This is what River McIntyre knows about who they are: They are a competitive swimmer. They were born and raised in Haley, Ohio, a town infamous for its failing marine park, SeaPlanet, and they feel a bitter kinship with the park’s captive-raised creatures. They have two parents and an older brother, and they’re Lebanese on their mom’s side. These are the facts River knows for certain.
River begins to realize that everything else is a lot more complicated after a run-in at SeaPlanet with Indigo Waits, an out and proud teenager from River’s past. Seeing Indy forces River to admit that they’ve been drowning under the tide of gender dysphoria and internalized homophobia for far too long. In the absence of the words to process their feelings, however, River jumps into SeaPlanet’s shark tank and sets off a chain of events that will forever link Indy’s and River’s lives.
In Man o’ War, author Cory McCarthy engages with every aspect of River’s life to create an extraordinary story with incredible depth. River’s experiences as a competitive swimmer enable McCarthy to explore the complex relationships that trans athletes have with their bodies, while River’s Arab American heritage raises discussions about biracial identity and passing in a world that’s prejudiced in favor of white, cisgender people.
McCarthy’s prose is suffused with emotion and often employs SeaPlanet’s sharks, orcas, Portuguese man-of-wars and other creatures as beautiful metaphors for River’s feelings. The jagged edges of dysphoria, the suffocating pressure of familial expectations and the all-encompassing need for love bleed through River’s internal monologue with biting clarity.
The novel’s exploration of queer identity ferociously resists the idea that coming out is a simple or straightforward process. River’s journey of self-discovery takes years, and Man o’ War follows them through high school and college. They try on different labels, experience both acceptance and rejection from their queer peers and navigate the joys and trials of medical transition. Along the way, McCarthy’s story provides space for every uncertain step, portraying River’s attempts to untangle the snarl of confusion and self-loathing inside themself with empathy and patience.
In Man o’ War, McCarthy validates how finding your name, accepting your name and telling others your name can all be separate, unique battles. Despite the pain those battles sometimes bring, River’s transition is driven by an irrepressible hope—a hope that will assure readers their true happiness is always worth the fight.
River’s plunge into the shark tank at SeaPlanet sets off a journey of self-discovery and transition driven by an irrepressible hope for true happiness.
Zarela Zalvidar is practically royalty in Santivilla, the capital city of Hispalia. Her mother was a celebrated flamenco dancer before she was killed by dragon fire, and her father is a respected Dragonador whose family has owned and run La Giralda, a dragon-fighting arena, for more than five centuries. After some dragons escape during a show at the arena, killing many spectators and gravely wounding Zarela’s father, she must find a way to save La Giralda from financial ruin and unmask a traitor who is sabotaging her family’s business.
In order to lure back La Giralda’s audience, Zarela must enter the ring herself, but she’ll need a trainer if she’s to leave the ring with her life. Arturo, a handsome former Dragonador turned trainer who scorns the Zalvidar family and their dragon-fighting legacy, seems like the perfect choice—if only Zarela can convince him to help. With only one chance to secure her family’s future, Zarela will do anything and risk everything to succeed.
Headstrong, resourceful and tenacious, Zarela is eager to emerge from the shadow of her mother’s fame. Arturo is a worthy foil who challenges Zarela to rethink her long-held beliefs regarding dragon fighting. He’s also one of only a few people in Zarela’s life who doesn’t underestimate her, and their crackling chemistry will please fans of the enemies-to-lovers trope.
In Together We Burn, author Isabel Ibañez (Woven in Moonlight) grounds her fantasy world in the culture of medieval Spain, including its food, art and language. Her depiction of the divisions between characters who believe that dragon-fighting is cruel versus those who defend it as a cultural tradition mirrors present-day debates in countries that practice bullfighting.
Packed with high stakes, a well-executed mystery and an appealingly swoony romance, Together We Burn has something to entertain a wide range of genre fiction fans.
In this medieval Spain-inspired fantasy tale, Zarela will do anything to save her family's dragon-fighting arena—even if it means entering the ring herself.
