Home: It’s a loaded little word with different implications for everyone. Tradition says it’s a locus of comfort and security, a place where family members offer unconditional love. The reality, of course, is often very different. What happens when home is a source of uncertainty and upheaval? Two YA novels provide teen perspectives on navigating life’s obstacles in the absence of the centering force of home.

Jennifer Longo’s What I Carry is narrated by Muiriel, Muir for short, a resilient young woman born an orphan at the John Muir Medical Center (for which she was named) in California. Almost 18 and wise beyond her years, she’s about to age out of the foster-care system.

Compared to other foster kids, Muir feels she has certain advantages. She’s white, she doesn’t agonize over memories of lost family members, and she’s had the same social worker for nearly her entire life. It was kindhearted Joellen who once gave her a book called The Wilderness World of John Muir, a collection of writings by the great naturalist. The volume inspired Muir to hone her survival skills amid the unpredictable world of foster care. Carrying with her only the bare essentials, she lives out of her suitcase and doesn’t own a phone. Eleven months is the longest she’s ever stayed with a foster family, and where exit strategies are concerned, she’s a pro.

After Muir moves into a foster home on an island not far from Seattle, her outlook changes. She connects with her foster mother, Francine, and befriends Kira, a talented young Japanese American artist. When she meets a fellow nature lover named Sean at her forestry internship, she finds herself falling hard—both for him and for her new life. But staying still has never come easy to Muir, and as the novel progresses, she wrestles with her instinct to run.

Longo has a gift for arresting details: “Slamming doors are birdsong in a foster house—always there,” Muir observes, “a kind of background music.” Longo writes with warmth, humor and a flair for good old-fashioned storytelling, spinning subplots involving Kira and other supporting characters to create a beautifully realized tale of a teen’s search for her place in the world.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with What I Carry author Jennifer Longo.

Izzy Crawford, the 16-year-old narrator of Maria Padian’s How to Build a Heart, is on journey similar to Muir’s. Izzy’s father, a Marine, died in Iraq when she was 10. With her mother, Rita, and little brother, Jack, Izzy has bounced from town to town over the years.

Now settled in Clayton, Virginia, in the Meadowbrook Gardens Mobile Home Park, the Crawfords are struggling to make ends meet. Izzy, a junior at the girls-only St. Veronica Catholic School, is ashamed of her home situation and keeps the details of her family life a secret. But an unexpected friendship with wealthy Aubrey Shackelton, whose brother, Sam, is the heartthrob of Clayton County High School, opens up new possibilities for Izzy. And when Sam shows an interest in her, she’s suddenly in “Crush Hell.”

Izzy maintains her precarious social facade until the Crawfords are chosen to build their very own house through Habitat for Humanity. The selection will be announced to the public and will invariably blow her cover. Afraid she’s about to become the “poverty poster child of Clayton, Virginia,” Izzy is forced to make important decisions about herself and her future.

As the story unfolds, so do the many layers Padian has built into the novel. Izzy’s father was Methodist and Southern, while her mother is Puerto Rican and Catholic; these differences have caused friction in their extended family. Readers are bound to see a bit of themselves in Izzy as she copes with the conflicting sides of her background, along with social pressures and delicate new friendships.

How to Build a Heart is a sensitively rendered story, but it’s also a fun read, brisk and engaging. There are mean girls who get their comeuppance, text-message mix-ups and, yes, the thrill of first love. Like What I Carry, Padian’s book demonstrates the importance of home as a source of support and identity for teens. Both novels illustrate that while family configurations may shift, the need for a home remains a constant. There really is no place like it.

Across a range of settings both historical and fantastical, three new young adult fantasy novels place determined young women and the challenges they face front and center.

The Kingdom of Back
For Nannerl Mozart, a girl in Salzburg, Austria, in 1759, the imaginary kingdom of Back serves as a joyful reprieve from the hours she spends practicing piano with her little brother, Wolfgang. The two prodigies entertain themselves by inventing stories about Back as they tour Europe to perform for the monarchy.

