Instagram Facebook X-twitter Linkedin

Sign Up

Get the latest ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.

All , , Coverage

All YA Coverage

YA FictionYAGraphic Novels & Comics

Best books for benchwarmers

Feature by Norah Piehl

You don’t need to know your layups from your line drives to love these YA books.

The buzzer-beating jump shot. The walk-off home run. The scrappy gang of underdogs who surprise themselves by making it to the conference final. We’ve seen all these sports stories before—and for good reason. Even if you’re not an athlete or much of a fan, it’s hard to deny the drama of sporting events. Two new young adult books use sports as a springboard for exciting storytelling. These tales are as much about courage, teamwork and integrity as they are about the game itself. 

★ Dragon Hoops
Cartoonist and former National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Gene Luen Yang would be the first to admit he’s not much of a sports fan. As he confesses in his new graphic memoir, Dragon Hoops, he grew up as more of a fan of superhero stories, where you know that good will always triumph over evil. “In a well-crafted story, everything makes sense,” Yang reflects. “Which is more than I can say for sports.”

The book opens when Yang, who teaches math at Bishop O’Dowd High School in Oakland, California, begins to notice that the whole school is abuzz about the basketball team. Intrigued, Yang interviews Coach Lou, who tells Yang that after three straight years of losses, he is trying out a gutsy strategy—stacking his team roster with senior players—that might finally result in a state championship for the Dragons.

Over the course of the season, Yang travels with the O’Dowd Dragons, profiles many of the players (including some from the equally talented girls’ team) and offers a brief history of basketball. As he gets to know the athletes, whose personalities develop into unforgettable characters, Yang confronts tough topics, such as the racism experienced by the team’s Sikh and Chinese players.

Dragon Hoops epitomizes the best kind of storytelling possible in the comics format. Yang incorporates visual jokes that will reward careful readers and masterfully combines words and pictures to generate drama and suspense beyond what either could do independently. As his season with the Dragons comes to a close, Yang is inspired by the players and finds the courage to make a career-defining decision of his own.

★ We Are the Wildcats
Courage is also at the heart of Siobhan Vivian’s We Are the Wildcats. The action in this field hockey-centered novel takes place not over the course of an entire season but over a single 24-hour period.

It opens on a hot day in August, as a week of team tryouts culminates in a final grueling workout, after which the team’s charismatic and demanding coach will select 20 new Wildcats. Team captain Mel is eager to host the team’s first Psych-Up of the season, a mandatory all-team slumber party at which new players will receive their varsity jerseys, but this year, Coach has something else in mind. Instead of letting the girls take charge as usual, Coach sends them on an all-night odyssey, causing old tensions and resentments from the prior season’s humiliating finale to resurface, painful and raw.

Vivian’s novel unfolds through six players’ perspectives, including incoming freshman Luci (who is flattered and then outraged to be Coach’s accomplice), injured Phoebe and goalie Ali, who eventually reveals the role that racism played in the previous season’s heartbreaking loss. Creating different voices and backstories for this many primary characters isn’t easy, but Vivian does so with aplomb, giving each Wildcat a credible and memorable personality.

As the teammates gradually open up and share their experiences of Coach’s history of emotional manipulation and outright lies, they begin to imagine a new way to seize their own power and reclaim this important season for themselves. 

Both Dragon Hoops and We Are the Wildcats are stories in which happy endings are not foregone conclusions, and the “good guys” aren’t guaranteed to win—but that’s part of what makes them engrossing, right up to the final play.

You don’t need to know your layups from your line drives to love these YA books.

The buzzer-beating jump shot. The walk-off home run. The scrappy gang of underdogs who surprise themselves by making it to the conference final. We’ve seen all these sports stories…

NonfictionFictionYA FictionYABiography

The Hold List: Remarkable people in remarkable times

Feature by the editors of BookPage

These books highlight heroes who give courage to our souls—but most of all, they reveal the true, relatable humanity beneath their subjects’ seemingly supernatural heroism.

The Black Rose by Tananarive Due

The story of Madame C.J. Walker, the first self-made female millionaire, is one of the most remarkable American success stories. Her life inspired Netflix’s recent series “Self Made,” but I prefer The Black Rose, a gripping work of historical fiction by award-winning author Tananarive Due that chronicles Walker’s rags-to-riches rise. The first person in her family born free, Walker survived an abusive marriage and raised a daughter on a meager salary before launching a hair-care empire for black women. Ambitious and tenacious, Walker held fast to the idea that women like her deserved to feel beautiful and were willing to pay for it—despite naysayers all around, including famous men like Booker T. Washington. But money talks, and Walker’s success soon spoke for itself. She never forgot where she came from, giving back until her untimely death at 51.

—Trisha, Publisher

The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy by Mackenzi Lee

Mackenzi Lee followed The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue with another smashingly entertaining historical road trip, this time focused on aspiring doctor Felicity Montague. Entering the medical field was nearly impossible for an 18th-century woman (even a rich, white woman), and Lee strikes the perfect balance between inspiration and historical realism. This is not a simple “girl power” fable. Felicity confronts her own internalized misogyny as she comes to appreciate women whose dreams and personalities are different from her own but no less valid or deserving of respect. The characters in Lady’s Guide know they are outliers in their own time, but they press forward anyway, confident that they are blazing a path for the generations of women who will come after them.

—Savanna, Associate Editor

In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez

The Mirabal sisters of Julia Alvarez’s powerful novel may sound like the stuff of myth, but they were real. Four women, known as “the Butterflies,” joined an underground movement in the late 1950s against President Rafael Trujillo and became legends of resistance for the Dominican people. Three sisters died in the process, but they mobilized a nation to liberate itself from a decades-long dictatorship. Alvarez’s novel, like many feminist Latin American works, is rebellious even in its form, mixing timelines and genres in a polyphonic, metafictive masterpiece. During dark times, our impulse can be to protect ourselves before others, to stay silent out of fear. Stirring to its very core, Alvarez’s novel captures the crucial shift when a person decides to stand up for what they truly believe in, no matter the cost.