Malaysian author Hanna Alkaf’s Queen of the Tiles combines two irresistible elements: wordplay and murder. It’s the story of Najwa, a Scrabble whiz whose best friend, Trina, collapsed mid-game during the Word Warrior Weekend tournament a year ago. As Najwa continues to deal with her grief, she competes in her first tournament since Trina’s death, where she discovers that her friend may have been murdered—and the killer could be sitting on the other side of the Scrabble board.
What initially sparked your interest in writing about Scrabble and the competitive Scrabble community?
I love Scrabble. Malaysia has a thriving, active Scrabble community, and as a teen, my older brother had been part of it. I remember many weekends spent ferrying him back and forth from our house to the Parkroyal Hotel in downtown Kuala Lumpur, where meets were usually held. Naturally, I ended up representing my school at a few competitions when I was in my teens as well. The strategies employed by top Scrabble players have always fascinated me, and when you combine that with my love of wordplay, Agatha Christie mysteries and teen angst, well, that’s how Queen of the Tiles was born.
The Scrabble competition in Queen of the Tiles is suspenseful and incredibly detailed. How did you research that aspect of the book? What did you learn that surprised you?
I watched many hours of Scrabble competitions, documentaries and interviews, read as much and as widely as I could on strategy and gameplay, and mapped out moves on a Scrabble board that I kept by my desk throughout the entire process.
I am now a repository of absolutely fascinating and utterly useless Scrabble trivia. For instance, the highest scoring Scrabble word ever was played by Karl Khoshnaw in 1982: caziques, for 392 points. But Dan Stock from Ohio worked out that, in theory, the highest scoring Scrabble word possible is oxyphenbutazone, which, if the stars somehow align and all conditions on the board are just as they need to be, can get you a ridiculous 1,778 points. Yes, I am very fun at parties.
“Mysteries work best when readers can play along.”
At the beginning of each chapter, you feature a word with its definition and Scrabble point value. Did you already have words in mind for this when you began writing?
I kept a Google Doc called WORD LIST, and every time I came across a word and definition that I thought I could work into the plot—whether for the words at the beginning of each chapter, tournament scenes or Najwa’s own internal monologues—I’d note it down.
Sometimes I needed something specific, like, “Oh, for this chapter, I need an obscure word that means ‘enemy.’” I’d open Thesaurus.com, plug the word in and find the most obscure but still relevant synonym. Then I’d cross-check it with an online Scrabble word checker to make sure it was valid and read what the official definition and point value would be.
Najwa’s internal dialogue was harder to work through. She floats from word to word depending on the definition or how that word is tied to her memories or her analysis of other people. It’s a tricky thing to pull off, and every time I did it felt like a tiny miracle.
One of my favorite such moments happens early on in the book. Najwa’s thought process takes her from the word arenite (a sedimentary clastic rock) to clastic (composed of fragments) to fragment (to break into pieces), and that’s how she feels right in that moment: like she’s falling apart.
The tournament aspect of the novel is thrilling on its own, but Queen of the Tiles also contains a murder mystery! Do you enjoy reading mysteries? What was challenging about plotting one yourself?
I grew up raiding my older sister’s collection of Agatha Christie novels and still go back to them as comfort reads—particularly the Poirot books. Yes, you read that right: I read murder mysteries for comfort.
The most challenging part of it all was laying down the breadcrumbs. It’s easy to say this big reveal needs to happen in this chapter, or this plot twist goes here, but if you don’t show a logical path to get there, then you’re not really earning it. Mysteries work best when readers can play along; they’re most fun when you can go back and realize the clues were there waiting for you, and you just didn’t realize at the time that they were clues at all.
“If [Najwa] feels real to readers, then I’m grateful, because the emotions were all too real to me.”
Najwa has developed an obsession with Trina’s Instagram account, and social media plays a vital role in the story. Why was it important to you to include this in the book?
Trina was a social media star; she had a large following and we catch glimpses of how obsessed she was with maintaining a certain image for her public. But the more we get to know Trina, the more we see how much more depth and darkness lie behind the facade.
And it isn’t just Trina. In all instances where we see social media use in Queen of the Tiles—and we see it a lot—there’s always the underlying question of what we present to the world versus who we really are. How much is being shown, and how much is being hidden? How do you evaluate what is real when you don’t know how much is being shared and how much has been withheld?
