Readers who revel in sweet and swoony stories will be won over by this trio of tales that celebrate adoration and affection.
Golden Boys
Gabe, Sal, Reese and Heath have been best friends for as long as they can remember. They’re all high achievers and the only openly gay boys at Gracemont High School. But the summer before their senior year, the Golden Boys are heading off in different directions for the first time. Gabe is volunteering with an environmental nonprofit in Boston; Reese is jetting off to Paris for graphic design classes; Sal’s mom got him an internship with a U.S. senator in Washington, D.C.; and Heath is the newest employee at his aunt’s arcade in Daytona Beach, Florida.
The summer holds plenty to look forward to—even for Heath, whose trip is also an escape from his parents’ impending divorce. But as their group chats indicate, the boys’ futures loom large and nerve-wracking. Might their travels help them figure out what they want to do with their lives, or at least with their last year of high school? Will their tightly knit bonds loosen, fray or even completely unravel?
As in his previous novels, The Gravity of Us and As Far As You’ll Take Me, bestselling author Phil Stamper creates winningly realistic characters who earnestly explore the muzzy space between youth and young adulthood. Readers will root for the foursome to find joy and purpose. Stamper’s detailed depictions of the boys’ summer gigs are fascinating, and their interlocking stories give the narrative a buoyant momentum.
Naturally, there are romantic entanglements afoot as well. Gabe and Sal question whether their friends-with-benefits arrangement is sustainable, while unrequited crushes blossom into real love for . . . no spoilers here! Suffice it to say, there is some smooching amid all the moments of inspiration and revelation as the four boys make their way through a perspective-changing, horizon-broadening summer.
Fools in Love
Do you like your love stories fantastical, or perhaps futuristic? Are you a sucker for a superhero, tantalized by time travel or convinced that one day you’ll have your very own meet-cute with a royal in disguise? Whatever your fancy, Fools in Love: Fresh Twists on Romantic Tales is sure to satisfy. It’s a delightful assemblage of 15 swoonworthy short stories that put fresh spins on classic romance fiction tropes such as “mutual pining” and “the grumpy one and the soft one.” The settings are refreshingly varied, ranging from a space station to a fairy-themed sleepaway camp to a sled race through snowy mountains. There are puppeteers, golf champions, novice magical investigators and an aspiring starship repair engineer, too.
The stories in this romantic treasury were written by a mix of acclaimed and up-and-coming authors including Natasha Ngan, Mason Deaver, Lilliam Rivera, Julian Winters and 2021 National Book Award winner Malinda Lo. Editors Ashley Herring Blake and Rebecca Podos also contribute a story each. The table of contents helpfully delineates not only each author but also the trope included in their story, so that readers can search out their favorites. Of course, they can also just dive right in and let themselves be swept along into the wildly creative worlds the writers have created.
And what worlds they are! In “Boys Noise” by Mason Deaver, two boy band members take an undercover trip to New York City, where they realize love songs just might be in their shared future. A modern-day annoyance—mistaking someone’s car for your rideshare—sets the stage for a shyly sweet flirtation in Amy Spalding’s “Five Stars.” Time travel is both suspenseful and achingly beautiful in Rebecca Barrow’s “Bloom,” while cheesy takes on a hilariously adorable new meaning in Laura Silverman’s “The Passover Date.” Fools in Love truly has something to please anyone and everyone who loves love.
One True Loves
Lenore Bennett’s parents are the epitome of Black excellence. They know the power of a plan and have instilled that ethos in their kids: Wally, their oldest, is going to law school; Lenore is off to New York University; and 10-year-old Etta is taking college classes.
But as Elise Bryant’s One True Loves opens, Lenore, a talented artist with fashion sense to spare, has other things on her mind. First, there’s senior prom, which she’ll attend dateless while dodging her jerk of an ex. After graduation, her family is embarking on a European cruise, which sounds wonderful but also stressful. Lenore’s parents already disparage her for trying lots of things instead of mastering one. What will they say if they discover that she’s been concealing the fact that she is still (gasp!) undecided about her college major?
While on the cruise, Lenore guards her secret and fends off her irrepressible best friend Tessa’s well-intended text-message advice about all things romance, which Lenore treats with great skepticism. She’s also highly irritated when she meets handsome Alex Lee, whose parents hit it off with hers. Lenore’s folks are, naturally, impressed by his carefully laid-out plans for medical school. As the cruise sails on, Lenore’s secret weighs ever heavier on her mind, even as her eye-rolling at Alex turns into meaningful glances. Might there be hope for Lenore to find love and fulfillment?
One True Loves is a heartfelt look at what it’s like to feel different from those closest to you and a cautionary tale about the ways in which people-pleasing affects mental health. It’s a winning companion to Bryant’s 2021 debut, Happily Ever Afters, that stands easily on its own, though fans will enjoy the glimpses into familiar characters’ futures. One True Loves offers warm empathy and wise perspective to readers who, like Lenore, are trying to figure out where—and with whom—they might fit in the big wide world.
Three YA novels capture the agony and the ecstasy of being young and in love.
The nightly transformations begin on Hannah’s 17th birthday. First, she awakens in the bedroom of her family’s Boston apartment with the eyes of a snake. The next morning, she has a wolf’s teeth. Six weeks after Hannah’s mother leaves in search of a cure, an envelope arrives in the mail. It contains an obituary for Jitka Eggers, the maternal grandmother Hannah has never met.
Hannah and her brother, Gabe, are desperate to find their mother and get some answers to what’s happening to Hannah. They travel to Jitka’s village in upstate New York, where the large Jewish family they never knew they had welcomes them into shiva, a Jewish period of mourning.
As Hannah, Gabe and their new friend Ari keep digging, they stumble onto family secrets; meet a folk healer called an opshprekherke; discover a golem and a vengeful, demonic sheyd; and find that, like the present and the past, the real and the fantastical aren’t as far apart as they might seem.