In The Kingdom of Back, a historical fantasy by Marie Lu (Legend, The Young Elites, Warcross), the young Mozarts discover that Back is not only real but also a source of their musical genius. But their father decrees that musical composition is not appropriate for women and that performing is not a suitable pursuit for a young lady like Nannerl. Now only Wolfgang is allowed to compose music. Enter Back’s blue-skinned princeling, Hyacinth, who promises that Nannerl will achieve immortality for her musical talent, if she will only assist him with a quest. Alas, the princeling’s offer comes at a price (as offers of help in fairy tales often do).

Throughout The Kingdom of Back, Nannerl fears she will be eclipsed by her brother, and Lu explores how much both Nannerl and Wolfgang are willing to sacrifice for the opportunity to share their genius with the world, as well as the complications of familial jealousy and betrayal. Lu wisely calibrates her contemporary perspective on her historical characters. With a light touch, she illustrates how the gifts of talented, ambitious young women like Nannerl were overlooked and unappreciated. Indeed, simply because he had the good fortune to be born a boy, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was allowed to nurture his genius, while the real Nannerl was largely lost to history. In Lu’s capable hands, she’s finally resurrected, and her story and music sing.

Mermaid Moon
If you think you know about mermaids because you’ve seen Disney’s The Little Mermaid, think again. The sirens in Susann Cokal’s Mermaid Moon are matriarchal, and their songs lure humans to the sea to be killed. This reenvisioning of the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale is no Disney movie; in fact, it offers a rather dim view of humankind from a siren’s perspective.

Mermaid Moon’s heroine is Sanna, whose father is sea-vish (a merman) but whose mother is land-ish (a human). To forestall the inevitable scandal, a witch cast a forgetting spell on nearly everyone present at Sanna’s birth. Now a young woman, Sanna has become the witch’s apprentice, but her dearest hope in life is to go on land and find her human mother.

Cokal, whose previous book, The Kingdom of Little Wounds, received a Printz Honor, spins a sprawling plot, populated by a large cast of both sea- and land-dwelling characters. (Oh, and there’s also a dragon.) Amid this fantasy world, Sanna is swept up by the problems of humankind—namely the highly religious and patriarchal society of the land-ish. When she comes ashore, the villagers regard her as a saint, and the local baroness effectively kidnaps Sanna to force her to marry her son. Sanna not only needs to find her mother, but she must also escape the confines of land-ish matrimony.

While Sanna’s quest to learn the truth is sometimes painful, it’s also, in the end, worthwhile. Mermaid Moon is an action-packed tale of parental abandonment, familial longing, treachery and dark magic, with an appealingly determined heroine. 

★ Red Hood
Bisou, the protagonist of Elana K. Arnold’s fast-paced Red Hood, lives with her grandmother, Mémé. After Bisou kills a wolf that attacks her in the woods, she learns that she is one of a small group of women who become supernaturally powerful during their menstrual cycles, and she must use these gifts to protect other women from wolves—who are actually men and boys who’ve committed terrible acts of violence against women. The wolves will show no mercy, and neither must Bisou. But as she develops her gifts, Bisou begins to realize the weight of her vengeful violence may also be a burden.

Red Hood recognizes that teens can and do become the victims of violence just as easily as adults. In a culture where violent acts are reported on the news every night, stories to help teens confront and reckon with this reality are vital. Award winner Arnold (Damsel, What Girls Are Made Of) addresses her readership with knowledge and ease, even when writing about delicate subjects such as sexuality, consent or the victim-blaming that can occur after an assault. 

A graphic, visceral fantasy that doesn’t pull its punches and often reads like a thriller, Red Hood depicts young women growing into their anger and developing a will to fight. “It’s not that we need more wolf hunters,” Bisou says, after she has killed her second wolf/boy. “It’s that we need men to stop becoming wolves.” I want to give this book to every teenager I know.

Young adult books shine when they speak to the challenges faced by teenagers as they mature to adulthood. These three novels represent characters who experience mental illness, which impacts as many as one in six people between the ages of 6 and 17 in the United States each year. The books themselves span a range of genres and formats—one is a romance, one a graphic novel, another paced like a thriller—but each puts a face to mental illness and addresses teen mental health with the gravity and honesty it deserves.