In her grief after Trina’s death, Najwa experiences memory issues, intrusive thoughts and more. Your portrait of Najwa is so real and raw. What was it like for you to craft this moving depiction of loss and healing?
I did some research on therapy and coping mechanisms for loss, grief and PTSD, but to be honest, writing Najwa was difficult not because I couldn’t understand what she was feeling, but because I understood it too well. I mined my own memories and emotions and buried shards of my own remembered grief in Najwa; if she feels real to readers, then I’m grateful, because the emotions were all too real to me.
I loved how often Najwa refers to her therapist when she talks about what she’s been going through. Why was it important to you to include therapy as part of Najwa’s experiences and to depict her openly relying on its lessons?
In Malaysia, we’re still working on destigmatizing mental illness and therapy. I really wanted to show a Malay Muslim teen struggling with her mental health and the ways in which she reaches out, gets help, develops coping mechanisms and puts those tools in practice—all things that I think we need to work on normalizing.
You recently tweeted, “I cannot tell you what it means to me to see a hijabi on the cover of a book that has absolutely nothing to do with Muslim pain or oppression. A book where she just gets to play Scrabble and solve a mystery and be a teenage girl.” That’s such a powerful statement. What do you hope Najwa and her story might mean for teen readers?
All too often, Muslims and hijabis have to perform our pain in order for our stories to be taken seriously. And those stories are important and necessary. But they’re not all we are. The Muslim experience is varied and colorful; we contain multitudes. We should have stories that showcase all of that! Our pain and our joy and our fears and our loves and our friendships—the sum of our lives and not just one aspect of it.
What do you think draws us to word games like Scrabble, crossword puzzles or, recently, Wordle and makes us want to play them time and again?
I can only really speak for myself, but in my case, I am endlessly fascinated by language and the way that the smallest changes in letters, word choice, tone, inflection or emphasis can entirely change the message we’re trying to get across. My dedication in this book reads simply, “This one’s for the word nerds.” I might as well have said, “This one is for me.”
Author photo of Hanna Alkaf courtesy of Azalia Suhaimi.
Hanna Alkaf’s new YA novel is a murder mystery set in the cutthroat world of competitive Scrabble.
Malaysian author Hanna Alkaf’s Queen of the Tiles is a raw, moving exploration of complicated grief, a celebration of teenage determination and a nail-biting murder mystery set at a cutthroat Scrabble tournament in Kuala Lumpur.
At last year’s Word Warrior Weekend competition, Trina Low, the titular Queen of the Tiles, made it all the way to the final round before she slumped over her board—dead. Najwa Bakri, Trina’s best friend, has been experiencing traumatic flashbacks, depression and memory loss ever since. “It’s as if Trina’s death cracked me open, and now pieces of me keep escaping, scattering themselves everywhere,” she explains.
Seeing a therapist has been helpful for Najwa, as will be attending this year’s Word Warrior Weekend. Along with ensuring that no one will tarnish Trina’s legacy, Najwa is also intent on proving that she is still an accomplished Scrabble player in her own right. This year, it’s Najwa who will become Queen of the Tiles.
Of course, other competitors have the same idea, setting the stage for round after round of precisely crafted, often mesmerizing gameplay. Queen of the Tiles brims with the skills a player must possess to become a Scrabble champion: sharp focus, quick thinking and a prodigious vocabulary. Every chapter opens with an esoteric word (plus its definition and Scrabble point value, natch). Alkaf builds an immersive, complex world but doesn’t stop there, layering in a compelling locked-room whodunit, too.
Indeed, the Word Warrior Weekend is upended when Najwa begins to receive anagrams via direct message from Trina’s long-inactive Instagram account. You wouldn’t think a word puzzle could seem threatening, but in Alkaf’s clever hands, the brainteasers foment unease and hint at a truly horrifying possibility: Could Trina have been murdered?
Scrabble frenemies become amateur sleuths, and everyone’s a suspect. During high-level Scrabble battles, shocking secrets are revealed and edgy suspense builds as the tiles click and slide. Readers will be guessing until the very end of this ensorcelling (15 points), sesquipedalian (26 points) mystery.
