Author: Kelly Jensen

Coconino, Arizona, is sinking, and the rain isn’t stopping. Ever since her dad died in a diving accident, Jin has been unable to bring in enough money to support her and her little sister, Thara.

When a drifter named Bhlil offers Jin and her sister the opportunity to change their fortunes, she’s tentative, even though she’s also desperate for the help. All they need to do is dive beneath the sunken city of Las Vegas for the sunken treasure.

Jin doesn’t want to. It brings up too many memories of losing her father. But when her sister is dead set on the challenge, Jin joins her. Together, they assemble a crew to find the treasure and save their lives.

This is a twist on Treasure Island.

Charlotte is a car crash survivor. Her boyfriend Jerry didn’t make it, though. She wants so badly to get back to whatever semblance of normal is possible as she deals with the trauma of the accident and the grief over losing someone she cared so much about.

It looks like she’s on the right track, but then she begins getting messages from someone claiming to be Jerry. The messages are clearly not from Jerry, but they contain information only Jerry would know.

Charlotte knows there aren’t such things as ghosts…right?

This thriller is an exploration of trauma, grief, and loss.

One of the most moving YA memoirs also happens to be one of the most banned in the country. This is Johnson’s story of growing up at the intersections of queerness and Blackness. It’s a story of complicated families, of toxic masculinity, Black joy, and so much more.

It might be too late for Mahalia to have the Sweet Sixteen party of her dreams. The kind that would be like her best friend’s and maybe help her get closer to her crush, Siobhan. But Mahalia has another idea—she’s going to throw herself a coming-out party. She’ll take on extra work and use that money to throw a spectacular event.

In theory, it’s good. In practice, it’s turning into a mess. Will Mahalia even get to have her party, or will she throw in the towel before it even happens?

This is a unique take on the memoir, following Echo as she enters her first year at Dartmouth College. She’s been sold a promise about the Ivy League school, but she soon finds herself struggling to keep up with the class, the dating scene isn’t great, and the campus isn’t as diverse as she was led to believe.

Echo realizes in order to succeed, she needs to become her own Chosen One. This will require healing her past to understand her present, including her experiences of grief, racism, difficult friendships, and more.

This is a memoir with a fabulism twist (and that cover is out of this world good!).

This one is being pitched as Circe for YA readers, and it is a feminist retelling of Medusa from Rick Riordan’s rad imprint.

Manisha, 16, runs from monsters. It was monsters (and men) that caused the dispersal of her people. She should be safe as a Priestess in the floating temples, but she’s not.

Pratyush is a monster slayer and favored by the King. Every kill he makes adds a year to his life. But he doesn’t want to have this duty anymore.

When Manisha and Pratyush connect, they see a possibility to change the trajectory of each of their lives. Their plans go awry, though. But in the rebirth of both, they reclaim power and their respective futures.

This one has in the description that there is a sexual assault that happens, so heads up for folks who like to know.

Alix Leclaire and her best friend Jeanne are going to graduate and land incredible work in the arts in Paris. Alix as a feather artist, and Jeanne, a record contract. But then Jeanne dies, and Alix is at a complete loss.

Alix then feels the spirit of Jeanne pushing her to take risks. To behave as Jeanne would, were she still around. This leads Alix to step out of her comfort zone….though perhaps into the hands of challenges she could never anticipate.

This is a story about art, grief, and defining your own future.

This paperback original is one for fans of rom-coms and nerdery.

Riley loves musicals, and her goal is to become a director on Broadway. She knows getting a role in the school’s spring musical is crucial. But when Riley doesn’t get permission before borrowing her mom’s car, she’s grounded. She’ll be forced to work at her dad’s game shop as a punishment.

Riley doesn’t have time for this, of course. She’s got the musical. So she’ll convince one of the other employees to cover her shifts in exchange for flirting with him. This will help him get the attention of his crush…maybe.

Maybe because it may be that Riley starts to catch some real feelings for Nathan, thanks to some intense games of Dungeons & Dragons.

Sonia Patil hopes she’ll be able to catch the attention of her crush at the local comic-con. But in a weird twist of fate, Sonia ends up saving her crush after he faints into a canal. No one knows it was her, though, since she was dressed up, and now, everyone wants to know who the masked heroine was.