—Cat, Deputy Editor

The Life of Frederick Douglass by David F. Walker, illustrated by Damon Smyth & Marissa Louise

Few Americans are more remarkable than Frederick Douglass. To learn about his extraordinary life and work, you could read the autobiographies he wrote during his lifetime, or one of the thorough biographies that have been penned since his death. Or, for a totally different avenue into the history of abolition, you could read David F. Walker’s stunning graphic biography. Written in the voice of Douglass himself and illustrated with at times violent, at times beautiful scenes from Douglass’ life, this book offers a high-­level portrait that is more humanizing, vivid and heart-stirring than words alone could paint. When the world seems full of impassable obstacles, The Life of Frederick Douglass is a helpful reminder of how to knock them down.

—Christy, Associate Editor

Blood Water Paint by Joy McCullough

Blood Water Paint is an incredible true story. Artemisia Gentileschi, the daughter of an art dealer in Rome during the early 1600s and a talented painter in her own right, was attacked and raped by one of her father’s business associates. Defying convention, Gentileschi pressed charges against her attacker, risking everything—including her future as an artist—to seek justice for herself. Joy McCullough tells Gentileschi’s story in 99 poems, interspersed with the prose stories of Susanna and Judith, the biblical women depicted in two of Gentileschi’s best-known paintings. Gentileschi’s voice on the page is arresting, and her determination to prevail and carve out a life for herself as an artist, even in the face of horror and trauma, is unforgettable. You’ll never look at Gentileschi’s paintings the same way again.

—Stephanie, Associate Editor

Each month, BookPage staff share special reading lists comprised of our personal favorites, old and new. 

These books highlight heroes who give courage to our souls—but most of all, they reveal the true, relatable humanity beneath their subjects’ seemingly supernatural heroism.
RomanceAudioYA NonfictionYAMemoir

Audio: May 2020

Feature by Anna Zeitlin

A clear-eyed examination of racism, a rollicking coming-of-age memoir and a romance that’s truly for everyone top this month’s best audiobooks.

★ Stamped

In Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, Jason Reynolds uses his own voice to reinterpret Ibram X. Kendi’s Stamped From the Beginning for young readers. He traces the origins of racism in the United States back hundreds of years, to when Greek philosophy and the Bible were first used to justify enslaving Africans with dark skin. In an engaging storytelling style intended for a young audience but appealing to anyone, Reynolds delves into different periods in American history to uncover the racism hiding in plain sight and how it connects to today. He equips listeners with the tools to notice when something is racist and to be antiracist in their own lives. Reynolds’ narration has a poetic, hip vibe that keeps the book flowing and never feeling like homework. This would make a great listen for the whole family, especially when incorporating breaks for discussion.

Everything I Know About Love

Dolly Alderton’s Everything I Know About Love, a touching memoir of early adulthood’s hilarious highs and relatable lows, is a must-read for anyone who grew up learning to talk to a crush through instant messengers. Alderton breaks up the memoir’s chapters with lists of the absolute truths that she believes about love at different ages in her life; the lists charmingly contradict each other as she gains maturity and perspective. Alderton makes for a delightful narrator despite, as she mentions, hating her posh, British boarding school accent. Her wit shines through, especially when narrating an imaginary, over-the-top bachelorette party from hell.

Undercover Bromance

Undercover Bromance, written by Lyssa Kay Adams, delivers on the goofy action the title promises. The bromance book club is made up of Nashville’s movers and shakers, from the city’s top athletes to its elite businessmen, including nightclub owner Braden Mack. When Braden accidentally gets Liv fired from her dream job as a pastry chef, he helps her get revenge on her sexual harasser boss. The fun cast of characters includes a hippie farmer landlord, a Vietnam vet who’s a softy at heart and a Russian hockey player who tells it like it is. Narrator Andrew Eiden’s macho, tough-guy voice is suited to this testosterone-laden romance novel that fully embraces the form and proves that romance can be for anybody.

A clear-eyed examination of racism, a rollicking coming-of-age memoir and a romance that's truly for everyone top this month’s best audiobooks.
Science Fiction & FantasyYA NonfictionYAGraphic Novels & ComicsGraphic Memoirs

Draw us in: Images and prose entwine to create distinct atmospheres

Feature by Eric A. Ponce

Sometimes a story can be told solely through prose, but these two graphics make it clear that some stories need more than just powerful words. Addressing themes of death, grieving, angst and longing, these books find that love can survive loss, and that the world is perfused with wonder.

Tyler Feder confronts loss with a gentle smile in Dancing at the Pity Party: A Dead Mom Graphic Memoir. No stone is left unturned as Feder recounts her mother’s cancer diagnosis and reflects on her own ever-present grieving process. Feder walks us through her journey in hilarious, moving detail, and the illustrations enable us to experience her pain even more deeply.

When Feder and her sisters go to the mall to get “black mourning clothes,” they stumble into Forever 21, where 2000s-era neon dresses are comically lurid against their sullen faces. Feder jokes lovingly about this experience. She also shares insights into the grieving process that recall Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, as when she refuses to let anyone clean out her mother’s closet or when she admits to feeling like her mom is “just on a long trip somewhere far away.”

While Feder’s experience is uniquely Jewish American, including kriah ribbons and a shiva, her memoir looks beyond culturally specific ideas about death to face loss and grief on a personal level. With a mix of sadness, compassion and joy, Feder tells a touching story for anyone who has lost someone—or really, for anyone who loves someone.

Borja González’s A Gift for a Ghost is the ensorcelling, strange yet familiar tale of the intertwined fates of a 19th-century girl who longs to be a horror-poet and a 21st-century high school punk band. The story and images are reminiscent of something Kurt Cobain wrote about the Raincoats, another amateurish band: “Rather than listening to them, I feel like I’m listening in on them. We’re together in the same old house and I have to be completely still, or they will hear my spying from above, and if I get caught, everything will be ruined.” The novel creates a similar effect: The story unfolds slowly and endearingly, and you find yourself drawn in to its air of mystery and magic. 

