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.

This pair of entertaining and compelling young adult novels confirm that the political is indeed very, very personal.

In our modern era of texts and tweets, video chats and DMs, the telephone-based romance at the heart of Katie Cotugno’s You Say It First is both daring and delightful. High school senior Meg loves her part-time job at WeCount, a nonprofit voter registration center near her home in a Philadelphia suburb. Lately, the gig has also been a haven in the stressful storm of Meg’s life. Her raucously argumentative parents have finally gotten divorced, her mom is drinking way too much, and for some reason, Meg is no longer excited at the thought of going to Cornell with her best friend. It’s a confusing, upsetting time, and Meg feels like she can’t talk to anyone about it.

Then one night at work, Meg makes a fateful call to an Ohio phone number, and recent high school graduate Colby answers. He’s still reeling from his dad’s suicide and might be outgrowing his small town, and he has no idea what to do next. The teens’ first conversation doesn’t go very well. Meg’s an idealist, Colby’s a pessimist; Meg wants to change the world, while Colby thinks change is unlikely and overrated. But where there is conflict, there are also sparks, and the two progress from hourslong phone calls to in-person visits.

Their budding romance has moments of both sweetness and struggle as Meg and Colby challenge each other’s worldviews and navigate their own personal emotional minefields. There’s plenty of delicious interpersonal suspense, not only between Meg and Colby but also in reckonings with their families and friends. Cotugno has crafted some truly touching conversations about family secrets, damaging expectations and reluctant vulnerability. You Say It First is a romantic coming-of-age tale with a politics-infused backdrop that makes a heartfelt case for hope and the belief that incremental changes—just one vote, just one conversation, just one shift in perspective—can make a difference.

Mariana’s father, Florida senator Anthony Ruiz, wants to be president, and he wants Mariana to get on board. In Natalia Sylvester’s Running, 15-year-old Mari’s pleas for privacy in her dad’s increasingly bright spotlight have been dismissed for years.

Mari’s dad been a politician for as long as she can remember. He turns every family outing into a photo op and alternately emphasizes or diminishes their family’s Cuban heritage depending on the whiteness of the audience and its potential appeal to big donors. Mari is proud of her popular and accomplished dad, but she hates public speaking and would love to be anonymous for once—to post what she wants on Twitter and to not be bullied at school because of something her dad said to a reporter.

Running finds Mari hitting a breaking point. She must decide whether she’ll keep bending to her father’s relentless pressure or stand up for her right to make her own choices. And there’s no more time to waste, because the ultimate invasion of privacy is looming: a tour of their family home and an interview with the whole family, broadcast live on national TV.

Readers will be captivated as the tension builds and Sylvester convincingly and movingly plumbs the painful questions Mari is finally able to ask herself: Without her father’s scripts and rules, who is she? Are her parents oblivious to her needs, or are they deliberately ignoring them? Mari realizes that continuing to avoid these questions and accepting what her father says without fact-checking him is no longer an option, especially since the activist group at school wants to know what she thinks about his voting record, and she has no idea what to tell them. But Mari does know this: She cares about other people, she cares about the environment, and it’s looking increasingly likely that she’s sacrificed her privacy and autonomy while her father promotes political policies she disagrees with.

Running’s portrayal of a teen girl’s political and emotional awakening is an invigorating tale of a breakdown that becomes a breakthrough. It’s a timely reminder that to effectively stand up for others, we must first stand up for ourselves.

Who among us has never wondered whether life exists elsewhere in the cosmos? These two YA novels explore this perennially popular topic from very different perspectives. In the first, a neurodivergent teen’s science project spirals into an otherworldly hoax. In the other, a Mexican American girl learns that the disappearance of her mother, who had immigrated to the U.S. without documentation, may be connected to an extraterrestrial plot.

“There were never really aliens,” narrator Gideon Hofstadt tells readers on the first page of his case files. Gideon's brain works differently from other people's. He makes decisions based on what's most practical and can't tolerate messy food or the sensory overload of driving a car. He also has trouble communicating his feelings to his boyfriend, Owen, a relationship that he has been keeping secret. (Gideon’s mother, unaware that he's spoken for, keeps trying to set him up on blind dates with other boys.)

