Jill Ratzan

It Sounded Better in My Head takes place in Australia, where summer is in January and senior year ends before college admissions are announced. The novel’s narrator, Natalie, feels in between. She’s in between her parents, who have blindsided her with an amicable announcement that they are divorcing, and in between her best friends, Zach and Lucy, who have started dating. But mostly, Natalie is in between being an introvert with severe acne and being an outgoing teenager who goes to parties. And then at one of those parties, she plays a game of spin the bottle and kisses Zach’s brother, Alex.

In this deceptively complex book, superficial questions about the intricacies of texting your crush accompany serious explorations of body image, sibling dynamics and interpersonal trust. Debut author Nina Kenwood hilariously chronicles Natalie’s bumbling attempts to pursue Alex through an awkward first date, unintended mishaps and more. But Kenwood also follows Natalie as she engages in meaningful conversations with Alex about physical intimacy. The pair’s on-the-page discussions of contraception, past partners, STIs and infidelity are frank and honest, and would serve as excellent models for readers in need of a script for such conversations in their own lives. It’s also heartening to read Natalie’s realization that intimacy and intercourse don’t need to be synonymous: “I never thought about how nice it would be to just have someone touch you softly and gently. . . . I thought it was sexy stuff or nothing.”

With candor and affection, It Sounded Better in My Head captures a teenager navigating the final moments of one stage of life and the first moments of the next.

Del has had a crush on Kiera for forever. So when Kiera joins a group at First Missionary Church and takes a purity pledge—promising to abstain from sex until marriage—Del stands up and joins, too. The pledge group will have classes and activities together, so it’ll be a great way for Del to spend time with Kiera, right? Between working at his fast-food job and secretly running a sexual-health Q&A service, Del throws himself into memorizing scripture—and dodging questions about his romantic escapades, about which he’s been intentionally lying for years. 

Two-time Edgar Award finalist Lamar Giles tells two stories at once in Not So Pure and Simple. One is a comedy of errors, as Del’s attempts to spend time alone with Kiera go increasingly awry. The other is a story of whether clever schemes are the best way for a young man to get closer to a young woman. Where does the line fall between appropriate and inappropriate attention? 

When Del’s sister’s YouTube channel becomes a social media sensation amid online pushback against the prevailing discourse surrounding a series of local teen pregnancies, Del realizes he may not be alone in having some learning to do. Perhaps First Missionary Church and Del’s small-town community could all benefit from a shift in perspective.

Dialogue between Del and his father, older sister and other characters gives readers a view of gender politics from balanced perspectives without interfering with Del’s authentic narrative voice. Sharp readers will find Easter egg references to some of Giles’ favorite contemporary books and authors embedded in the text, providing pointers for what to read next. 

Giles successfully integrates social justice themes into Del’s story while maintaining a genuinely engaging and often hilarious tone.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Lamar Giles talks toxic masculinity, teen sex ed classes and his love for ’80s rock ballads.

Abandoned. Thief. Drifter. Trixie’s fine with those labels, and fine being on her own ever since her mother disappeared. But the state isn't fine with a homeless 17-year-old girl with a record of burglary. So her social worker offers Trixie a deal: She can avoid prison by finishing high school in the guardianship of her long-lost aunt.

Small-town life with the McCabe family is a big change for city-loving Trixie. Her cousin Ember is shy and withdrawn, her meddlesome great-great aunt is always matchmaking and her aunt bakes pies—Lucky Lime, Bracing Blueberry and Ardent Apple—that are known around town for their magical properties. And then there’s Jasper, the perpetually smiling delivery boy who just might take Trixie’s mind off Shane, who was supposed to be her source of stability amid the instability of her mother’s addictions.

Trixie settles into a routine of doing homework, working at her aunt’s tea shop and taking turns making dinner with her new family. But she’s had chances with families before and things have never worked out. Why should this time be any different?

All the McCabe women, she's told, have special gifts. How will Trixie use hers? Will she continue reaching for the past or put down roots in the present? In A Constellation of Roses, author Miranda Asebedo offers a tearjerker tale about the nature of love, the meaning of family and, of course, the magical powers of pie.

