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.

Evie used to believe in love. She has bookshelves full of romance novels to prove it. But she’s recently realized just how naive she’s been. After all, her father’s affair and her parents’ subsequent divorce are irrefutable evidence that, in real life, love stories always end in heartbreak. 

When Evie tries to get rid of her romance novel collection, a strange encounter leaves her with two things: the address for the La Brea Dance Studio and unnerving visions of exactly how other couples’ love stories will end. As Evie tries to discover the source of her visions, she makes her way to the dance studio, where she finds herself entering a ballroom dance competition with a boy named X. Despite her best efforts and better judgment, Evie begins to fall for X, and her growing feelings for him prompt her to wonder whether love is such a terrible idea after all.

Nicola Yoon’s Instructions for Dancing will break readers’ hearts and put them back together again several times. Evie and X are both healing from their own tragedies while also balancing family expectations with their personal needs and desires. Teen readers will relate to the authentic and sometimes messy way they navigate these journeys. 

Excellently developed secondary characters add richness and depth to Evie’s experiences as she tries to reconcile her cynicism with her undeniable feelings for X—all while dealing with the new configuration of her family and her unwelcome visions of heartbreak. Evie’s “best friend forever,” Martin, encourages her to work out what’s causing her visions even as he struggles to work up the courage to ask out Evie’s sister, Danica. Meanwhile, Cassidy and Sophie (Evie’s “other best friend forever” and her “other other best friend forever”) navigate their new romantic relationship with each other. Both romances fuel Evie’s cynicism but remind her how happy relationships can be. Evie’s parents do their best to protect their daughters from the fallout of their divorce, making it clear that adults don’t always get it right, even when they have the best intentions.

Yoon delivers this captivating story of first love with beautiful prose, clever dialogue that swings between laugh-out-loud funny and wildly insightful, clear respect for the complexity and nuance of her teen characters’ perspectives and emotions—and just enough magic to make it all truly unforgettable.

Lee Swan knows there’s an art to telling a love story. For the last two years, she’s put all her time and energy into a podcast produced from the attic of her Memphis home with her boyfriend, Vincent. “Artists in Love” chronicles the romances of famous creatives, and Lee has constructed her own happily ever after along the way. Then she and Vincent break up, leaving Lee artistically and emotionally unmoored. 

With her parents’ looming divorce echoing her own fractured love story, Lee can’t help but wonder whether falling in love is ever worth the risk of falling out of it. Could a series of mysterious objects Lee discovers in her parents’ study hold the answer? There’s a VHS tape of their disastrous engagement party, a passport her father received six months before Lee was born and a book of her mother’s poetry that’s dedicated to a man who isn’t Lee’s father. 

With help from a family friend named Max and a charming musician named Risa, Lee starts a new podcast to investigate her parents’ relationship. As Lee interviews her parents and their old college friends, she plumbs deep emotional wounds within herself and her family. She catches her parents in lies and confronts her own secret history of infidelity to Vincent. 

Through her newfound understanding of her polyamorous bisexuality, Lee begins to re-examine what she wants from life. Does she still have a future in Memphis, the city she’s always loved? Can she reconcile her love for her progressive Southern home with the reality that it still harbors deeply entrenched veins of racism and homophobia?

Author Mary McCoy’s previous novel, I, Claudia, won a Michael L. Printz Honor in 2019. Her spectacular follow-up, Indestructible Object, never offers easy answers, instead honoring her realistically flawed characters’ messy nuances. McCoy incorporates Lee’s podcast interviews and scripted voice-overs into the narrative with stylish flair, strengthening both the novel’s poetic tone and Lee’s striking first-person narrative voice. Lee’s journey toward even the hardest truths plays out with stunning emotional depth. This is a layered and vulnerable examination of everything that makes a heart beat—or break. 

When Maeve is tasked with cleaning out a storage space at school as a punishment for throwing her shoe at a teacher, she finds an old tarot deck. She’s a quick study with the cards, and before long she’s doing readings as a sort of cottage industry in her private Catholic school. A reading for her ex-best friend, Lily, turns into an argument when it brings up painful parts of the girls’ pasts. Afterward, Lily disappears without a trace, prompting Maeve to explore witchcraft further in order to find her. All Our Hidden Gifts takes magic seriously and reminds us it’s everywhere we look.

Author Caroline O’Donoghue grounds this story in rich details. Scenes in which Maeve does card readings or spellwork are fascinating. They never slow the plot down with esoterics, and they build on one another so that we’re learning right along with Maeve. It’s clear how tiring the work and concentration required by witchcraft are; there are no spells enacted by a mere wiggle of the nose here.

O’Donoghue depicts Maeve’s school and home in a way that’s true to life, and we get a feel for her neighborhood in Ireland. A conservative religious youth group is beginning to take a hold in the area, which not only poses dangers to LGBTQ+ characters, including Maeve’s sister Jo and her friend/crush, Roe, but also adds a frightening edge to Maeve’s quest to find Lily. There’s an emotional authenticity to Maeve’s tetchiness, too. She was to blame for the collapse of her friendship with Lily, and she’s often demanding and jealous in her tentative new friendships, as well as with her family. Witchcraft offers her a center to return to, not to mention some anchoring confidence.