As Teresa prepares for her poetry debut, and as bandmates Gloria, Laura and Cristina try their hands at songwriting, the story builds, with anxiety rising in all of their lives. As the four girls struggle to decide which sides of themselves to embrace, González’s artwork can be both spare and hyperfloral. We begin to wonder who the girls will become and what brought them all together in the first place. Once (some of) these questions are resolved and the story reaches its end, you can’t help but feel that you missed something, but that feeling is actually just a desire to read the book all over again.

Addressing themes of death, grieving, angst and longing, two new graphics find that love can survive loss, and that the world is perfused with wonder.
YA FictionYA

Beacons in the darkness

Feature by Jessica Wakeman

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.

Three novels represent characters who experience mental illness, addressing teen mental health with the gravity and honesty it deserves.

YA FictionYA

Kissing by the book

Feature by Norah Piehl

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.

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.

NonfictionFictionYA FictionYAAmerican History

Book Clubs: Immigration sagas

Feature by Julie Hale

In these stories of farewells and fresh starts, crafted with discernment and compassion, book clubs will find inspiration for vibrant discussion. 

Eitan Green, an Israeli surgeon, is involved in a fateful accident in Ayelet Gundar-Goshen’s suspenseful novel Waking Lions. During a late-night drive, Eitan hits and kills an Eritrean man and leaves the scene. When the victim’s wife tracks him down, she agrees to keep silent about the incident if Eitan promises to secretly treat undocumented Eritrean immigrants. Eitan agrees, but the decision leads him into a web of deceit. This razor-sharp examination of the plight of displaced peoples will give reading groups plenty to talk about as it delves into questions of integrity, loyalty and honesty.

For reading groups that enjoy science and social history, Daniel Okrent’s The Guarded Gate  focuses on the eugenics movement in early 20th-century America and how it helped bring about the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act, a law that prevented millions of Europeans from immigrating to the United States. This volume is a sobering, expansive study of discrimination and nativism, but it’s also eminently readable thanks to Okrent’s accessible writing style.

In Rakesh Satyal’s novel No One Can Pronounce My Name, Harit, a middle-aged Indian immigrant, lives with his troubled mother in the Cleveland suburbs. They are each mourning the death of Harit’s sister, Swati, in their own ways. Harit finds an unexpected friend in Ranjana, a fellow immigrant coping with her own losses by secretly writing paranormal romances. Satyal fashions a narrative tinged with melancholy and humor in this rewarding book, which engages with issues of gender roles and family ties.

American Street, Ibi Zoboi’s debut YA novel, tells the story of 16-year-old Fabiola, who leaves Haiti to settle with her mother, Valerie, in Detroit. When they arrive in the United States, Valerie is detained by customs officials. After being taken in by her American cousins, Fabiola grapples with an unfamiliar culture while trying to hold on to the traditions of home. Poignant but hopeful, American Street is a powerful examination of identity and kinship that’s enriched by Zoboi’s use of Haitian mythology. It’s an unforgettable account of the difficulties of assimilation and the experience of being an outsider.

In these stories of farewells and fresh starts, crafted with discernment and compassion, book clubs will find inspiration for vibrant discussion.
Science Fiction & FantasyNonfictionFictionYA FictionYAMemoirFamily Drama

8 ways to spend a summer day

Feature by BookPage contributors

When the sun is high and a summer afternoon stretches out before you with zero expectations, a great book—read for inspiration, thrills or pure enjoyment—is all you need.

★ Happy and You Know It

For readers who want the fun of reality TV but the heart of a good drama

Laura Hankin’s Happy and You Know It is the sort of novel that can suck a reader in and hold them until a whole day has passed, but it’s also a multidimensional story with riches revealed through close attention. After Claire is fired from her band, she’s trying to pay her way through New York City life, and a gig as a playgroup musician will have to do. The mothers in the group are wealthy and wellness-obsessed, but they easily incorporate Claire into their lives, and she welcomes the inclusion. As the playgroup moms work out their insecurities—within themselves and within their friendships—the metaphorical masks they wear begin to slip. With a light hand and a touch of mystery, Hankin’s debut explores feminism, class and the expectations placed on mothers. This is a romp with substance, consumed as easily as a beach read but offering ample opportunities for self-reflection.

—Carla Jean Whitley

Safecracker

For readers who want fiery pacing

Michael Maven is a New York thief who’s very good at his job and thinks that his next gig, stealing a rare coin from a rich guy’s apartment, should be easy. Then the job is interrupted by a mysterious woman, and within a matter of days, Michael finds himself at the center of a deadly web of drug cartels, crooked cops, the FBI and the woman who very nearly killed him—twice. Tight, thrilling and charming, Safecracker is a new take on the classic “crook-in-over-his-head” crime story, unfolding through Michael’s effortlessly cool narration. In prose that calls to mind the breeziest work of crime legends like Elmore Leonard, author Ryan Wick drives his narrative forward like a freight train. It’s expertly paced, witty and surprising, while also retaining a sense of the familiar that only comes from a love of the genre.

—Matthew Jackson

Editor’s note: Safecracker was originally scheduled for publication on June 2, 2020, but it has been canceled by the publisher. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

The Madwoman and the Roomba

For readers looking for the humor in housework

In The Madwoman and the Roomba, Sandra Tsing Loh finds comedy in the indignities and absurdities of contemporary life while chronicling her 55th year. In two earlier nonfiction books, Loh adjusted to motherhood and went through a rocky divorce. This time, Loh is happily divorced and happily post-menopausal but still recording her life with let-it-all-hang-out charm. She recalls her embarrassing, claustrophobic freakout at the March for Science and tries to unleash her inner midlife goddess while parenting two teenagers. She describes her efforts to improve her terrible front yard, hire a painter, understand her malfunctioning high-tech fridge and follow her new cookbook’s recipes. Loh’s tone is chatty and self-deprecating, like having a glass of wine or a long phone call with your favorite witty, goofy friend. Because the narrative is loosely structured, you can read straight through or just dip into an essay when the mood strikes. 

