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.

It’s hard enough to be a teenager without having to deal with, say, ghosts, disappearances or murder. In this trio of YA mysteries, smart and determined girls do whatever it takes to solve the case.

When All the Girls Are Sleeping

Never has a supply closet been so ominous as in Emily Arsenault’s slow-burning gothic mystery, When All the Girls Are Sleeping. The site of said closet is Dearborn Hall, the senior dorm at Windham-Farnswood Academy. Until last year, the closet was room 408, home to the mercurial Taylor Blakey. In the wee hours of a frigid February night, screams echoed down the hallway, and Taylor’s lifeless body was found on the ground beneath her open window. Since that night, Taylor’s former room has become a taboo space, intentionally ignored and never entered . . . or has it? 

Haley Peppler, Taylor’s erstwhile best friend, isn’t so sure. She’s skeptical of rumors about the ghostly Winter Girl who supposedly haunts Dearborn Hall. But lately, unexplainable things have been happening around the closet (its window left open during a freeze, whispers emanating from within), and Haley is starting to think there really could be something supernatural afoot.

When Haley receives a strange video filmed the night of Taylor’s death, it heightens her unease and spurs her to investigate: Is there another explanation for Taylor’s demise than the flimsy story the school offered? As Haley researches Dearborn Hall’s colorful history, Arsenault does an excellent job of unfurling a centuries-old mystery within the context of this contemporary tale. 

Carefully timed flashbacks and revelations make for a tantalizingly suspenseful read. Using newspaper archives, social media and interviews, Haley unearths plausible motives and suspicious sorts aplenty, contributing to the book’s atmosphere of increasing dread. As the anniversary of Taylor’s death looms, a thought-provoking undercurrent of class conflict and unresolved anger adds urgency to Haley’s quest for the truth. When All the Girls Are Sleeping is a spooky and compelling examination of what truly haunts us.

That Weekend

On prom weekend, Claire Keough and her closest friends, couple Kat and Jesse, head up to a cabin in the Catskills to celebrate their entry into adulthood. It should be a fun, secret trip, but when Claire wakes up in a forest clearing alone and seriously injured, That Weekend becomes the most definitive event of her life thus far. Kat and Jesse are missing, and due to Claire’s head trauma, the last 36 hours are a blank. It’s a horrific dilemma: “All that matters is what happened on that mountain. The only important information is what I can’t remember.” 

This dramatic and terrifying turn of events is just the tip of the iceberg in this twisty, fast-paced mystery. Kat and Claire take turns telling the inventive story, which moves to and fro in time. The question of motive is at the heart of the story, which offers readers a rich mine of human behavior to ponder as characters crack under the stress of the weekend’s aftermath. Kat’s wealthy, powerful family tries to take control, the FBI gets involved and a Nancy Grace-esque journalist seems determined to portray Claire as a villain. The resultant media attention coupled with her nagging self-doubt compel Claire to conduct her own investigation in hopes of regaining control over her reputation, emotions and future. As we draw nearer to the truth of that fateful weekend getaway, author Kara Thomas (2018’s The Cheerleaders, et al.) expertly layers plenty of reasons to suspect almost everyone. Whodunit lovers will be delighted.

Lies, betrayals and pulse-pounding moments abound as Claire questions whether she can ever trust or even know anyone. The book’s shocking ending will surely cause readers to look upon innocuous things in their lives (friends, family, weekend jaunts) with sharp eyes.

The Box in the Woods

Readers who heaved sad sighs upon reaching the end of Maureen Johnson’s The Vanishing Stair, the final book in her Truly Devious trilogy, will be thrilled to learn that smart, funny teen sleuth Stevie Bell is back in The Box in the Woods.

It’s summertime, and Stevie is home from Ellingham Academy, the boarding school where she solved a 1930s cold case. That amazing feat made her famous for a time, but now she’s pondering what’s next and making the best of a deli job where the customers feel “entitled to her entire soul as she [gets] them ham.” 

She needn’t ponder for long. Tech bro CEO Carson Buchwald makes Stevie an intriguing proposition. He recently purchased Camp Sunny Pines, formerly Camp Wonder Falls, the site of an unsolved murder committed in 1978 that devastated the town of Barlow Corners. Carson intends to make a podcast and documentary about the case, and he wants Stevie to investigate. She can even bring her friends Janelle and Nate, and they’ll all work as counselors while Stevie attempts to solve the brutal crime.