Author Rebecca Podos packs a lot into From Dust, a Flame, including lovingly detailed descriptions of traditional Jewish practices, tales of creatures from Jewish mysticism and depictions of life in Prague during the Nazi invasion. Its narrative encompasses two time periods plus assorted letters, dreams and folktales—and references to everything from the legends of King Solomon to Disney’s The Little Mermaid.
Throughout the novel, Podos explores themes typical of YA literature, including self-image and self-discovery, as well as more mature questions, such as when to protect children and when to let them go. A mystery component encourages readers to question their initial assumptions, and a first romance found when least expected adds queer sexuality to the range of experiences represented.
From Dust, a Flame sits comfortably beside other works of Jewish American YA literature, both classical and recent. As in Jane Yolen’s 1988 novel, The Devil’s Arithmetic, Holocaust-era visions inform a present-day teen’s circumstances, and as in Gavriel Savit’s The Way Back, published in 2020, a host of magical creatures from Jewish mythology intervene in our world and influence the destinies of young adults.
At its core, From Dust, a Flame is a moving story about the enduring power of telling stories.
Romania 1989: Nicolae Ceaușescu, Romania’s longtime leader, has told the world that Romania is a land of bounty, and the world believes him. But Cristian Florescu, who lives with his parents, sister and grandfather in Romania’s capital city, Bucharest, knows the truth. Gray, lifeless buildings line the streets, and food scarcity, unreliable electricity and constant paranoia are part of daily life under Ceaușescu’s regime.
Cristian is a high school student who dreams of becoming a writer, but the Securitate, Ceaușescu’s secret police, have other plans for him. Called to the principal’s office one day, Cristian is greeted by an imposing member of the Secu. Under threat of blackmail, Cristian agrees to become an informant and to report on the American diplomat whose apartment his mother cleans.
As Cristian begins his double life, he starts to doubt everyone around him, even his closest friends and family. Glimpses of the world outside Romania stir feelings of confusion and curiosity and leave Cristian reeling as he tries to make sense of the contradictory truths he is uncovering about his country. All the while, Romania rushes toward revolution.
Part espionage thriller and part bildungsroman, Ruta Sepetys’ fifth novel, I Must Betray You, focuses on a lesser-known aspect of Cold War history and provides a window into the chilling reality of 1980s Romania, the dictator who fooled the world and the events that led to his downfall.
The novel is a master class in pacing and atmosphere. Much of the book unfolds slowly, creating a foreboding sense of rising tension, until the dam suddenly breaks. Months of caution and paranoia cascade into a frightening series of bloody protests.
As a writer of historical fiction, Sepetys’ greatest strength is her dedication to research. The novel’s diaristic tone and its laser focus on one boy and one country’s story don’t leave much space for the broader context of historical communism and Marxist ideologies within the narrative, though copious endnotes are packed with tales from Sepetys’ research trips across Romania, photos from the period that offer profound visuals and plentiful source notes.
“When we don’t know the full story, sometimes we create one of our own,” Cristian writes in the novel’s final moments. “And that can be dangerous.” I Must Betray You makes its potent message clear: If the truth sets us free, its power comes from how we choose to wield it.
Ruta Sepetys’ new novel is an atmospheric and masterfully paced historical thriller set during the end of the regime of a dictator who fooled the world.
On a cold January morning, the ghost of Todd Mayer watches as his naked, frozen body is discovered in a park by someone passing by. He listens as two police detectives question his family and private-school classmates about his whereabouts the night before. They don’t question his friends, though, because Todd doesn’t have any friends. Instead, the detectives focus their investigation on one of Todd’s male teachers, who took an unusual interest in him.
While Todd silently observes the aftermath of his death, a girl named Georgia, whose brother was one of Todd’s classmates, is dealing with issues of her own. Carrie, one of the most popular students at their all-girls’ school, has recently decided she and Georgia should be friends, but Georgia’s feelings about Carrie are decidedly more complicated than just friendship. Then Georgia realizes she might know something about what happened to Todd on the night he died, setting Georgia and Todd on a collision course with the truth.
Author Mariko Tamaki is best known for This One Summer, a graphic novel she co-authored with her cousin Jillian Tamaki that received Caldecott and Printz Honors. In Cold she creates a fast-paced mystery reminiscent of Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones.
The novel alternates between Todd and Georgia, with Todd’s chapters in third person and Georgia’s in first. Tamaki gives Todd’s sections a fitting sense of detachment: “Todd didn’t want to see his dead body anymore. Not because it upset him. It just didn’t interest him anymore. Like a plate of cold, half-eaten food on the table after dinner.” Meanwhile, Georgia’s chapters brim with emotion as her feelings for Carrie conflict with her insecurities. Throughout, Tamaki nails the dialogue, peppering it with the perfect amount of slang and teenage witticisms.
Sharp and authentic, Cold doesn’t just take its title from the chill of a wintry day but also from the cruelty and isolation of adolescence. Readers who love intense, suspenseful storytelling will devour it in one sitting.
Sharp, intense, authentic and deeply suspenseful, Cold is a fast-paced mystery guaranteed to be devoured in one sitting.
In the city of Setar, the capital of the kingdom of Ardunia, Alizeh works her fingers to the bone all day cleaning the 116-rooms of Baz House, a noble estate. At night, she works on commissions as she tries to establish herself as a seamstress. She can only survive this exhausting schedule because of her supernatural strength and endurance. Alizeh is Jinn, and while Jinn and humans have coexisted for many years, Jinn are considered untrustworthy and are not allowed to openly use their magic.
Even among Jinn, Alizeh is extraordinary, with more reason than most to put up with the abuses of life among the servant class. She has been on the run since the death of her parents, and a noble house with a large staff and plentiful security is the perfect place to hide. Yet there are parts of Alizeh’s story that are unknown even to her.