★ This Is My Brain in Love

In a last-ditch effort to keep her family’s foundering Chinese restaurant afloat, Jocelyn Wu hires Will Domenici, who is looking to strengthen his resume with marketing experience, for a summer job. Over the course of one summer, the pair fall in love while dealing with mental illnesses that threaten both their relationship and the future of A-Plus Chinese Garden.

Jos’s work keeps her so busy, she hardly has time to consider her own mental health. She’s not even certain her parents, immigrants from Taiwan, even believe that mental illness is real. Jos appears outwardly hardworking and whip smart, and Will is the only person in Jos’ life who notices that she’s exhibiting many symptoms of depression. Will, an aspiring journalist from a wealthy family, experiences anxiety and panic attacks. His Nigerian mother has cautioned him about the risks of being open about his mental illness, so he stays guarded, even around Jos.

This Is My Brain in Love is both a sweet love story and a tension-packed drama that provides 101-level advice about overcoming the social stigmas and personal shame that can be associated with mental illness. Author I.W. Gregorio creates highly differentiated first-person narrative voices for both Jos and Will, and their complexity and nuance as characters add authenticity as well as relatability to the book. Their experiences also vitally widen the representation of mental illness to include teens of color and teens from immigrant families.

It’s a testament to Gregorio’s skill that by the time I finished This Is My Brain in Love, I felt like Jos and Will had become dear friends whose happiness in both life and love I was rooting for. I was sorry when their story came to an end.

The Dark Matter of Mona Starr

Mona, the teen girl in Laura Lee Gulledge’s graphic novel, The Dark Matter of Mona Starr, refers to her depression and anxiety as “dark matter.” Taking the form of a black goblin that follows her around, Mona’s dark matter wreaks havoc everywhere in every aspect of Mona’s life.

When she feels well, Mona is a sweet, creative girl. But when her dark matter tightens its grip on her, she feels smothered by cruel, punishing thoughts. Gulledge’s illustrations depict Mona floating through space like a speck of dust, surrounded by thought bubbles with messages that include “You don’t matter” and “You’re no one.” It’s a pitch-perfect visual representation of the feelings of helplessness and isolation depression can cause.

Gulledge does not leave Mona to suffer in solitude, however. Throughout the book, Mona visits a compassionate therapist who coaches her (and readers) on how to corral negative self-talk and reframe harmful stories. Featuring chapters titles like “Notice Your Patterns” and “Break Your Cycles,” Dark Matter is instructive about the daily coping skills that mental illness often requires.

Favoring emotional exploration over a straightforward plot, Dark Matter demonstrates through clever and heartfelt illustrations how Mona’s experiences of anxiety and depression (dis)color her world. Mona has enough self-awareness to realize that not everyone spirals into turmoil so easily, and like many people who’ve just been diagnosed with mental illness, she feels broken. However, she gradually learns that she can manage her dark matter with the help of a strong support network and by embracing effective self-care and personal creativity. Gulledge includes a self-care plan in the book’s final pages to help readers form strategies for good mental health themselves.

The Lightness of Hands

Legerdemain is a branch of magic in which the performer uses their hands to perform acts of trickery or sleight of hand; deriving from French, it means “light of hands.” As the daughter of the Uncanny Dante, a once-famous magician, 16-year-old Ellie is gifted when it comes to legerdemain and other magical techniques.

But Ellie feels uneasy about her talent. She’s seen how just one mistake can ruin a career like her dad’s, and the bipolar II disorder she inherited from her late mother can cause her to spiral after performing. But her father has heart problems and has been shunned by the magic community, so Ellie must perform—as well as pickpocket and steal—to pay their bills.

Jeff Garvin’s The Lightness of Hands spins a sprawling, elaborate story. The central narrative involves Ellie’s plan to get her father to Los Angeles to perform his infamously failed magic trick, the Truck Drop, on live TV for the first time since it went disastrously wrong. The payday from this gig could profoundly improve their lives, which would include giving Ellie reliable access to the medication she needs.

