All hell breaks loose at an Atlanta high school when a Friday night football game devolves into mass fighting and chaos. Two teenage girls—one black and one white—are thrown together as an unlikely duo fighting to stay alive.

Racial tensions fuel the violence that spills from the football field to the streets, making it a life or death challenge for Lena, who is black, and Campbell, who is white, to get safely home. Thrown together by fate, the girls must find a way to relate to each other, to trust each other and to look past their biases to work together and navigate their dangerous path.

Told in alternating chapters in the girls’ distinct voices, I’m Not Dying with You Tonight shows how Campbell’s challenges are not quite the same as Lena’s—and that the community’s perception and prejudices of them both will either aid or hinder their journey. They may be together physically, but their paths are divergent because of their race.

This is a potent novel about cooperation in the face of anger, ugliness and prejudice. An ideal companion to The Hate U Give and the books of Jason Reynolds, this is a must-read for all teens. Amid the very of-the-moment themes of racial tensions and police intervention, the tenuous but authentic relationship of the two girls rises to the forefront. They just want the same thing—safety and security in an uncertain world.

The summer between junior and senior year in high school is a crossroads for many people, but perhaps especially so for Serena Velasco and her best (and only) friend, Melody Grimshaw. Both of them have just failed Western Civ—Serena because she prefers to use her considerable intelligence and anti-authoritarian outlook to challenge her teacher’s pro-democracy viewpoints, and Melody because she believes on some level that she, like all the Grimshaws before her, is fated to never graduate from high school.

The Grimshaws have a bad reputation in Colchis, the small, economically depressed upstate New York town where they live. Serena doesn’t care about public opinion, but that’s easy for her to say. Her mother is the school principal, and her stepfather is a realtor, so although they still need to worry about money, they are worlds away from Melody and the rest of the Grimshaws. Serena knows that she could easily go to college and even get a scholarship if she only applied herself. Melody’s road out of Colchis is much less obvious. She is a talented dancer, but without means or opportunity, how can she pursue her talent and her dream?

Tolman’s debut novel is mature and sophisticated, both in its subject matter, which is frequently dark, and in its narrative structure. The chronology covers a little over a year, and the prose, especially near the novel’s end, is beautifully ambiguous. At the heart of this sometimes difficult but ultimately rewarding novel, however, is a realistic portrait of two friends coming to terms with the widening gulf between their future paths, and navigating whether and how they can reconverge.

Maia knows she’s the best tailor in the empire. But with two brothers dead in the Emperor’s wars, her family’s once-renowned tailor shop is in financial ruin at the beginning of Spin the Dawn, Elizabeth Lim’s debut novel. One day a messenger brings news: The Emperor needs a new imperial tailor for his betrothed, Lady Sarnai, and is holding a sewing competition. Dressed as a boy and carrying her grandmother’s scissors, Maia travels to the palace.

While tailors puzzle over creating jackets out of paper and shoes out of glass, gossip and sabotage threaten to destroy contestants’ chances. And what is it about her grandmother’s scissors that captivates Maia? Could magic, long dismissed by Maia and her people, actually be real?

And if the contest weren’t already difficult enough, Lady Sarnai issues a final challenge— sew three legendary dresses ascribed to the goddess Amana. The first dress is to be made from sunlight so pure it can be spun, the second from moonlight so dense it can be woven and the third from the blood of stars. Accompanied by Edan, the court enchanter, Maia sets off to somehow acquire these celestial materials. But ghosts and demons haunt her path, as well as both friendly and unfriendly human travelers. On the journey, Maia will find adventure, self-discovery and maybe even love.

Reminiscent of the tales of Rumpelstiltskin and Cinderella, Spin the Dawn will leave readers eagerly awaiting next year’s sequel, Unravel the Dusk.

Set in modern-day San Francisco, The Beckoning Shadow ferries readers into the seedy underbelly of a world where humans with supernatural powers fight in a vicious tournament for a rare chance to rewrite their past.

Vesper wants nothing more than to blend in with the rest of humanity and pretend that her powers don’t exist. Unfortunately, she’s one of the Oddities—special humans born with powerful magical abilities—and is one of the most fearsome, as she’s a Harbinger who can read others’ worst nightmares and summon them into existence. But Vesper has already hurt too many people with her inability to control her powers—that is, until she meets Sam. A regular human who knows far more than he lets on, Sam offers to train Vesper and sponsor her in an underground fight between Oddities, the Tournament of the Unraveling.

As Sam trains Vesper in fighting techniques and helps her befriend other Oddities who teach her how to wield her dangerous powers, they learn more about each other’s past and discover that this fight has actually become a battle against death itself.

Fans of Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, Fight Club and Victoria Aveyard’s Red Queen series will enjoy The Beckoning Shadow, screenwriter Katharyn Blair’s debut novel. Her genuine dialogue, authentic characters and perfectly paced fight scenes will keep readers’ blood pumping until the last page.

Guards are let down, secrets are revealed, and love blossoms in Amber Smith’s Something Like Gravity. 

Still processing the aftereffects of an frightening assault, newly out transgender teen Chris goes to his Aunt Isobel’s house for the summer. His new neighbor, Maia, is still grieving the sudden loss of her older sister. A near-fatal accident brings the two together when Maia is trying to take a photograph in the middle of the street and Chris is test-driving his aunt’s old station wagon. They get off on the wrong foot as neighbors, but soon their relationship beautifully unfurls into a romance.

