Miliani, Inez, Natalie and Jasmine are best friends bound by magic and love. When Jasmine is killed by a drunk driver, everything the four girls once shared is shattered. Mili, Inez and Nat try to support one another in the wake of the tragedy while also dealing with illness, addiction and the threat of deportation within their own families. But Mili, the last of the girls to see Jas alive, isn’t content to merely mourn. Drawing on the magical traditions of her Filipino heritage, she convinces her friends that they can bring Jas (or at least a version of her) back from the dead. Though Inez and Nat hesitate, they are spurred onward by Mili’s insistence that their efforts can succeed.

Soon, the girls are attending seances at Mili’s mysterious Aunt Lindy’s house, performing rituals of their own and testing the boundaries between the realms of the living and the dead. But magic always comes with a price, and as the trio descend deeper into spellwork, they uncover terrifying secrets about one another and their families that endanger the plan to resurrect Jas—and could break apart their lives completely. Can the three friends perform the final ritual before everything crashes down around them?

Riss M. Neilson’s ambitious debut novel, Deep in Providence, is a dense, meticulously plotted story. It sits at a curious crossroads, functioning both as a contemporary YA novel about grief and a fantasy rooted in magical practices from Filipino and Jamaican cultures. Remove the novel’s magic and you’d have an emotional yet often-told tale. But by incorporating elements of fantasy, a genre historically predisposed to whiteness and straightness, Deep in Providence becomes a boundary-pushing addition to the canon of teen witches.

Alternating between Mili’s, Inez’s and Nat’s perspectives enables Neilson to create a multifaceted portrait of their close-knit friend group, in which private hurts and joys are refracted and magnified by the girls’ constant proximity. The book’s magic system serves as a metaphor that provides an added layer to the book’s exploration of loss. As the girls’ desperation grows, so too do their powers—and what the trio is willing to do with them. Neilson doesn’t shy away from emotional intensity: The girls’ grief isn’t pretty or palatable, and the spirits answer in full force.

At almost 500 pages, Deep in Providence suffers a bit from too much table setting. Early chapters focus on the girls’ backgrounds without much rising tension, and not all readers will be hooked by the slow start. But once magic enters the scene, the story deepens and widens, eventually arriving at a satisfying emotional climax and denouement.

Deep in Providence is a beautiful, haunting novel about letting go and finding peace for yourself and for those who are gone.

Minah Okar is content with the home that she and her father have built in Brooklyn, New York. With her hilarious best friend, Nikki, and loving boyfriend, Mike, by her side, Minah feels that she has left her old life in Obsidian, Michigan, behind for good. But when Minah learns that her estranged mother has died, Minah is forced to reconcile memories she’d much rather forget. She returns to Obsidian for the first time in five years to confront the truth about her family’s deepest secrets.

Break This House, the second novel from National Book Award finalist Candice Iloh (Every Body Looking), explores Minah’s joys and heartaches through her immersive first-person narration. Minah is insightful as well as observant, offering vivid descriptions of everything from the smells on New York City subway cars to the cacophony of songs that play simultaneously from different speakers at a family party. Neither the humor nor the horrors of her family’s past escape the broad scope of her pensive reflections.

Iloh’s visceral depictions of Minah’s inner and outer worlds make Break This House’s themes of loss and grief all the more impactful. As Minah sifts through her muddled memories and her family’s fragmented recollections, she begins to determine what she really thinks about herself, her parents and her faith. Suspended between her past and her future, she must craft an identity that honors her family but gives her the agency to make her own choices.

Break This House is a tender, poetic story about what it’s like to experience loss and learn to continue living anyway. It’s heart-wrenching to follow Minah as she tries to answer impossible questions that everyone eventually faces: What must we leave in the past, and how can we move forward without it?

This is what River McIntyre knows about who they are: They are a competitive swimmer. They were born and raised in Haley, Ohio, a town infamous for its failing marine park, SeaPlanet, and they feel a bitter kinship with the park’s captive-raised creatures. They have two parents and an older brother, and they’re Lebanese on their mom’s side. These are the facts River knows for certain.

River begins to realize that everything else is a lot more complicated after a run-in at SeaPlanet with Indigo Waits, an out and proud teenager from River’s past. Seeing Indy forces River to admit that they’ve been drowning under the tide of gender dysphoria and internalized homophobia for far too long. In the absence of the words to process their feelings, however, River jumps into SeaPlanet’s shark tank and sets off a chain of events that will forever link Indy’s and River’s lives.