“I tell this story because I can,” writes Saundra Mitchell in the author’s note of her new novel, All the Things We Do in the Dark. Seeking to avoid “adding one more fictional rape to a world that uses it far too often for entertainment,” Mitchell retells a traumatic event from her childhood, adding elements of fabulism to create All the Things We Do in the Dark.

The first thing everyone notices about Ava is the scar on her face. When she was 9 years old, a man lured her into the dark and raped her. But Ava’s a junior in high school now, and she knows what to do: She avoids strangers, follows her mother’s rule of never going out by herself and, most of all, keeps her emotional baggage neatly folded in mental boxes with strong, secure locks—until she finds a dead body in the woods, that is.

Ava instantly connects with the dead teenager, whom she calls Jane. Jane haunts Ava at every turn, leading Ava to take impulsive chances as she begins to break all of her own rules. But even as Jane appears to Ava in increasingly disturbing guises, Ava’s regular life goes on. Her best friend, Syd, becomes distant, and she finds herself falling for her classmate Hailey. Soon Jane’s secret can no longer stay hidden, and Ava must make a choice. Will she claim her buried past or let it claim her?

Like the worms in the soil of Ava’s visions, All the Things We Do in the Dark will crawl into readers’ viscera and stay under their skin.

The summer after her first year of college is going to be great for Juliet Milagros Palante. An internship with her favorite feminist author means spending the summer in the hippy, happening city of Portland, Oregon—far away from her home in the Bronx. She’s packed the inhalers she needs to control her asthma, her girlfriend, Lainie, has promised to call, and her extended family sends her off with a traditional Puerto Rican dinner.

But the summer doesn’t quite turn out as planned. Juliet’s mother won’t talk to her after Juliet comes out, Lainie isn’t returning her messages, and the feminist scene in Portland is more complicated than Juliet expected. Juliet doesn’t know what preferred gender pronouns are, what it means to be polyamorous or why activists of color sometimes distrust their well-meaning white friends. Is her mentor, Harlowe, who champions positivity toward women’s bodies, really the heroine Juliet thinks she is? How can Juliet call herself a queer feminist when she isn’t sure what those words mean anymore? Where does religion—whether it’s Juliet’s Catholic faith or any other—fit in to feminist ideologies? Who is Juliet, anyway, and who does she want to become?

Set in 2003, Juliet Takes a Breath is both a coming-of-age story and a guidebook to an emerging world of intersecting identities. Author Gabby Rivera takes readers through an unforgettable summer of libraries, science fiction writing workshops, hair-styling parties, women’s studies and self-discovery.

Editor’s note: Juliet Takes a Breath was originally published in 2016 by Riverdale Avenue Books.

For 41 cycles over thousands of years, the wizard Merlin has had the same agenda: Find Arthur, train Arthur, and nudge him onto the nearest throne. Then Arthur is supposed to defeat the greatest evil in the universe and unite all of humankind. Every cycle so far, Arthur has died and Merlin has aged backward—until this 42nd reincarnation of the once and future monarch.

This time, Arthur is a teenage Arab interplanetary refugee who was taken in by an adoptive brother named Kay and his two moms. Arthur is also a girl named Ari. And, like nearly everyone else in this futuristic world, Ari is queer.

Familiar characters and places from the legend are here in new guises. Gweneviere is the multi-racial leader of a rebel planet, Lamarack is gender-fluid, and Camelot is a combination of a run-down spacecraft and a world where medieval entertainment takes center stage. The greatest evil in the universe is a mega-corporation known as Mercer that’s led by an unforgiving Administrator. When a quest to reveal Mercer’s dark side—and to rescue Kay and Ari’s moms—goes awry, Ari and her friends must draw on previously unrecognized strengths to save themselves and the universe, and the stunning conclusion leaves room for future stories.

Authors Amy Rose Capetta and Cori McCarthy, best known for their Rainbow Boxes project to stock libraries and shelters with fiction featuring LGBTQ+ characters, bring the King Arthur story to life in an entirely new way, complete with space battles, steamy romance and high adventure.