Della Lloyd’s family has drawn their magic from the Bend, a stretch of river and woodland known to locals as Wood Thrush Nature Park, for generations. Recently, however, something has gone terribly wrong with the woods and their magic that Della can’t explain. Almost a year ago, a spell left her mother cursed to be transformed into a monstrous river siren each night, and now a string of girls has disappeared in the park. 

Among them is Rochelle Greymont, whose sister, Natasha, will stop at nothing to find her. While Natasha suspects Rochelle’s abusive boyfriend, Jake, of foul play, Della secretly worries her bloodthirsty mother might be the real culprit. Natasha’s anger and desperation lead her to beg Della for magical assistance in tracking down Rochelle, but neither girl is prepared for the terrible secrets their search will unearth. 

Erica Waters’ second novel (after 2020’s Ghost Wood Song) is a richly atmospheric mystery that isn’t afraid to delve deep into the darkness of its premise, and the Bend provides a perfect backdrop for its story. It’s a foreboding place, steeped in a long history of violence and filled with creatures that are not what they seem to be. Even Della, who loves the Bend and feels connected to the rich plant life it harbors, can’t ignore the threat its increasingly twisted magic poses. 

While both Della and Natasha are driven by the need to protect the people they love, Waters never shies away from the harsher sides of her heroines. “I’d kill a hundred park visitors myself before I’d let my momma die,” Della admits early on, while Natasha wants Jake to suffer for how he treated her sister as much as she wants him to confess. Waters gives Della’s and Natasha’s feelings of rage, grief and fear plenty of space to seethe without judgment. The result is a cathartic portrait of two girls’ anger toward a world whose cruelty and injustice forced them to fight back. 

Full of dangers both magical and mundane, The River Has Teeth delivers ferociously good thrills.

“My life is small and simple, but it’s a better one than I ever thought I’d have,” says Cash, the protagonist of Jeff Zentner’s fourth novel, In the Wild Light. After his best friend, Delaney, discovers a new bacteria in a local cave, she becomes a scientific sensation and nabs a scholarship to a fancy New England boarding school. There’s a catch though: She won’t go without Cash. 

Delaney is desperate to leave their small, opioid-ravaged town of Sawyer, Tennessee. But Cash’s guilt at leaving his ailing Papaw behind and his insecurity about cutting it at a private school initially cloud any visions he might have of a grander life.  

Zentner’s signature poetic prose is in full effect as he crafts sentences that read like sweet tea tastes and cotton feels. The gorgeous writing reflects the inherent romance of Cash’s new life on campus, where he forges new relationships with a girl who teaches him about love, a boy who shows him the value of prayer and a teacher who helps him discover the gift of poetry, which he comes to rely on as a salve for life’s problems. Frankly, Zentner’s writing is romantic because his story demands it. Poetry, the divine, science and, yes, even quiet porches in podunk Appalachian towns—this is the stuff of passion and worship.

Every rose, however, has its thorns, and In the Wild Light’s are particularly sharp. Its romance is balanced by tragedy and grief, which keep the story grounded in reality and build enough tension to keep things from veering into the saccharine. The darkness that surrounds Cash and Delaney is enormous. Candid discussions of addiction and death by overdose abound, and a scene of attempted sexual assault is a shock to the system. 

In the Wild Light is a love letter to possibility. Like the hero of the Pixar film Ratatouille who learns that “anyone can cook,” Cash (though not a rat, but certainly someone who feels like an outsider) learns that our creative impulses are an essential part of what we need to survive and heal. Zentner, who, like Cash, calls Tennessee home, asserts that anyone, even kids from the rural South with unremarkable pedigrees and pasts scabbed over after trauma, can live beautiful lives full of love. In an author’s note included with advance editions, Zentner says every book he writes is a love story. You can tell.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Discover how In the Wild Light author Jeff Zentner tricked his publisher into publishing his poetry.

