YA Fiction

With a Little Luck

Beloved for her enthralling science fiction, which includes The Lunar Chronicles series and the Renegades trilogy, Marissa Meyer also proved herself a cross-genre champion with Instant Karma, her bestselling (as usual) first rom-com. In With a Little Luck, she’s taking fans back to the coastal town of Fortuna Beach to meet Jude, whose ordinary life—working at his parents’ vinyl store, drawing comics and playing Dungeons & Dragons—is transformed when he finds a special 20-sided die that gives him incredible luck. But what happens when this luck runs out?

Twelfth Knight

By Alexene Farol Follmuth

In a starred review, we praised the “agile and cutting voice” of The Atlas Six, Alexene Farol Follmuth’s debut published under the pen name Olivie Blake. We’re eager to read her upcoming retelling of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, in which Viola is a high school student who finds solace in an online role-playing game called Twelfth Knight. She’s also the student body Vice President to football player Jack Orsino’s President. When her virtual avatar, Cesario, meets his Duke Orsino online, sparks fly in a rom-com as hilariously tangled as its source material.

Canto Contigo

By Jonny Garza Villa

Jonny Garza Villa brought a sweetly poignant voice to contemporary YA romance with their tender, nuanced novels Fifteen Hundred Miles From the Sun and Ander & Santi Were Here. In Canto Contigo, the Pura Belpré Honor recipient tackles rivals-to-lovers romance as talented singer Rafael Alvarez moves to San Antonio for his senior year only to discover that his new school’s mariachi band already has someone occupying the coveted lead vocalist role: a very cute boy that Rafie happens to have met before.

A Place for Vanishing

By Ann Fraistat

Ann Fraistat writes about the effects of trauma with sensitivity and care in this eminently entertaining horror tale rife with thrills, chills and heart.

Lunar New Year Love Story

By Gene Luen Yang, Illustrated by LeUyen Pham

Gene Luen Yang’s writing and LeUyen Pham’s illustrations blend seamlessly to introduce readers to Vietnamese American Val and her evolving relationship with love.

My Big, Fat Desi Wedding

By Prerna Pickett

Anthologies work best when the stories are tied together by a unifying theme. My Big, Fat Desi Wedding takes things a step further by centering a unifying event as well—the Desi wedding and its unique, beautiful traditions.

Shut Up, This Is Serious

By Carolina Ixta

Caroline Ixta doesn’t shy away from representing Oakland’s complexities—its vast socioeconomic inequalities, its legacy of racial tensions, its rich but complicated Mexican American community—in clear-eyed detail conveyed through protagonist Belén’s intimate first-person narration.

Caroline Ixta doesn't shy away from representing Oakland’s complexities—its vast socioeconomic inequalities, its legacy of racial tensions, its rich but complicated Mexican American community—in clear-eyed detail conveyed through protagonist Belén's intimate first-person narration.