Kamran, crown prince of Ardunia, is destined to succeed his grandfather as king. On a visit home from his military duties, Kamran notices a strange interaction between a street urchin and a servant girl, and fears the servant girl may be a spy from the rival kingdom of Tulan. His suspicions set in motion a series of events he cannot control as Alizeh becomes a wanted woman who is believed to be a significant threat to the king. Kamran’s conflicting principles—loyalty to his king and conviction that Alizeh is not a danger—draw him down a path to find out the truth for himself.
A retelling of “Cinderella” complete with an aspiring seamstress on a crash course toward a fateful royal ball, This Woven Kingdom masterfully incorporates influences from Persian and Muslim history, culture and mythology. Exceedingly powerful but not invulnerable, the novel’s Jinn are an intriguing addition to the YA canon of such figures. Setar is vibrantly evoked, and its wintry climate and snowy landscape set it apart from books with similar plots and themes.
The novel’s standout feature is its language. This Woven Kingdom is a fairy-tale retelling that actually sounds like a fairy tale: Its characters speak like they’re in one, using formal tones and sophisticated vocabularies. That is not to say the novel is devoid of levity. Indeed, the grandiosity of Alizeh and Kamran’s banter adds to the intoxicating sense of wonder and flirtation that marks their interactions.
Tightly paced, with a rollicking set of twists and revelations and a chaotic climax that leads straight to a whopping cliffhanger of an ending, This Woven Kingdom is an exceptional fantasy that blends its various influences to addictive effect.
Tahereh Mafi masterfully incorporates Persian and Muslim influences into this exceptional, addictive “Cinderella” retelling.
As this queer space opera opens, Lu, a compassionate scientist who lives among a colony of peaceful refugees from across the universe, discovers Fassen, a young soldier in training who has sworn to resist an oppressive empire. Fassen is the only survivor of a rebel convoy that was fleeing imperial forces. They crash-landed on the planet where a group from Lu’s colony is setting up a temporary research site.
Lu offers Fassen not only a way back to the rebel base but also an offer of friendship and kindness that Fassen is unfamiliar with. Before they warp back to their own solar systems, Lu sciences up an interstellar cell phone so they can keep in touch. “No one should ever be alone the way you were,” Lu says. “Let’s stay friends, okay?” It’s perhaps the fastest meet cute in the galaxy, and it marks the beginning of Blue Delliquanti’s subversive take on the trope of star-crossed “lovers.”
To be clear, Across a Field of Starlight is not a romance. It is not the story of two ill-fated heroes who are destined to find each other again, fight a tyrannical regime and fall in love. Delliquanti, who has mined the stars for previous queer space epics, including their acclaimed webcomic “O Human Star,” has composed a gentle, loving story about friendship that is not only uninterested in romance but also actively pushes back against its familiar beats. Amid a story that can sometimes feel overloaded with sci-fi specifics, these moments of subversion are crystal-clear pearls of thoughtful provocation. Why do Fassen and Lu need to fall in love to make their relationship worthwhile? For that matter, why does art need a purpose? And is destruction the only way to win a war?
It’s Fassen whose story fits the classical hero’s journey in this tale, and their character arc—a young person in search of their own identity—is particularly moving, especially among the book’s heteronormatively transgressive cast of characters. Bellies are out, hair is long, and the line between feminine and masculine is tossed into the sun.
Readers who have been searching for something to fill the “Steven Universe”-shaped hole in their hearts will find comfort here. As in the beloved Cartoon Network program, characters are diverse in shape, color and size. They, too, are young, emotional and learning about themselves and the strange beings they meet during their adventures. Delliquanti’s colorful, expressive art is also perfect for cartoon lovers.
Warmhearted but challenging, full of love yet aromantic, Across a Field of Starlight is an ambitious queer take on what it means to be star-crossed.
Readers who have been searching for something to fill the “Steven Universe”-shaped hole in their hearts will find comfort in Across a Field of Starlight.
A haunted, decaying mansion. A cemetery that’s being disinterred. Dead souls that seem to come back to life and beckon to teenage twin sisters separated at birth. These are just a few of the wonderfully mysterious elements in Mirror Girls, Kelly McWilliams’ second YA novel.
As if slowly building terror and suspense weren’t enough, the book is also an exceptional work of historical fiction set in 1953 Eureka, Georgia. McWilliams’ genre blending works remarkably well, although perhaps that shouldn’t come as a surprise, since the days of segregation and lynchings were a horror show. What better way to confront this era than with a horror story?
As in McWilliams’ first book, Agnes at the End of the World, two sisters narrate Mirror Girls. Charlie and Magnolia are born in 1936 to Marie, who is Black, and Dean, the wealthy white heir to Heathwood Plantation. Their young parents are murdered as they drive north to be married, leaving behind their infant daughters. Marie’s mother takes darker-skinned Charlie to live in Harlem, where she becomes a civil rights activist. Meanwhile, Dean’s mother raises light-skinned Magnolia as a privileged white Southern belle in their crumbling plantation. The girls have no idea about each other’s existence until Charlie brings her dying Nana back to Eureka, setting the plot explosively in motion.
Once Magnolia learns that she is Black, she realizes that she will have to choose between continuing to live a lie or embracing her heritage as well as her twin sister. Her choice becomes a matter of life and death: After Grandmother Heathwood dies, Magnolia is unable to eat, drink or see her own reflection in a mirror. This is an effective device; as Charlie notes, “It never ceases to haunt me—the unpredictable ways colored folk are reflected in a white eye.”
McWilliams is an excellent stage manager, pacing the action well and keeping the stakes high. The sisters’ alternating voices immerse readers in what life was like during Jim Crow for both white and Black people, and Magnolia’s emerging consciousness is especially well done. A few characters, including Grandmother Heathwood and Magnolia’s beau, Finch, sometimes seem stereotypical; however, even they ultimately have a few surprises up their sleeves.