All Gideon originally planned to do was test his newly built seismograph by creating an explosion large enough that it would be picked up by a nearby university. But when his brother, Ishmael, interferes and creates a much bigger explosion than either boy intended, a rumor starts to circulate in their small Pennsylvania town that aliens landed on their family’s farm. Instead of denying the rumors, Gideon encourages them and documents the resulting hysteria as a study in group psychology, all in the hopes of getting into MIT, getting a job at NASA and becoming one of the world's leading astronomers.

Soon people around town are claiming to have been abducted by aliens, and Gideon and Ishmael must continually raise the stakes to keep control of their own narrative. But when the leader of a cultish multilevel marketing (MLM) business comes to town and declares that the aliens have given him the recipe for a tonic that will grant immortality, all bets are off. What will happen to Gideon's MIT. application if his sociological project is exposed as a hoax?

Chelsea Sedoti (The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett) tells It Came From the Sky through a series of news reports, interviews, explanatory interludes and other forms of data that Gideon has collected. A bovine escape artist, a bizarre reality TV show and a curious (but explainable) sighting of the late John F. Kennedy in the woods add laugh-out-loud humor to her fast-paced tale. Divergent storylines involving Gideon's younger sister, his lonely friend Arden and his mother's MLM connections dovetail into a highly satisfying conclusion. The aliens may never have been real, but the human foibles, challenges and hopes Sedoti depicts in a breezy and engaging documentary style definitely are.

With her debut novel, Sia Martinez and the Moonlit Beginning of Everything, Raquel Vasquez Gilliland transports readers far from the verdant fields of Pennsylvania farm country, across the continent to the American Southwest and into the realms of speculative fiction and magical realism.

Sia’s favorite place is a spot in the Arizona desert that might have been where the world began. There, two human-shaped cactus plants seem to be reaching their arms out to each other, as though asking to dance. She goes there sometimes to light candles to guide her mother's spirit home. Not quite two years ago, Sia's mother, who immigrated to the United States without documentation, died in the Sonoran desert after being deported. And yet Sia’s grandmother insisted, until her own recent death, “M'ija vive.” My daughter lives.

Sia's anger at the local cop who reported her mother to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement is sometimes soothed by the corn she plants, a family tradition with deep roots. She can sense her departed abuela's watchful presence in her garden, among her cacti and sometimes even in her car. Meanwhile, there's a school project about the moon to complete and Harry Potter fan fiction to read. Sia's relationship with her best friend, Rose, becomes strained by Rose's new girlfriend, Samara, leaving Sia room to pursue a romance of her own with Noah, the new boy at school, which is complicated by Sia's personal history with sexual assault. Everything is finally coming together, as friends reunite and love grows stronger.

And that's when Sia sees the blue lights in the sky.

Like the best speculative fiction, Sia Martinez and the Moonlit Beginning of Everything uses imaginative elements as metaphors for contemporary issues, in this case racism, immigration and abuse of police power. Sia’s narration is also pervaded by intense spirituality that blends Catholicism with the spirits and ghosts of Mexican folklore. The book teems with vivid imagery and explicit social commentary; "I guess when your skin is light enough, you get to cast the benefit of the doubt like a spell or something," Sia muses at one point.

Don't be disoriented when the narrative seems to radically shift genre just before the halfway point. Vasquez Gilliland skillfully sows the seeds of science fiction and magical realism early in the story, and like Sia's maíz, they have been waiting for just the right time to bloom.

What makes a fairy tale? Is it the presence of witches and demons, magic mirrors and secret spells? Are fairy tales always stories about finding one's true love, righting the wrongs of previous generations or navigating the cost of meddling in powers beyond your understanding? Are wishing wells and dark forests required? What about a magic . . . spoon? These three YA novels explore, stretch and expand our notions of what a fairy tale can be.

The Mirror: Broken Wish

When a package from their neighbor arrives at Agnes' doorstep in the winter of 1848, her husband Oskar warns her to ignore it: Everyone in their small German village knows that their neighbor is a witch. But what could be wrong with honey cake, lavender tea and an offer of friendship? Agnes longs to have a family, and Mathilda offers her a potion she promises will end Agnes’ childlessness. But magic comes with unexpected consequences, and associating with Mathilda comes with unexpected costs. Agnes makes her decisions and hopes for the best.