In 1930s England, Bea’s parents are determined that she should become a proper lady, but she’d rather be studying insects. So when she mortifies her parents yet again (in a dinner scene that involves a discussion of the mating habits of glowworms, the local vicar and the word fecundity), they send her to Italy so her strict Uncle Leo can set her straight. 

Bea arrives to discover that her uncle’s fiancée, Filomena, has turned his once stuffy villa into an artists’ haven. Rather than polishing her manners, Bea will spend her summer studying art with Ben, an obnoxious though decidedly handsome painter. In an effort to keep Ben’s ego in check and to give Bea a taste of the romance she craves—in the interest of scientific inquiry, of course—friends dare Bea and Ben to start up a summer fling, but it soon becomes clear that they’re both in for far more than they bargained for.

Under a Dancing Star is an effervescent retelling of Much Ado About Nothing, in which author Laura Wood transplants Shakespeare’s Beatrice and Benedick to an artists’ colony in Tuscany. There, young Bea is encouraged to explore her passions under the watchful but mischief-minded eyes of her new friends.

Wood’s second YA novel resurrects the dazzle that made her first, 2020’s A Sky Painted Gold, such a gem. Readers will be immersed in the electric heat of an Italian summer, surrounded by vibrant characters and inspired by their free-flowing conversations and progressive ideals. 

Although Wood treats the political tensions in Italy on the eve of World War II seriously, the novel’s primary focus is Bea’s personal journey. In the beginning, she’s a witty and intelligent girl who’s unhappy with the status quo but uncertain how to define her ambitions. Over the course of her transformative summer, it’s heartening to see Bea’s evolution into a self-assured young woman who is determined to chart her own course. And if readers fall just a little bit in love with Ben in the meantime, well, who could blame them?

Magic is rare and forbidden in the kingdom of Kiata. Most people, including the emperor, associate it with demons and danger, so Princess Shiori keeps her magical abilities carefully hidden. But when her nerves about her impending betrothal lead to a slip-up, Shiori’s stepmother, Raikama, notices. The two were close when Shiori was a child, but now they watch one another warily until Shiori discovers that Raikama is also hiding a secret. 

After Shiori reveals the secret to her six older brothers, Raikama curses them, transforming the princes into cranes, then lays an even more cruel curse on Shiori: A magical bowl on her head hinders her power and obscures her face, so that she is unrecognizable as the kingdom’s princess, and any time she speaks a single word aloud, one of her brothers will die. 

Cast to the far reaches of the kingdom and unable to explain her plight or reveal her identity, Shiori must rely on help from Kiki, a mischievous paper bird brought to life by Shiori’s magic; an infuriating dragon prince; and a nobleman’s son who continually defies her expectations. It will take all of Shiori’s wit and determination to reunite her family and break Raikama’s curses.

In Six Crimson Cranes, YA fantasist Elizabeth Lim delivers a blend of fairy tale and legend that feels both classical and fresh. Lim draws on and blends European, Chinese and Japanese sources, and the mix gives the novel both a sense of familiarity and an entertaining unpredictability, as the reader never knows which source’s elements will take precedence in the next step of the story.  

Shiori is no magical savant: She’s an endearing heroine who grows over the course of her journey, using her natural strengths to fight her way back home. Her relationships with her six brothers are well defined and touching. The book’s romantic subplot is satisfyingly swoony but also functions as an indicator of Shiori’s transformation from a kind and curious yet sheltered and judgmental princess into an open-minded young woman. 

Intriguing departures from the beats of a typical fantasy-quest plot, well-laid red herrings and excellently sown seeds of future complications set Six Crimson Cranes apart. It radiates with Lim’s love for fairy tales and legends from around the world and takes readers on a well-paced adventure with a magic all its own. 

For Olivia Brooks, the three-day Farmland Music and Arts Festival represents the possibility of an exciting new experience and of winning a car in the #FoundatFarmland scavenger hunt. It's also the only thing distracting her from an upcoming judicial hearing in which she'll be asked to testify against her ex, who violated her trust in a deeply personal (not to mention illegal) way.