Mirror Girls is a spine-tingling, empowering look at justice and civil action that urges readers to be aware, to be true to themselves and to take action. As Magnolia observes, “As twin sisters, white and Black, we are a symbol of coming victory. A promise of change.”
This story of biracial twin sisters separated at birth and the reckoning that comes when they reunite is a remarkable blend of historical fiction and horror.
Flicker is pretty good, but flare is what everyone really wants, because in Fire Becomes Her,the world runs on flare. The magical substance has made the country of Candesce rich and powerful, but Candesce’s political elite decide who deserves access to the precious resource and who will be left in the dark.
Like flicker, the illicit, bootleg version of flare, a good education and social connections not enough for 17-year-old Ingrid Ellis. Wealth and power are what she truly desires. Ingrid yearns to leave behind her impoverished childhood, forced to scrape by on bits of flicker just to keep warm. She longs for a life full of the magic, power and opulence available only to those with unlimited access to pure flare. Senator and presidential candidate Walden Holt’s son, Linden, seems to be the perfect way to get there.
As Ingrid pursues and (maybe, she thinks) falls in love with Linden, she is desperate to win his father’s approval. After she makes an impressive but unexpected display of magical strength during a raid at an underground flicker club, Ingrid is invited to join Senator Holt’s campaign. She offers to embed herself as a spy among the opposition and to pass along information that might ensure Holt’s victory. Things become complicated, however, as Ingrid gets to know the policies and ideals of the candidate she’s spying on. Along the way, her own worldview is shaken to its core.
In their second novel, author Rosiee Thor masterfully blends a fantasy setting inspired by the Prohibition era and a plot dripping with political intrigue. Fire Becomes Her thoughtfully explores complex themes including inequality, social hierarchies, families both found and chosen, and the possibility of redemption. Thor takes every opportunity to let these characters be uniquely themselves, and the range of gender identities and sexualities represented, as well as the nuanced forms of attraction and love depicted, are impressive and will be, for some readers, revelatory.
Fire Becomes Her is an imaginative, glittering tale about what it’s like to hold the kind of power that can truly change the world.
Rosiee Thor’s second novel masterfully blends a fantasy setting inspired by the Prohibition era and a plot dripping with political intrigue.
Mirror Girls blends historical fiction and horror to tell the story of Charlie and Magnolia, biracial twin sisters separated at birth after their parents’ murder, and the unforeseen consequences of their unlikely reunion 17 years later.
Author Kelly McWilliams spoke to BookPage about the deeply personal experiences that inform the novel and what it’s like to write what scares you.
Can you introduce us to Charlie and Magnolia? Magnolia has been raised to believe she’s a white Southern belle, with no knowledge of her racial heritage. When her grandmother admits the truth on her deathbed, Magnolia’s reflection suddenly disappears from every mirror: She’s unmoored after the loss of her self-conception.
Charlie begins the story in New York City, living with her Black grandmother. It’s the dawn of the civil rights movement, and she dreams of being a protester and fighting for justice. But then her grandmother falls ill and wants to be buried in the place she was born: the rural town of Eureka, Georgia, where Magnolia still lives on an old plantation.
So, at the start of the story, both girls have just lost crucial aspects of their identities. Charlie has lost her life in New York, where it was safer (though not fully safe!) for her to defy the racist status quo. Magnolia, in turn, is reeling from the revelation that despite her skin tone, she’s not, in fact, white. Both girls desperately need to find each other in order to construct a new, mixed-race identity from the ashes of their old lives.
You’ve said that your debut novel, Agnes at the End of the World, was inspired by a dream you had. How did Mirror Girls begin? Mirror Girls is more personal than Agnes, and I think I’ve been making my way toward writing that story for a long time—possibly decades. I grew up in a mixed-race family, and families like mine always have to fight to be seen as family. I can’t tell you how many times people challenged the fact that my brother and I were blood related, just because our skin tone is different. Mixed-race families have to affirm their existence over and over to a society that often chooses not to reflect us. This story was inspired by my own childhood, my own life.
“I grew up in a mixed-race family, and families like mine always have to fight to be seen as family.”
I was also inspired by the photographs of twin sisters Marcia and Millie Briggs, who made the news as infants because one baby presented as white (complete with red hair) and the other as Black. While I found these sisters sweet and inspiring, I recognized that the world was quite puzzled and uneasily fascinated by their existence. The subtext was: What does race even mean if twins can be born with such different racial presentations? And I thought, well, I know the answer to that! In order to survive a world that is still inhospitable to mixed-race families, I had to learn the answer to reconciling my own identity, and it was hard. That journey to self-acceptance felt like a story worth telling.
Mirror Girls has quite a few excellent names for both people and places. How do you find the right names? For the most part, I just wait for names to come to me—and I know in my gut when I’ve found the right one. Sometimes it’s instant; other times it takes months.
I struggled mightily with the name of the plantation in the book for one horrible reason: There are so, so many plantations that still stand in the South, if only as historical destinations or people’s inherited homes, that I kept imagining names that had an analog in real life, which wasn’t ideal. I probably Googled 10 different names (many ending in –wood) until I found one that didn’t already belong to some plantation somewhere. It gives you a sense of the devastating scale of slavery to have that particular problem.
Both of your novels feature sisters as co-narrators. What elements of sisterhood did you want to explore in Mirror Girls that you didn’t touch on in Agnes? Do you see any commonalities between the two pairs of sisters in each of your books? I’ll be honest: When I wrote Agnes, I wasn’t quite ready to take on the subject of mixed-race identity. It was too raw and personal for me at that moment in my life. Nevertheless, in that earlier novel, Agnes and Beth also lose their received identities—as oppressed members of a fundamentalist cult—and must fight to claim a new life and to redefine themselves. Part of that journey means understanding each other as sisters, despite their radically different temperaments and despite the fact that, while Agnes escapes the cult, Beth initially chooses to stay.