Dorothy “Doe” Saltpeter and her friends are ready to make their senior year at the Weston School for girls their best yet, which means pulling the most outrageous pranks on Winfield Academy, the rival boys’ school across the road. But when the two schools announce a shocking merger, Doe is forced to interact with Winfield students, including smug, wealthy Three, her sworn enemy.
To aggravate Three, Doe proposes a fake relationship with his cousin, Wells, who has his own reasons for agreeing to the ruse. As Doe’s and Wells’ lies begin to unravel, Doe uncovers a dark secret plaguing the Weston School, which forces her to rethink her commitment to pranks and rivalries and decide where her priorities truly lie.
This May End Badly is a fun, insightful novel that introduces an instantly appealing heroine. Doe and her group of prankster girlfriends are easy to root for, their pranks ingenious and clever, and her witty relationship with Wells is buoyant and charming.
Yet for all the levity offered by dueling schools and prank wars, This May End Badly thoughtfully explores serious issues as well. During the course of Doe’s school year, debut author Samantha Markum examines harmful family dynamics, childhood trauma and sexual harrassment. Doe must learn to take responsibility for her actions and use her voice, even when that means partnering with people she once considered enemies.
This May End Badly captures the excitement and transitions experienced by many teens during their final year of high school. Doe finds it difficult to say goodbye to her childhood and step into adulthood, which is compounded by the huge changes her friends and beloved school are undergoing. At first, she stubbornly clings to her adolescence and is willing to go to great lengths to keep every aspect of her life, including her relationships, school and responsibilities, exactly how it’s always been.
But as her friends choose colleges, the Weston School enters a new era and Doe’s love life blooms, Doe begins to acknowledge that it’s time to grow up. Along the way, she discovers that becoming an adult isn’t so bad—especially when it means growing with the people you love.
Debut author Samantha Markum’s This May End Badly is a fun, insightful novel about the challenges and rewards of saying goodbye to adolescence and growing with the people you love.
Chloe Green and Shara Wheeler have nothing in common except their goal of beating each other in a ruthless race to become valedictorian of Willowgrove Christian Academy, the best school in their small Alabama town. Chloe is a queer former Californian with two moms and a mean streak; Shara is the principal’s daughter and the de facto princess of Willowgrove. So when Shara corners Chloe in an elevator at school one day and kisses her, questions arise. Things get even stranger when Shara vanishes in the middle of prom, leaving the prom king without a queen and the school buzzing with rumors.
With weeks left until graduation, Chloe is determined to find Shara, but she’s not the only one looking. Star quarterback Smith Parker, Shara’s longtime boyfriend, and Shara’s next-door neighbor, bad-boy Rory Heron, have both been “kissed and ditched” like Chloe. With only the memory of vanilla-mint lip gloss and an increasingly convoluted string of clues to follow, the unlikely trio reluctantly band together to track down Shara—who may not want to be found.
I Kissed Shara Wheeler, the first YA book by adult romance sensation Casey McQuiston, brilliantly deconstructs many tropes common to teen novels published during the first decade of the 21st century, including popular yet troubled girls, outsider heroes and scavenger hunts, complicating them by incorporating queerness, religious trauma and a deep interiority. Likewise, Chloe, Shara, Smith and Rory push against the outlines of their archetypes. The result is a messier and more grounded take on contemporary YA fiction that will appeal to current and former teens alike.
I Kissed Shara Wheeler is self-aware but not self-conscious, and it never condescends to its readers. McQuiston’s prose is quick, witty and referential, striking a balance between the wry way that characters speak in rom-coms and the way that real teenagers actually talk. McQuiston maintains the tone (and frequent absurdity) of the novels they’re emulating as their characters explore issues that teens have always faced. They handle trauma and its impact with nuance and sensitivity, and even tertiary characters feel dimensional.
Shara herself is the most impressive accomplishment here. As if anticipating comparisons to the oft-derided manic pixie dream girls of John Green’s novels, McQuiston takes an affectionate jab at Paper Towns early on: “Of course Shara cast herself as the main character of her own personal John Green novel,” Chloe thinks. Like the seekers in that novel, Chloe, Smith and Rory initially learn more about themselves and each other than about Shara. But as she does with many other elements in this novel, McQuiston twists this trope, going one step further than Green and peeling back Shara’s layers, revealing her to be deeply complicated—smart, insecure, gregarious, selfish and more. She’s clearly no one’s manic pixie anything, and her desperation to be found speaks to her sublimated desire to find herself.
