Sixteen-year-old Maya Krishnan, an Indian American aspiring artist, lives in Citrus Grove, Florida, a suburb of Orlando with “two sides, like a coin.” There’s the side she and her friends live on, with a diverse community of people “who have thick accents and even thicker blood.” And then there’s the side of bake sales, white picket fences and bigoted remarks about immigrants. Maya seethes about the hypocrisy around her but is unsure how else to express her frustration other than through her art.

Maya’s portfolio attracts Juneau Zale, a wealthy white senior with a rebellious spirit. Juneau sees a spark in Maya and invites her to join the Pugilists, a secret society of students who use “art, pranks [and] mischief” to shine a light on inequalities in their school, such as the overpolicing of students of color. Soon Maya’s falling for Juneau, despite the cracks appearing in Juneau’s carefully crafted facade. As tensions at school rise and pranks turn into potential crimes, Maya will have to decide how close she’s willing to fly to Juneau’s sun.

In All the Yellow Suns, debut author Malavika Kannan captures the emotional turmoil of high school, with relationships as likely to bleed into one another as the watercolors on Maya’s palette. Kannan’s dialogue is natural in a way that reflects the author’s experience as a 22-year-old student of comparative studies in race and ethnicity and creative writing at Stanford University. She crafts beautiful prose filled with eloquent metaphors such as, “When two humans wear each other down, erode until their bodies fit together like clay—that’s what love feels like. Sanding somebody’s edges and crooks. Settling into their ridges.”

The fact that All the Yellow Suns is so intensely character-driven means the plot with the Pugilists doesn’t quite pack the punch their name promises. However, Maya is such a likable, passionate narrator that readers will relish the intimate story of her coming to terms with her sexuality. The large cast of side characters is spread thin throughout the book, though each is as complex as they can be for the space they receive. Juneau’s character is the most complex of all, fascinatingly difficult to pin down: a manic pixie dream girl who has a potential white savior complex and is battling internalized homophobia.

Darker than Casey McQuiston’s I Kissed Shara Wheeler and lighter than Courtney Summers’ I’m the Girl, this sapphic contemporary coming-of-age story is intensely realistic and beautifully heartbreaking and will capture the attention of readers who are passionate about activism.

Marlow Briggs is a 17-year-old cursebreaker for hire, the most in-demand badass in Caraza City, a metropolis in the gritty region known as the Marshes. It’s an always interesting, occasionally life-threatening existence of evading gangs and sneaking around speak-easies. Her curse-sensing cat, Toad, keeps her company, and she works with her best friend, Swift, at the Bowery Spellshop.

A year ago, she was living an entirely different life in fancy Evergarden with her mother. One terrible day, Mom went missing and Marlow fled to the Marshes, an area lacking the beauty and amenities of Evergarden but rife with clients who need her magical know-how and investigative savvy.

As Katy Rose Pool’s inventive and engaging Garden of the Cursed opens, a potential client turns up in the form of Adrius Falcrest, Marlow’s former friend and scion of one of the wealthy and powerful Five Families. Despite their now-frosty relationship, Adrius implores her to break a curse that threatens the lives and fortune of his family.

Marlow agrees to a fake-dating situation in order to explain her and Adrius’ unlikely reunion. His habitual snideness and family’s snobbery ensure the couple’s antagonism persists as Marlow’s investigation proceeds, making a difficult job even tougher. Pool, best known for her Age of Darkness trilogy, adeptly explores the ways miscommunication and mistrust can warp relationships of all sorts. But with help from Swift and the new friends Marlow makes along the way, Pool also shows how strong friendships can provide sustenance and joy.

As Marlow picks her way through a minefield of class conflict, criminality and frustrating uncertainty, she realizes her mother’s fate may be tied to Adrius’ curse. Mom’s disappearance is “the great unsolved mystery of her life. The question that lived under her skin, that prodded at her when her thoughts were otherwise quiet.”

Pool keeps Garden of the Cursed moving right along, punctuating the story with suspenseful conflict and emotional reckonings, then revving up to a cliff-hanger ending that will leave readers eager for the next installment in this exciting duology.

Aurelie possesses the rare skill of Seeking, the art of finding people, but she’s given up on magic—it’s an outdated practice in the kingdom, anyway. Being a baker’s apprentice isn’t her dream, but it’s safe and stable, and she’d be content to remain a baker forever. That is, until a bounty hunter named Iliana visits her shop and asks for help in her quest to rescue Prince Hapless. Aurelie joins Iliana and her troll associate, Quad, and gets swept up into a kingdomwide adventure involving strange creatures, mysterious assassins and royal conspiracies. Their odyssey takes Aurelie far from the bakery and calls into question whether she’s living the life she really wants.

