Here are some of the new YA books coming out in May that have starred reviews and are getting lots of buzz. Enjoy!
Excuse Me While I Ugly Cry by Joya Goffney
Hurricane Summer by Asha Bromfield
Incredible Doom by Matthew Bogart and Jesse Holden
Luck of the Titanic by Stacey Lee
Off the Record by Camryn Garrett
On the Hook by Francisco X. Stork
Pumpkin by Julie Murphy
A Sitting in St. James by Rita Williams-Garcia
Tokyo Ever After by Emiko Jean
Home Is Not a Country by Safia Elhillo (9780593177051)
Nima has always wished that she was different somehow. Part of it is the loss of her father before she was born. Part of it is that she doesn’t feel like she fits into her suburban home in America. Part of it is that she isn’t connected enough to her Sudanese heritage. Haitham, a boy who lives nearby, is her only friend and when he is injured after they argue, Nima finds herself adrift and spending days without talking to anyone. She dreams about a fantasy life where her father wasn’t killed, she has a large extended family, and her mother is not overworked and exhausted. Soon those dreams lead to her taking risks, inviting a hungry spirit into her life, one who looks a lot like her and can show her the life of her dreams. But what is the cost of these dreams?
Told in exceptional poetry, this verse novel for teens is a deep look at racism, Islamophobia, and being part of a large diaspora. Elhillo’s poetry is some of the best I have read in a YA verse novel. She captures the dark emotions of loneliness, hate crimes, and lack of self-esteem with such clarity and empathy. Her poetry shows the importance of family, whether it is imagined or real. It shows the dangers of wanting to escape your life and of the potential of losing it all along the way.
Nima is the sort of protagonist that readers will want to shake and comfort. She is incredibly lonely, spending her evenings isolated and her days silent. Her relationship with her mother is complex and well drawn, creating both tension and connection in turns. Readers will see themselves in Nima, in dreaming of alternate lives and outcomes. They will get a close look at the experience of an immigrant family that keeps secrets in order to survive.
Incredible writing combines with a gorgeous story of loneliness and risk. Appropriate for ages 15-18.
Reviewed from library copy.
The Locus Science Fiction Foundation has announced the top ten finalists in each of their categories for the 2021 awards. The winners will be announced on June 26, 2021. There is a young adult category and here is the Top Ten:
Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland
Legendborn by Tracy Deonn
Over the Woodward Wall by A. Deborah Baker
A Peculiar Peril by Jeff VanderMeer
Race to the Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse
The Scapegracers by Hannah Abigail Clarke
Shadowshaper Legacy by Daniel Jose Older
The Silvered Serpents by Roshani Chokshi
A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow
A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher
Yolk by Mary H. K. Choi (9781534446007)
Jayne has moved from her Texas hometown to New York City to attend design school. Her older sister, June, lives in New York City too, but the two haven’t spoken in years. Jayne has spent a lot of time partying in clubs and bars and sleeping with boys. Now she lives in a horrible tiny illegally sublet apartment without running water or heat, but with a roommate who won’t pay rent, occasionally sleeps with her, and then ignores her. When Jayne and June get back in touch with one another, Jayne finds out that her sister has cancer. Even more, June has taken on Jayne’s identity in order to use her insurance for the surgery she needs. Jayne finds herself loving her sister’s fancy and safe apartment and basically moving in with her. Jayne has her own issues to confront, including her relationship with food, her hatred of her body, and the way she binge eats. As the two sisters grow closer, the truth must be shared between them in order for them both to recover.
Choi has once again created a novel that lays her characters bare before the reader. Jayne is so caught up in her own tragic life story, that it startles her and the reader alike when she must face a true tragedy, her sister’s cancer diagnosis. As Jayne obsesses about her classes, her future career, her awful apartment, her horrible roommate, and her family, she avoids thinking about her eating disorder or facing it at all. Readers will see the evidence of her imbalanced relationship to food, but the extent of the problem is only steadily revealed as the layers are peeled away.