Charlie and Magnolia fight a parallel battle in the land of Jim Crow, which frankly has always seemed to me much like a malignant cult. In a cult, oppressive leaders tear down their members, trying to bend them to their will. During Jim Crow, Black people were told that we’re second-class citizens, that we don’t deserve what white folks have. Jim Crow explicitly targeted the Black sense of self, trying to force us to accept a damaged reflection of ourselves. To survive, Magnolia and Charlie must affirm, over and over again, their own worth—but they can’t do it alone. Their sisterhood, across class and the color line, becomes a key piece of their identity. Family and familial love is the greatest antidote to a world that insists, at the top of its lungs, that Black girls don’t count and don’t matter.
In addition to exploring sisterhood, Mirror Girls also dives deep into daughters, mothers and grandmothers, and the ways each generation’s actions ripple outward and affect future generations. What drew you to exploring these ideas in this story? Every Black family in America suffers from intergenerational trauma, especially along our maternal lines. I heard somewhere that 95% of Black Americans are direct descendants of enslaved people, and the crux of chattel slavery as an institution was the separation of children from their mothers on the auction block. That’s an ever-present truth, an inherited cultural memory for every Black mother.
“Family and familial love is the greatest antidote to a world that insists, at the top of its lungs, that Black girls don’t count and don’t matter.”
But intergenerational trauma also takes very personal forms. On the day I was born in a hospital in Maryland, my mother was recovering from a cesarean section when a nurse took me for a checkup. My mother is obviously Black, but I’m extremely light. That nurse didn’t bring me back to my mother; they brought her a Black baby boy instead! Despite our identifying wristbands, that nurse just could not believe that we belonged together. My mother injured herself hollering in the hallway for me, and that story became a huge part of our family identity. In fact, when I gave birth, I remembered what had happened to my mother and worried that if my daughter’s skin tone didn’t match mine, there’d be trouble. It’s a terrible thing to fear that the world will deny your family their basic right to be a family.
Of course, terrible things happen to Black mothers in hospitals every single day, considering the horrible mortality rate. I firmly believe that every bit of maternal suffering causes intergenerational trauma down the line. Grandmothers, mothers and daughters bear so much of that pain. But we also tell the stories that help us to make sense of those traumas. It’s our heritage, and it’s also what we must pass down to help our descendants survive.
Mirror Girls is set in Georgia in 1953, with lots of references to Charlie’s life in Harlem. What sort of research did you do for the book? Were you able to do any travel- or interview-based research? While deciding on a setting, I read Remembering Jim Crow: African-Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated South, which is a collection of oral histories. Hearing those voices, I knew I would set the story during this time of struggle, when survival depended in part on Black folks’ own belief in their self-worth. At this time, elders worked so hard to imbue Black children, who were looked down upon by white society, with a sense of pride.
What I really loved about those oral histories, though, was the amazing specificity. Who knew that Coca-Cola once advertised itself in the South for being a “whites-only” drink in some states? And the segregated water fountains just came up over and over as a source of humiliation. It was really a deep laceration to the soul, to be segregated in those mundane ways.
I had desperately hoped to get down South for this project, but the pandemic prevented me from traveling. I did reach out to a sensitivity reader from the South to help with my understanding of the place.
As for interviews, I guess I did sort of interview my own family! We have a family legend that our last enslaved ancestor, a grandmother, walked off a Georgia plantation after emancipation, which is why I set the story there. Black families have long memories, but you do sometimes have to specifically ask the elders in your life to tell them. There’s quite a bit that the older generation often keeps to themselves because the stories are so painful to speak out loud.
I loved the book’s references to three real-life figures: Caleb Hill, Walter White and Ella Baker. Why was including each of these figures important to you and to the story? My book is in part about an imagined lynching, that of Charlie and Magnolia’s parents. I included Caleb Hill’s name and tragic fate because it’s so important that we remember that lynchings really happened, en masse, in the real world. Caleb Hill died at a time when New York’s NAACP headquarters was keeping very careful track of Southern lynchings, so it was also the exact type of event that would have formed a bridge between the South and New York at the time. Northern brothers and sisters never stopped decrying Southern brutalities, and lynchings especially.
“Knowledge is power, and feeling empowered leads to feeling less scared, in the end.”
As for Ella Baker, she’s Charlie’s role model, because she’s not only an activist, she’s also a leader in a sexist time. I imagine Charlie following in her footsteps.
Finally, as I’m a woman light enough to pass for white, Walter Francis White is perhaps my very favorite historical figure of all time. Naturally, he becomes Magnolia’s as well, as she’s establishing her identity as a biracial person. Walter White could easily pass, but he chose not to. This brother had blond hair and blue eyes! In his early years, he acted as a sort of spy, investigating Southern lynchings for the NAACP. He put himself in grave danger pretending to be white to extract information from murderers. There’s a story that, at one point, he had to jump onto a moving train to save his own life. I just love that though he could have chosen the easy way out—pretending to be white to further his own opportunities—he dedicated his life to the Black community. And he used his light-skinned privilege to do something good for others.
Your first book combined the “cult escape” narrative with a pandemic story, and Mirror Girls seamlessly blends historical fiction and horror. What do you enjoy about stirring different genres together? Are there other genres you’d love to combine in the future? I love to stir up genres, and I think it’s because I genuinely feel that life is too messy to be captured by one genre alone. There’s also a tension that two distinct genres place on each other that leads to fruitful and interesting narratives. Genre mashups also help you to avoid writing plot points that are too cliché.
I do have some combos I hope to write one day! One is a Western combined with a spy novel (actually based on the life of Walter White), but my next project is a single genre: a contemporary social satire. Genre mashups, while rewarding, are hard to pull off, and I need a short break!