In Man o’ War, author Cory McCarthy engages with every aspect of River’s life to create an extraordinary story with incredible depth. River’s experiences as a competitive swimmer enable McCarthy to explore the complex relationships that trans athletes have with their bodies, while River’s Arab American heritage raises discussions about biracial identity and passing in a world that’s prejudiced in favor of white, cisgender people.

McCarthy’s prose is suffused with emotion and often employs SeaPlanet’s sharks, orcas, Portuguese man-of-wars and other creatures as beautiful metaphors for River’s feelings. The jagged edges of dysphoria, the suffocating pressure of familial expectations and the all-encompassing need for love bleed through River’s internal monologue with biting clarity.

The novel’s exploration of queer identity ferociously resists the idea that coming out is a simple or straightforward process. River’s journey of self-discovery takes years, and Man o’ War follows them through high school and college. They try on different labels, experience both acceptance and rejection from their queer peers and navigate the joys and trials of medical transition. Along the way, McCarthy’s story provides space for every uncertain step, portraying River’s attempts to untangle the snarl of confusion and self-loathing inside themself with empathy and patience.

In Man o’ War, McCarthy validates how finding your name, accepting your name and telling others your name can all be separate, unique battles. Despite the pain those battles sometimes bring, River’s transition is driven by an irrepressible hope—a hope that will assure readers their true happiness is always worth the fight.

Zarela Zalvidar is practically royalty in Santivilla, the capital city of Hispalia. Her mother was a celebrated flamenco dancer before she was killed by dragon fire, and her father is a respected Dragonador whose family has owned and run La Giralda, a dragon-fighting arena, for more than five centuries. After some dragons escape during a show at the arena, killing many spectators and gravely wounding Zarela’s father, she must find a way to save La Giralda from financial ruin and unmask a traitor who is sabotaging her family’s business.

In order to lure back La Giralda’s audience, Zarela must enter the ring herself, but she’ll need a trainer if she’s to leave the ring with her life. Arturo, a handsome former Dragonador turned trainer who scorns the Zalvidar family and their dragon-fighting legacy, seems like the perfect choice—if only Zarela can convince him to help. With only one chance to secure her family’s future, Zarela will do anything and risk everything to succeed.

Headstrong, resourceful and tenacious, Zarela is eager to emerge from the shadow of her mother’s fame. Arturo is a worthy foil who challenges Zarela to rethink her long-held beliefs regarding dragon fighting. He’s also one of only a few people in Zarela’s life who doesn’t underestimate her, and their crackling chemistry will please fans of the enemies-to-lovers trope.

In Together We Burn, author Isabel Ibañez (Woven in Moonlight) grounds her fantasy world in the culture of medieval Spain, including its food, art and language. Her depiction of the divisions between characters who believe that dragon-fighting is cruel versus those who defend it as a cultural tradition mirrors present-day debates in countries that practice bullfighting.

Packed with high stakes, a well-executed mystery and an appealingly swoony romance, Together We Burn has something to entertain a wide range of genre fiction fans.

Malaysian author Hanna Alkaf’s Queen of the Tiles is a raw, moving exploration of complicated grief, a celebration of teenage determination and a nail-biting murder mystery set at a cutthroat Scrabble tournament in Kuala Lumpur.

At last year’s Word Warrior Weekend competition, Trina Low, the titular Queen of the Tiles, made it all the way to the final round before she slumped over her board—dead. Najwa Bakri, Trina’s best friend, has been experiencing traumatic flashbacks, depression and memory loss ever since. “It’s as if Trina’s death cracked me open, and now pieces of me keep escaping, scattering themselves everywhere,” she explains.

Seeing a therapist has been helpful for Najwa, as will be attending this year’s Word Warrior Weekend. Along with ensuring that no one will tarnish Trina’s legacy, Najwa is also intent on proving that she is still an accomplished Scrabble player in her own right. This year, it’s Najwa who will become Queen of the Tiles. 

Of course, other competitors have the same idea, setting the stage for round after round of precisely crafted, often mesmerizing gameplay. Queen of the Tiles brims with the skills a player must possess to become a Scrabble champion: sharp focus, quick thinking and a prodigious vocabulary. Every chapter opens with an esoteric word (plus its definition and Scrabble point value, natch). Alkaf builds an immersive, complex world but doesn’t stop there, layering in a compelling locked-room whodunit, too.  