Jayne is a captivating character, full of so much self doubt and self hatred. Her story is full of unflinching honesty paired with the poignant truth of a family who has immigrated to the United States and stands to lose one another along the way. Jayne’s relationships with her mother and sister are so beautifully crafted, they ring with such truth that they are frightening. Choi’s writing is masterful throughout, capturing the tragic, beautiful story of growing up as a Korean-American immigrant.
Heartbreakingly true, riveting writing and stellar characters. Appropriate for ages 14-18.
Reviewed from copy provided by Simon & Schuster.
YALSA has announced the nominees for the 2021 Teens’ Top Ten. The Top Ten is a list chosen by teens where teens nominate and choose their favorite books of the previous year. Nominations come from members of teen book groups in 15 school and public libraries across the nation. Here are this year’s nominees:
All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Jackson
All the Stars and Teeth by Adalyn Grace
Atomic Women by Roseanne Montillo
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins
The Betrothed by Kiera Cass
The Black Friend: On Being a Better White Person by Frederick Joseph
The Bone Thief by Breeana Shields
Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas
Chain of Gold by Cassandra Clare
Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo
Dangerous Secrets by Mari Mancusi
The Dark Matter of Mona Starr by Laura Gulledge
Dragon Hoops by Gene Luen Yang
Five Total Strangers by Natalie D. Richards
Flamer by Mike Curato
The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Instant Karma by Marissa Meyer
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab
Legendborn by Tracy Deonn
Lost Book of the White by Cassandra Clare and Wesley Chu
The Mermaid, the Witch and the Sea by Maggie Tokudo-Hall
One of Us Is Next by Karen M. McManus
The Shadows Between Us by Tricia Levenseller
Tweet Cute by Emma Lord
We Used to Be Friends by Amy Spalding
The Great Godden by Meg Rosoff (9781536215854)
On their annual beach vacation, a teen and her family experience an unusual summer. It’s a summer of time spent sailing and swimming. A summer full of competitive tennis games, shared meals, and naps. It was also a summer of new love, hot crushes, and strange boys. It was the summer when the Godden brothers arrived. Kit was the golden brother, impossibly handsome and entirely intoxicating when he turned his attention on you. Hugo was the darkness to his brother’s shine, the surliness to his charm. As the narrator watches, her sister and Kit become involved, flirting at first and then becoming more and more. What should be just a summer fling has an underpinning of unease and manipulation, just in time for Kit to turn his attention to the narrator who by now should know better. But even then, he has more chaos to create.
Printz Medal winner, Rosoff has created a slim volume that is impossible to put down. It has the languid and flowing feel of Kit himself, drawing readers in with promises of summer fun and then turning into something quite unusual, dark and menacing. The book is a great coming-of-age story where readers get to see a young woman realize what is happening around her and yet not quite be able to stop it from engulfing her as well. The narrator is never named, but all is seen and felt through her own experiences, making it an intensely personal read.
The writing is exceptional. Rosoff quietly and carefully seeds doubts with the words she chooses to use in describing the characters, the things that the narrator sees, and the questions that she has deep down. Rosoff situates us all with a rather unreliable narrator, who sees her siblings and family in a specific way, then along with the reader has new realizations about them and what that means.
Sun drenched, threatening and vibrantly feminist this is a triumph of a book. Appropriate for ages 14-18.
Reviewed from ARC provided by Candlewick Press.
Here are 18 of the upcoming titles for teens that have gotten lots of buzz this spring. Lots of favorite authors along with new authors to love.