As Ellie tries to persuade the Uncanny Dante to stage a comeback, she experiences the manic and depressive episodes that define her illness. They cause her to lash out at her dad, her best friend and her maybe-boyfriend, as well as to constantly second-guess herself. Garvin, who shares in an author’s note that he also has bipolar II, vividly portrays the emotional whiplash of the disorder.

Garvin walks a tightrope between a story chock full of juicy secrets of magical tradecraft and the community of people who make their living as professional magicians and the more grim reality of Ellie’s life, which includes realistic and weighty representations of the aftermath of parental suicide as well as Ellie’s suicidal ideation and attempts. Ellie’s thoughtful reflections about her identity and experiences give the book heart, and the support system she constructs around herself give it hope. In the hands of teens who need it most, The Lightness of Hands will be a beacon beaming out the message that life with mental illness is always worth living.

Nearly every bookworm has, at one point in their lives, dreamed of the bookstore or library meet-cute: Perusing crowded shelves, a fellow bookworm catches your eye, strikes up a conversation and before you can recite the ISBN of your favorite title, you’re on your way to happily ever after. If that scenario sounds like your ideal way to meet your match, here are three YA novels that celebrate young love and the love of books in equal measure.

By the Book

Debut author Amanda Sellet finds inspiration in classic works of literature for her fish-out-of-water novel, By the Book. Her heroine, Mary Porter-Malcolm, has always navigated her life using lessons she’s learned from the novels she loves. So when her tiny private school abruptly shuts its doors, Mary figures she’ll confront the challenges of public high school just as her favorite Brontë heroines tackle their adversities.

Much to her surprise, a group of popular girls is drawn to Mary’s ability to put the lessons of literature to good use in separating the scoundrels from the heroes among the boys at school, and they soon become fast friends. But what happens when Mary falls for a real Vronsky type, the biggest scoundrel of all?

Mary is a fascinating character, charmingly old-fashioned in her speech and outlook but more than capable of meeting the challenges and rewards of modern life. In Sellet’s confident hands, Mary’s new friends, who could have easily fallen into “mean girl” stereotypes, are thoughtfully developed characters. Bibliophiles will enjoy quizzing themselves on the many literary allusions scattered throughout the text—and don’t worry, Sellet provides a guide in the back of the book!

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Amanda Sellet assists literature’s worst boyfriends in telling their sides of the story.

Verona Comics

Jennifer Dugan’s Verona Comics also offers plenty of allusions, primarily to the movie The Shop Around the Corner (and its beloved 1990s remake, You’ve Got Mail), but also, as the title suggests, to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Jubilee and Ridley first encounter each other at a comics convention. They hit it off immediately but, because they’re in costume, don’t know each other’s true identities. Little do they know that they’re actually sworn enemies: Jubilee’s stepmom, Vera, is an indie comic artist who also runs a beloved comics shop, while Ridley’s dad manages a huge chain of comics shops determined to put stores like Vera’s out of business. Ridley is desperate to win his dad’s approval, so he reluctantly agrees to conduct some corporate espionage at Vera’s shop, but he soon finds himself trapped between love and family loyalty when he discovers Jubilee’s identity.

As with her previous novel, Hot Dog Girl, Dugan’s new romance is a celebration of her characters’ queer identities; both Ridley and Jubilee identify as bisexual, and Jubilee has two moms. Dugan skillfully balance humorous situations (and plenty of comics fandom) with heavier fare, thoughtfully addressing issues of mental illness in a buoyant love story about forgiveness and second chances.

Chasing Lucky

Like Verona Comics, Jenn Bennett’s Chasing Lucky is anchored by a bookstore. This one is located in picturesque (but sadly fictional) Beauty, Rhode Island, a coastal tourist community that bears a strong resemblance to Newport. Ever since the tension between Josie’s mom and grandmother came to a head when Josie was 12 years old, Josie’s mom hasn’t stopped moving their little family all over the East Coast. But they’re returning to Beauty for the first time in five years so that Josie’s mom can manage the family bookstore, Siren’s Book Nook, while Josie’s grandmother travels the world.

Almost immediately, Josie is thrust back into the small-town prejudices and rumor-mongering about her family. She also has to confront new and confusing feelings for her former best friend, Lucky Karras, who has undergone something of a bad-boy transformation—and become the subject of some rumors of his own—while they’ve been apart. Even as she finds herself falling for Lucky, Josie wrestles with her family’s complicated history and makes discoveries that will change how she views not only Beauty but also herself.