As the story alternates between the present day and the 1970s, Johnson offers funny vignettes of summer-camp life and context for the deaths of the murdered camp counselors—locals whose family and friends still live in town. Readers will root for the irrepressible Stevie, who thrills to tracking down clues. Her romantic relationship is realistic and sweet, and her kindness toward the still-grieving residents of Barlow Corners is touching.

As Stevie fits pieces of the past together, the danger lurking in Barlow Corners emerges and creates irresistible tension, particularly after another murder happens mid-investigation. Can she find the truth before someone else meets an untimely end? The Box in the Woods is a gripping and complex mystery bolstered by its commentary on the popular fascination with true crime—and its empathetic reminder to consider the perspectives of those they leave behind in their wake.

The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat and the scourge of sexism are front and center in these stories of talented, fierce girls who find collective power on and off the field. These powerful YA novels celebrate sports, friendship and the pursuit of justice. Read them and cheer!

At 16 years old and 6 feet, 2 inches tall, Mara Deeble has a few chips on her well-muscled shoulders, thanks to the suppressed anger she wrangles every day in the affecting, funny and timely Like Other Girls by Britta Lundin, a writer on the CW show “Riverdale” and author of 2018’s Ship It.

Mara’s got a three-pronged strategy to escape her conservative rural Oregon hometown. Step 1: Win a basketball scholarship. Step 2: Go to college in Portland. Step 3: Come out. For now, however, the pressure of her all-important plans and the time it’s taking to implement them is wearing her down. So, too, are her mother’s insistence that she attend church clad in a dress and heels and her frustration at having crushes she knows she can never act on.

To top it all off, Mara gets booted from her beloved basketball team for fighting, and Coach Joyce says she can’t return unless she succeeds on another team—sans violence. Mara scornfully deems volleyball too girly, what with all the hair ribbons and giggling, so she joins the football team instead. Her brother, Noah, and her BFF, Quinn, are on it, and the three of them have been playing together since childhood. What could go wrong?

Well. She’s spent years acting like just another one of the guys, so as Mara begins to actually excel on the gridiron, she’s surprised when her teammates’ sexism turns on her with full, resentful force. Even worse, four volleyball girls—including Mara’s frenemy, Carly, and crush, Valentina—join the team. Suddenly Mara’s a role model whether she likes it or not. (Reader, she does not.) 

A newcomer to town named Jupiter, who is an older, out lesbian, helps Maya reframe some of her own biases. She offers empathy even as she notes that the way Maya’s mother gatekeeps femininity is not all that different from how Mara stereotypes the volleyball girls. Jupiter also serves as a lovely, hope-inspiring example of what life could be like for Mara and her queer classmates someday.

Along with suspenseful and exciting gameplay, Like Other Girls features a winning mix of coming-of-age revelations, fun romantic subplots and thought-provoking musings on what it really means to be comfortable with yourself as part of a family, a community and a team.

Like Mara, high school junior and field hockey star Zoe Alamandar has a plan in Dangerous Play. She’ll lead her team to New York state field hockey championships victory, impress a scout from and get a full ride to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and bid her central New York hometown a hearty farewell.

After a summer of training the team with co-captain Ava at her side, Zoe’s feeling pretty great about her chances for success. Her teammates are united in their shared goal. She’s had fun working at her uncle’s ice cream shack with her best friend, Liv. Her dad has been dealing with lingering pain from a work accident but has been more upbeat lately. Zoe might even get up the nerve to talk to her crush, a boy named Grove.

In Dangerous Play, debut author Emma Kress demonstrates with devastating realism just how quickly things can change. When Zoe is sexually assaulted at a party, her optimism and confidence are crushed under the weight of PTSD, and her bright “fockey”-filled future now seems impossibly far away.

Kress, who has worked as a sexual violence peer counselor, writes in her author’s note that she “wanted to examine what happens to a group of girls and their community when rape culture goes unchecked.” She has created a memorable portrait of a girl who struggles with her new reality as emotions roll over her like so much rough surf.

But what if the team could prevent the same thing from happening to other girls? Vengeance takes center stage as a new mission generates excitement and controversy among the girls. They’re an adventurous bunch (parkour is a beloved team hobby), but how far is too far? And who gets to decide what equals justice?

Dangerous Play celebrates female friendship with wit, heart and plenty of pulse-pounding field hockey action as the championship game draws ever closer. Readers will root for Zoe, her teammates and their families as they strive to find common ground: “We’re all strands of yarn and gradually . . . we knit together and become something. Something bigger.”

The novel in verse is experiencing a bit of a renaissance in children’s and YA literature. Writers including Kwame Alexander, Elizabeth Acevedo, Jason Reynolds, Candice Iloh, Jasmine Warga and Joy McCullough have garnered both critical acclaim and commercial success. These two YA novels feature teenage narrators for whom the carefully chosen words of poetry hold the key to self-discovery.