In an interview, you once said that you tend to write what scares you. Do you ever have to take a break from writing because you’ve scared yourself? What makes you feel brave? The things that scare me exist in the real world: patriarchy, white supremacy and racism, and I’m thinking about and dealing with them every single day. In a weird way, writing about those things is itself my break from the awfulness of reality. Writing what scares you is oddly therapeutic, the way nightmares are. I have to work through my thoughts about these heavy topics in order to stay grounded in my real life. It’s like a very demanding form of self-care.
When I’m finished with a book, I’ve usually worked out some of the troubles in my own head and squared my thoughts on these heavy topics and how we should respond to them. Knowledge is power, and feeling empowered leads to feeling less scared, in the end.
What will you take away from the writing of this book? When I was in middle school, I struggled to look into mirrors, because I just could not square the racial identity that I hold so dear with my own light face. By the time I hit my 20s, mirrors and I were on better terms, but in another, deeper way, I was still avoiding a certain type of mirror: my own writing. I did not write about white passing or light-skinned existence or the struggles of mixed families. Or, I suppose, I was writing about those things, but they were extremely sublimated.
Now, in my 30s, I finally feel strong enough to write more explicitly from my own personal experience. It’s been absolutely revelatory. I’ve never felt so at peace with my own racial ambiguity, and I’m finally beginning to process and even speak about the core traumas of my mixed childhood. My book is dedicated to mirror girls of every color, everywhere—and come to think of it, that includes me.
Four years ago, after attracting the unwanted attention of Poseidon and being cursed by Athena, Medusa and her sisters fled to a distant island. Her winged sisters take to the skies every day, leaving Medusa alone with only the snakes on her head for company. One day, Medusa discovers Perseus, a handsome boy stranded on the island. Slowly, they open up to each other, unaware that their blossoming relationship will become the spark of a tragedy.
Jessie Burton’s Medusa is a feminist retelling of the classical Greek myth of Medusa and Perseus, brought to life with full-color illustrations by Olivia Lomenech Gill. The book adds complexity to a character many readers may know only as a monstrous Gorgon, famously capable of turning anyone who looks at her into stone. Here, readers meet Medusa not as a monster but as a hopeful girl who bears both psychological and physical scars.
Burton’s narrative powerfully explores the effects of abuse. Medusa tells her story, giving readers a firsthand glimpse into the trauma she’s experienced, its long-term ramifications and the twisting rationalizations that others use to defend her abusers. As she transitions to adulthood and navigates healing, identity and romance, she often looks to the women in her life for guidance and insight. Medusa’s sisters, Stheno and Euryale, and even Athena herself offer varying perspectives on maturity and femininity, and Medusa is able to consider their conflicting views while also developing her own way forward.
Gill’s illustrations provide visual representations of Medusa’s thoughts and feelings. Sketches of birds and ocean life ground the story in the seaside isolation of Medusa’s island. Some of the images, such as one of Medusa and her sisters flying into the night sky, have a collage-like quality that endows the story’s mythical subjects with genuine human emotion. Gill’s colors mirror Medusa’s emotional journey: Medusa’s joy shines through in vivid blues and greens, her curiosity about Perseus is a soft yellow, and her horrific past is a dark and bloody red.
Throughout the book, Burton’s prose and Gill’s art work in harmony to offer two intertwined ways of learning who Medusa really is. By placing her at the center of the tale, they give an epic voice to victims whose stories often go ignored and untold. Readers who love nuanced retellings of myths will not want to miss it.
Medusa adds complexity to a character typically known only as a monstrous Gorgon, and readers who enjoy nuanced retellings of myths will not want to miss it.
Preston Norton’s third YA novel is a profound and often profane exploration of family and forgiveness. Hopepunk is the story of Hope Cassidy, whose beloved sister, Faith, runs away after their mom tries to send her to a camp that practices so-called conversion therapy. While trying to track Faith down, Hope also discovers a love for forbidden rock music, forms a band, Hope Cassidy and the Sundance Kids, and enters her school’s Battle of the Bands. We chatted with Norton about his book’s nuanced depiction of religion and how they balance heavy themes with humor.
When did you begin to write Hopepunk?
In order to answer that, I feel like I need to address the elephant in the room, which is that the word hopepunk existed long before it became the title of my novel. I first heard it on Twitter, where a reader had compiled a list of their favorite “hopepunk” stories, and one of my previous novels, Neanderthal Opens the Door to the Universe, made the list.
The entire hopepunk genre is a reaction to the dystopia we were all living in—and in many ways, continue to live in to this day—and our desperate need to find hope and happiness in our speculative fiction. Hopepunk isn’t speculative fiction per se, but it is 100% a love letter to speculative fiction and the lifeline it provides us in super dark times.
Hope wears her heart on her sleeve. Where did her character originate?
Whenever I write in first person (which is pretty much all the time), I have a very difficult time not injecting a bit of myself into the main character. When you take a step back and look at my past three protagonists, you will find that they all wear their hearts on their sleeves, they cry a lot, and they have a bit of unchecked anger that could easily be resolved with counseling. All of these characters have someone they care about so much that it hurts—it almost becomes their entire identity—and when the people they love are hurt, the main characters sort of lose their minds. It’s by learning to care in the right way that they eventually find themselves. This is how you write a protagonist for a Preston Norton novel. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
“It is really interesting to me to see the shape a person leaves when they are no longer there.”
The sisterhood between Faith and Hope is one of the relationships at the core of Hopepunk. What were the challenges of conveying their bond when one of them is literally missing for most of the novel?
To me, the trick was less about writing the relationship than writing the hole that forms when a relationship is broken. It doesn’t just break Hope’s heart. It breaks her entire family, and it breaks each of them in different ways.