In a letter included with advance editions of the book, McQuiston writes that “I Kissed Shara Wheeler started off as a feeling.” The book’s most potent impressions are also feelings: the rush of nerves before the opening night of the spring musical; the strange magic of driving familiar streets at night; your crush’s name appearing on your phone screen. I Kissed Shara Wheeler assures readers that although hurt is real, love is complicated and friends can let you down, the world is wide and nothing is impossible.
I Kissed Shara Wheeler, the first YA book by adult romance sensation Casey McQuiston, brilliantly deconstructs tropes common to early-2000s teen novels.
Best friends Evelyn and Mina were 10 years old when they summoned a spirit to do their bidding. They wanted to clear Evelyn’s father of suspicion in the mysterious drowning deaths of three Long Island teenagers known as the Cliffside Trio. Six years later, the girls are still paying the price: Mina has a painful scar on her wrist in the shape of a sand dollar, and Evelyn’s family has collapsed. Even the girls’ friendship couldn’t survive the fallout.
When Evelyn gets caught in an academic cheating scandal, she summons another spirit to salvage her college prospects, but the consequences are even more disastrous. The only person who can help Evelyn out of her supernatural mess is Mina, but it won’t be easy. The malevolent spirit not only haunts the girls but also draws power from tormenting the souls of the Cliffside Trio. Evelyn and Mina’s attempts to investigate and banish the spirit reveal secrets and cover-ups, not to mention a budding romance. It’s soon clear that they’ll have to risk everything to discover the truth.
In The Drowning Summer, Christine Lynn Herman’s elaborate ghost mythos departs significantly from typical haunted house narratives. The souls of the novel’s dead dwell in the ocean, where they can be called upon by the living to vanquish problems, as Evelyn and Mina did when they were children. Readers who enjoy detailed world building will find their appetites thoroughly satisfied by Herman’s creative framework.
In addition to a compelling ghost story, however, The Drowning Summer is a deft exploration of both girls’ grounded, authentic family dynamics. In a well-intended but misguided attempt to protect Mina from danger, Mina’s mother unintentionally puts her daughter in harm’s way. Meanwhile, Evelyn’s older sister, who is still reeling from their parents’ divorce and their mother’s abandonment, causes additional hurt to their suffering father.
Herman struggles at times to craft a mystery as absorbing as her story’s supernatural and interpersonal elements. For instance, the novel establishes that Evelyn’s father had the means to commit the Cliffside Trio murders, but never indicates what his motive would have been. Most mystery enthusiasts will nonetheless find the compounding clues and the novel’s resolution fulfilling.
Fans of Shea Ernshaw, Kerri Maniscalco or the CW’s “Nancy Drew” will love The Drowning Summer’s blend of supernatural thrills, cold-case mystery and sweet romance. It’s an empowering tale about working through family trauma and rising above expectations.
Christine Lynn Herman’s The Drowning Summer blends supernatural thrills, a cold-case mystery and sweet romance for a haunting tale perfect for fans of the CW’s “Nancy Drew.”
For Lou, the months before college are full of change and uncertainty. She just broke up with her too-pushy boyfriend, and she thinks she might be asexual. Her mother, Louisa, is away selling beadwork on the powwow circuit, and her former best friend, King, is back in town for the first time in three years. And her family’s ice cream business is going under.
Then a letter arrives from Lou’s father, a dangerous, manipulative white man who has recently been released from prison and demands to be involved in her life. Lou was conceived when he sexually assaulted her mother, and the pair spent years running from that history and their own Métis heritage before finally settling down with Lou’s uncles. If anyone in Lou’s family learns that her father is out of prison, Lou fears that Louisa will want the two of them to disappear again, and Lou will lose every ounce of stability she’s managed to find. With support and tough love from King and other friends, Lou spends a pivotal summer learning to finally embrace who she is, who she loves and what she stands for.
