The Larkins’ family history starts with a shipwreck off the coast of Maine in 1885. Fidelia Larkin, the only survivor of the sinking of the Lyric, persevered, founded the town of Lyric, Maine, married and started her family there. “Their love was our beginning” is Lyric’s unofficial slogan. 

Generations later, Fidelia’s descendants are adrift in wreckage of a different sort. Violet’s younger brother, Sam, has just tried to take his own life, and Violet’s parents have sent her to stay with her uncle in Lyric for the summer so they can focus on Sam’s recovery. Desperate to shed her own self-destructive tendencies, Violet shaves her head and tries to disappear. But she soon discovers that, although her disappearing act won’t help her brother, reviving their lifelong dream of finding the wreckage of the Lyric just might.

Debut novelist Julia Drake has drawn all her characters richly, easily enabling readers to identify with Violet, Sam and their struggles. The seaside setting is vividly evoked, and readers will feel fully transported to the small town of Lyric. Violet and Sam undergo dramatic transformations as they begin to heal, redefining both their identities and their relationship with each other. Their journey together is the novel’s greatest strength. 

Inspired by Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Drake’s enthralling debut doesn’t shy away from the big stuff. The Last True Poets of the Sea explores themes of identity, mental health, romance and family with grace and gravitas.

The summer after her first year of college is going to be great for Juliet Milagros Palante. An internship with her favorite feminist author means spending the summer in the hippy, happening city of Portland, Oregon—far away from her home in the Bronx. She’s packed the inhalers she needs to control her asthma, her girlfriend, Lainie, has promised to call, and her extended family sends her off with a traditional Puerto Rican dinner.

But the summer doesn’t quite turn out as planned. Juliet’s mother won’t talk to her after Juliet comes out, Lainie isn’t returning her messages, and the feminist scene in Portland is more complicated than Juliet expected. Juliet doesn’t know what preferred gender pronouns are, what it means to be polyamorous or why activists of color sometimes distrust their well-meaning white friends. Is her mentor, Harlowe, who champions positivity toward women’s bodies, really the heroine Juliet thinks she is? How can Juliet call herself a queer feminist when she isn’t sure what those words mean anymore? Where does religion—whether it’s Juliet’s Catholic faith or any other—fit in to feminist ideologies? Who is Juliet, anyway, and who does she want to become?

Set in 2003, Juliet Takes a Breath is both a coming-of-age story and a guidebook to an emerging world of intersecting identities. Author Gabby Rivera takes readers through an unforgettable summer of libraries, science fiction writing workshops, hair-styling parties, women’s studies and self-discovery.

Editor’s note: Juliet Takes a Breath was originally published in 2016 by Riverdale Avenue Books.

“It’s an ordinary summer day, the day that Jimmy Killen dies and comes to life again.” So begins Almond’s tale of young Davie’s journey through the streets of Tyneside town and up the hill on the other side.

It’s not a long walk, yet it feels like an epic pilgrimage for all of the people he meets along the way—a priest who questions the existence of God, little girls drawing fairies and monsters and angels in chalk on the pavement, a one-legged man with a hawthorn crutch, friends, footballers, a bonny lass, a handsome murderer, and the dead man come to life again.

Death is in the air, as it often is in Almond’s novels, where the line between the dead and the living is blurred. Often, too, the loveliness of the world is celebrated: “Ah, the mountains, Davie, and the sun and the rain, the greenness of the grass beneath me feet, the yellow in the hedges, the blueness of the sky above me head, those distant jagged islands in the blue, blue sea,” Paddy Kelly says to Davie.

Not many writers for young readers take on so much in a short novel—death and life and what’s the point of it all, anyway. If this novel covers similar ground as previous novels, just as Davie covers the same ground of Tyneside town he has walked many times, Almond views these elemental themes from a new and exciting perspective.

“Maybe it’s impossible not to connect our experiences to one another in a really linear way,” narrates Scarlett, a rising college sophomore and physics star. “But Einstein gave us another approach. Time [is] like a flip-book—each image still there but only moving because we turn the pages to see it.”

As readers turn the pages of Shana Youngdahl’s debut novel, As Many Nows as I Can Get, time flips back and forth. We see a road trip after Scarlett’s first year at Colwyn College. We see the year before, as she prepares to say goodbye to her small Colorado town and to David, the local golden boy harboring dark secrets. Just as she’s settling into her new home with her roommate, Mina, Scarlett learns that she’s pregnant. Should she keep the baby, have an abortion or seek adoptive parents? What will her pregnancy mean for her college experience, her intended career as a scientist and her self-image?

As the narration flips between Scarlett’s senior year of high school, her first year of college and the life-changing summer in between, she realizes that, like physics, life is all about thinking, observing, rethinking, drawing a conclusion—and then asking more questions.

YA literature, some say, is about the moments when one state of being changes to another. In its structure and its story, As Many Nows as I Can Get is a perfect example of this sometimes bumpy, sometimes poignant transition.

What does it mean to be Korean? What does it mean to be American? What does it mean to be in love? To be a family? These, among many others, are the complicated questions posed by David Yoon in his debut novel, Frankly in Love.