Seventeen years later, Elva pins sunflowers in her hair for the dance, hoping to catch the eye of handsome farmhand Willem. Her parents, Agnes and Oskar, have warned her never to share her secret—when she looks into water, she sees visions of the future—but maybe telling Willem will be fine. Besides, she'll need his support: A frightening vision and the discovery of a stash of hidden letters has led Elva to seek out the only other person she knows of with magical powers, the witch Mathilde, who's rumored to kidnap children as they play in the woods.

Julie C. Dao’s Broken Wish is the first in an innovative quartet of novels called The Mirror. Each book will be written by a different author, but the four authors will share notes and ideas throughout the creative process. Together, the four books will follow four generations of a family—and a magic mirror—from 19th-century Germany to New Orleans in the 1920s, then to San Francisco in the 1960s, before finally resolving in New York City in the early 2000s.

The ingredients are all here for a quintessential fairy tale (including a reference to the Brothers Grimm), but be prepared for some surprises too. Elva's watery visions are always true, they're not always truly complete. The familiar fairy tale elements of Broken Wish never once feel derivative, thanks in part to Dao’s effortless prose and heartfelt characters. It’s an important reminder that, done well, even tales as old as time can feel fresh and enjoyable.

The Puppetmaster’s Apprentice

How would the story of Pinocchio be different if the eponymous child had a talent for woodcrafting—and if she was a girl? In The Puppetmaster's Apprentice, Piro and her father Gep own a woodworking shop and are hard at work on a special order—a hundred life-sized wooden soldier marionettes, each with a unique face, for the ruling Margrave's sickly son. A secret attic cubbyhole connects Piro and Gep’s home above their shop to the shop next door, where Bran, the tailor's son, is trying to find the courage to tell his parents that he'd rather make clocks than clothes. He longs to help the town clockmaker repair a long-broken glockenspiel clock, another project also recently commissioned by the Margrave.

Because magic is banned on penalty of death, no one must ever know that Piro came to life after a spell recited under a blue moon. But it’s hard to keep the secret because of the trace the magic left behind: A wooden splinter bursts from her skin whenever Piro tells a lie. When the Margrave summons Piro to the palace for a special commission, she'll need all of her skill as a puppet-maker—and as a magical creature herself—to defeat the frightened tyrant's twisted imagination.

Debut author Lisa DeSelm proves herself just as much of a talented maker as her characters. She uses detailed imagery to craft an imaginative world of wooden assassins and princesses, metal gears and glass eyes. Fairy tale staples including an enchanted forest, a rhyming spell and a mysterious crone join elements of dark fantasy, romance and political intrigue as Piro works together with her fellow makers to save her town and break her curse. Amid the pounding of hammers and the scraping of chisels, the magic of the blue moon reminds Piro of her father's favorite maxim: "A maker will always prevail.”

The Way Back

Just about everyone knows the tales of Snow White's magic mirror, Hansel and Gretel's child-eating witch and Pinocchio's extendable nose. But how many teens are familiar with the gilgul, the Sisters of Lileen or the demon Belial? In Gavriel Savit’s The Way Back, a 19th-century Eastern European village becomes the departure point for two teens' tour through the demonology of Jewish mysticism.

Yehudah, hiding from a mysterious stranger who may be responsible for his father's long-ago disappearance, follows a crow to a treasure house run by a bargain-making demon whose agreements never quite turn out well for his petitioners. Bluma, meanwhile, flees a dark spirit in her house that leaves behind a very strange spoon, stumbles into a graveyard and is soon surrounded by the vengeful demon Lilith and her cat-like entourage. Yehuda and Bluma’s paths cross and they find themselves in the Far Country beyond the living lands. There’s a ferryboat operator who must be paid, a red scarf whose protective value is much more than mere warmth and a magical library that returns answers to visitors' questions in their own handwriting. Back in the everyday world, a famous Rebbe is about to host his youngest granddaughter's wedding, and everyone is invited—guests from the world of the living and from the world of the dead.

Told in repetitive rhythms reminiscent of the oral storytelling tradition, The Way Back is a quiet and contemplative tale. Like more familiar fairy tales, the story contains magical incantations, talking animals and dark hooded figures. But bring your tissues, because this one is a tearjerker—especially one scene in which Death appears to each character in the guises they’ll understand best. By striking bargains, serving demons, stripping away their identities and asking themselves whether what they seek is truly what they want, Yehudah and Bluma, lost among creatures of the dark, haltingly attempt to find their way back.