In The Summer of Bitter and Sweet, Jen Ferguson (Border Markers) portrays one weighty subject after another, including Lou’s exploration of her sexuality, her relationship to her Métis heritage, her quest to save her family’s ice cream shack, her father’s threats and her burgeoning relationship with King. Each of these storylines could easily fill a whole novel, but Ferguson impressively blends them all together in a complex depiction of one teenager’s struggle to find her center when every aspect of her life seems on the verge of collapse.
Lou is wonderfully multidimensional, and so is everyone around her. As Lou comes to a new appreciation of her community and its power, Ferguson paints the novel’s ancillary characters with vivid strokes, creating detailed and dynamic portraits of Louisa, King, Lou’s uncles and even her ex-boyfriend.
Readers will appreciate that Lou’s journey toward strength and self-acceptance is not neat or linear; instead, it’s messy and filled with as many stumbles as steps forward. They’ll empathize with her when she reaches for King and when she pushes him away. It’s moving and inspiring to witness Lou’s tenacious drive to understand, on her own terms, what family and identity truly mean.
Jen Ferguson’s The Summer of Bitter and Sweet is a moving, inspiring portrait of one teenager’s tenacious desire to understand what family and identity truly mean.
“You look stunning,” one narrator thinks about the other at the beginning of Robin Gow’s A Million Quiet Revolutions. The narrators are in love and beginning the process of transitioning their gender identities. After one narrator, a history buff, reads about two Revolutionary War soldiers named Aaron and Oliver who may have been transgender, the narrators adopt these names as their own, deciding that “We’ve been erased from / so much history. / Someone needs / to write us back in.”
When a terrible event at Aaron’s church causes his family to quickly move away from their small Pennsylvania town to New York City, the narrators face being separated for the first time since they were in first grade. During this time, Oliver tries on a chest binder and wonders whether he’ll have to redo his bat mitzvah, while Aaron’s new queer friends give him strength to come out fully to his Catholic Puerto Rican family. The pair reunite in New Jersey for a reenactment of the Battle of Monmouth, where their understandings of the past meld with their hopes for the present and future.
In Gow’s free verse poems, line breaks occur in unusual places and allow for contemplative pauses: “I stay on the low branches as / you climb higher.” Through Aaron’s and Oliver’s interactions with each other, their siblings and their parents, readers will find models for supporting trans family members. Gow also thoughtfully depicts Aaron and Oliver asking for and giving sexual consent.
Aaron and Oliver are frustrated that much of history ignores “what it was like to live as someone / other than a / white / Protestant / land-owning / man,” and as they discover that life needn’t follow gender binaries, their revelations ring with authenticity. Fans of classic YA literature will enjoy a subtle allusion to Laurie Halse Anderson’s 1999 novel, Speak, a book that was revolutionary in its time, too.
The Most Dazzling Girl in Berlin
The more we understand history, the more opportunities we have to form connections with one another. Such connections play a key role in Kip Wilson’s The Most Dazzling Girl in Berlin, which is set in the eponymous city just before Hitler’s rise to power.
Eighteen-year-old Hilde has just left her orphanage with a handful of Reichsmark coins and the painful memory of Gretchen, the girl who stole her heart. Looking for a job, she stumbles into Café Lila, a club where “all / kinds / of / love / are / possible,” and learns that they’re in need of a musical waitress. Hilde tries to summon up the courage to sing—which is especially difficult in front of the beautiful Rosa, whose aunt warmly welcomes Hilde to their Jewish home. Meanwhile, an important election is approaching and tensions are rising. Hitler’s National Socialists might win over desperate crowds through promises to end hunger and unemployment, but they’re also eager to find someone to blame for Germany’s problems, and they disapprove of what they consider “degenerate” establishments—places like Café Lila.
Alliteration (“languidly, leisurely, lovingly”), onomatopoeia (a clock counts “ticktack”) and words that travel across the page as Hilde moves around Café Lila (“tables / bar / floor / round and round”) add aural and visual interest. Hilde’s realization that she can decide what kind of person she wants to be strikes a quiet note of rightness. Although there’s no on-the-page sex, there’s plenty of acceptance, found family and sweet romance between two girls who know they’re “different from the others” in a time and place where being different means being in danger.