For 17-year-old Frank Li, disappointing his stubborn, high-strung Korean immigrant parents is to be avoided at all costs. When Frank falls for a white girl named Brit, he knows that he has to keep their relationship hidden from his family. To cover his tracks, he becomes entangled in a fake relationship with Joy Song, a close family friend. But when disaster after disaster strikes, Frank learns the hard way that some things are more important than high school romance.

Through funny, relatable prose and some truly heartbreaking moments, Frankly in Love wrestles with important questions of race and identity. Yoon encapsulates the teenage experience, not only for young Korean Americans but for all teens. He also tackles stereotypes, and though the novel does occasionally play into them, many are eventually broken down in surprisingly clever ways.

Having grown up Korean in America, I had points while reading this novel when I nearly wept from the feeling of having been seen for the first time in YA literature. Frankly in Love is an absolute must-read for young people grappling with questions of identity.

Dumped shortly after finally having sex, CeCe is determined to win back her born-again boyfriend. She decides to follow him to Jesus camp in order to prove she’s exactly the kind of girl he needs in his life. There’s just one problem: CeCe knows nothing about Jesus. Her best friend, Paul, goes to camp with her to help her play the game without getting caught, but everything goes awry when CeCe learns that her ex is dating one of her cabin mates. As CeCe scrambles to win back her boyfriend, learning more about herself, her feelings and her friendship with Paul, she realizes that what she wanted may not be what she needs after all.

Have a Little Faith in Me is a romantic comedy that explores feminism and comprehensive sex education against the backdrop of a conservative religious summer camp. First-time author Sonia Hartl tackles all of these topics and more with finesse—always candid, always open-minded and very rarely heavy-handed. 

CeCe and her cabin mates ask questions about sex and love that many young readers will already have on their minds, and Hartl answers them in a way that is both gentle and empowering. And through Paul, she gives young readers a role model for how we should treat one another and expect to be treated in romantic relationships.

Hartl’s debut is a powerful read for teens who are beginning to explore romantic relationships and sexuality.

All Jay Reguero wanted to do was play some video games, not talk to his family and finish out his senior year of high school. He didn’t want attention, and he didn’t want to make waves. The death of his cousin Jun changed all of that. In Filipino-American author Randy Ribay’s third novel, Patron Saints of Nothing, Jay knows that the only way to find out happened to his cousin is to travel back to the Philippines, where his father emigrated from 17 years before.

The president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, has a shockingly brutal plan to eliminate crime in the country: arrest all of the drug users and sellers, and if they resist, kill them. Before leaving, Jay learns that Jun was killed as part of Duterte’s initiative. Jay cannot reconcile this with the Jun who had sent him so many letters for years, and he knows there must be more to the story. As Jay spends time with his extended family in the Philippines, he learns that knowing the whole truth doesn’t make understanding it any easier.

While Jay and Jun’s story is fictional, the mass assassination of Filipinos is not. Jay is confronted with stark class divisions, extreme systemic poverty, fervent national pride and a growing understanding that not everything has a simple, linear answer. Patron Saints of Nothing combines personal letters and lyrical prose to create a story that causes Jay and the reader to wrestle with who they truly are and what they really believe.

Lucille and Winona meet under extreme circumstances: standing outside the police station as Lucille considers ratting out her drug dealer brother and Winona debates turning in her father, a beloved weatherman whose private behavior isn’t quite as sunny as his public disposition. In their desperation, the two make a pact: get each other through senior year and then escape to Chicago. But when Winona makes a shocking discovery about her deceased mother, she and Lucille realize they can’t afford to wait. They set off for Las Vegas with a wad of cash and a stolen car, determined to take back their power and find their freedom.

A collaboration between Brittany Cavallaro (author of the Charlotte Holmes series) and Emily Henry (The Love That Split the World ), Hello Girls is a whip-smart ode to what can be accomplished by underestimated young women. In Winona and Lucille, readers will find dual protagonists who are at once hilariously over the top and deeply relatable. These young women have been forced to grow up too quickly, but their friendship makes anything possible.

Cavallaro and Henry write with one voice, tackling the tough subjects of drug abuse, poverty and domestic violence. Winona and Lucille’s high-stakes adventure is often far-fetched and always a riot, but its lasting impression is of two young women who have decided to put themselves first, unconditionally and unapologetically.

Perfect for readers who are more than ready to raise their own voices, Hello Girls is a wild end-of-summer ride.

Ellis Kimball is a doomsday prepper, constantly adding to her various survival kits for the end of the world. Her therapist, Martha, is working with her to understand her expectation of an apocalypse, as it is manifesting in Ellis as anxiety.

After a therapy session, Ellis runs into Hannah Marks. They meet up again at school, where Hannah does everything she can to entice Ellis to hang out with her and her friends, Sam and Tal. Ellis soon learns that Hannah has visions and knows when the apocalypse is coming. Their friendship quickly blossoms as the two set out on a journey to save others while inadvertently finding themselves along the way.

Katie Henry’s depiction of anxiety is executed perfectly via Ellis’ inner monologues and outward actions. She captures budding teen sexuality as well as what it means to face your fears within your mind, your religion and your own family.

Let’s Call It a Doomsday is an exemplary portrait of acceptance, trust and revelation.