For Toni Foster, the festival represents a familiar stomping ground, full of bittersweet memories of her late musician father. The festival’s Golden Apple talent competition is also her last chance to perform on stage before she’s forced into the college, career and life her mother has chosen for her. 

When Olivia and Toni meet by chance on the first day of the festival and join forces to compete in their respective contests, neither girl is prepared for the whirlwind of emotion that Farmland has in store for them. 

Leah Johnson’s second novel, Rise to the Sun, is filled with evocative details of the music festival experience and moving descriptions of live music. Whether listening to a heartfelt acoustic practice at a campsite, dancing to EDM in a refurbished barn or performing under blinding stage lights, the characters’ love of music rings clear. The world of the novel feels particularly real and alive thanks to some fun cameos that readers of Johnson’s first book, You Should See Me in a Crown, will be excited to see. 

The book’s plot gains structure and momentum from the scavenger hunt and talent competitions, but Johnson is careful not to let the contests overwhelm the more sensitive struggles at the core of Olivia’s and Toni’s stories. Olivia is outgoing and friendly, but she frequently worries she’s “too much” for others. Toni has the talent to pursue her dreams, but she often pushes away the things she wants the most. Johnson makes excellent use of alternating perspectives to convey each girl’s complex and relatable interior life. As Olivia and Toni begin to fall for one another, the contrasting and complementary elements of their personalities make for a beautifully balanced love story.

Readers will find it impossible not to root for Olivia and Toni as they race to solve scavenger hunt clues, nail onstage performances and learn to trust each other with their hopes and fears. Rise to the Sun shines even brighter than Johnson’s dazzling debut.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Leah Johnson reveals why she included cameos from You Should See Me in a Crown in Rise to the Sun.

In Blackout, six of YA’s biggest superstars join forces to create a memorable collection of interlinked love stories that all unfold on one unforgettable New York City night.

Talented authors Dhonielle Clayton, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Angie Thomas, Ashley Woodfolk and Nicola Yoon have been crafting memorable novels and gaining deservedly passionate readerships for years. That makes this joint undertaking nothing less than a landmark publishing event for YA literature enthusiasts.

Jackson’s story, “The Long Walk,” serves as a framing narrative of sorts for the book, as it’s split into five “acts” that alternate with the other contributors’ stories. It’s late afternoon on a sweltering summer day, and just as Tam realizes that she and her ex-boyfriend Kareem have mistakenly been offered the same internship at the historic Apollo Theater, the city is plunged into a widespread blackout. Tam and Kareem embark on an epic journey on foot from Harlem back home to Brooklyn, where the summer’s most happening block party will kick off that evening.

Along the way, Kareem and Tam’s story intersects with five other tales of love. In Stone’s “Mask Off,” two boys stuck on the same subway car feel torn about the last time their paths crossed, when both were in disguise. In Clayton’s story, a girl in the iconic New York Public Library struggles to find the perfect book to express her romantic feelings. And in Thomas’ “No Sleep ’til Brooklyn,” set on a double-decker tour bus, a girl on a class trip from Mississippi gets valuable advice from a bus driver about charting her own course—which is exactly what he does, too, when he steers the bus to Brooklyn and to that same block party.

Not all of Blackout’s stories are typical happily-ever-afters, but they’re more interesting that way. Several leave just enough ambiguity to encourage healthy debate among readers. Spotting various characters’ connections to one another will also keep readers engaged and entertained.

YA readers have been calling on traditional publishers to acquire and support more positive representations of Black teens. Readers in search of joyful stories of young Black love will adore Blackout.