Both A Million Quiet Revolutions and The Most Dazzling Girl in Berlin use poetry to sidestep pronouns. The former makes dexterous use of “you” and “we,” while Ute, the “perfectly androgynous pianist” of the latter, is never referred to with pronouns at all. Both novels also use changes in layout to denote shifts in voice. Words are aligned with the left margin when Oliver and Hilde narrate, and with the right margin when Aaron, Rosa and Rosa’s aunt speak.
Readers in search of insight into the lives of queer teens throughout history—and inspiration for their own lives today—will find plenty of it in these books. As Oliver writes to Aaron about his history project on the gay rights movement during the late 1960s, “It makes me feel like / revolutions are still possible.”
These novels in verse offer stories about LGBTQ people in two eras, illuminating truths about the past and offering touchstones for teens today.
To commemorate their “dumpster fire” of a year ending, two teenage girls light a fire in their school’s garbage dumpster. Over the course of a single day, the fire sets off a twisting chain of events and unravels a complex relationship that flickers between best friendship and so much more.
In Nothing Burns as Bright as You, Ashley Woodfolk (When You Were Everything, The Beauty That Remains) plumbs the depths of female friendship, first love and the grief that often comes with navigating—and losing—both. The narrator retraces the history of an intimate friendship with someone referred to only as “you” across the novel’s nonlinear structure, creating a portrait of a defining relationship. With the day of the fire as an anchor, readers follow the girls back and forth in time and witness them becoming best friends and partners in crime, then slowly but fully—though the narrator’s partner can’t bring herself to admit it—falling in love.
Woodfolk’s second-person free verse and rich language imbue both characters and their relationship with vivid, vulnerable life. She exposes their conflicted feelings about their love for each other as well as the exhaustion from the weight of the expectations they bear as Black teenagers. The narrator poignantly recalls her first realization that she lives “in a world that always makes things that aren’t your fault / your fault,” describing how, at age 13, she found herself in danger simply because she was a Black girl. Yet only a few lines later, the narrator reveals that when she met her friend “a year later, almost to the minute,” her friend told her, “You didn’t need to be rescued. / You are infinitely powerful. / You had already saved yourself.”
In moments like these, Woodfolk captures an intense connection between two girls in its truest form. Readers will recognize touchstones of their own friendships in the unguarded, affectionate and protective way Woodfolk’s protagonists relate to one another, and they’ll also feel the ferocity of the deep love and sadness the girls experience as their relationship begins to singe and smolder in the days before and the hours after the fire. Nothing Burns as Bright as You is an emotional inferno and Woodfolk’s best book yet.
In Nothing Burns as Bright as You, Ashley Woodfolk plumbs the depths of female friendship, first love and the grief that often comes with navigating—and losing—both.
In African Town (7 hours), co-authors Charles Waters and Irene Latham use a series of first-person narrative poems to tell the story of the Clotilda—the last American slave ship—and to reveal the fates of the enslaved passengers and their captors.
Each character’s perspective unfolds in a particular poetic structure that reflects their personality, and the audiobook cast members incorporate the cadence of these poems into their performances without ever sounding forced or contrived. Consequently, the listener experiences not only an epic story of terror, grief and heroism but also the unique humanity of each character, including the Clotilda—a ship that is infinitely more humane than her masters.
The accompanying downloadable PDF is packed with valuable information, including a glossary, timeline and additional information about the characters. African Town is an emotionally complex, searingly honest and extremely rewarding experience for teen and adult listeners alike.
Set against the backdrop of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Katherine Locke’s This Rebel Heart is a queer, fabulist novel about a girl navigating her complicated feelings toward the place she calls home—a place where magic and horror live side by side.
Csilla Tisza, whose hair is as silver as the Danube River, has lost almost everything. Her Jewish family survived the Holocaust only for her parents to be declared enemies of the state and executed four years ago. Now Csilla lives with her aunt, Ilona, her last living relative. The secret police watch their every move, their family’s home has been nationalized and subdivided into smaller apartments, and they are constantly surrounded by antisemitism. Together, Csilla and Ilona are plotting to escape Soviet-controlled Hungary. Yet when Csilla meets two young men—one a mysterious figure who rescues her from the police, the other a student who asks her for a dangerous favor—her plan to abandon Hungary transforms into a resolution to save it.
