Category: What’s Up in YA

I’m loving the recent college-life YA books I’ve been seeing lately, and here, two aromantic and asexual students find themselves in a messy online situation. Sophie Chi is a first-year student at Wellesley College, and, though she’s very comfortable in her aromantic and asexual identities, she knows she’ll never fall in love. Despite this, she starts an Instagram account (“Dear Wendy”) where she — follow me — gives relationship advice. Yeah. Then, there’s Jo Ephron, another first-year student at the same school, who has created the “Dear Wanda” account, which sorta kinda rivals Dear Wendy. As Sophie and Jo bond over their shared aroace identities and get closer, neither of them knows they’re secretly online rivals, which is just the best setup for some delicious messiness.

This is part of the Elatsoe series (which I loved) but actually takes place before the first book. Here, torn away from their traditional home by a devastating flood, Shane and her mother work with their pack of ghost dogs to track down missing people. When Shane’s mother and a boy from the neighborhood both go missing after interacting with a fairy ring, Shane gathers up a crew to find them. Her brother, friends, and an untrustworthy grandparent all hit the road to find the two missing people, but soon realize that it may not just be a matter of where they are, but when they are.

I loved how the first book incorporated Lipan Apache traditions with other lore, and I’m excited to see that at play in this new book.

This has such a unique magic system that goes so well with its bloody competition. In it, Ning is still gripped by guilt surrounding her mother’s death, and now, the same poison tea that killed her mother may also take her sister, Shu. The only way Ning can think to save her sister’s life is to enter the kingdom’s magical tea-brewing competition; but to win, she’ll have to contend with backstabbers, messy court politics, and handsome strangers.

This has a lot going on…in the way that we like, of course. Here, 17-year-old Ross Quest is a master thief prodigy, descended from a long line of thieves. Thing is, she just wants to live a normal teen life, free of the odd trappings of her heisting family. But then her mother’s life is threatened, and the only way for her to save her that she can see is to enter the Thieves’ Gambit, a dangerous international heisting competition. The plot thickens, of course, once we learn that among her competitors is a smooth-talking cutie…

Hanalei of Tamarind comes from a well-respected and revered family. But a choice made by her father to steal a seadragon egg that was meant for a sick princess means that she and her family have been forced into exile. It’s not what she saw for her future. So a chance meeting with a female dragon who offers her a chance to return home to Tamarind is Hanalei’s opportunity to find happiness and undo the wrong that led to her family’s exile.

Samahtitamahenele, aka Sam, is in a tough spot. He’s the last prince of Tamarind, but he’ll never inherit the throne. Tamarind is a matriarchy. He’s in a tough spot because his grandma is about to end her reign, and his mother is very ill. Sam knows he can do only two things: get married or cure his mother’s illness. So when Hanalei, his childhood friend, returns, he turns to her for help. Together, they’re going to hunt down the dragonfruit that could cure Sam’s mom…but it won’t be easy, and they won’t be the only ones on this very mission.

If you’re looking for a queer revenge tale, here you go. Punk-boy Phil has a reputation as a troublemaker, so it’s a surprise to everyone when he and Cameron start dating. Cameron’s reputation is solid, and he gained a lot of fans when he made a coming-out video that went viral.

Jackson has been on the straight and narrow for years. He’s a good kid and he’s doing everything right in high school. But he feels lost despite his successes, especially when it comes to missing his former best friend Phil.

So when Cameron dumps Phil and sullies his reputation further, Phil wants revenge—mostly to expose some of the secrets and lies and phoniness that Cameron’s kept under wraps. Phil reconnects with Jackson, who he suspects can infiltrate Cameron’s friend group and get the dirt.

The problem is that coming together to get revenge on Cameron might not solve either Phil’s nor Jackson’s problems. Though coming together might kindle something more between the former besties.

Joan works as the person who makes and keeps up with the swords for Shakespeare’s acting company. As a member of the Orisha, she’s been given the gift of controlling metal. Her family, all Orisha, are also tasked with keeping an eye on London’s Fae population; usually, there’s nothing to worry about, but there has been more and more Fae activity recently, including some attacks. So when Joan hurts a powerful member of the Fae, she finds herself in the middle of a battle between the human world and the world of the Fae.

This is the first in a duology, and the sequel, Saint-Seducing Gold, hits shelves on April 23, Billy Shakespeare’s birthday.

Stevie and Nora loved one another and had a plan to make their love something they didn’t need to hide. It involved moving away from their conservative hometown and out to California after high school.

Stevie, though, has a terrible fall that leaves her unable to remember much of her life. This includes the plan to leave down and worse, how much she and Nora are in love. Stevie cannot remember anything about the last two years, and her life has become messy, inconsistent, not what she would have wanted before the fall.

As for Nora, she’s unsure how to handle no longer being remembered nor what happens as a result of Stevie no longer wanting the future they had planned.

For readers who would like an adventure story for their picnic.

This book has everything: a historic setting, the Suffragist movement, a girl on an Antarctic exposition, and a survival story.

Clara Ketterling-Dunbar is part of The Resolute, a team of 28 crew members on an Antarctic exposition. It is November 1914, and the ship is stuck on ice 100 miles from the continent. How will the team survive? How will Clara figure out who she is amid a crew that is not necessarily happy there is a woman on board?

As a heads up: this book has sexual assault and harm to animals — the first is not unpunished, and the second is not out of gross cruelty but survival.

If you love survival, discussions of feminism and what it does or does not entail, and reading about the perceptions held by people around the globe about Americans in this era, don’t miss this one.

For readers seeking a swoony, frothy historical picnic companion.

If you want a 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?

For readers who want to take an outdoorsy, (unfairly) cute contemporary romance picnicking.

Celine, the resident conspiracy theorist and local weird girl at her high school, and Bradley, the star football player who struggles with OCD, are ex-best friends. Actually, Bradley abandoned Celine because she didn’t fit in with his new, cool friends (tsks loudly). Now, they’re just academic rivals who engage in general pettiness and who have to work together in a survival course in the woods as part of a scholarship competition. To win, the outdoors isn’t the only messy thing they’ll have to wade through.

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.