About halfway through The Marvelous Mirza Girls, Noreen, an Indian American teenager who is spending a gap year in India with her mother, Ruby, overhears a white American girl talking on her phone at a cafe. “Poor people here have like literally nothing, but they’re happier than so many people in American who have, like, everything. They’ve been such an inspiration,” the girl says. Shortly after, the girl receives a verbal dressing-down that's uniquely Indian and full of pride, serving as something of a mission statement for The Marvelous Mirza Girls.

Noreen and Ruby have traveled to New Delhi to recharge, reconnect and find solace after the death of Ruby’s sister, Noreen’s aunt Sonia. The chic Mirzas breeze through adventures in ancient ruins, have romantic encounters with handsome men and absolutely slay at karaoke parties, all while navigating a culture that’s both familiar and foreign to them. Second- and third-generation American readers will find Noreen’s and Ruby’s experiences inspiring, and the novel’s easy charm, strong mother-daughter relationship and romantic elements recall the best moments of Amy Sherman-Palladino’s “Gilmore Girls” or “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”

When a sex scandal erupts involving Noreen’s new boyfriend and his family, the novel embarks on a precarious tightrope walk between tradition and modernity. Through author Sheba Karim’s lens, readers see New Delhi as a complex place of refuge that’s also in need of reinvention. It’s home to breathtaking architecture, delicious food and maybe even wish-granting jinn, but it’s also a city where poverty, toxic air and even more toxic masculinity can be overwhelming.

“For each thing that is true about India, the opposite is also true,” says Noreen. In other words: It’s complicated, just like The Marvelous Mirza Girls.

Pendt Harland has only known cruelty and indifference. Unlike her siblings and cousins, Pendt has a rare genetic ability that causes everyone on her family’s spaceship to view her existence as a waste of precious resources. So when the ship docks at Brannick Station just before Pendt’s 18th birthday, she seizes the opportunity to escape and meets the Brannick twins, Ned and Fisher, who take her in as part of their family. As Pendt’s abilities grow to their full potential, the twins realize she could be the key to changing their own fates.

Well known for her YA science fiction and fantasy novels, author E.K. Johnston (That Inevitable Victorian Thing and Exit, Pursued by a Bear) explores a new interstellar world in Aetherbound, plunging readers into a magical galaxy shaped by a history of conflict between a ruling empire and a rebellion that never truly died out. Concrete details bring this futuristic world to life, illuminating how the conflict’s legacy impacts everything from the way food is prepared to how neighborhoods are structured and how the vast universe is navigated.

Aetherbound’s characters are equally engaging. From a young age, Pendt is subject to her family’s imposed calorie counting and neglect, and her journey to safety and self-love will have readers rooting for her success. The Brannick twins are charming and complex, anchored by their affectionate relationship with one another and genuine empathy for others. Ned is a bold leader who’s dedicated to managing Brannick Station despite his secret dream to leave it all behind and join the rebellion. Fisher is willing to do anything to protect his home and the people he loves but lacks the Y chromosome the departing empire made a requirement to sustain life on the station—a requirement both twins find “antiquated and stupid.”

To keep each other and the station safe, the trio bears the burdens of a growing rebellion, the loss of loved ones and the sting of betrayal. Johnston never loses sight of the humanity at the heart of her narrative, treating readers to Ned’s one-liners, Fisher’s love for video games and Pendt’s affinity for gardening. These moments of lightness and joy contrast against the pain they must face, making this futuristic tale feel grounded and real.

Johnston often includes LGBTQ+ characters in her books, and her portrayal of Fisher is subtle, woven deeply into the author’s vision of the way characters construct and perceive gender identity as something completely separate from genetics. As Fisher and Pendt become close, he guides her toward understanding that a person’s value is so much more than the circumstances of their birth, a theme that resonates throughout the book.

The beauty of Aetherbound lies in its characters’ abilities to face painful, terrible circumstances and still fight for a better life. It’s a thought-provoking and hopeful book that encourages a closer examination of what truly makes life valuable.

