re looking for a YA political thriller, look no further.
Emily Bird goes to a tony D.C. prep school and has everything going for her in her life. A chance meeting with homeland security officer Roosevelt David, though, changes everything. She wakes up days later in a hospital with no recollection of the party at all.
Perhaps the meeting wasn’t chance. Perhaps Roosevelt had an agenda. Perhaps he thought Emily knew something about the deadly virus ravaging she shouldn’t, given that her parents work on top-secret science for the government.
But Emily won’t take the incident lying down. She and her best friend are going to figure out what happened to her, even if it means unleashing one of the biggest D.C. scandals ever.
As always, thanks for hanging out. We’ll see you on Saturday for deals.
Until then, happy reading!
–Kelly Jensen