Between Perfect and Real by Ray Stoeve
The Cost of Knowing by Brittney Morris
Dustborn by Erin Bowman
The Forest of Stolen Girls by June Hur
The Great Godden by Meg Rosoff
House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland
The Infinity Courts by Akemi Dawn Bowman
Kate in Waiting by Becky Albertalli
Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses by Kristen O’Neal
The Power of Style: How Fashion and Beauty Are Being Used to Reclaim Cultures by Christian Allaire
She Drives Me Crazy by Kelly Quindlen
Slingshot by Mercedes Helnwein
Somewhere Between Bitter and Sweet by Laekan Zea Kemp
Thirty Talks Weird Love by Alessandra Narvaez Varela
Victories Greater Than Death by Charlie Jane Anders
What Beauty There Is by Cory Anderson
Zara Hossain Is Here by Sabina Khan
The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna (9781984848697)
At age 16, Deka is preparing for the blood ceremony in her village that will prove that she is pure and worthy of marriage. When her village is attacked by deathshrieks though, Deka’s blood flows gold rather than red. Deka is discovered and held in a cell where she is drained of her blood regularly. Now unable to die permanently, she suffers through several deaths while her blood is sold by the elite members of her village. When a strange woman arrives wielding the power of the Emperor, she takes Deka with her to join a new elite force of fighters, all of them girls with gold blood and immortality. It is there that Deka becomes a warrior, learning to fight the deathshrieks and also learning about the powers she seems to have that no one else does, including the ability to order the deathshrieks to obey her commands. But all is not what it seems in the training camp. Steadily, Deka and her friends discover what is being hidden from them all.
Written in wildly engaging style, this book is a gripping and tense look at a society that denigrates women yet has to depend on them for their very survival in war. The pacing is strong, the book moving ahead with new discoveries and new revelations nicely. The diverse characters fill the entire cast, making a rich reading experience in an interesting fantasy world with monsters who are more than they seem at first.
Deka is an engaging protagonist. She must push back on the way she was raised to be submissive, something that many girls and women in our own society must do as well. Stepping into her own power is a theme of the book, learning to wield her new weapons and then figuring out who the real enemies are. Readers will figure out the puzzle long before Deka even seems interested in wondering about it. There are a few surprises along the way though, making it worth reading even if the reader has it mostly solved.
Ferocious, feminist, fierce and great fun. Appropriate for ages 13-17.
Reviewed from copy provided by Delacorte Press.
The Wide Starlight by Nicole Lesperance (9780593116227)
Eli was born in the tiny community of Svalbard, Norway. She was raised by a mother who loved stories that made their lives extraordinary. From magical tales in front of the fire to three girls set free from their destinies to marry princes, her stories were both a comfort and a concern. Then one night, Eli’s mother vanished from a frozen fjord leaving Eli behind in the icy darkness as she was swept up by the Northern Lights. Since then, Eli has lived a very normal life with her father in Cape Cod. Everything changes though when she receives a mysterious note brought by the wind and left in a bush for her. The Northern Lights are coming to Cape Cod, and Eli realizes that she may be able to bring her mother back. After whistling for her mother under the sweep of colors in the sky, her mother does return, but not without other consequences. Her mother is icy cold with fingernails that melt away and eyes full of darkness. When meteorites start to fall around them and narwhals beach nearby, Eli knows she must make the trip to Svalbard and find out how to save her mother.
Lesperance’s fantasy novel is beautifully crafted, full of echoes of stories like “East of the Sun, West of the Moon.” It builds from these stories, creating something new and magical. The story spans continents, taking readers from Norway to America and back again. The contrasts between ways of life are profound and interesting. They support the wild and raw stories that come to life around Eli and her family. The settings are both depicted with clarity and a real attention to the details that make them special.
Eli and her mother are fabulous characters. Eli must find her way through the layers of the stories to see the truth within them that will lead her to her mother. She has to figure out how to trust, and it may just be the most unlikely people around her. The depiction of her grandmother is one of the best in the book, showing what could have stayed a stereotypical cruel woman and turning her into something complex who supports the entire story.
Clever writing, beautiful world building and a twist on classic folk tales make this a book worth exploring, perhaps with mittens. Appropriate for ages 12-16.
Reviewed from copy provided by Razorbill.
Waking Brain Cells 