Sarah Welch

Days before her high school graduation, Claudine’s parents announce that they’re divorcing. She and her mom will spend Claude’s last summer before college on an island in Georgia with spotty Wi-Fi and relentless mosquitoes. Claude feels like the floor’s been pulled out from under her until she meets Jeremiah, the enigmatic islander who sees through every wall she puts up. Slowly but surely, Claude and Jeremiah rebuild her foundations, taking risks with their hearts and control of their lives.

As in Jennifer Niven’s previous YA novels, Breathless introduces its protagonist at a moment when her world feels upside down, confronting her struggles head-on. For Claude, these include the emotional fallout from her parents’ divorce and her growing desire to have sex before she heads off to college. (Though she knows virginity is a patriarchal construct, Claude is ready to lose hers ASAP.)

Although Claude’s parents and the novel’s other adult characters lack dimensionality, the teens—including Claude, Jeremiah and Claude’s best friend, Saz—are all richly developed, deep flaws and all. Claude and Jeremiah’s romance has just the right amount of sweetness as they grapple with the line between love and lust, what it means to feel grounded and what they might mean to each other once the summer comes to a close.

Breathless is a frank and tender novel of self-discovery that fans of Sarah Dessen’s transformational summer romances and John Green’s stories of poignant self-discovery and difficult growth will enjoy.

Shady Grove’s daddy could call ghosts from the grave with his fiddle. He died in a car crash four years ago, but when the woods around Shady’s home suddenly fill with the sound of the bluegrass music he used to play, she knows he’s trying to send her a message. Then her brother is accused of murder, and Shady realizes it’s her turn to take up her daddy’s fiddle, call out the ghosts and illuminate the secrets that have been keeping her family prisoner for generations.

Ghost Wood Song, Erica Waters’ debut novel, is a haunting Southern Gothic tale that will delight fans of Jeff Zentner’s The Serpent King and Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl’s Beautiful Creatures. Readers will lose themselves in Florida’s rural pine woods, among the ghosts that haunt Shady’s family and the bluegrass melodies she plays to summon them. 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Author Erica Waters shares her favorite murder ballads and explores the appeal of this genre of traditional music.

Waters’ characters are just as vivid, coming into sharp relief against the lush setting as they wrestle with grief, family secrets and high school drama. (Shady and her two best friends, Sarah and Orlando, can’t agree on the set list for their band, and their arguments are complicated by the love triangle between Shady, Sarah and gorgeous cowboy Cedar.) Waters makes it easy to root for Shady as she battles conflicts both mundane and supernatural, working through a wide range of emotions rendered with nuance and authenticity.

Ghost Wood Song is a lyrical, evocative novel that’s part ghost story and part mystery, wrapped around a gorgeous tale of loss, love and family healing.

Adelaide’s life has been turned upside down by her brother’s addiction, her family’s separation and her devastating breakup with Mikey Double L. With an aching heart and an unfinished school project hanging over her head, threatening her final grades, Adelaide chooses to stay at her boarding school for the summer, walking professors’ dogs and falling in and out of love—over and over again. Through it all, she just might learn that what she really needs is herself.

E. Lockhart is no stranger to the complexities of the teenage heart, and Again Again explores them in a poignant and lyrical way. As in her previous novels, such as We Were Liars and Genuine Fraud, Lockhart again plays with perception and time, treating readers to multiple versions of Adelaide’s experiences, from romantic encounters to feedback from teachers. The line between reality and fantasy becomes intentionally and wonderfully ambiguous. Call it an exploration of the multiverse or a glimpse inside a teenage girl’s mind. Either way, the creative format highlights Adelaide’s uncertainty and elevates her summer into a coming-of-age experience that readers will find relatable.

While every scenario Adelaide imagines (or lives) is honest and heartfelt, the most powerful storyline in every version is her relationship with her brother, Toby. Lockhart depicts his recovery from addiction gently and respectfully, and the siblings’ attempts to find their new normal are beautifully rendered and often eclipse Adelaide’s romance as the most moving relationship in the book.

On the surface, Again Again is relatively simple: Girl meets boy, girl falls for boy, emotional turmoil ensues. But Lockhart’s unique narrative structure and poetic prose stylings transform it into a thought-provoking look at what we expect and what we need from each other—and from ourselves.

When Mae and Hannah’s parents are killed by a tsunami in Malaysia, the two sisters’ lives are turned upside down. Hannah, emotion-driven and artistic, struggles under the weight of opioid addiction as she grieves for her family and the life she’s lost. Meanwhile, Mae, who dreams of working at NASA, grapples with having been orphaned by the loving parents who adopted her and wonders how much more she’ll have to give up to save what’s left of her family. As the aftermath of the wave washes up family secrets and questions about the future, both girls must learn to move forward, holding onto each other and the love their parents left behind.