The title and cover of Tina Cane’s first YA book, Alma Presses Play, set the scene immediately: Portable cassette players and big headphones are the technology of the day as 13-year-old Alma and her Jewish Chinese family ring in the new year of 1982 in New York City.

For Alma, eighth grade and the following summer are a time when “there’s a lot going on / but also nothing at all.” She ponders her possibly romantic feelings for her neighbor Miguel, gets her first period, dodges her parents’ increasingly frequent arguments and misses a friend who moves away. Along the way, Alma’s guidance counselor, Ms. Nola, encourages her to write down her feelings about race, gender and life in her neighborhood. Plus there’s candy to eat and share—Tootsie Rolls and Pop Rocks and Twizzlers—and music for every mood, from Stevie Wonder and Blondie to David Bowie and the Pretenders.

The most noticeable feature of Alma Presses Play is the way Cane arranges Alma’s words on the page. Most lines consist of blocks of words set apart by white space, which allows readers to inhale between each phrase and makes Alma’s words feel breathy, immediate and authentic. Lists, letters, dictionary-style definitions and outlines break up the pace. Cane sprinkles in details of life in the 1980s such as mixtapes, Atari video game systems and Judy Blume novels, as well as the ever present question of what, exactly, the plural of Walkman is.

The Greek and Roman mythology that Alma studies in school—especially the character of Janus, the god of transitions, and stories of female protagonists such as Helen and Pandora—provides an ongoing lens through which Alma makes sense of her life. Cane offers multiple, sometimes contradictory versions of these myths, enabling Alma and the reader to wrestle with the stories’ alternating messages of women’s power and powerlessness. “Even though fiction is made-up / it contains a certain kind of truth," Alma muses, a fitting description of Cane's writing. As Alma makes decisions about school, relationships and even the city she wants to live in, it’s wonderful to watch her realize that she can set her life to the music that she chooses.

Two years ago, Moth’s parents and brother were killed in a car crash, leaving an emotionally and physically scarred Moth to live with her aunt. Despite being an elite, talented dancer, Moth vows that she will never dance again: It “feels too joyful, too greedy now.” Moth wishes that she had learned more Hoodoo practice from her grandfather, who promised before he died that he would “never leave [her] trapped—defenseless.”

None of the other Black kids at her mostly white school want to be friends, but soon Moth meets Sani, who also feels out of place living with his mother’s white family after his Navajo father left, and whose depression stops him from singing and playing the music that once brought him joy and meaning. Together, they depart on a cross-country road trip, visiting historical sites where enslavement and genocide underly white prosperity, exploring moth-related metaphors for growth and maybe even starting to fall in love. Will they find the courage to break out of their cocoons and emerge in new forms?

If you think you know where this story is going, think again. Me (Moth) will surprise you.

As in Alma Presses Play, the placement and alignment of words on the page plays a key role in the storytelling of Me (Moth). Line spacing varies, and some lines are only one or two words long. Even punctuation is unusual: Ampersands replace standard conjunctions, and names often appear in parentheses even when meanings are otherwise clear (“my aunt (Jack)” or “my mom (Meghan)”). Author Amber McBride rhymes occasionally (“the accident that split / our car like a candy bar”), drawing attention to the sounds of words, and her imagery is often tactile and tangible (“the choreography is choppy water instead of wind blowing / through a field of wheat”).

Moth engages in Hoodoo practices like lighting candles, burying significant objects and leaving offerings of food to ancestral spirits in the hopes of shifting odds in her favor. She also matches Sani’s Navajo creation stories with traditional Hoodoo stories of her own. “All stories have ghosts,” Moth tells Sani, and she’s right. In this brilliant novel, the past haunts the present in places where history, memory and spirituality intertwine.

Coming-of-age goes supernatural in three spellbinding YA books featuring teen witches with amazing abilities and major magic. Toil, trouble and the curses of adolescence are no match for their power!

Edie in Between

In Laura Sibson’s Edie in Between, Edie Mitchell treasures the silver acorn pendant her mother gave her, but she avoids nearly every other aspect of her heritage. Edie comes from a long line of witches, but the 17-year-old considers magic something to be avoided rather than embraced.

Since her mother’s recent death, Edie has been living with her grandmother, GG, in the small town of Cedar Branch, where she refuses to touch the herbs and small bones hanging in the kitchen or interact with the inquisitive ghosts of her ancestors who like to float around the houseboat they share with a cat named Temperance. Her mother is a ghostly presence, too, but Edie won’t chat with her like GG does; she’s “a constant reminder of what I’ve lost.”