Indeed, the Word Warrior Weekend is upended when Najwa begins to receive anagrams via direct message from Trina’s long-inactive Instagram account. You wouldn’t think a word puzzle could seem threatening, but in Alkaf’s clever hands, the brainteasers foment unease and hint at a truly horrifying possibility: Could Trina have been murdered?

Scrabble frenemies become amateur sleuths, and everyone’s a suspect. During high-level Scrabble battles, shocking secrets are revealed and edgy suspense builds as the tiles click and slide. Readers will be guessing until the very end of this ensorcelling (15 points), sesquipedalian (26 points) mystery. 

Dorothy “Doe” Saltpeter and her friends are ready to make their senior year at the Weston School for girls their best yet, which means pulling the most outrageous pranks on Winfield Academy, the rival boys’ school across the road. But when the two schools announce a shocking merger, Doe is forced to interact with Winfield students, including smug, wealthy Three, her sworn enemy.

To aggravate Three, Doe proposes a fake relationship with his cousin, Wells, who has his own reasons for agreeing to the ruse. As Doe’s and Wells’ lies begin to unravel, Doe uncovers a dark secret plaguing the Weston School, which forces her to rethink her commitment to pranks and rivalries and decide where her priorities truly lie.

This May End Badly is a fun, insightful novel that introduces an instantly appealing heroine. Doe and her group of prankster girlfriends are easy to root for, their pranks ingenious and clever, and her witty relationship with Wells is buoyant and charming.

Yet for all the levity offered by dueling schools and prank wars, This May End Badly thoughtfully explores serious issues as well. During the course of Doe’s school year, debut author Samantha Markum examines harmful family dynamics, childhood trauma and sexual harrassment. Doe must learn to take responsibility for her actions and use her voice, even when that means partnering with people she once considered enemies.

This May End Badly captures the excitement and transitions experienced by many teens during their final year of high school. Doe finds it difficult to say goodbye to her childhood and step into adulthood, which is compounded by the huge changes her friends and beloved school are undergoing. At first, she stubbornly clings to her adolescence and is willing to go to great lengths to keep every aspect of her life, including her relationships, school and responsibilities, exactly how it’s always been.

But as her friends choose colleges, the Weston School enters a new era and Doe’s love life blooms, Doe begins to acknowledge that it’s time to grow up. Along the way, she discovers that becoming an adult isn’t so bad—especially when it means growing with the people you love.

Best friends Evelyn and Mina were 10 years old when they summoned a spirit to do their bidding. They wanted to clear Evelyn’s father of suspicion in the mysterious drowning deaths of three Long Island teenagers known as the Cliffside Trio. Six years later, the girls are still paying the price: Mina has a painful scar on her wrist in the shape of a sand dollar, and Evelyn’s family has collapsed. Even the girls’ friendship couldn’t survive the fallout. 

When Evelyn gets caught in an academic cheating scandal, she summons another spirit to salvage her college prospects, but the consequences are even more disastrous. The only person who can help Evelyn out of her supernatural mess is Mina, but it won’t be easy. The malevolent spirit not only haunts the girls but also draws power from tormenting the souls of the Cliffside Trio. Evelyn and Mina’s attempts to investigate and banish the spirit reveal secrets and cover-ups, not to mention a budding romance. It’s soon clear that they’ll have to risk everything to discover the truth.

In The Drowning Summer, Christine Lynn Herman’s elaborate ghost mythos departs significantly from typical haunted house narratives. The souls of the novel’s dead dwell in the ocean, where they can be called upon by the living to vanquish problems, as Evelyn and Mina did when they were children. Readers who enjoy detailed world building will find their appetites thoroughly satisfied by Herman’s creative framework.

In addition to a compelling ghost story, however, The Drowning Summer is a deft exploration of both girls’ grounded, authentic family dynamics. In a well-intended but misguided attempt to protect Mina from danger, Mina’s mother unintentionally puts her daughter in harm’s way. Meanwhile, Evelyn’s older sister, who is still reeling from their parents’ divorce and their mother’s abandonment, causes additional hurt to their suffering father.

Herman struggles at times to craft a mystery as absorbing as her story’s supernatural and interpersonal elements. For instance, the novel establishes that Evelyn’s father had the means to commit the Cliffside Trio murders, but never indicates what his motive would have been. Most mystery enthusiasts will nonetheless find the compounding clues and the novel’s resolution fulfilling.

Fans of Shea Ernshaw, Kerri Maniscalco or the CW’s “Nancy Drew” will love The Drowning Summer’s blend of supernatural thrills, cold-case mystery and sweet romance. It’s an empowering tale about working through family trauma and rising above expectations.