It is really interesting to me to see the shape a person leaves when they are no longer there. Faith didn’t believe her presence made a difference, so it is very interesting and also very heartbreaking that when she runs away, all that seems to be left is her absence.
Initially it may seem like you’re pretty harsh on the subject of religion, but so much of Hopepunk is actually about forgiveness and faith. Why was exploring this duality important to you?
I have a very complex relationship with religion. On the one hand, I grew up in a religious community that I feel like represented the very worst when it came to homophobia and gaslighting and shame culture in Christianity. I am not religious anymore and have not been for a very long time.
I do see immense value in spirituality. I think we all need something to believe in that is bigger than ourselves sometimes. Not for any moral reason. I think we need it for our own happiness. To help us find equilibrium.
In that same sense, I feel like forgiveness—a concept that we often think of as “Christian” in nature—might be the most important ingredient to any one human being’s personal happiness. Even if it’s just yourself you need to forgive.
“I realize that not everyone in the world is an ally, but I like to believe it’s possible that everyone in the world could become one.”
Many characters in the book undergo transformations, but Hope’s mom’s journey is one of the most meaningful. How did you avoid extremes when creating her character?
If Hope was the easiest character to write (because she is very similar to me), Hope’s mom was maybe the most difficult, perhaps because I have never personally met a person who has undergone a transformation quite like hers. But I am very proud of where she ended up because, at the end of the day, she is 100% someone I would want to have on my team.
Christianity 101 is all about powerful transformations, villains becoming heroes (case in point, Saul becoming Paul), so it seems oddly appropriate that she undergoes such a metamorphosis. I realize that not everyone in the world is an ally, but I like to believe it’s possible that everyone in the world could become one.
Hopepunk is set in Wyoming. Why did you choose to tell this story in a conservative setting? Can you talk a little bit about the broader significance of telling queer stories in spaces like that?
I’ll be 100% honest. This story was almost set in Alabama, but then a conversation with my agent and editor drop-kicked it out of Appalachia and into the Rockies. We landed in Wyoming purely because of Sundance. (Yes, the band was called Hope Cassidy and the Sundance Kids before the setting had anything to do with Sundance.) When we finally pushed that puzzle piece into place, it just clicked.
Regardless of where the story could have been set, queer stories are needed everywhere because queer people are everywhere. I’m drawn to conservative settings because those are the places I’ve always lived. My hope is always to connect with just one reader in such a way that they feel seen, heard and understood. Maybe, if I’m lucky, I will have given them something that wasn’t there before.
Within Hopepunk is a second story, a lesbian sci-fi adventure called “Andromeda and Tanks Through Space and Time.” Was it challenging to incorporate this into the larger narrative?
I had so much fucking fun with this story! Maybe too much fun. There were many times when I was afraid that it wouldn’t make it into the final version of Hopepunk, and it is much more sliced and diced than it was in my original draft.
The greatest challenge was always selling my editors on this very weird little story within the story. When I try to explain it to people, I always bring up the “Carry On” story with Simon and Baz in Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl. It is very different, obviously, but on a spiritual level, I feel like it is very much the same thing.
“I think we all need something to believe in that is bigger than ourselves sometimes.”
How did you balance the weighty themes and emotions in Hopepunk with the fact that it’s also often extremely funny?
This is very easy for me, because life is simultaneously so very funny but also so very sad. I think humor is my way of dealing and coping with sad and difficult topics. Humor allows me a safe distance to be vulnerable, but not so vulnerable that it makes me depressed and anxious.
Hopepunk is also about rock ’n’ roll and how powerful it can be to make music. In your acknowledgments, you mention that the songs in the book were going to be covers, but one of your editors pushed you to write original songs, which you found a daunting prospect. How did you pull it off?
I honestly have no idea. I don’t necessarily believe in miracles, but I also cannot deny that it must be some sort of miracle because I am NOT a songwriter.
With that said, I will readily admit that the third and final song in the book, “Love Can See,” was the most difficult one for me to write—so much so that I feel like I kind of cheated and borrowed the tune, time signature and lyrical beats of a preexisting song as a model for it. (But there is no actual tune in my book, so good luck suing me, mwahaha!)
I will have to award some sort of prize to the first reader who calls me out on Twitter for which song I used as a crutch. Would you like to be a minor character in my next book? I feel like that’s the only thing of value I have to offer. The contest begins NOW!
Hope quite literally finds her voice while singing karaoke at a local haunt. Are you a karaoke person? If so, what’s your go-to song?
I will sing anything and everything. I am a karaoke monster. I am not good by any means, but what I lack in talent, I make up for in loudness and staggering enthusiasm. There is nothing I won’t sing.
June CL Tan’s debut novel is the tale of two haunted teens, one by traumatic memories of losing his parents and his rightful claim to the throne, the other by the absence of any memories whatsoever.
Ahn feels stuck in the small village where she lives with her adoptive grandmother. She struggles to earn—and sometimes steal—enough to survive and grapples with the blank space that is her past. When her illegal magical abilities are discovered, she is brought to the palace, certain that imprisonment and execution will be her fate.
Meanwhile, Altan is traveling through the country, tracking down and exacting vengeance on the people who murdered his parents and twin sister. Relying on his clan’s training and his friend Tang Wei, Altan is desperate to find the legendary Life Stealer, a person with a rare magical ability that’s integral to Altan’s quest.
When Ahn’s and Altan’s paths intersect, they soon realize that working together will be more thrilling and more dangerous than either could have predicted.
Jade Fire Gold is a complex and fast-paced fantasy that alternates between Ahn’s and Altan’s perspectives. Readers will be quickly swept up in Ahn’s efforts to discover who she truly is and who she wants to become and in Altan’s battle between self-fulfillment and the personal sacrifice required to serve the greater good.