Bennett brings the small town of Beauty to vivid life; you’ll swear you can almost smell salty ocean air emanating from these pages. She perfectly captures Beauty’s “mix of money and weird,” as well as the way it can feel like a cage for those who don’t quite fit in. In Josie, Bennett constructs a well-developed portrait of a young woman seeking to carve out an identity for herself in a family full of strong personalities and a community that seems to have already made its mind up about her.

Every time Chasing Lucky threatens to float away into the realm of the idealized or the romanticized, Bennett pulls it back down to earth through characters who wear their messy emotions on their sleeves, as well as through a thoughtful depiction of working-class life in a place shaped by extraordinary wealth.

Editor’s note: Chasing Lucky was originally scheduled for publication on May 5, 2020, but its publication was delayed until Nov. 10, 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

LGBTQ+ characters are more visible than ever in young adult literature. The protagonists of these books navigate intersectionality, injustice and romance, and their stories are welcome additions to the growing canon of queer YA lit.

Felix Ever After is a love story that emerges in the aftermath of a frightening act of cruelty. Felix Love wants nothing more than to live up to his name by falling in love, but as a black, queer, trans guy, he worries that his labels sometimes make it hard for people to see his heart. When someone at school viciously outs him, Felix must uncover who did it—and who his true friends are.

Author Kacen Callender brings Felix’s New York City home to vibrant life, incorporating sensory details that make a day spent hanging out in the park feel like a grand adventure. Felix’s first-person narration is as intense as his emotional landscape, but Callender’s portrayal of what it feels like to be young and constantly playing defense against the world rings with truth. The book’s title hints at Felix’s happy ending, but getting there takes a harrowing journey across a social minefield, so witnessing Felix come out on top, with good people on his side, feels that much sweeter.

Robin Talley’s Music From Another World bounces between Northern and Southern California in 1977. Tammy lives in Orange County and is deep in the closet because of her conservative Christian family. Sharon lives in San Francisco, has a brother who is gay and is immersing herself in the city’s punk scene. The girls connect via a school pen pal project, and Talley relays their stories through diary entries and letters until destiny leads them to meet in person.

The history depicted here is well worth revisiting or, for teens, uncovering for the first time. Talley doesn’t pull any punches when she describes Anita Bryant’s hateful “Save Our Children” campaign or the activism it provoked. As with Felix’s New York, 1970s San Francisco is a star player here. Sharon lives in an uptight Irish Catholic neighborhood, but the Castro district is just a bus ride away, and change is in the air. This is a story of friendship, love and the ways music can fuel both, set at a pivotal moment in the struggle for gay rights. (This reader, who still owns Patti Smith’s Horses on vinyl, hopes teens will explore the music as much as the history.)

Kelly Quindlen’s Late to the Party is a perfect summer read. Codi and her two BFFs, Maritza and JaKory, are all queer and spend most of their time hanging out in her basement and watching TV 24/7. Lately, though, they’ve been feeling burned out on one another and have begun to seek out new experiences. Maritza and JaKory take for granted that Codi is more of a late bloomer than they are, but while they’re not paying attention, she slips away from them, makes new friends and falls for a girl. When they find out she’s done all this without telling them, there’s a reckoning to be had.

The pacing here is so relaxed, you can practically feel the sticky humidity of an Atlanta summer grinding the bustle of life to a halt. Scenes of summer parties and the slow process of Codi getting to know new people and letting her guard down around them—while keeping a tangled web of secrets—feel realistic. The tentative romance between Codi and Lydia is sweet and languid; they have time to warm to one another and work through their nervousness. Codi’s friendship with Ricky, who welcomes her into his social circle under complex circumstances (she did him a great kindness but also saw something he wants kept quiet), is simultaneously warm and fraught with insecurities on both sides.

The most radical thing about Late to the Party is its unabashed sentimentality, which never veers into sanctimony or didacticism. It’s just teens growing together, growing apart and growing up—but somehow that’s exactly enough.