Author: Kelly Jensen

This book sounds so good, as it is pitched as a “Magical realism meets Southern Gothic.”

It’s the summer before senior year of high school, and Jericka Walker planned to spend it hanging out on the Jersey Shore. But those plans are upended when her grandmother is dying, and Jericka’s mother drags her to spend time with grandma in Coldwater, Maryland. Jericka doesn’t know her grandmother at all, as she abandoned Jericka’s mother and uncle when they were growing up.

But as much as Jericka’s struggling to form any kind of bond with her grandmother, it’s the town of Coldwater that’s more of a struggle. The vibes of it are off, and there is so much drama. Jericka does meet Kat, though, a “ghost girl” who helps her find some fun in Coldwater.

Coldwater is full of secrets, though, and Jericka might find herself sucked into some pretty big ones.

Seventeen-year-old Eleanor’s hero is her name-twin. Eleanor Roosevelt. But this Eleanor is nothing like her—or is she, in her own way?

World War II is raging in Europe, and Eleanor is worried about her Jewish family abroad. She’s also hiding a secret that accidentally gets let out: she’s a math genius and just the kind of person who would be perfect on the job of helping the US Army with a secret weapon that could put an end to the war.

Eleanor is traveling the country and the world as part of this team. It’s a lot of work but she knows she’s involved in a good cause—the only problem is she still doesn’t know or believe in herself, and before she can help with the war, she needs to get to know herself.

Manny is wandering the western United States after being kicked out of a place where he’d been living. He and his sister Elena have been in the foster care system since they were young, so not having a settled place isn’t new territory for him. But what is new is being part of the Varela crew, consisting of adults and teens who are traveling up and down the highway. It’s as close as Manny has ever gotten to a family and he has found himself feeling some romantic feelings toward Carlos, one of the fellow passengers.

During pit stops, Manny cannot stop trying to see the TV and the infomercials about a camp he knows very well. A camp where he and his sister went. A camp from which he was expelled. And now, as he learns, a camp where a dead body has been found. Manny is convinced it’s Elena’s body and that she’s been killed for not following the orders of the camp leader. So now he’s bound and determined to get to Idyllwild and find out, once and for all, if Elena is alive or dead.

At heart, this is a mystery. Who is the girl who died at the camp? Is it Manny’s sister? But this is also a mystery about Manny. Who is he? How did he become who he is? What kind of world has he experienced that has made him shut himself off from both others…and himself? Why is he without a home or family? 

There’s a puppet empress on the throne while the realm is breaking into three separate factions, with three warlordesses itching to get their hands on power. It’s the Xin Dynasty, year 414.

Zephyr sees the battle as being pretty cut and dry. She herself was orphaned very young and became one of the smartest and savviest strategists in the land. As such, she’s served under Xin Ren, one of the warlordesses. Ren is loyal to the empress but Zephyr doesn’t necessarily see this as a bad thing…nor a good thing.

Now with their world being upended, Zephyr needs to infiltrate an enemy camp in order to save Ren’s followers. The problem is that Zephyr meets Crow, an enemy strategist who keeps her on her toes. Now the two of them are going head to head on who can be strongest, smartest, most cunning…so long as, well, feelings don’t get in the way.

This is the first in a duology, and the second book, Sound The Gong, will hit shelves on April 30.

Temple Baker’s father is an infamous serial killer. People love to talk about his crimes on podcasts, in the media, wherever talk of such things keeps a captive audience. But one thing Temple never believed was that her father killed her mother. That is, until he confesses to killing his wife and Temple’s mother on death row.

Temple won’t rest until she finds the body, though. So when she returns to the farm where she once lived and where her father committed many of his crimes, she’s surprised to find it transformed into a camp for horror-loving queer teens.  

Obviously, Temple has to fit in. So she cosplays a counselor, and while she’s feeling a way about fitting in with the girls who are like her, their obsession with true crime is off-putting to her. Then one of those girls ends up dead, and Temple worries that someone is playing a game of imitating her father.

Will she find the murderer? More, will she find the truth about who killed her mother?