The novel is vivid, thrilling and occasionally humorous as it honestly and powerfully explores colonization and oppression, the long-term ramifications of violent conflicts and how easily the truth can be lost when history is written by the victors. This mix of epic storytelling, Chinese mythology and adventure-filled romance marks the arrival of an exciting new voice in young adult fantasy.
This fast-paced fantasy blends Chinese mythology, adventure and romance. It’s an irresistible and exciting debut.
Poets Irene Latham and Charles Waters have collaborated on two books for young readers. Their third book together, African Town, is a novel in verse for teen readers about historical events known by far too few Americans. In 1860, decades after the federal government had banned the importation of slaves, a group of 110 Africans were forcibly brought to the United States and enslaved. After the Civil War, the group’s survivors created a community that still exists today, now called Africatown. In many voices and poetic forms, Latham and Waters powerfully chronicle their story. The poets discuss the origins of the project and the responsibility they felt to do justice to the survivors—and to their living descendants.
African Town is your third literary collaboration. How did these collaborations begin? This all started with an email from one poet (Irene) to another (Charles) in February 2015, with an invitation to work on poems for a potential book from Lerner Publishing Group. The aim was to write about universal subjects with the topic of race as a through line, which turned into Can I Touch Your Hair? Poems of Race, Mistakes and Friendship. The book was the brainchild of Lerner Editorial Director Carol Hinz. If it wasn’t for Carol, we never would have worked together in the first place. We’re eternally grateful to her.
How did African Town start? It feels like our previous two books together—and the degree of difficulty involved in creating them—prepared us for undertaking this project, which was quite challenging and rewarding. We were surprised by our lack of knowledge about this vital story, and we hope our book helps remedy that for others.
We learned of this history when we were presenting together at the Alabama Book Festival in Montgomery, Alabama, in the spring of 2019. We were so inspired by these courageous humans—how they endured so much, and how bound they were to one another. They were ripped from their lives, and yet they continued to dream and to do. Every step of the research brought us to another “wow” moment, and we wanted to help bring the story to young readers.
Your previous books together were written for younger readers than African Town, which is for teens. How did you settle on telling this story for teen readers? The age of the characters and the brutality of parts of this history demanded that this book be marketed as young adult, but we approached it as a “family” story. We imagine intergenerational families sharing this book and having rich discussions about our past, our future and how resilience and hope are cultivated at home—however (and wherever) one defines that word.
What research did you do to ensure you could immerse yourselves in the characters’ experiences? Thank the universe we were able to visit Mobile, Alabama, in late February 2020, about two weeks before the country shut down due to the pandemic. We visited Africantown, spent time outside the Union Missionary Baptist Church, which was founded by the Clotilda survivors, stood next to the bust of Kossola outside the church, visited the Old Plateau Cemetery also founded by the Clotilda survivors, went on the Dora Franklin Finley African-American Heritage Trail, visited the History Museum of Mobile, pored over documents at the Mobile Public Library’s local history and genealogy library, and spent time at Kazoola Eatery & Entertainment, meeting the kind people of Mobile and soaking up the atmosphere.
“We imagine intergenerational families sharing this book and having rich discussions about our past, our future and how resilience and hope are cultivated at home.”
As you researched, what did you learn that was the biggest revelation for you? One of the biggest revelations was how little we actually know about the women who were onboard the Clotilda. The main sources of information were male-focused, like Kossola’s many interviews and William Foster’s journal. Holes in research are gifts to historical fiction writers, and it became important to us to recognize these incredible humans and to create rich, full female characters.
African Town speaks to readers in so many different characters’ voices, including the Clotilda herself. How did you decide who would write whom? Our decisions about who would write which character were dictated by where each of us was in the research. We each ended up writing both Black and white characters, and then we spent a lot of time revising together. The Clotilda was perhaps one of the most delicate to write, because we cast her in an all-knowing, voice-of-the-world kind of tone. The Africans in the hold don’t necessarily know what’s happening to them, but the Clotilda does.
At the end of the book, you share details about the various poetic forms you paired with each character and why you chose them. Are there certain forms you each tend to favor? Did you learn any new ones? We worked hard to match form with personality. With so many voices, we were looking for ways to distinguish each one. Varying the form and shape of the poems on the page helped a great deal. This is where writing our previous book Dictionary for a Better World proved helpful because that book had 47 different poetry forms. We both tend to favor free verse when writing, but we have come to enjoy nonets and tricubes among others.
Even though it was challenging to craft, we’ve come to respect and be proud of using tankas, a short Japanese form of five lines and 31 syllables, for the character of James. It’s such an elegant and difficult form to pull off. We were partially inspired by the verse novel Garvey’s Choice by Nikki Grimes, which is written only in tankas. We felt the form matched James’ personality and mien. Another one we’re proud of is the form used for Cudjo Jr. It was a combination of the poetic styles of E.E. Cummings and Arnold Adoff—with our own twist on it.
“It wasn’t always easy to join these courageous humans on their journey, but it was life-changing.”
How did you feel about doing justice to the real people, events and places in the book? Both of us knew that since we were writing about many instances that happened to real people, it was vital to be as thorough as possible in research so that we might “get it right.” The mantle of responsibility felt a lot heavier than our previous two books, which dealt with our own lives. We spent hours and hours discussing personality, relationships and motivation—which, due to gaps in information available, was often left for us to imagine.
It’s been important to us to involve the descendants as much as possible, and we’re so grateful for the warm welcome we have received from the community. Our hope is to honor their ancestors, to work with them to make this history more accessible, and to share with young readers a story that impacted us on a very personal level. It wasn’t always easy to join these courageous humans on their journey, but it was life-changing. We feel so lucky to know these characters so intimately. Their resilience continues to inspire us.
Author photo of Irene Latham and Charles Waters courtesy of Eric Latham.
Acclaimed poets Irene Latham and Charles Waters give the past a voice in African Town, their new novel in verse about the last group of Africans brought to America and enslaved.
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