—Sarah McCraw Crow

★ The Obsidian Tower

For readers who believe that any season can be the season of the witch

In the kingdom of Morgrain, there is a castle. In that castle is a great black tower. And inside that tower, behind innumerable and impenetrable enchantments, is a door that should never be opened. Ryx, who has the power to kill anything she touches, is the Warden charged with keeping it safe. When a visiting mage ventures too close to the magic of the tower, Ryx finds herself at the heart of an international crisis. She must use all of her wits and talent to keep Morgrain, and the world, safe from unspeakable ruin. Like any good mystery, Melissa Caruso’s The Obsidian Tower slowly feeds the reader clue after clue, never fully revealing everything at once. But this book has moments of real pain and longing that have nothing to do with magic or towers. Not being able to have physical contact with anyone has changed Ryx, and the choices she makes to subvert or embrace this fact are beautiful and terrible—which makes her eventual confrontation with some very nasty magic all the more satisfying. 

—Chris Pickens

My Kind of People

For readers who find strength in community

Sky is only 10 years old, but she’s experienced as much pain and confusion as someone three times her age. Although she was abandoned at a fire station as a newborn, she found a home with her adoptive parents. Now she’s starting over again, and this time she’s old enough to be aware of the pain. Sky’s adoptive parents have died in a car crash, and their will designates that Leo, Sky’s father’s best friend from childhood, will become her guardian. Leo is torn up at the loss of his friend, and now he must create a loving home for Sky. Her presence sends Leo and his husband, Xavier, into a tailspin. In My Kind of People, novelist Lisa Duffy paints a portrait of a community of people trying to find out who they are—and with whom they can be themselves. As neighbors jump in to help raise Sky, or to weigh in on what Leo could do better, Sky and Leo wrestle with their understanding of their changing circumstances. Duffy’s story is sweet but never cloying, and she’s unafraid to depict uncomfortable circumstances as the tale unfolds.

—Carla Jean Whitley

★ Last Tang Standing

For readers who say they hate drama but actually love it

It is a truth universally acknowledged that mothers will meddle in their daughters’ love lives. For Andrea Tang, a successful 33-year-old lawyer in Singapore, that truism extends to her aunties, cousins and anyone else who can claim relation to her. What everyone wants to know is, when will she get married? After ending a long-term relationship, Andrea feels the pressure to find The One while also putting in as many billable hours as possible to secure a partnership in her law firm. Her friends offer support, but Andrea can’t stop thinking about Suresh, her officemate and competition for partner. He’s annoying, engaged to a beautiful but domineering Londoner and not at all Andrea’s type. Except that he’s exactly her type. Author Lauren Ho is a former legal adviser, and her debut novel is a blast. With a relatable, laugh-out-loud protagonist, Last Tang Standing is a near-perfect blend of Crazy Rich Asians and Bridget Jones’s Diary, yet it still feels wholly original.

—Amy Scribner

Look

For readers who miss their feminist film studies class

In Zan Romanoff’s YA novel Look, Lulu Shapiro has mastered Flash, a Snapchat-like app that shares her perfectly edited life with 10,000 followers. But a racy Flash, meant to be private, accidentally goes public, and now everyone has seen Lulu being intimate with another young woman. Her classmates think she just did it for attention, but Lulu is bisexual and fears what sharing this truth about herself could mean for her popularity. Then Lulu meets the beguiling Cass and her friend Ryan, a trust-fund kid refurbishing an old hotel. With no phones allowed at the hotel, Lulu experiences a social life less focused on carefully curated images. She feels like she can truly be herself—until an abuse of trust brings it all crashing down. Anyone who has engaged in content creation—even just photos on Instagram—will have a lot to chew on regarding the praise and scorn women experience based on how they depict themselves. The cast of characters is almost entirely teens, but older readers will take a lot from Look as well. Self-­commodification hardly started with Snapchat, after all.

—Jessica Wakeman

Rockaway

For readers ready to ride a wave of emotion

In 2010, following her divorce, Diane Cardwell finds herself shuffling listlessly through her life and work as a New York Times reporter. Casting about for an assignment, she heads out to Montauk, Long Island, and spies a group of surfers out in the shimmering surf. Transfixed by this group of men and women, she begins trekking out to Rockaway Beach from her Brooklyn apartment to take lessons and join her newfound troop. Cardwell dives into surfing, alternating between fear of failure and dogged determination. As she gains confidence and develops her own style, she moves to Rockaway Beach, buys a little cottage and a board and thrives in her new neighborhood. When Hurricane Sandy hits in 2012, she rides it out in Rockaway with some of her friends, and they emerge as an even more tightknit community. In Rockaway, Cardwell’s moving story washes over the reader with its emotionally rich portrayal of the ragged ways we can embrace our vulnerabilities in order to overcome them.

—Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

 

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this feature incorrectly stated that Lauren Ho is a former attorney.

When the sun is high and a summer afternoon stretches out before you with zero expectations, a great book—read for inspiration, thrills or pure enjoyment—is all you need.
NonfictionFictionYA FictionYANatureFamily Saga

The Hold List: Explore the great outdoors

Feature by the editors of BookPage

Beautiful vistas. Shocking greenery. Bright, airy calm. Nature is magnificent, but sometimes the bug bites, poison ivy and boot-staining mud are not. Here are five literary landscapes you can discover from the comfort of your couch.