In Little Universes, Heather Demetrios (I’ll Meet You There) delivers a story that will break readers’ hearts and put them back together again several times over. As the novel alternates perspectives between poetic Hannah and logical Mae, Demetrios creates two equally powerful voices that evolve brilliantly, growing more distinct and yet drawing together as the two sisters navigate their changing relationship through their unique responses to unimaginable trauma.

Demetrios addresses potent material, including death, addiction, abortion, sexual assault and adultery, with incredible nuance and respect, enabling readers who don’t share Hannah’s and Mae’s experiences to connect deeply with what they’ve been through. Little Universes is a challenging, emotional read, but it will leave readers reassured by the power of love and of their place in this universe.

When she signs up for an elective radio broadcasting class, Nina expects that she will earn an easy A. After all, her father is a well-known radio DJ, so radio must be in her blood, right? But when her class’s group project spins out of control, Nina and her team learn more about radio—and family, friendship and loyalty—than they ever anticipated.

The story centers on Nina, who is juggling family drama, friendships and the general anxiety of senior year, none of which is helped by the fact that her neighbor and former best friend, Jamie, has come hurtling back into her life as the fourth member of her radio class team. But Mills’ vivid character development doesn’t end with her protagonist. Nina’s two sisters, her mother, her soon-to-be stepfather and all of her friends are colorful and complex creations who are fully capable of stealing the show. (Nina’s broadcasting team members Joydeep and Sasha nearly do—repeatedly.)

The slow burn of Nina and Jamie’s rekindled friendship-turned-adorable-romance adds an extra layer of depth to Lucky Caller that readers of contemporary romantic comedies will love. But Nina and her team’s efforts to create an exciting new radio show—and all that goes wrong along the way—are what readers will really find irresistible. Emma Mills (First & Then, Foolish Hearts) delivers a quietly heartwarming story of complicated family dynamics, forgotten friends and first loves in Lucky Caller.

The Larkins’ family history starts with a shipwreck off the coast of Maine in 1885. Fidelia Larkin, the only survivor of the sinking of the Lyric, persevered, founded the town of Lyric, Maine, married and started her family there. “Their love was our beginning” is Lyric’s unofficial slogan. 

Generations later, Fidelia’s descendants are adrift in wreckage of a different sort. Violet’s younger brother, Sam, has just tried to take his own life, and Violet’s parents have sent her to stay with her uncle in Lyric for the summer so they can focus on Sam’s recovery. Desperate to shed her own self-destructive tendencies, Violet shaves her head and tries to disappear. But she soon discovers that, although her disappearing act won’t help her brother, reviving their lifelong dream of finding the wreckage of the Lyric just might.

Debut novelist Julia Drake has drawn all her characters richly, easily enabling readers to identify with Violet, Sam and their struggles. The seaside setting is vividly evoked, and readers will feel fully transported to the small town of Lyric. Violet and Sam undergo dramatic transformations as they begin to heal, redefining both their identities and their relationship with each other. Their journey together is the novel’s greatest strength. 

Inspired by Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Drake’s enthralling debut doesn’t shy away from the big stuff. The Last True Poets of the Sea explores themes of identity, mental health, romance and family with grace and gravitas.

Lucille and Winona meet under extreme circumstances: standing outside the police station as Lucille considers ratting out her drug dealer brother and Winona debates turning in her father, a beloved weatherman whose private behavior isn’t quite as sunny as his public disposition. In their desperation, the two make a pact: get each other through senior year and then escape to Chicago. But when Winona makes a shocking discovery about her deceased mother, she and Lucille realize they can’t afford to wait. They set off for Las Vegas with a wad of cash and a stolen car, determined to take back their power and find their freedom.

A collaboration between Brittany Cavallaro (author of the Charlotte Holmes series) and Emily Henry (The Love That Split the World ), Hello Girls is a whip-smart ode to what can be accomplished by underestimated young women. In Winona and Lucille, readers will find dual protagonists who are at once hilariously over the top and deeply relatable. These young women have been forced to grow up too quickly, but their friendship makes anything possible.

Cavallaro and Henry write with one voice, tackling the tough subjects of drug abuse, poverty and domestic violence. Winona and Lucille’s high-stakes adventure is often far-fetched and always a riot, but its lasting impression is of two young women who have decided to put themselves first, unconditionally and unapologetically.

Perfect for readers who are more than ready to raise their own voices, Hello Girls is a wild end-of-summer ride.