Chris and Maia’s alternating points of view give the reader a bird’s-eye view of how the teens process their feelings both for one another and within themselves. With admirable gentleness and empathy, Chris and Maia explore their burgeoning relationship, slowly revealing their innermost secrets while holding some back. While sensitively tackling subjects of first love, acceptance and friendship, Smith expertly chronicles her characters’ twin journeys of grief and coming out, as well as what it takes to move on despite seemingly permanent damage. 

While readers should be warned that the flashbacks to Chris’ assault are intense, Something Like Gravity is perfect for fans of Meredith Russo’s If I Was Your Girl and Lisa Williamson’s The Art of Being Normal.

Debut author Kat Cho bursts onto the YA scene with a gripping fantasy-romance set in modern-day Seoul.

Miyoung is used to being on her own. She’s a gumiho, a mythical fox creature with nine tails who feeds on the energy of human men, so a solitary existence is often necessary. She knows only the company of her demanding and emotionally distant mother. But one night, as Miyoung hunts in the forest by the light of the full moon, she saves a boy named Jihoon from a vicious attack, and what begins to form between the two is a bond unlike any the young gumiho has ever experienced or could have imagined for herself. Jihoon accepts her wholeheartedly, providing Miyoung with a solace and security entirely new to her. But lurking in the shadows are dark forces that want to tear the two apart, and soon the time will come when Miyoung must make an impossible choice between her immortality and Jihoon’s life. 

With the rising popularity of K-pop and K-dramas, the time has never been better for a novel like Wicked Fox. It’s rich in both modern Korean cultural detail and ancient Korean folklore, and the enthralling, action-filled plot and intriguing characters make for a story that few readers will be able to resist devouring.

Skye may be known as the school slut, but she isn’t worried about her reputation. Instead, she’s focused on partying with her friends, winning the scholarship to her top-choice art school and getting far away from her hometown. But when her mother brings a former boyfriend, Dan, back into their lives, that plan starts to crumble. Last time Dan was in the picture, he hurt Skye in a way she couldn’t even articulate. And now, torn between leaving home to pursue her dreams and staying to protect her little sister, Skye has to face a truth she’s spent years trying to bury.

Laura Sibson’s debut novel is a total knockout. The Art of Breaking Things tackles sexual assault with all the weight and nuance it deserves and none of the sugarcoating or brushing off it so often gets. Sibson wraps that discussion into a novel whose characters—from Skye and her friends to her little sister and the adults in their lives—are rendered with so much empathy that we can’t help but feel like they’re our friends, too. Sibson’s specificity and her deft prose make readers participants, not just witnesses, as Skye hits rock bottom before pulling herself back up with the help of her friends and her art.

A powerful novel about consent, creativity and the importance of trust (in yourself as much as anyone else), The Art of Breaking Things is a must-read for anyone who’s felt like she had to handle her trauma alone.

Elisabeth Scrivener is an orphan. Raised in one of the kingdom’s six Great Libraries, she has been training as an apprentice, hoping one day to become a library warden who’s responsible for the categorization and containment of dangerous magic. The Great Libraries house not only regular books but also grimoires—books created with sorcery that contain ominous spells and rituals. These grimoires can also transform into deadly creatures known as Maleficts. Elisabeth knows not to trust sorcerers and the powerful magic that whispers to her from the shelves. In fact, she has been raised to defend humans from and contain the powerful magic.

But when disaster strikes her library and she is accused of treason, Elisabeth makes an unlikely alliance with young sorcerer Nathaniel Thorn and his Mephistophelian servant, Silas. Uncovering the true saboteur leads Elisabeth down a terrifying path of conspiracy and chaos, but also of self-discovery. As she learns more about her connection to grimoires and gets closer with Nathaniel and Silas, she begins to reassess her goals and question some of the Great Library’s teachings.

Bestselling author Margaret Rogerson (An Enchantment of Ravens) presents a unique twist on a magical fantasy plot, setting the novel in a 19th-century Western Europe-inspired world that’s dealing with the inheritance of medieval magic as well as the innovations of an industrializing society. Elisabeth is a charismatic heroine, and her chemistry with Nathaniel is inevitable and natural, but it is Silas’ character arc that is particularly compelling.

A race against time filled with demonic magic, vivid settings and classic romantic tension, Sorcery of Thorns is a chillingly good gothic read.

Acclaimed author Tiffany D. Jackson’s latest novel, Let Me Hear a Rhyme, opens in 1998. It’s summertime in Brooklyn, and a teenage boy named Steph has been murdered.

Before leaving the funeral repast, Steph’s best friends, Quadir and Jarrell, visit his bedroom where they find Steph’s sister, Jasmine, and Steph’s vast collection of hip-hop music. Steph’s walls are covered with pictures of hip-hop artists like the Notorious B.I.G., but he was more than a fan. He was also an artist. 

When Quadir and Jarrell hear the music Steph had been recording before he died, they have an idea. Shouldn’t the world get to hear their friend’s lyrical genius? Jasmine agrees to let them take some of his music on the condition that they’ll also help her find out who killed her brother. Quadir and Jarrell know that could be a deadly pursuit, but soon they find themselves in a hot seat of their own. Promoting Steph’s music (whose lyrics were written for the novel by real rapper Malik-16 Sharif) without mentioning that he’s deceased brings money and opportunities to the two boys, but it also boxes them into a maze of lies they must navigate along with some volatile personalities. 

Readers will feel connected to these teens’ love of hip-hop, their loyalty to each other and their love for their community—even when they disagree over how to protect it. Alternating narration among the three main characters offers moving portraits of young people trying to live up to the best selves their slain friend and brother urged them to be. This is an engaging ode to ’90s hip-hop and to love in many forms.