The book’s ending leaves the door open for a sequel, and readers are sure to clamor for one. Maeve is a complex hero just coming into her powers, and she deserves more opportunities to use them. All Our Hidden Gifts is grounded and realistic, even when it’s got a foot in the supernatural, and it captures the complex, emotional nature of teen relationships with ease.

A Sitting in St. James is a mesmerizing, confounding and vividly rendered portrait of the thoroughly putrid institution of slavery in antebellum Louisiana. Though author Rita Williams-Garcia’s writing is exquisite, the history she so skillfully captures is ugly and therefore sometimes difficult to read.

Filtered through the story of the Guilberts, a plantation-owning white Creole family who experiences both economic decline and moral decay, A Sitting in St. James does many things well. First and foremost, it attaches human faces, flesh and blood, to seemingly distant history and to abstract ideas such as white supremacy. It also forces readers to confront the routinely brutal, dehumanizing realities of family separation and sexual exploitation and abuse that were intrinsic to the plantation system, as Williams-Garcia brings these heartbreaking acts to life on the page. 

Prideful and aristocratic Sylvie Bernardin de Maret Dacier Guilbert is the product of another corrupt system, the French royal court. In the aftermath of the French Revolution, Sylvie was offered a choice: “convent, guillotine, or plantation lord’s wife.” She chose the latter under some duress and never fully acclimated to her fate. This layer of privilege only makes Sylvie more demanding, more entitled and more aggrieved. It’s why, many decades later, even as the plantation fails, Sylvie insists on having herself memorialized by a famed French painter like the aristocrat she was born to be. Her demand sets the novel in motion. 

That sense of privilege is also why Sylvie plucked her personal servant, Thisbe, from her family’s quarters like a puppy from a pound and named her after Marie Antoinette’s prized pet dog. Like a pet, Thisbe is constantly forced to shadow Sylvie, even sleeping by her feet. “You are a body,” Sylvie tells Thisbe at one point, “not a whole person.” It’s a stunning encapsulation of the novel’s white characters’ emotional attachment to notions of Black inferiority and inhumanity. The belief that Black people are less than human was fundamental to slavery, and the Guilberts will go to any length to uphold it. 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Rita Williams-Garcia reveals the interaction that inspired A Sitting in St. James.

The racism of Sylvie’s loutish, dissolute and disappointing American-born son, Lucien, manifests with more complexity and more horror than his mother’s. He can be charming and has complicated relationships with his biracial daughter and half brother. Lucien spends most of the novel trying to find a way to save the plantation from its crushing debt. But he has also raped an unspecified number of the women over whom he has dominion, ordered forced breeding for profit, separated children from their families as a matter of course and generally handles and refers to Black people in dehumanizing terms.

Lucien’s actions are bound up in his roles as the steward of the plantation and the Guilbert patriarch. The historical record shows that his actions are representative of the abuses enacted in this system by men in his position. Even at Lucien’s violent worst, his justification for doing deliberate harm is clear: “His was the act of a master pruning the vine that would kill the harvest. He did what a farmer must: rid the virulent worm that would contaminate the vineyard and cause it to bear no fruit.”

Though this is a multilayered and expansive ensemble story with a significant queer romance, Williams-Garcia places villains Sylvie and Lucien firmly at its center. In an author’s note, Williams-Garcia reveals that her goal was to make them answerable for their crimes and their system of belief, because they’re the ones who deserve scrutiny. In this, A Sitting in St. James succeeds spectacularly. Williams-Garcia presents the ideals of Southern gentility and femininity as inextricable from the atrocities and unearned privilege that propped them up, thus deconstructing cultural myths about their virtue. In light of the Guilberts’ crimes against humanity, both mother and son could be fairly labeled monsters, but Williams-Garcia instead makes them appear ordinary—greedy, grasping and brutal, but human. 

Indeed, readers will find Sylvie’s psychology in particular to be maddening. Having lost “too much” over a lifetime, she clings to her autonomy and authority over others, desperately upholding the system that affords her a position of privilege. Other characters’ motivations remain more opaque, the result of a narrative style that holds readers at arm’s length as it focuses more on dialogue and actions rather than on personal thoughts. However, this makes rare glimpses into the characters’ minds all the more impactful. 

A Sitting in St. James is a multigenerational saga that brilliantly depicts Southern plantation life and systemic rot. It thoroughly exposes how oppressive hierarchical systems, including patriarchy, heteronormativity and racism, corrupt the individuals who benefit from them even as those same individuals victimize others. There’s obviously no single bad apple on the Guilbert plantation; the whole orchard and everyone who eats its fruit are poisoned.

Jazmyne Cariot's queen mother, Judair, rules with an iron fist, but even as Jazmyne joins a rebellion that's planning the queen's assassination, she fears that she isn't prepared to lead after her mother's death. Far away in a heavily guarded prison, Iraya plots an uprising with her fellow cellmates, then uses their escape to move toward her true goal: revenge on the royal family. When these two witches from warring clans discover they share a target, they must form an unprecedented alliance. By combining their power, they’re sure to succeed—if they don’t destroy each other first.