While author Emma Mills takes inspiration from classic fairy tales in Something Close to Magic, she also challenges traditional fantasy tropes. Magic, for example, is seen as antiquated and pointless, and those who practice magic are largely dismissed by society. And Prince Hapless is the story’s damsel in distress, needing the female characters to save him. Mills also gives each character more depth than a traditional fable would, diving into Aurelie’s complex emotions about her future, Hapless’ tense relationship with his role as a thirdborn royal son, Iliana’s hidden past and Quad’s perspective on humanity. Nuanced, profound scenes mingle with lighter, humorous moments, making the characters feel real and their growth believable. It’s easy to root for their success as a team after watching the steady development of their relationships.

Mills’ mastery of language is on full display here, with fun, clever prose and dialogue that are bound to make readers laugh out loud. The banter between characters feels natural, with conversations showcasing Aurelie’s tenacity, Iliana’s wit, Hapless’ charm and Quad’s candor.

Classic fairy-tale settings, compelling mysteries and a charismatic cast of characters make Something Close to Magic an entertaining, fast-paced read, and its ending strikes the perfect balance between satisfaction and the promise of more adventures. Readers will be reminded of The Princess Bride; Something Close to Magic may be a fantastical tale, but it’s also one with relationships that hit close to home.

Wannabe detectives and aspiring magicians alike will delight in The Grimoire of Grave Fates, an anthology of 18 interlinked stories penned by such beloved YA authors as Kat Cho, Marieke Nijkamp, Mason Deaver, Darcie Little Badger and Kwame Mbalia.

The compelling Agatha Christie-esque whodunit is set at the Galileo Academy for the Extraordinary, a prestigious school founded by famous “astronomy sorcerer” Galileo Galilei that educates future sorcerers. In recent eras, the academy has adopted a “more global view of magic,” resulting in updated classes, travel to different countries and policies meant to ensure greater diversity and inclusivity.

Unfortunately, this has had no effect on the employment of Septimius Dropwort, a professor of magical history—and a proud, vocal, abusive bigot. It’s not surprising, then, that when he’s found murdered on school grounds, nary a tear is shed. But accusations aplenty arise: Since he has mistreated and alienated pretty much everyone, everyone is therefore a viable suspect.

The book’s writers have created an appealing cast of characters with a range of backgrounds, abilities and personalities, all of whom are preoccupied with fulfilling their magical destinies while attempting to excel in a place that can feel inhospitable. 

As The Grimoire of Grave Fates editors Hanna Alkaf (Hamra and the Jungle of Memories) and Margaret Owen (Little Thieves) write in their note to readers, “Some readers may have felt painfully excluded from stories about witches, wizards, and magic schools that could not imagine people like them; some have been deliberately shut out. Above all, we hope that everyone can see themselves somewhere in these pages.” 

As the story progresses and the students join forces to find the killer before one of them is blamed, they gradually realize they’re not as alone as they first thought. Delightful details abound: Taya, in the art-based magic program, has a lioness familiar named Ketesl; Maxwell blends math and magic; and Jamie sneezes ice crystals after walking through a ghost. Together, the students home in on the elusive culprit, attempt to evade harm and collectively remind the school that its extraordinary attendees deserve more support—a resonant message of hope for a better future, magical or otherwise.

Blood and gore are everywhere. Screams echo through the night. The masked killer, machete in hand, is at the gate . . . but Charity, ready with her knife, stabs him first. She announces that she’s the final girl—the one who always survives.

It’s just another night at Camp Mirror Lake, a terror simulation game where Charity and her teenage co-workers chase paying guests through the woods in a loose reenactment of a cult classic horror movie that was filmed there a generation ago. The summer is almost over, but Camp Mirror Lake is short staffed—where have Heather, Jordan and Felix gotten to?—so Charity invites her girlfriend, Bezi, and their friend Paige to pitch in for the last few days. The sound effects are cued up, the fake blood and raw chicken mixture is ready to be poured and the latex body parts have been strategically placed. But on the night before the season finale, someone appears who isn’t in the script. And then the real terror begins. 