A Girl of the Limberlost

The U.S. is full of landscapes that capture the imagination, but the ones that remain are only a fraction of what once existed. Gene Stratton-Porter has preserved one of these lost natural wonders, the Limberlost Swamp of Indiana, in her bestselling 1909 book, A Girl of the Limberlost. As lonely young Elnora Comstock roams the swamp to collect moth specimens, Stratton-Porter uses her keen naturalist’s eye to bring its eerie beauty, watery dangers (quicksand!) and unique fauna to life. She hoped the book would encourage conservation of the wetlands, which were being ravaged by oil rigs and drained for agriculture. Read this classic to immerse yourself in a lost world, then console yourself with the fact that, due to recent conservation efforts, a small portion of the swamp has begun to bounce back.

—Trisha, Publisher

A Wizard of Earthsea

Practically all of the important action in Ursula K. Le Guin’s iconic fantasy novel happens outdoors on the windswept seas and craggy islands of Earthsea. Le Guin’s mages skip along the enormous ocean in small boats pushed by winds that they command, or they transform into birds to fly from island to island. As her protagonist, Ged, travels from the harsh island of Gont to a school for wizards on the island of Roke and then embarks on a quest to hunt down a shadow creature, Le Guin treats readers to one stunning vista after another. My personal favorite is the island of Pendor, which was once a stronghold for pirates and outlaws before their vast treasure attracted the attention of dragons. Once the dragons took over the island, they used the towers of Pendor as glamorous perches before flying off to terrorize unsuspecting villagers. 

—Savanna, Associate Editor

Gathering Moss

Recently I have fallen back in love with moss, that ubiquitous, unexamined miniature landscape that is, rather surprisingly, absolutely everywhere—on the driveway and in sidewalk cracks, adorning tree trunks and hiding in the garden. It’s so small that it can easily become set dressing to the larger wonders of the forest, but through naturalist Robin Wall Kimmerer’s eyes, there is nothing more exciting or life-giving than a carpet of moss. In this loving series of personal essays, she is a gracious guide to the boundary layer where mosses flourish, blending scientific detail with poetic ruminations on her life spent observing these tiny rainforests. Her love of the mossy world is as buoyant as deep peat, and she leaves her readers with a profound sense of stewardship. If you’re like me, you’ll soon find any opportunity to stop and pet the moss.

—Cat, Deputy Editor

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Who better to deliver a shock to your stay-at-home system than Annie Dillard? Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is her nature writing masterpiece, full of all the scenery and savagery, tranquility and tragedy, mystery and miracle of the great outdoors—“beauty tangled in a rapture with violence,” as Dillard put it. This work of narrative nonfiction documents a year she spent exploring the natural world around her home in Virginia’s Roanoke Valley, through which the titular Tinker Creek runs. Dillard plays the part of pious sojourner, venerating monarch butterflies, muskrats, grasshoppers and pond scum in prose that is alternatingly lilting and electric. If summer’s monotony has dulled your senses, I recommend dipping into this iconic collection for a jolt of wonder.

—Christy, Associate Editor

Prodigal Summer

I read Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer for the first time one summer in Boston. I’d moved into an attic bedroom in a sprawling old house in Lower Allston, a neighborhood overrun with college students like myself. It had unfinished wood floors, mice and no air conditioning, so I often stayed up into the cooler hours of the morning reading, then caught a few hours of sleep before I had to head downtown for work. Kingsolver’s tale of the intersecting lives of humans and creatures in Appalachia was intoxicating. Reading it felt like falling under an enchantment—particularly since I was in the heart of a big city. Kingsolver explores the connections between humans and nature in many of her works, but this is the one I find myself returning to every year when the trees turn green and the sun shines warm.

—Stephanie, Associate Editor

Beautiful vistas. Shocking greenery. Bright, airy calm. Nature is magnificent, but sometimes the bug bites, poison ivy and boot-staining mud are not. Here are five literary landscapes you can discover from the comfort of your couch.

A Girl of the Limberlost

The U.S.…

YA FictionYA

A Pride parade for your bookshelf

Feature by Heather Seggel

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.

Three novels tell the stories of queer teens and celebrate all the ways that love keeps winning.
RomanceNonfictionFictionChildren's & YAYA FictionYATrue CrimeMiddle Grade

The Hold List: Crimes we can’t help but admire

Feature by the editors of BookPage

Generally we’re a law-abiding group, we promise. But something about Private Eye July makes us revel in bad behavior. These are some of our favorite crimes and criminals in literature.

Heresy

An all-female gang of Robin Hood-style outlaws in the Old West, robbing stagecoaches and seeking revenge on horseback? I’m in my boots and already out the door. In Melissa Lenhardt’s novel, the first daylight bank robbery in Colorado was not by Butch Cassidy in 1889, by rather by Margaret Parker and her Parker Gang in 1873. The women on Margaret’s ranch just want to make a home and care for their horses. But men, furious at their success, destroy everything, so the women take up a life of crime. They capitalize on being underestimated and then take what they want, only to use the ill-­gotten gains to support their ranch and town. As far as reckless, unrepentant outlaws go, Margaret is one of my favorites, making the most of a lawless West and then distributing the wealth to those who need it most. If you loved Netflix’s “Godless,” then this feminist Western is for you.

—Cat, Deputy Editor

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler 

When it comes to trespassing, Claudia and Jamie Kincaid really know how to make a crime count. Twelve-year-old Claudia wants to run away from home, but she knows she doesn’t have what it takes to make it in the wide world, with all its bugs and sun and other trifles. So she devises a plan to disappear in style, by sneaking into the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and living there with her younger brother until further notice. When I read this renowned middle grade novel for the first time (at age 31), I immediately related to Claudia’s poised practicality and fussy tastes. Why even bother breaking the law unless you’ll get to bathe in a marble fountain and sleep in an elaborate canopy bed? No matter your age, this childhood classic is sure to break and enter into your heart.