Edie manages her longing for her former Baltimore home and her uncertainty about the future by going on daily runs with her new friend, Tess. But when a threatening force is accidentally roused, Edie’s reluctance to embrace magic becomes a liability. She must get up to speed on her powers before something terrible befalls her and those she cares about—including the beautiful and appealing Rhia, an aspiring witch who’s delighted to share with Edie what she’s learned about magic thus far.

The discovery of her mom’s old journal proves pivotal to Edie’s rushed education. Each entry hints at something Edie must find or do and opens a window into her mother’s life before she became pregnant. Sibson (The Art of Breaking Things) draws the past into the present with empathy and skill, respecting the pain of Edie’s grief while allowing her to know her mother in a way she might not have otherwise.

Edie in Between is a winning portrait of a girl’s evolution from embarrassment to openly embracing what makes her different, including celebrating her magical kinship with the witches who came before her.

The Witch Haven

When 17-year-old seamstress Frances Hallowell discovers her powers in The Witch Haven, she is horrified, relieved and hopeful. It’s 1911 in New York City, and after a violent attack on her life, Frances is appalled to realize she may have killed her attacker with her emotions. Thankfully, two nurses suddenly appear on the scene and whisk her away to Haxahaven Sanitarium, helping her avoid police suspicion and catapulting her into an astonishing new chapter of her life.

That’s because the nurses are witches and Haxahaven isn’t a medical facility. Instead, it’s a 200-year-old school for the magical, complete with dramatic architecture, noisy dining hall and imperious headmistress. Now that Frances’ powers have been awakened, Haxahaven will help her use them for good.

And that’s where the hopefulness comes in, as magic holds both the promise of a better future and the solution to a more immediate problem: Can Frances’ new powers help her find out what happened to her brother, William, who was found dead in the East River four months ago? Her grief is ever-present—“like a punch to the gut fifty times a day”—as is her desire to solve his murder and prevent others from suffering as he did.

Debut author Sasha Peyton Smith has created a compelling character in Frances. She’s smart and often funny, impulsive and occasionally frustrating as she makes decisions born of naivete and desperation, often with new friends Maxine and Lena in tow. The arrival of William’s friend Finn offers a way for Frances to learn meaningful magic (disappointingly, Haxahaven focuses on housekeeping-centric spells) and to investigate William’s death. There’s romantic potential between them, too, but Finn belongs to a gentlemen’s club full of power-hungry wizards. Should she judge him by the company he keeps?

The Witch Haven is an immersive excursion into early 20th-century New York City. Beneath the grit and darkness of the period, Smith layers in a supernatural underworld that intrigues Frances as much as it endangers her. The result is an atmospheric and mystical adventure that offers a realistic exploration of grief and a memorable take on coming-of-age tropes.

Bad Witch Burning

Katrell Davis suffers greatly in debut author Jessica Lewis’ Bad Witch Burning, enduring wrenching emotional pain, violent beatings and overwhelming exhaustion. Even so, the 16-year-old stubbornly insists on survival even when her options are meager and dangerous. She works 30 hours a week at a burger joint, trying to pay the rent and bills for the decrepit townhouse where she lives with her neglectful mother and her mother’s abusive boyfriend, Gerald. She has a side gig, too: Using her magical powers, she conjures up her clients’ dead relatives, even though it causes her physical pain.

Her best friend, Will, loves to chat with her late grandma Clara, who warns Katrell that she must stop her seances: “You’ll burn down not only yourself, but everyone and everything around you.” Katrell pays Clara no mind; she’s got work to do. But when her hours at the burger joint are cut and Gerald kills her dog, Katrell’s anguish and rage burn hotter than ever, leading her to discover an even more powerful ability than merely communing with the dead. So what if people are crawling out of their graves and walking around? It’s a huge risk, but Katrell will figure it out, and she’ll monetize it.

A series of resurrections earns her more cash than she’s ever had—but more attention, too. As threatening types close in and Katrell realizes her powers aren’t completely under her control, Lewis’ story becomes an even wilder ride, its horror tinged with the darkest of humor as Katrell’s life hangs in the balance.

Bad Witch Burning is a powerful debut, a moving gift of a story from a writer who, per an author’s note included with advance editions of the book, worked through her own valid anger and emerged stronger on the other side to create a book “for girls who need to scream but smile instead.” It’s an exciting, harrowing supernatural tale filled with thrills, poignancy and heart.