Teens who live for drama—class, club or otherwise—will give standing ovations to two YA novels centered on stagecraft and what goes on behind the scenes.

Superstition’s the thing in Robin Talley’s The Love Curse of Melody McIntyre. Sure, the Beaconville High School drama club honors traditional theater rituals such as no whistling backstage and saying “Break a leg” instead of “Good luck.” But under perfectionist stage manager Melody McIntyre’s leadership, there’s also an hilariously extensive spreadsheet of additional rituals and “countercurses” the club observes in order to prevent a catastrophe like the ones that’ve plagued BHS in the past (including a run of the Scottish play in which the theater burned down).

This year, the theater’s curse rears its head in particularly dramatic fashion: Melody gets dumped mid-performance by her girlfriend Rachel, the costume crew head, resulting in frantic efforts to handle missed cues and a painful and very personal conversation broadcast over the entire crew’s headsets. Afterward, the crew requests that Melody refrain from dating anyone else until after their upcoming production of Les Misérables has closed. It’s a wacky proposal, sure, but Mel sees their logic. Productions do seem more problem-plagued when she’s in a relationship, and she’s not feeling romantic after the breakup, anyway.

As actors and crew launch into a flurry of auditions, costume construction, lighting strategies and more, and a lovely new classmate who’s a professional actor catches Mel’s eye, Mel struggles to be true to herself without upsetting her friends. Is a problem-free production even possible?

Talley’s attention to detail, from cocoa that doubles as dirt on actors’ faces to the mechanics of various set pieces, is impressive, especially since, per her acknowledgements, she was never in a drama club herself. She also does an excellent, sharp-eyed yet sympathetic job portraying the groupthink that can occur in a tightknit bunch of people who are under great stress with a looming deadline: Everything feels like life or death, and anyone who does something unusual is suspect. The production’s trash-talking actors versus crew dynamic and the relentless countdown to opening night heighten the tension. Readers will delight in having a front-row seat for Talley’s funny, romantic tribute to high school theater in all its glory—both on stage and backstage.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Discover more great reads by YA author Robin Talley.

Audrey Winters’ senior year isn’t going as planned. Instead of swanning around with her beau Milo, she’s depressed in the aftermath of their breakup. She quit her beloved drama class so she wouldn’t have to see him, and she’s been avoiding her friends so she doesn’t have to talk about what happened between them. She’s also upset about the chaos at home. Her father cheated on and left her mother for his pregnant girlfriend a couple of years ago. Now, in the wake of his new insistence on selling their house, her mom’s been drinking too much, and her critical brother Dougie is absolutely no help.

It’s a state of affairs that would make anyone cynical and lonely, but things start to look up in Holly Bourne’s It Only Happens in the Movies when Audrey takes a job at Flicker Cinema in an effort to distract herself from her troubles. Enter her co-worker, Harry the flirty aspiring filmmaker. Multiple people warn Audrey to stay away from Harry, and she’s more than happy to, rejecting his advances with firm and wryly witty determination. Besides, the cinema’s really busy, she’s got to look after her mom and she’s working on a media studies project for school about the beautiful lies told by romantic comedies.

But as Audrey and Harry spend more time together at work and while filming his zombie movie after hours, she finds herself warming to Harry and, to her surprise, thinking that perhaps romance could be possible. Devotees of rom-coms will detect a familiar rhythm here, which is intentional: Bourne’s story follows a traditional romantic comedy arc while also serving as a critique of the genre. Through Audrey, Bourne questions filmmakers’ motivations, the cliches and tropes that have long been accepted and promoted by the genre, and the sexist underpinnings of it all.

It Only Happens in the Movies has a cinematic structure, too, complete with spot-on scene-setting (chapter titles include “The Chance Encounter” and “The Montage”) and character sketches (“The Best Friend Who Only Exists To Be Your Best Friend,” “The Bad Boy Who Changes His Ways Just For You”) that encapsulate essence of this popular genre with winking self-awareness. It’s a rewarding and grounded read with timely social commentary—and some fun with zombies, too.