Author Kalynn Bayron knows the ins and outs of the horror genre, and she lets us in on all the tropes through the character of Paige, a wise and wisecracking horror fan who’s quick to call out the dangers of flirting (“As soon as people start having sex, it’s like a bat signal to the killer.”) and the stupidity of chasing clues after dark (“Why do the thing that always leads to somebody getting murdered in the woods?”). Like the Scream franchise and Joss Whedon’s The Cabin in the Woods, these self-referential hat tips don’t give away the plot as much as they make the path through it even more fun. The tension is high, the isolated camp setting is delightfully creepy and the premise of embedding real murders among the trappings of fake ones is used to clever effect. Creaky trapdoors, secret passageways, dusty storage rooms and bobbing canoes abound, creating spookily atmospheric imagery that matches the characters’ increasing sense of dread. And Paige is right that pieces of the full story are often lurking in the corners, revealed little by little as the body count rises.

Plan to read You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight under a blanket with a flashlight, but only if you’re willing to stay up late. As horror fans know, there’s always one last twist at the end.

Zelda lives in the kind of quaint, upbeat town worthy of a montage. People greet her by name, wish her good luck on her geography test and loan her a bike when she’s running late. But after a close call on that bike with a car and a disappearing boy, Zelda starts to question her perfect town. Why does that geography test—which she’s pretty sure she also took yesterday—make no sense? Why does the town laundromat sport its own creepy clown? And why has her dead cat, Patches, shown up . . . talking?

Zelda starts to suspect that she’s actually inhabiting a dream, even more so once she reencounters that mysterious boy, Langston. But whose dream is she in? And what if the dreamer wakes up? Will they all just cease to exist?

To find out, Zelda, Langston and Patches head toward the limits of the known dream world. What they discover includes a robot house, an ice cream vendor who speaks in rhymes and the four gym teachers of the apocalypse, all of which are depicted in black-and-white illustrations by author Adam Rex. If this sounds kind of silly, it is. Those familiar with Rex’s books for younger readers will recognize his zany humor here as well, but even as the absurdity is pushed to extremes, A Little Like Waking maintains a level of seriousness as well.

The dreamscape is influenced by personal history and often tinged with tragedy. At every turn, the characters consider big questions: “Do you want to grow up? Do you want a life that’s easy or a life that’s real?” Zelda must confront the fact that if she’s not the dreamer, she’s not the star she once assumed. As she puts it, “Growing up is realizing you’re not the main character. Or everyone else is, too.”

A Little Like Waking is sneaky like that, planting nuggets of philosophical and moral truths alongside carnival rides that sprout from the earth like giant vegetation. It’s also romantic and a little sad, with moments of quiet, bittersweet loveliness that stand out in high relief from the near-constant backdrop of hilarity. Rex’s quest narrative is like none other, sure to leave readers marveling at the wonder of dreams and the power of imagination.

Hilde, a part-swan, part-human daughter of Odin, ferries souls along the silver road in the sky to the Other Wood. She envies her five sisters’ brighter gifts, but Odin chose her for this duty because of her strength, so she continues this melancholy work—until she meets the equally lonely Baron Maximilian von Richter on the shore of a lake.

From within his crumbling and solitary Bavarian castle, Richter dreams of a bigger life for himself, one filled with jewels and notoriety. When he invites Hilde into the glittering world of his imaginings, she trades her wings to become more human, eagerly learning the complicated waltz steps of 19th-century Europe. But when Richter proves to be more captor than liberator, Hilde begins to seek an escape. Allied with Franz Mendelsohn, a kind and talented artist who seems to see the truth of her magic, Hilde searches to reclaim the wings she once sought to give up forever.

With feather-light precision, R.M. Romero’s YA novel-in-verse A Warning About Swans (Peachtree, $18.99, 9781682634837) walks the thin line between fairy tale and allegory, selfhood and love, dreams and reality. This winding fable about living myths, set in postindustrial Europe, softens the tale of Odin’s daughters—known in many versions of mythology as the Valkyries—while respecting its origins.

As in her previous novel, The Ghosts of Rose Hill, Romero writes in clear, lovely verse. Unlike novels-in-verse that fail to demonstrate a strong understanding of poetry, A Warning About Swans lends itself perfectly to the form, maintaining a spare beauty and creating fully formed characters within the limited confines of a shorter text. Richter is believable as a terrifying representation of what men with unchecked power often do, while Hilde and Franz’s burgeoning love story feels multidimensional and authentic.

A Warning About Swans soars in its exploration of myths: their power, their failings and how they change alongside humanity yet stay with us throughout millennia. Romero provides a lovely example of how across all of time, some lessons stay true.