“Whoever can protest and does not is responsible for what happens without protest.” Csilla recalls her mother sharing this line from the Talmud, a collection of writings about Jewish theology and law. The energy behind this idea fuels This Rebel Heart. In an author’s note included with advance editions of the book, Locke frames their novel as a story about why “showing up matters” in any fight for the future.
This Rebel Heart is a story with grim, heavy stakes, filled with characters who grapple with the answers to impossible questions. How do you love a country that has killed your family? How do you love a family member with blood on their hands? Locke’s prose often has a circular quality to it, repeating phrases and images like refrains or even mantras. Though this technique may, at times, grate on some readers, the repetition also draws attention, again and again, to what these characters have experienced and how these experiences still echo in their lives. A 2020 survey of Americans ages 18 to 39 revealed that almost 1 in 4 believed the Holocaust was either a myth or had been exaggerated, and every day, fewer survivors remain to tell their stories. A friend drives it home to Csilla: “You survived. You survived. You survived.”
Any reader who has ever felt unsure of their place in history will find solace in This Rebel Heart.
In this novel about why showing up matters, Csilla must navigate her complicated feelings toward her Hungarian home, where magic lives alongside horror.
Armed with knitting needles, retractable swords and a mean cup of tea, the pink-clad Ladybird Scouts are the covert defenders of the world. High school junior Prudence Perry left her Ladybird circle after her best friend was killed three years ago. She wants nothing to do with the competitive toxicity of the group, but she’s part of a legacy scout family, so her grief, anxiety and PTSD share space in her heart with a daily dose of guilt. Still, she strives for normalcy with her rebellious nonscout friends—but a life of fighting enormous interdimensional mulligrubs that feed on human emotions isn’t so easy to shake.
Now that Prue’s cousin Avi is of training age, Prue is expected to begin training her own circle of Ladybirds. Intending to fulfill that duty but nothing more, Prue throws herself back into battle while grappling with her mental health and her family’s expectations. As she becomes unexpectedly close with her trainees, Prue must choose: forget the Ladybirds and leave that life behind for good, or help lay the groundwork for a kinder, more supportive sisterhood?
With a sly sense of humor and nostalgia, Scout’s Honor riffs on postmodern horror classics like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and recent hits like “Stranger Things.” Author Lily Anderson offers a clever subversion of “chosen one” narratives as the novel explores tantalizing “what ifs” like “What if Buffy had just gone to a psychiatrist?” and “What if Girl Scouts were masters of cookies—and karate?”
It’s an absurd premise, but Anderson makes it work through unself-conscious world building and a skillful blend of fantastical and real-world threats. While Prue and her “babybirds” fight literal monsters, they’re also railing against toxic female institutions, intergenerational conflict and the notion that women should shoulder the burden of emotional labor. Scout’s Honor works as both allegory and satisfying speculative fiction, portraying battles with mulligrubs and the challenges of mental illness with equal grace. It’s hilarious and heart-wrenching in equal measure.
Anderson understands the necessity of characters who feel grounded in reality, despite the absurdities of their situations, and Scout’s Honor poses powerful questions: How do you let grief move with you rather than letting it swallow you whole? How do you balance the weight of obligation with your own needs? How do you remain soft in a hardened world? With the support of her friends, Prue works to figure out her own answers. As her favorite mantra goes, “Can’t go over it, can’t go under it.” The only way out is through.
Meet the Ladybird Scouts, armed with knitting needles, retractable swords and a mean cup of tea as they defend the world from interdimensional monsters.
Sign Up
Stay on top of new releases: Sign up for our newsletter to receive reading recommendations in your favorite genres.
Maria Ressa’s book is a political history of the Philippines and an intimate memoir, but it’s also a warning to democracies everywhere: Authoritarianism is a threat to us all.
Sean Adams has dialed down the dystopian quotient from his first satirical novel, The Heap, but that element is still very much present in The Thing in the Snow.