—Christy, Associate Editor

The Thief

I love a good con. Strictly speaking, the events that unfold in Megan Whalen Turner’s series opener, The Thief, are more of a con-heist hybrid, as Gen steals the king’s signet ring, gets caught when he boasts of having done so, is thrown in prison and is freed only under the condition that he steal something even more valuable on behalf of the king. But Gen has as much in common with successful con artists as he does with successful thieves. He’s patient and highly skilled at playing a very long game. He understands the power of misdirection, turning the expectations of others to his advantage repeatedly. The Thief’s best con, however, is on the reader, as Turner gradually reveals that nothing and no one in her story are what they seem. The first time I read it, I was, as they say, a total mark. It was the most enjoyable deception I’d ever experienced.

—Stephanie, Associate Editor

 

The Feather Thief

It’s easy to think of theft as a victimless crime: Items of financial value usually belong to people who can afford to part with them. But in The Feather Thief, Kirk Wallace Johnson writes about a real-life theft with an impact far beyond the financial. In 2009, Edwin Rist broke into a London museum to steal the skins of 299 rare birds. By the time Rist was arrested, more than half of the skins had been sold or stripped of their valuable feathers. Johnson’s quest to discover why leads him to a network of Victorian salmon fly-tying fanatics who’ll pay to pursue their esoteric hobby, as well as through the history of the birds, many of which were painstakingly preserved for 150 years before their ignominious end. A good crime story says something about the world: What do we value? What is worth protecting? Rist’s crime is a perfect, if heartbreaking, one, because of the answers Johnson finds.

—Trisha, Publisher

An Unnatural Vice

In K.J. Charles’ atmospheric Victorian romance, Justin Lazarus swindles his trusting clients out of their money by pretending to be a spiritualist. And while, yes, that frequently means taking advantage of people’s grief, it’s hard not to root for him given the desperate poverty of his background and the relative prosperity of his targets, not to mention his habit of taking in stray orphans, whom he in no way cares for, by the way—why on earth would you suggest such a thing? Justin’s love interest, idealistic journalist Nathaniel Roy, admits, in spite of himself, that to actually make people believe you can talk to the dead takes nerves of steel and a keen insight into human psychology. Charles puts readers in the same thrilling, uncomfortable place as Nathaniel: You know that what Justin is doing is wrong, but you also want to keep watching him do it.

—Savanna, Associate Editor

Generally we’re a law-abiding group, we promise. But something about Private Eye July makes us revel in bad behavior. These are some of our favorite crimes and criminals in literature.
YA FictionYA

Most likely to . . . become your new favorite YA author

Feature by BookPage contributors

We asked eight YA authors, first-timers and seasoned veterans alike, to talk about their new releases and reflect on their creative journeys.

THE FRESHMEN

Roseanne A. Brown

A refugee and a princess find themselves on a romantic, dangerous collision course in A Song of Wraiths and Ruin, a West Africa-inspired fantasy. Brown raises the stakes by exploring how we all have a responsibility to right the wrongs of injustice. (Click here to read the full review.)

What do you hope readers will love about A Song of Wraiths and Ruin?
The protagonists represent characters I wish I’d gotten to read when I was growing up. Their struggles are informed by the emotional roller coaster of my teen years, so I hope readers see themselves in these characters’ lows and triumphs.

How did you feel when you found out you were going to be published?
I got the call when I was living in Japan; my agent called me at 5 a.m. to break the news, and I was so delirious with sleep that I was half-convinced I was dreaming. As a black immigrant, the thought that I could actually get anything traditionally published had always felt about as likely as me becoming the first person on Mars. Some days, I wake up and it still doesn’t feel real.

A year from now, what impact do you hope A Song of Wraiths and Ruin will have made on readers?
It’s difficult to even imagine what the world might look like a year from now, but I hope that A Song of Wraiths and Ruin will help readers learn that they can draw their greatest strength from the parts of their identities the world has taught them to hate. I also hope the book helps them to know that healing from trauma is often a messy, painful process with no clear finish line, but it’s a journey that is always worth it.

Lora Beth Johnson

Andra wakes up after a long journey to a new planet and slowly puts together a horrifying truth: She’s been asleep for hundreds of years longer than she should have been. Goddess in the Machine offers a vision of how society, technology and language will be transformed over time that’s thoughtful and inventive but never weighs down the emotional urgency of Andra’s plight. (Click here to read the full review.)

What are you most proud of in Goddess in the Machine?
The dialect of some of the characters is my own rendition of a futuristic English, based on trends in linguistic evolution. It was difficult to develop and a challenge to write in, but it’s been amazing to experience early readers using it to communicate with me.

A year from now, what impact do you hope your novel will have made on readers?
It would be cool if readers were using my futuristic dialect in casual conversation! I also hope the book helps readers realize the power of their words—the way that language literally creates and re-creates the world around us.

How did you feel when you found out you were going to be published?
Honestly, I still don’t think it’s hit me. Probably one day, I’ll be perusing the shelves at my local bookstore and see my book and just start weeping.

Laura Wood

In the summer of 1929, Lou Trevelyan feels hemmed in by her small Cornwall town, under pressure to grow up and settle down, until she is swept into the intoxicating, glamorous world of the wealthy Cardew siblings. Wood creates an atmosphere in A Sky Painted Gold that readers can dive into headfirst. Lou’s whole world is tinted with an undercurrent of magic. (Click here to read the full review.)

What are you most proud of in A Sky Painted Gold?
I’m proud of how personal it is. I love Cornwall so much, and A Sky Painted Gold is a very heartfelt expression of that. I worked hard to try to capture the beauty and magic of the place, and the way it makes me feel. My family are Cornish and I included stories that my Nan told me. For example, my great-grandmother was called Midge, just like like Lou’s mother, and anecdotes from her life are woven through the story. It’s another way in which I feel close to it, a way that the story is a part of myself. It makes you very vulnerable as a writer, but I’m proud of that—it’s really the book of my heart.

What do you hope readers will love about the book?
Setting the book in the 1920s meant that I could go all out on the clothes and the music and the parties. It’s decadent, not just in the Gatsby–esque sense of the word, but in the pleasure it takes in small things, in warm seas and moonlit swims and the whisper of a silk dress.