It’s been a year since Clara lost control of her powerful magic and accidentally killed her best friend, and she still lives in fear that her powers will hurt someone again. Her magic just seems drawn to the people she loves—with disastrous consequences.

Clara is an Everwitch, a rare witch who can access the magic of all four seasons. While her peers at the Eastern School of Solar Magic are at their most powerful in spring, summer, fall or winter, Clara’s powers rotate and change with the seasons, and her fear of her own magic is starting to cause her to fall behind at school.

In The Nature of Witches, witches are key players in the global fight against climate change and atmospheric disruption, especially since shaders (people who don’t have magic) insist on developing and exploiting places on the planet that should remain wild. As an Ever, Clara should be a singularly powerful witch, destined to be indispensable in the intensifying struggle to calm the raging atmosphere. But Clara is stuck, too scared to train the way her teachers want her to but conscious of the grave responsibility an Ever holds.

The environmental situation is worsening, and Clara must decide whether to join the fight for the planet or take the drastic step of relinquishing her powers forever. When she’s paired with a new training partner, the calm and gentle spring witch Sang Park, Clara begins to see a way to trust herself and her powers again.

Rachel Griffin’s debut YA novel is a fascinating blend of climate fiction, fantasy, boarding school novel and romance. Clara’s trauma and fear are well developed, and her backstory makes her extreme resistance to forging relationships or using her magic understandable. The connections Griffin builds between the natural world and the witches’ magic are fresh and intriguing.

The book’s looming sense of danger comes from the chaotic environment, one in which the climate crisis has worsened significantly, rather than from a traditional antagonist, which leaves more room for Clara’s interiority and growth. YA fantasy connoisseurs may be able to predict a few revelations about Clara’s magic, as well as some story beats along the way, but the near-future setting and the witches’ ancient earth-magic practices are exciting and immersive. Steeped in love for the natural world, The Nature of Witches is a new spin on familiar themes that readers will find inspiring and satisfying.

It's time for Pachelbel’s “Canon in D”—again. Though Quinn dutifully plays the harp for her family's wedding-planning business, Borrowed + Blue, she doesn't believe in romance anymore, especially not the kind that starts with grand gestures and always ends in heartbreak. Now that she's graduated from high school, her parents expect her to follow in her older sister’s footsteps and join the family business after college. But Quinn yearns to build a future she can call her own. This summer, she plans to wear animal-print dresses, eat chocolate mug cakes, hang out at Seattle’s farmer’s markets with her best friend, Julia, and Julia's new girlfriend . . . and swear off guys completely.

But then she runs into Tarek, the cute Egyptian American baker who’s a hopeless romantic and whose family's catering business often works with Borrowed + Blue. Bickering with Tarek used to be Quinn's favorite part of working at weddings, but they haven't spoken since she confessed her feelings for him just before he left for college last fall. Amid mishaps with missing bridal attendants, melted cakes and last-minute tofu runs, Quinn soon finds that she's falling for Tarek again, despite her best efforts not to. Meanwhile, a reality show wedding seems poised to help Borrowed + Blue really take off, but only if everything goes perfectly.

We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This is a classically structured romance with a contemporary social consciousness, exploring such topics as Quinn’s Jewish identity; mental and physical illnesses, including obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression and eczema; and the effects of celebrity culture. Discussions of sexuality and gender are modeled and normalized, and B+B’s clients include couples of all sorts—two grooms, two brides and second marriages. Frequent humor keeps the tone light (funny slogans on T-shirts and mugs are particularly chuckle-inducing) and sensuous language about everything from pizza to kissing abounds. The idea of a “perfect” special day gradually gives way to the notion that what makes life sweet are the bumps along the way.

Fans of Stephanie Perkins’ YA love stories or the satisfyingly independent-minded heroine in Gayle Forman’s Just One Day will adore this sweet, fizzy confection of a romance.

