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.

Kate and Andy have always loved having crushes on the same boys. After all, what could be more fun than spending time with your best friend dissecting every glance, word and text message for hidden signs of reciprocation from the object of your mutual affection? But when their summer theater camp crush, Matt, shows up at their school on the first day of junior year, their lighthearted attraction to him suddenly becomes a little too real. As Kate navigates her feelings for Matt—not to mention the stress of the fall musical—she wonders if her friendship with Andy can withstand first love.

Though Kate’s and Andy’s competing crushes on Matt take center stage for much of the book, Kate in Waiting celebrates love in all its forms, including friendship, family, unrequited attractions and new romances. Kate’s BFF-ship with Andy is fierce, flawed and extremely relatable, as is her sibling dynamic with her older brother, Ryan, and her budding flirtation with Ryan’s best friend, Noah.

Becky Albertalli creates a colorful, true-to-life cast of supporting characters, from “the squad” of Kate’s theater friends to their jock antagonists, “the f-boys.” Although these tropes can be found in any teen movie, Albertalli makes them entirely her own, transforming theater kids and jocks alike into fully developed characters who blur the lines between their cliques.

Fans of Albertalli’s Creekwood novels (Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, et al.) will feel right at home with Kate in Waiting, which encapsulates all the joys and anxieties of the high school experience, with special attention paid to the strange and wonderful electricity of the theater. The result will make both loyal Albertalli fans and newcomers alike give Kate in Waiting a standing ovation.

Rika Rakuyama loves Little Tokyo, from its ramen shops and beautiful old trees to the neon signs that cast “a wild rainbow glow” upon the street. Her appreciation for her Los Angeles neighborhood, which is marvelously rendered in Sarah Kuhn’s From Little Tokyo, With Love, is deep and abiding—even though Rika often feels unwelcome there.

Community elders critique her hair (reddish and wavy), her face (freckled) and her parentage (her dad wasn’t Japanese). A classmate sneeringly calls her “half-breed,” while neighbors say she’s a “mistake” because her mother had her at 15 before dying in childbirth. Judo training helps Rika channel her understandable anger, and she’s looking forward to participating in a martial arts demonstration at the Nikkei Week festival. Her enthusiasm for fighting earns eye rolls from her cousins: Belle, the reigning Nikkei Week Queen, and Aurora, a junior princess. Though her cousins are enchanted by fairy tales, Rika is certain that happy endings aren’t real.

Everything changes in a chaotic moment when the parade’s grand marshal, a movie star named Grace Kimura, locks eyes with Rika during the festivities, leaps out of her parade vehicle, runs toward the convertible Rika’s driving, whispers Rika’s name and then disappears into the crowd. In the aftermath, Rika discovers a photo of young Grace that points to a shocking secret. Grace’s co-star Henry offers to help track Grace down, and together he and Rika embark on an epic and entertaining quest across LA, falling for each other along the way. Could Rika have her own happy ending after all?

The concept of fairy tales swirls through Kuhn’s novel like a refrain. Initially, it’s a taunt other characters aim at Rika, a reminder of everything she can’t have, but it becomes a quiet song of possibility that underlies her journey to self-acceptance. Her emotional maturation is realistic and moving, while her forays into romance are charming and often funny. (Henry’s biceps are apparently quite distracting.)

From Little Tokyo, With Love is a hopeful testament to all we can gain by opening ourselves to people outside our immediate circle. We can find kindred spirits, learn to stand up for ourselves and create our own fairy tales—no princesses required.

Stacey Lee has earned critical acclaim and a loyal readership for intricately plotted fiction featuring Chinese characters amid memorable historical settings, including Under a Painted Sky and The Downstairs Girl. Her new book, Luck of the Titanic, was prompted by a little-known fact: Of the eight Chinese passengers aboard the Titanic, six survived, but they were deported within 24 hours of arriving in the United States.

The novel opens with a mesmerizing action scene as Valora Luck, a trained acrobat, catapults her way on board the doomed ship. Although she has a valid first-class ticket, an officer has refused to let her board, claiming she lacks proper documentation and won’t be allowed to disembark in America due to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. But Valora is determined to join her twin brother, Jamie, who has already boarded in third class for the first leg of a journey to Cuba. They haven’t seen each other for two years, and Valora has a scheme to reunite them: She wants to convince a circus executive who’s also on board to hire them both as acrobats for the Ringling Brothers.

Lee’s characters often adapt disguises, and Valora alternately poses as a male laborer alongside Jamie below decks and as a fashionable first-class widow who turns heads with her confidence and style. As Valora navigates the highly class-conscious world of the ship, readers witness the stark discrepancies between rich and poor, as well as some of the racist behavior of its passengers. “The English love all things Chinese—silk, tea, plates—just not if it comes with a beating heart,” Valora observes.

The narrative builds slowly toward the looming, inevitable tragedy. In a moment of overt dramatic irony, a well-heeled character remarks, “Imagine being afraid on such a magnificent vessel as the Titanic.” Once the ship strikes the iceberg, Lee unspools one heartbreaking scene after another as Valora, Jamie and their friends struggle to find each other and reach safety. 

From the start, readers are aware that two of the book’s Chinese characters will die. When one succumbs early in the disaster, the remainder of the novel becomes a superbly choreographed guessing game of who the second victim will be. Despite the hardships its characters encounter, Luck of the Titanic is anchored by its energetic and empowered heroine. This novel is an admirable and engaging addition to the annals of fictional Titanic lore. 

Over the course of her nine YA novels, including Michael L. Printz Honor book Please Ignore Vera Dietz and Printz Medal winner Dig., A.S. King has earned a reputation for writing books that are consistently smart and timely. She is unafraid to challenge readers with ambitious prose and structure or to confront them with frank treatments of weighty themes including race, sexuality and mental health. Switch continues this work. 

In Truda Becker’s world, time has stopped. It’s been June 23, 2020, for nine months, more or less. An online program called N3WCLOCK has stepped in to fill the void, informing everyone from airline pilots to high school students what time it would be, had time continued to function properly. At school, Tru and her classmates participate in an initiative called Solution Time, pooling their resources and creativity to either solve the time problem or sufficiently distract themselves so they stop caring about it altogether. 

Tru’s attempts to solve the problem are complicated by a couple of issues. At home, her father has begun building a series of nested plywood boxes around a mysterious light switch at the center of their house. As the novel progresses, the house begins to turn on its axis, Tru and her family members separated into boxes within it, casualties of this inscrutable DIY project. 

Tru has also recently discovered that she’s a javelin-throwing prodigy. The media has begun to report on people with special abilities, so-called Anomalies who can solve impossible math problems, heal injuries with a mere touch or even fly. As Tru navigates both the situation at her house and her newfound athletic fame, she wonders how all these strange circumstances could be connected—and whether she can break open the boxes that are keeping people apart from one another.

At first, the story’s intriguingly abstract world is so surreal as to be disorienting, as is Tru’s fragmented narration, her scattered thoughts punctuated only by forward slashes (like / so). broken apart by slashes (/) between them. Readers would do well to relax and settle into the novel’s bizarre, provocative premise and follow King where she wants to lead them. As Switch explores the spectrum between isolation and connection, it becomes an unsettling but emotionally resonant novel for our own unsettling times.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: A.S. King reveals how an invitation to speak at a library led to the genesis of Switch.