How did you feel when you found out you were going to be published?
Stunned. I’d had the idea for such a long time, and it really is an amalgamation of all of my favorite things. I knew I would want to read it, but it’s a quiet book in a lot of ways—delicate, maybe a little old-fashioned—so I wasn’t sure anyone would want to publish it.

THE SOPHOMORES

Rory Power

In the small town where her mom grew up, Margot uncovers darkness lurking in the poisonous roots of her family tree. Whip-smart and suspenseful, Burn Our Bodies Down builds to a fantastically unsettling resolution. (Click here to read the full review.)

What are you most proud of in Burn Your Bodies Down?
I’m most proud of Margot, the main character. She’s grown up in an emotionally abusive household, so she has a particular mindset that is often at odds with what we expect and want from a thriller protagonist. Rather than always pushing for more answers, Margot often defaults to ignoring what’s going on around her, because she’s afraid of finding out something that will hurt her. Balancing that mindset with the needs of the story was tricky, and of everything in the book, I’m most proud of how that turned out.

What do you hope readers will love about the book?
I hope they’ll love getting to hang out in the town of Phalene. It was a joy to create this run-down farming town in the middle of nowhere, full of secrets and creepy cornfields.

How was writing your second book different than your first book?
Burn Our Bodies Down was a more difficult book to construct. With Wilder Girls, I took great care to cut my characters off from the world, which meant I could bring in speculative elements without having to consider any response from law enforcement or the media, but Burn operates on a larger scale and interacts with the world around it, which was entirely new to me.

What’s one of your favorite things you’ve heard from readers since your first book, Wilder Girls, was published?
I’ve been so lucky to receive a lot of really wonderful messages from readers, but I’m particularly fond of readers responding to the queer representation in the book. I know how much it’s meant to me to be able to see myself reflected in literature, so to be able to give that to a reader is an incredible feeling.

Liara Tamani

Carli and Rex have promising basketball careers ahead of them, but their whirlwind romance is challenged by loss, grief and the pressure to succeed. All the Things We Never Knew offers a raw, honest portrait of the bond between two teens on and off the court. (Click here to read the full review.)

What are you most proud of in All the Things We Never Knew?
I’m most proud that Carli and Rex’s love feels real. Experiencing love for the first time is such an overwhelming sensation. I remember feeling like every ounce of my teenage body was buzzing with it. But knowing the feeling and putting it into words are different. I had to dive deep into their psyches and find language to articulate the very specific love between Rex and Carli.

What do you hope readers will love about the book?
I hope readers will fall in love with Rex and Carli. The book alternates between their perspectives, so readers will get to know them both and see both sides of their first love. Carli is fiery; Rex is sensitive. They’re both deep thinkers who are dealing with family drama and pain. Their love journey is a messy, complicated one, but there’s lots of talking and ruminations along the way. In those shared exchanges and private reflections, I hope readers will come to know and care about Carli and Rex deeply.

How was writing this book different from writing your first book?
The process for writing my first book, Calling My Name, was meandering and exploratory. That novel begins when Taja, the main character, is 12 years old and ends when she’s 17, so it spans several years. It’s structured in vignettes and short stories that I wrote out of order. I didn’t outline at all and allowed the book to come together piece by piece. Writing All the Things We Never Knew was more straightforward. Its events only span a couple of months of Carli’s and Rex’s junior year, so the plot is much tighter. I started with an outline (which was super short, because I still like to give the characters space to make their own decisions), and I wrote it chronologically.

What’s one of your favorite things you’ve heard from readers since your first book was published?
Many teens have written me to say Calling My Name inspired them to be themselves, and every time, I’m filled with so much gratitude. There’s so much pressure for young people to fit in⎯really, for all of us to fit in. So many people sacrifice so much of themselves to feel like they belong. It’s hard to be completely free and face whatever judgement comes with it. It takes bravery, which is something that I’m constantly working on and trying to inspire with my words.

THE UPPERCLASSMEN

Tanaz Bhathena

After her parents are murdered by the king’s army, Gul’s desire for vengeance could destroy the kingdom—and with it, everyone she has come to care about. Hunted by the Sky is a medieval India-inspired fantasy that’s beautiful, brutal, fresh and feminist. (Click here to read the full review.)

What are you most proud of in Hunted by the Sky?
It’s in a completely different genre! I spent 10 years focusing on contemporary fiction. I’d dabble in fantasy, but I never had the courage to write a whole novel—until now.

What do you hope readers will love about the book?
I’m biased, but I love the book’s medieval India-inspired setting and I hope readers will love it too! I want them to be able to escape to a world of magic, romance and fierce women warriors.

How has your readership impacted your writing over the course of your career?
My readership definitely keeps me on track about ensuring accurate representation in my books—especially about communities I don’t belong to. But other than that, I find readers very open to the stories I want to tell. Sometimes, I have to remind myself that I am my first reader and if I don’t like the story, no one else will.

What themes have you carried forward from your previous books into this new novel?
Love and courage are common themes in all my novels, and they’re usually explored through flawed main characters. Gul is a fierce girl who loves deeply, but her mission of avenging her parents’ murders sets off a chain of events with disastrous consequences. There are warrior women with strong bonds of sisterhood, but they are also thieves who  engage in vigilante justice. Love and courage bring out the best and the worst in us, even when we are aiming for great things.

Lori M. Lee

When Sirscha’s best friend, Saengo, is killed in battle and Sirscha unexpectedly resurrects her, the awakening of Sirscha’s magical powers forces the two to undertake a dangerous journey to the Dead Wood and its ruler, the ancient and mysterious Spider King. The horrors faced by the heroines of Forest of Souls echo their inner conflicts as they confront terrifying spirits and bloody battles as well as fear, prejudice and loss. (Click here to read the full review.)

What are you most proud of in Forest of Souls?
I’m super proud of the journey my main character Sirscha takes in Forest of Souls. Many of her insecurities were modeled after my own at a young age, and her path towards self-acceptance and self-worth is one I hope resonates with others as well.