There’s no shortage of YA novels in which a commoner gets involved with a royal family and/or discovers their royal lineage, but as enjoyable as this trope is, most of these novels involve British or European monarchies. Emiko Jean’s Tokyo Ever After sets a thoroughly modern fairy tale in the Imperial House of Japan.

Seventeen-year-old Izumi Tanaka has never felt like she completely belongs in her insular, mostly white Northern California town. Sure, she loves and admires her single mom, and she absolutely adores her small group of pan-Asian friends, who’ve dubbed themselves the “Asian Girl Gang,” or AGG for short. (“Think less organized crime, more ‘Golden Girls.’”). But unlike her friends, Izumi has no clear idea what’s next after senior year or why she feels so adrift.

Then Izumi’s friend Noora discovers an evocative love note hidden in one of Izumi’s mom’s books, dated with Izumi’s birth year, and traces it to none other than the crown prince of Japan. Izumi is intrigued: Surely it’s impossible that her dad could be someone so distinguished, right? But when Izumi’s mom—and soon after, an entourage from the Japanese Embassy, followed closely by an entourage from the Japanese tabloid media—confirms the truth, Izumi is whisked off to Tokyo to meet the royal family she didn’t know she had.

In addition to her lack of Japanese language skills, Izumi struggles with constant scrutiny from some of her particularly judgmental relatives, her hot yet chilly bodyguard and members of the press. But she is charmed by Japan’s beauty, and her father and other family members welcome her warmly, even when she makes missteps by wearing inappropriately casual clothing or choosing the wrong knife at dinner. 

Jean impeccably blends Izumi’s thoroughly American sensibilities with a fond and cheerful depiction of Japanese culture. Izumi and her love interest even confess their feelings to each other using waka, a traditional poetic form, instead of letters. Along with excerpts from the Tokyo Tattler and the AGG’s group text, Izumi’s vulnerable yet brash first-person narration propels the novel forward and gives it a contemporary feel despite the thousands of years of tradition underpinning her experiences. Readers in search of a witty fairy tale that delivers plenty of romance and glamour should look no further than Tokyo Ever After.

For more than a century, thanks to L.M. Montgomery’s series that began with Anne of Green Gables, readers have associated Canada’s Prince Edward Island (PEI) with a spirited redhead named Anne Shirley. First-time author Regina M. Hansen stakes her own PEI literary claim via another ginger-haired girl, Beatrice MacNeill, known as “Beet.” Like Anne, she’s determined and sharp-witted. Unlike Anne, she discovers one fateful night in 1949 that she can see ghosts. 

It’s the specter of Beet’s beloved older cousin Gerry who comes to her, soaking wet and playing an eerie tune on his fiddle. Beet realizes he must have died at sea and that he’ll never meet his son, Joseph, born that very night. Alas, this is not the last time Beet experiences deep sorrow in Hansen’s historical fantasy, The Coming Storm. It’s also not the last time something strange happens in her world, as ancient folklore and workaday reality collide.

The sea and its unknowable allure are central to Hansen’s story, as is PEI itself. The author’s descriptions of the island’s wet sands, foggy nights and dramatic cliffs create a spooky atmosphere that elicits a delicious sense of creeping dread. This dread takes hold of Beet after the arrival of Marina Shaw, who claims to be a cousin of Gerry’s and expresses her outrageous intent to take little Joseph back to Boston with her. 

Beet can’t understand why Marina remains so unsettlingly serene in the wake of any objections. And what about the unearthly music she keeps hearing riding on the breeze? Certainly the sea stirs up strange winds, but this feels . . . different. 

Hansen moves the story back and forth in time, skillfully introducing characters who share their own bizarre sea stories with Beet. As the days and pages pass, the danger to Joseph grows, and a supernatural threat looms over Beet’s island home, all of which contribute to the slowly building suspense. The Coming Storm is an intriguing, often thrilling tribute to the bonds of love and friendship. It’s also an eloquent ode to the wild beauty of PEI and a testament to the power of facing what confounds us.