Told through illustration, journal entries, and pages of diaries and zines, this is Kuehnert’s raw, honest, and powerful memoir about growing up and struggling with addiction. It’s also the story of surviving an abusive relationship when it seemed no one else was there for her.

The RMS Queen Anne is a transatlantic cruise ship where guests seem to buy one way tickets to their death. They climb aboard but never make it to their destination. Chrissy, Chase, Kiki, and Emma are all invited to cruise, and they have some weird feelings about it the minute they arrive.

Then Chrissy goes missing the first night. While no one else knows, what Chrissy knows is she’s been sucked into a different time altogether. There’s a passenger who has a message for Chrissy and her friends—that she didn’t die by accident. Her death was on purpose, and the person who killed her is alive and well.

That murderer might even be on the ship right now.

Clara’s got magic. It’s never been dangerous, though. Then, one day, she touches her father’s chest, and from it blooms poisonous flowers. She knows the only way to help him is to cast a spell. It’s the kind of spell that requires precision and perfection, and it’s the kind of spell that will require her to seek help from Xavier. Xavier is her childhood friend, and he’s asking a heavy price for his help. Clara accepts, even though she’s nervous to do so.

But what Clara discovers about Xavier is the truth of why he’s changed so much between childhood and now. Clara may be the only one with the power to heal him.

This one is a reimagining of the Icarus myth mixed with Portrait of a Thief and sounds like a fun one.

Icarus Gallagher steals art and replaces it with his father’s knockoffs. Most of the time, Icarus has targeted Mr. Black, a man who played a part in the death of Icarus’s mother. To keep the game up, Icarus has mostly stayed as far away from relationships with other people as possible. Slipping up would spell disaster.

Then the worst happens. Helios, son of Mr. Black, is under house arrest and catches Icarus in the act. But rather than turn Icarus in and ruin his life, Helios asks for a favor: become his friend.

Not only does this break every one of the rules Icarus has set for himself. It also puts him and his work in even more danger.

But his heart might be feeling something different, even if Icarus’s dad is still bent on revenge.

Something kind of bizarre about this book is how little description there is about it. Check the Amazon listing, as well as the publisher’s landing page for the book. We don’t even get the main character’s name (and yes, I’m aware you can go on Goodreads/review sites for more, but there is something about the mystery of it all that is in and of itself intriguing!).

Anyway, this book is about a girl who goes to a boarding school and unravels a mystery following the disappearance of her roommate. It’s dark academia with a paranormal mystery at its heart.

Alicia is 16, and she’s subject to nonstop judgment from her classmates. It comes because she has sex, so she’s, of course, seen as easy. A slut. Every other name you can imagine for a girl like her.

Except: Alicia was sexually abused by a teacher. She’s a survivor. And, of course, it’s a popular teacher who did that to her.

As Alicia begins to drop out of everything that brings her joy, she finds a series of letters from someone else at school. Someone who claims they’ve been a victim, too. Now, she wants to get to the truth of that story and her own.

This verse novel is one for readers who are itching for a compelling and powerful story of redemption, race, power, and maybe even love.

Rynn knows she is adopted, and even though her records are closed until she turns 18, she decides to seek out her birth mother. Her birth mother may no longer be alive, but when Rynn discovers she has a biological sister in foster care, she wants to reconnect. But that reconnection may cost her her adoptive family.

Ariel’s mind is scary. Aside from everything she contends with on the outside—demanding parents, being queer, being a “big girl,” no longer having her older sister at home to spend time with—she cannot stop imagining violent situations.

She’s hopeful that a new summer job at a carnival will help, even if it means some of her rituals and routines are not what they used to be. She’s making friends and enjoying herself.

But how long until she cracks and what’s going on inside splits her in half?

This is a book exploring obsessive-compulsive disorder.

This book showed up as a digital galley many months ago, and even though I did not get to it yet, it’s been one I have been itching to read as soon as possible.

Written in verse, the book begins with NASA assuring everyone that even though a massive planet named Malachite is in their orbit, everything will be okay. Crosby doesn’t believe that, though. She’s convinced that if people do not ascend to the fourth dimension, they will be instantly killed when Malachite slides by.

