Riot New Media

Natalie and Imogen are best friends and are about as different as they can be. Natalie is a brave adventurer while Imogen is far more quiet and reserved. One thing the two of them have in common is their love of everything supernatural. The two of them spend every summer at the Harlow Hotel, one of the most famously haunted hotels around, and they enjoy the ride. Imogen believes it’s truly haunted while Natalie believes it’s all fun and games.

Then Imogen dies suddenly. It rips apart Natalie’s life, but she’s determined to still spend the summer at Harlow and use it as an opportunity to work on her senior project of creating a teen ghost hunting show. Annoyingly, Leander is also working on his senior project at the hotel, and Natalie cannot stand him.

But as much as she’s annoyed by Leander, he’s not only not hard on the eyes, but Natalie realizes he could be helpful for her project. She asks him to team up to help and he’s game.

The problem? The hotel ghosts might not be figments of either of their imaginations. The Harlow Hotel has secrets that it wants to share with Natalie and Leander—and it might help Natalie work through some of the grief related to losing Imogen.

Ruby Santos is an 18-year-old Filipina American living in San Francisco. Her mother just died, and she’s been grieving—and not just grieving, she and her father are deeply behind on their bills and in debt from mom’s medical treatment. They’ve had to move out of the top floor of their home and into the basement in order to rent out the top floor and bring in some money.

Then Ruby discovers a secret about her father and a secret about her city. Dad has been working as a delivery person for the underworld. He “jumps” train lines and gets packages to a wealthy family of the underworld. But because of his grief and increased alcohol use, he’s fallen behind, and if he doesn’t catch up, the family house might be taken from them.

So Ruby does what any good daughter would do. She offers to help. But it’s not a fun place of magic and romance in the underworld. That exists, sure. But the underground is a world of rivalry, of trafficking illegal goods, and where she realizes she might be creating more trouble for her family than she could have ever imagined.

Magical San Francisco underground? Let’s go!

I really need to do a roundup of YA books featuring teen chefs/teen cooking competitions. This one would fit right in perfectly—and they are not only abundant, but they are so expansive in the types of cuisine featured (which is good for reading but less good when you want to sample that cuisine as you’re reading).

Jackie Oh is tired of being the perfect Korean American daughter. There is so much pressure on her to live up to her parents’ exacting standards. All she wants to do is be a chef, but she knows that expressing that would be rough on Mom and Dad.

But still, Jackie manages to work at her grandparents’ deli after school and at night, she practices her French cooking. She knows she should be studying, but being in the kitchen is a balm to the stress of school, studying, rising anti-Asian violence in New York, and more.

So when Jackie is given the shocking opportunity to compete on one of her favorite teen television cooking competitions, Burn Off!, she takes it. She thinks escaping into the world of privileged kids will be fun and more, she’ll get to hone and show off her skills in the kitchen. Yeah, the gimmicky challenges are just that, but this is her time to shine.

This book dives into identity and culture with both humor and heart.