What do you hope readers will love about the book?
I want the story to linger inside readers. I hope they will love the friendship between Sirscha and Saengo. It was really important to me to portray a friendship between girls that was unconditional and sweet but also real and complex. I hope that Sirscha’s path toward self-acceptance resonates as well.

When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
I wanted to be a writer from a very early age. I’ve always loved stories because they hold a very specific escapist kind of magic. Writing was my way of claiming that magic for myself.

Editor’s note: In the print issue of BookPage, we placed Lori M. Lee under the ‘Freshmen’ header, incorrectly suggesting that Forest of Souls is Lee’s first YA book. Lee is the author of two previous YA novels, Gates of Thread and Stone and The Infinite.

Rachel Lynn Solomon

On the last day of high school, Rowan is determined to beat her nemesis, Neil, in the annual senior class scavenger hunt. Today Tonight Tomorrow is a puzzle, a nostalgic reflection on a rite of passage and a delicious romance. (Click here to read the full review.)

What are you most proud of in Today Tonight Tomorrow?
When I started writing Today Tonight Tomorrow, I knew the book would take place over 24 hours on the last day of senior year. I also knew I didn’t want to include lengthy flashback scenes, because I wanted it to feel like a snapshot of this one day that changes everything. I decided to scatter ephemera throughout the book—emails, lists, receipts and other tidbits—to enhance the relationship. I’m proud that I was able to tell a full story, a full romance, with this short timeline. My publisher did an incredible job with the design of the book, and the final version feels like a scrapbook of Rowan’s high school journey.

What do you hope readers will love about Today Tonight Tomorrow?
The slow burn of the rivals-to-lovers relationship! Rowan begins the book despising Neil—though readers will probably pick up on some hidden attraction—and gradually discovers the person she’s spending the last day of high school with is completely different from the nemesis whose demise she spent four years plotting. Over the course of 24 hours that take them all over the city, they share secrets and fears and a slow dance in an empty library. “Just kiss already” is what I hope readers will think as they turn the pages.

How has your readership impacted your writing over the course of your career?
It’s made me so wildly grateful. When I saw the reaction my first book received from Jewish readers, I made a vow to myself that I’d only write Jewish protagonists moving forward. Some of my characters are religious and some aren’t, but they are all Jewish, and that is a vital piece of their identity, as well as mine. There are still so few Jewish characters in contemporary YA novels, and I feel very proud to contribute to this small but important category.

What themes have you carried forward from your previous books into this new novel?
Every female protagonist I write is ambitious and full of yearning, with all the messiness that comes with wanting something that may be just out of reach. I think that sense of yearning appears in all my books in slightly different ways—yearning for another person, a dream school, a future career. In Today Tonight Tomorrow, Rowan wants to write romance novels, a passion she hides because she’s been judged in the past. Alongside her real-life romance, her story is about gaining the confidence to embrace what she loves without shame.

 

Photo credits: Roseanne A. Brown photo by Ashley Hirasuna; Lora Beth Johnson photo by Kailan Sindelar; Rory Power photo by Henriette Lazaridis; Liara Tamani photo by Seneca Shahara Brand; Tanaz Bhathena photo by Nettie Photography; Lori M. Lee photo by PrettyGeeky Photography; Rachel Lynn Solomon photo by Sabreen Lakhani.

We asked eight YA authors, first-timers and seasoned veterans alike, to talk about their new releases and reflect on their creative journeys.

THE FRESHMEN

Roseanne A. Brown

A refugee and…

FictionAudioYA FictionYAMemoir

Audio: August 2020

Feature by Anna Zeitlin

Narrators make an audiobook, and this month’s selections are standouts, including a husband-and-wife duo telling their own parenting story.

★ The New One

Comedian Mike Birbiglia describes his reluctant journey to fatherhood in his funny and brazenly honest The New One (5 hours), a truly special audiobook interspersed with short poems by his wife (and co-narrator), J. Hope Stein. Birbiglia shares his doubts, fears and joys experienced while transitioning from a happily child-free existence to the mysteries of caring for a baby, and Stein’s sweet interludes capture the experience of new motherhood with playfulness and vulnerability. Birbiglia has written and starred in multiple comedy specials and movies, and his narration has the feel of an extended comedy set. You’ve probably never heard a more creative reading of a book’s acknowledgments, as Birbiglia and Stein tag-team their thank-you’s.

Sex and Vanity

Paying homage to A Room With a View, Sex and Vanity (9.5 hours) uses a captivating story of young love to deliver a hilarious and astute commentary on the upper classes. Nobody name-drops and describes designer fashion quite like Kevin Kwan, whose latest novel opens at a lavish destination wedding on the idyllic island of Capri and explores themes of Asian American identity and the pressure to live up to familial expectations. Narrator Lydia Look has her work cut out for her with this jet-setting cast, and she brings dimension and heart to every voice, from American heiresses with British lilts to well-traveled Chinese characters with Australian-­tinged accents.

Clap When You Land

Novel-in-verse Clap When You Land (5.5 hours), written and narrated by Elizabeth Acevedo and co-narrated by Melania-­Luisa Marte, is about two teenage half sisters who’ve never met. Camina lives in the Dominican Republic, and Yahaira lives in New York City. Everything changes when their father suddenly dies on his way to visit his Dominican family. Each girl processes her grief and comes to a new understanding of who their father really was, all while dealing with typical teenage drama. As the story switches between the sisters’ perspectives, both narrators deliver natural, evocative performances that flow with the rhythmic verse and are never constricted by the form. The result is utterly original, heavy but ultimately hopeful.

Narrators make an audiobook, and this month’s selections are standouts, including a husband-and-wife duo telling their own parenting story.

Sign Up

Stay on top of new releases: Sign up for our newsletter to receive reading recommendations in your favorite genres.

Sign up now

Recent Reviews

All Reviews

Author Interviews

More Interviews

Recent Features

All Features