Crosby’s been taken in by fortune tellers and Malachite truther sites online. Worse, no matter how much she tries to convince everyone in her life that in order to survive, they need to immediately prepare for the apocalypse, they don’t listen.

So what happens when Crosby needs to be brought back to Earth?

Blending found poetry and prose with black and white illustration, this novel is a love story between Ray and Orion—two people with difficult pasts who meet at a Memphis roller rink. At the heart of the challenge is a family secret that could end the relationship before it even gets the chance to begin.

Looking for an anthology of stories about what it is to be a student today on college campuses? What about if it were focused exclusively on stories written by people in the college or just-recently-graduated college stage? This anthology is a diverse array of voices, just as it is a diverse array of stories spanning college orientation to graduation.

Something bad happened in the run-down house that Cas arrives at in West Texas. She’s come at the request of her best friend Drea, who has been living there for a few weeks with other classmates.

But things are off. Drea isn’t there, and her roommates aren’t talking. It’ll be up to Cas to find out what happened to her best friend and the role this terrifying house may have played in Drea’s disappearance.

When I put together my master database of YA releases, this one was slated for March 5. It looks like it got moved to February 27, so technically, this one’s been on shelves for a week.

I’m including it anyway.

Kindling—young elite warriors who wielded magic had power so strong that it killed them when it was used—used to fight wars. But with war over, Kindling have been outcast.

There’s still violence around. There is also a history of trauma. So when a village is under threat, seven Kindling see their opportunity to once again bring their powers to the fore.

Except the war they’re engaged in won’t just be on the ground. It’ll be with themselves, their histories, and their legacies, too.

Hollis wants senior year to go by without much more to worry about. This includes not rattling the comfortable relationship she has with her boyfriend, Chris—she goes as far as to learn his favorite tabletop game to keep their bond strong, but he has a rule for game night that excludes her since she’s just one of the girlfriends.

Hollis wants to play the game, so she finds an all-girl group headed by Gloria Castañeda. It’s a great way for her to make friends and play Secrets & Sorcery. It is giving her a space to be more than the labels attached to her: fat, anxious, Chris’s girlfriend.

Then, an in-game crush begins between Hollis’s character and Aini Amin-Shaw’s character. But is it only in-game?

Venus Stoneheart is a hustler who brews magic love potions, even though it is a dangerous job—it not only has physical consequences, but if she’s ever caught, she will end up in prison.

Then Venus’s mom is killed by an enemy. Everything changes in an instant for her, the it changes even further when the Grand Witcher of her coven offers Venus the opportunity for revenge. All Venus needs to do is brew a potion that will enslave some of the most powerful politicians in D.C.

This story brings us into a world of people and witches and the battle of power between them. It’s also about making tough choices in the name of saving your life and your loved ones.

It’s the 4th of July, and an explosion levels an oil rig. It brings chaos with it, and it immediately puts 6 Muslim teens at the center of the incident—convenient suspects who had nothing to do with it but whose lives are upended in the process of proving their innocence.

Now they’re stuck in a game where they have to point their fingers at one another in order to acquire their own freedom.

Maude grew up as not just the daughter of witches, but she and her best friend Odette imagine fantastical worlds together. But once they grew up, those worlds dissipated and the two besties also found their friendship wither, too.

Magic has changed now, but Odette is craving it. So two weeks ago, she went in search of it. Now she is missing, and Maude might be the only one who knows where or how to find her.

The problem is Odette might be inside Sicklehurst, and Sicklehurst is inside a forest that isn’t just full of magic. It’s full of danger.

Jax, Yas, Spider, and Han are all working-class teens living in Seattle. Together, they’re Team Jericho, incredible scavenger hunters around town. But with a new power plant being built in town, everything in their lives—including their parents’ well-being—is about to be destroyed.

The Order is a vigilante organization shrouded in mystery. They’ve concocted a puzzle in the scavenger hunting form, and Team Jericho sees their chance. If they win, they can save their lives and home.

But if they lose—a real possibility with another team attempting to win—the consequences will be life-altering.