Problem? Sonia’s sister is undocumented, and her mother was deported; they’ve been trying to stay under the radar. So, as people work to uncover the do-gooder, Sonia worries that all of the positive attention might lead to some very negative consequences for her, for her family, and for her future with her crush.

This book is set up like a Bollywood movie and follows Arya during her senior year in shaadi season. Arya is excited her sister is home, though she herself is juggling a million challenging emotions after watching her best friends break up, her rival for student council become more intense, and being unable to suppress flutters for the irresistibly cute Dean.

A fun slice-of-life family story that’s been compared to Save The Date and Never Have I Ever.

A rom-com by two of the best illustrators working in kid lit? Count me in!

Val is convinced she is cursed when it comes to love. It’s generational. No one in her family has had luck with a little thing called love.

Then, she meets a pair of lion dancers. It’s chance, but something in it rekindles hope in Val. Might she be able to break the family’s curse and find true love?

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.

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.

Lady Ela Dalvi was betrayed by her best friend Poppy over a boy three years ago. Ela was sent away, and her reputation was tarnished over it—the boy was, after all, son of a duke.

Now, three years later, Ela wants revenge. Poppy has been rising in the elite ranks, and Ela can’t let that stand any longer.

Her plan is to disguise herself as a mysterious heiress and start to show up at elite events. Can she bring down her former best friend, or will she find herself falling hard for the boy who started this entire problem?

May’s parents put a lot of pressure on her as she’s still not the Chinese Taiwanese American daughter they want her to be. Her beloved brother Danny is, so his acceptance into Princeton pleases their mom and dad. But Danny secretly struggled with depression, and when he dies by suicide, the family experiences grief they could never imagine. The only thing making it worse is how the community responds with racism and hatred. May works through these challenges with her writing—the thing her parents didn’t see as valuable—and she’s taking back her and her family’s story.

This book explores mental health, racism, and the challenges of finding your voice.

Jake and Nate’s ex-boyfriends decided to fake that they’re doing well post-breakup. Their exes are together and sharing on Instagram just how perfect their relationship is.

Naturally, Jake and Nate decide they’re going to get back at their exes and pretend to have the best summer ever. They’ll hit the ‘Gram, too, with incredible photos of their perfect road trip. It’s a big scheme to make everything look like it’s going great, and the two of them are mourning the loss of their relationships.

What they won’t talk about is how they’re stuck in a van with Nate’s annoying parents and younger sister. Nor how they actually haven’t talked to each other in years.

Nor…how they might be falling for one another. A hilarious road trip meets social media hijinks rom-com.

Perla, 16, has done everything right in high school in order to graduate early, with honors, and get into her dream college, Delmont University. But when she’s rejected by the school, she doesn’t know what to do. Everything she’s worked for has been upended.

So she decides to do what anyone else would do: forge an acceptance letter and show up anyway. If she can lay low but see how things work, maybe she can actually get an acceptance when she reapplies for next year.

In the meantime, she’ll be crashing classes.

Nova Albright is going to be the first Black homecoming queen at Lovett High School. This is a huge deal, especially because the system at Lovett has been rigged in favor of white courts since the beginning, as the school came to be post-Katrina and combined the rich white students from one part of the Mississippi town with the lower-income Black students from another part of town. The Black students are de facto segregated at the school: they’re not in the AP classes, but they ARE there to help the school’s sports teams excel. This little factoid is important for several reasons, including why Nova’s crowning is especially important.

So it’s incredibly suspicious when Nova is found dead days before Homecoming on the same night a viral video of Tinsley McArthur emerges. Tinsley, who believes she deserved the crown. Tinsley, who has a family legacy to uphold. Tinsley, who was drinking with her friends that night and said she was going to murder Nova.

But Tinsley swears she’s innocent. This was a setup by her ungenerous so-called friends. She was drunk when she made that statement. She absolutely did not kill Nova. 

Or did she?

Looking for a teen sports memoir about coming of age as a queer person? This is a winner for that and more.

Karina skated at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships and quickly became a fan favorite. She then became the first skater on Team USA to come out as queer.

Her memoir explores life on the ice, as well as growing up in a big school where, even in an era where queerness became more accepted than in the past, she knew virtually no one else having the experiences she was. Because this is a sports memoir, it also explores the ups and downs of figure skating, including the unreal pressures placed upon athletes to look and act in a certain way.