Three young adult novels put inclusive queer representation in the spotlight and capture how contemporary teens connect both in person and online. Although the storytelling styles vary, the emotions in these novels run as deep as love itself.

Meet Cute Diary

Noah is a blogger who’s built a huge following by publishing made-up stories of trans romances that his readers believe are anonymously submitted by real people. But a disgruntled reader has called Noah out, putting his online reputation at risk. To win over the skeptics, Noah embarks on a fake romance with Drew, an older guy who seems too good to be true. Could going along with his own romantic hoax cost Noah a chance at the real thing?

Emery Lee’s Meet Cute Diary is a charming cautionary tale about the limits of online fame. Noah is so overly invested in his blog that he’s often rude to his friends and family. Though he has moments of self-awareness, he soon reverts back to the same behavior. Then he grudgingly takes a summer job that leads to a sweet relationship with a fellow camp counselor. As he and Devin get to know one another, Noah’s need for clicks and likes begins to lose its luster, and he starts to understand that being honest with the readers he once lied to, albeit under the guise of offering them hope, is the responsible thing to do.

Meet Cute Diary has some elements of a rom-com but can feel downbeat on the way to its happy ending. The fact that many trans teens don’t experience the same enthusiastic support that Noah and Devin receive from their families hangs heavy in the background. One of the novel’s best touches is the clear message that there’s no single path to transitioning and no set of pronouns that’s right for everyone. Witnessing Lee’s characters undertake the challenging work of figuring themselves out is inspiring.

Some Girls Do

Some Girls Do captures how two girls with little in common navigate a come-here-now-go-away kind of love. Morgan is a new student, an elite runner embroiled in a lawsuit against her old Catholic school. To Morgan, being out and proud is as necessary as breathing. Ruby is scraping by to make ends meet and running herself ragged on the pageant circuit, where her mother insists she’s on track to become the next Miss America. They meet cute when Ruby almost runs over Morgan with her beloved Ford Torino, and mixed into their mutual anger is an undeniable spark. Morgan would like to coax it to flame, but Ruby’s life depends on her extinguishing it as quickly as possible, and therein lies the dilemma.

Author Jennifer Dugan wisely lets readers spend time inside each girl’s head through chapters that alternate between their perspectives. They are both busy, overworked students, but their shared obsession quickly builds and spills over into a furtive romance. The demands of parents, teachers and friends weigh on each of them differently. For Morgan, being demonstrative and declarative about things in public makes them real; were Ruby to do that, she’d risk being kicked out of her home. Navigating that divide is messy, but Dugan describes it with empathy. The girls’ occupations and relationships feel real and add to the sense of high school as a pressure cooker, especially in what seems like the ultimate small-town setting, where a rumor can make or break a reputation. 

Ruby’s and Morgan’s stories unfold in tandem, intersecting and separating as events progress and both girls grow and change. Some Girls Do is a sweet novel that offers plenty of rough edges and no easy answers.

The Sky Blues

Robbie Couch’s beautifully realized and heartwarming debut novel, The Sky Blues, hinges on the countdown to a high school rite of passage: asking someone to the prom. Sky Baker is gay and a major introvert; this “promposal” is a chance to leave his comfort zone and ask out his crush, Ali Rashad, so Sky and his friend Bree have been scheming up great ideas together. Then a hacker leaks their plans to the whole school, along with a racist, homophobic message that targets both Sky and Ali, and gives Sky a new priority: finding the culprit.

Chapter titles track the number of days remaining until the promposal, and even as plans go awry well before the day arrives, this structure cleverly keeps the story organized and flowing. Ever since Sky’s mom kicked him out of the house for being gay, he’s been living with Bree, with Sky’s older brother serving as an ineffective go-between. Sometimes the weight of Sky’s abandonment sinks him into a heavy depression, which will resonate with anyone who has ever felt the same. It’s touching to see him receive support from classmates and one teacher in particular, and to see him thrive on their care. And there’s good humor to be found in how everyone’s crushes and intentions seem to point in the wrong direction at one time or another. 

A group of students works together to find the source of the email hack, and their teamwork eventually bears fruit, but there’s no simple justice to be had. It’s a painful lesson, but one that underscores Sky’s resilience and growing maturity. The Sky Blues reminds us that deep kindness can carry those we care about through hard times.