Between the busy tech week leading up to the school musical’s opening night and her overwhelming crush on her best friend, Cordelia Scott thinks she’s at her limit—until a demon named Fred appears and tells her she’s accidentally sold him part of her soul. To escape the fires of hell, she must help Fred defeat an even more powerful demonic entity that’s been plaguing their community for nearly 100 years and the supernatural creatures under its command. But how hard could it be to put on a great show, hide her feelings from Veronica and destroy a demon?

Alex Brown’s Damned if You Do feels both modern and mythical. Brown’s characters are regular teenagers who do things like suffer through pop quizzes, gather in a cozy coffee shop, visit churches that may be hiding dark secrets and fight monsters such as the aswang, a creature from Filipino folklore. They also deal with horrifying, somber realities, such as the physical and emotional abuse Cordelia received from her father, which she recounts in as much vivid detail as she does her visions of hell.

But Damned if You Do doesn’t leave readers solely in darkness, and its weightier problems are balanced out with plenty of dry and witty humor. Readers will enjoy scenes of Cordelia bantering with Fred, sharing tender moments with Veronica and thriving in her role as stage manager.

Ultimately, this book is about healing and the immense work it takes. Cordelia and her friends must decide: Do we allow others to define who we are, or can we take control of who we’re becoming? Whether it’s dealing with abandonment, abuse or exploitation, Damned if You Do asks us to take a hard look at how our experiences shape how we see ourselves—and how we can take back our own power and agency.

Brown strikes a delicate balance between light and dark, showing readers that the grimmest parts of ourselves are worth accepting. Damned if You Do is mature and complex while making plenty of space for humor, friendship and love, affirming the power of relationships to help us grow in ways that feel impossible on our own.

Finding the right words can be a challenge for anyone. Lilah, the deaf protagonist in Give Me a Sign (Putnam, $18.99, 9780593533796), is struggling not only with what to say but also how to say it. A sweet and thoughtful romp, Anna Sortino’s debut novel navigates the intricacies of Deaf culture and how one girl finds her place in it.

Consumed by doubts that she’s not “deaf enough” and irked by her hearing parents who are preoccupied with making sure she can pass as hearing, Lilah minimizes herself and what accommodations she needs. Her friends “forget” she can’t hear as well as them, inadvertently leaving her out of conversations or taking her to inaccessible activities.

At the end of her junior year, all Lilah wants is to feel understood like she did when she was at Camp Gray Wolf, a summer camp for blind, deaf and hard-of-hearing kids. Nervous about her rusty American Sign Language but excited to connect more with her Deaf identity, Lilah applies to become a counselor.

What ensues is a summer in the woods with cute boys, late-night shenanigans and more lessons about herself than she ever could have imagined. With lots of summer-ready fun, Give Me a Sign thoughtfully tackles a myriad of coming-of-age tropes through the lens of deaf characters. Sortino’s writing shines the brightest when the story takes a turn toward the harsh realities and traumas that deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals often endure through misunderstandings with the hearing world. Sortino doesn’t shy away from examining cruelty, but her narrative also remains informative, kind and steady. Give Me a Sign is not only a point of representation for folks looking for themselves in a fun read but also a reminder that just because someone can’t hear or speak doesn’t mean they don’t have a voice.

In The Narrow, author Kate Alice Marshall (Our Last Echoes) tells a chilling tale of a ghost who can’t relinquish the past, a boarding school with fatal traditions and a rising senior who will sacrifice anything to stay on campus.

As her final year at Atwood School begins, 17-year-old Eden White discovers her feckless parents haven’t paid her tuition. The school’s dean makes a proposal: Eden can stay, but she must become a live-in companion to fellow student Delphine Fournier. Six years ago, Delphine attempted the students’ traditional yearly jump across the Narrow, the treacherous river that runs beneath the school, but did not succeed. Afterward, Delphine developed a deadly allergy to unpurified water and now lives in isolation at Abigail House.

Odd things happen once Eden arrives at Abigail House: She experiences torrential rainfall when skies are clear, sees wet footsteps approaching her bed and awakens from horrid dreams with fresh bruises. Eden must lean on her best friends and Delphine to solve the mysteries around the Abigail House and Atwood School.

Marshall deliberately positions clues to construct a swiftly darkening narrative that touches on addiction, abuse, privilege and parental neglect. As the pace quickens, readers will become immersed in Delphine’s and Eden’s nightmarish experiences and their deepening relationship. Those who enjoy puzzling mysteries and supernatural suspense will devour this haunting tale.