Ciannon Smart’s debut YA novel, Witches Steeped in Gold, is a thrilling story that unfolds against a vivid island backdrop inspired by Jamaican culture, history and folklore. Smart plunges readers into a sprawling world of fantasy and mystery that’s dripping with political intrigue, lore stretching back generations and a fully realized magic system.

Chapters that alternate between Jazmyne and Iraya offer two strikingly different perspectives on the action, yet each girl’s distinct voice rings clear. Jazmyne is thoughtful, deliberate and cautious, while Iraya is spirited, passionate and impetuous.

As the plot progresses, Smart offers an honest, character-driven exploration of the relationship between the personal and the political. Jazmyne and Iraya were both born into the roles they must eventually inhabit, willingly or not. Smart highlights not only their personal motivations, hesitations and emotions but also the broader societal consequences of their choices—to kill, to save, to ally, to betray. Ultimately, the narrative blurs the line between good and evil, and readers will likely find themselves rooting for different characters throughout the book.

Full of twists and turns, Witches Steeped in Gold is a complex and powerful read featuring two heroines who are unafraid to venture into the unexpected.

Before you read Joan He’s The Ones We’re Meant to Find, spend a moment to appreciate its cover. Featuring an illustration by Turkish artist Aykut Aydoğdu, it depicts the faces of two young women who seem peacefully swathed in a blanket of gentle ocean spray as cotton candy clouds float above them. It’s the perfect way to begin He’s book, a story in which nothing is what it seems to be.

Cee has been alone on a remote island for three years, unsure of her memories and her purpose. With the help of an old robot, she collects scraps so she can build a boat and sail off to search for the only thing she is sure of: Cee has a sister, and she needs to find her. Science prodigy Kasey lives in a pollution-free eco-city, where she’s grappling not just with her sister’s mysterious death but also with the politics of saving her quickly deteriorating planet. A clue leads her to Actinium, an enigmatic young man whose skills as a scientist match her own but whose intentions are murky.

He has cited Hayao Miyazaki’s Academy Award-winning animated film, Spirited Away, as an inspiration for her writing, and it shows. Full of fantasy and mystery, this eco-science fiction romance is as epic as the ocean and seems destined for the big screen. He skillfully blends genres to create a cinematic Rorschach that puts both her characters and the reader to the test.

At the heart of the novel is this question: If we are the cause of humanity’s problems, how can we possibly be the solution? “None of us live without consequence,” says Kasey at an emotional high point. “Our personal preferences are not truly personal. One person’s needs will deny another’s. Our privileges can harm ourselves and others.” It’s heady stuff—ambitious, pointed and deeply satisfying. The plot’s twists, turns and reveals aren’t just boxes He is checking for the sake of a formulaic mystery. Instead, they’re purposeful and in service of characters who are on the brink of something greater than themselves.

Though it’s urgent and weighty, He’s sophomore novel isn’t lacking for fun. There are cute boys, high-tech marvels of the future and interpersonal drama along the way. When you reach the end, you’ll look at its gorgeous cover with new understanding. Like Kasey and Cee, there’s so much more than meets the eye.

Seventeen-year-old Jane Belleweather has just won $58 million in the Wisconsin lottery. It’s a life-changing amount of money that could lift Jane out of poverty and jump-start her dreams of becoming an oceanographer. Unfortunately, because Jane is a minor, she can’t come forward to collect the prize.

Jane could sign over the winning ticket to her mother, but she fears the money would only exacerbate the severe hoarding addiction her mom developed in the wake of her father’s death. Jane also considers asking her ex-boyfriend, Holden, to claim the prize. But he’s been a grade-A jerk ever since he got back from summer camp, and she’s not sure he would actually give her the money. All the while, Jane’s best friend, Brandon, a budding investigative reporter, has vowed to uncover the identity of the winner by any means necessary, complicating Jane’s attempts to conceal the truth. Ultimately, Jane must decide if she will be better off with money or without it.

Jamie Pacton’s second novel, Lucky Girl, explores the myriad ways money can change people. When the winning ticket is announced, everyone ponders what they would do with such an enormous windfall, but few consider the risks associated with newfound wealth. Eventually Jane learns of the tragedies that often befall lottery winners, their lives so frequently torn apart—and in some cases ended—by the greed and envy of those around them, and this possible fate makes her decision even more complicated.

The amount of money that can change someone needn’t be enormous, as Pacton skillfully reveals through Jane’s relationship with Holden. After spending a summer surrounded by rich kids at camp, Holden has suddenly become resentful of his middle-class upbringing. His dreams of wealth supersede his compassion toward Jane, whose situation at home is difficult. She’s often deprived of food and sleep due to her mom’s mental illness. Yet Jane remains kind, self-assured and determined in the face of hardship.

Readers who think they know exactly what they’d do if millions of dollars landed in their lap will think again after reading Pacton’s thoughtful novel.