Hey, YA Readers!
Remember how Monday was a loaded day with new hardcover releases? That carries over into a stacked week of paperback releases, too. It’s a good week to be a YA reader—or rather, it’s an especially good week to be a YA reader.
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Bookish Goods
Personalized Book Holder by TheArtofEngraving
Okay, this is such a clever idea and would make a perfect gift for a book lover—including a gift to yourself. It’s a personalized book holder that will not only hold your current page for you but also where you can stack up your (small) TBR. The ability to engrave is a bonus. It’s $80, but keep an eye out for sales on this one—as I write, it’s half-price.
New Releases
Like I said, it’s a big week for new releases in paperback, too. I’m limiting my roundup below to three in three different genres, but you can grab the entire list of YA paperback releases over here. As always, you might need to toggle your view to snag the paperback edition.
Perfect Little Monsters Cindy R. X. He
Ella Moore is the most popular—err, notorious?—girl at high school. Or was. She was murdered at a party she was hosting, and there are loads of suspects and motives. The police are suspecting a new girl to school, Dawn, as Dawn was the last person to hand Ella a drink before she died. Ella’s friends agree that they think Dawn did it, but Dawn knows she’s innocent. She’s now going to do all she can to prove it.
This is a paperback original, which we need more of in YA.
She Is A Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran
It’s the summer after her senior year of high school, and Jade is preparing to go to the University of Pennsylvania. The hitch is the cost; she doesn’t want to take out loans to pay for school and her mother certainly can’t help out. Despite being estranged from her father who left the family years ago, Jade agrees to visit him for five weeks and help restore the French colonial house he’s working on in Vietnam. It’s going to be a lot of work and take a lot of Jade’s patience to make it, but that money and future are important to her. University is her opportunity to be the fully queer Vietnamese American girl she’s had to keep under wraps.
When Jade arrives, things are bad from the start. She’s informed she’ll be spending her time working with Florence on building the website for the house being restored. See, Ba’s not just going to live in the house he’s restoring; he’s going to be using it as a vacation destination for wealthy folks to stay in.
Every night, though, Jade finds herself further and further disturbed by the house. She’s seeing things—ghosts—and she’s heeding the warnings of one ghost dressed as a bride who warns Jade not to eat anything. There are bugs everywhere, and there are remnants of Jade’s ancestors throughout the estate. Ba doesn’t believe there is anything weird going on, and neither does Jade’s sister. But Jade knows something isn’t right and this house is out to kill them all.
How can she convince her dad and sister that the house is no good? She’ll have to team up with Florence and do something big. They may need to create their own series of hauntings to get others to pay attention. But by the time Ba and her sister notice, will it be too late? Will the house have taken complete control?
Time Out by Sean Hayes and Todd Milliner, with Carlyn Greenwald
Barclay is a killer basketball player and that helps him become a legend in his small Georgia town. But when Barclay decides at the biggest pep rally in the town’s history to come out, he’s swiftly outcast. He doesn’t know how to be himself without basketball and now the hostility of the community that once loved him is only making it worse.
Enter Amy. She’s Barclay’s best friend and convinced that if he gets involved in a local cause, he’ll not only find purpose but he’ll get to meet likeminded people. Now he’s going to a voting rights meeting to find that bigger purpose…and it turns out, so, too, is Christopher, one of Barclay’s biggest rivals. But—you know where this is going—the longer they get to know each other over a budding passion, their former status as enemies is no longer. Could it be they’re falling in love?
For a more comprehensive list of new releases, check out our New Books newsletter.
YA Book News
- The Chocolate War published 50 years ago, which is wild (and something I want to eventually write about). Here’s how the book being consistently banned shaped Robert Cormier’s life.
- The Maze Runner is getting an adaptation reboot. (Hmm…all of these incredible books by authors of color itching for adaptation).
- There’s also an adaptation of Sky’s End in the works (it’s still a white male author, since that’s this week’s theme, but the director attached to it is Antoine Fuqua).
- There’s a new edition of Hunger Games hitting shelves with illustrations.
- Some readers will see this sentence and go huh? while others will nod along: it’s hard to believe Robert Muchamore’s CHERUB series is 20 years old. Those were staples in my former librarian life.
- These are all of the YA books you can read for free this month on SimonTeen.
Thanks as always for hanging out. We’ll see you on Saturday with some great YA book deals.
Until then, happy reading!
–Kelly Jensen, currently reading Thirsty by Jas Hammonds