Sponsored by Oni Press.
Annie is a smart, antisocial lesbian starting her senior year of high school who’s under pressure to join the cheerleading squad to make friends and round out her college applications. Her former friend Bebe is a people-pleaser, a trans girl who must keep her parents happy with her grades and social life to maintain their support of her transition. Through the rigors of squad training and amped-up social pressures (not to mention microaggressions and other queer youth problems), the two girls rekindle a friendship they thought they’d lost and discover there may be other, sweeter feelings springing up between them.
Hey YA Readers!
Let’s catch up on the latest in YA book news and new YA books this week.
YA Book News
- I didn’t realize there had never been an audiobook for Judy Blume’s classic Forever . . . now there is!
- If you haven’t yet seen the new Time list of 100 best YA novels of all time, here it is. We’ll dig into this more in next week’s newsletter.
- Akwaeke Emezi has a new YA novel, a companion to Pet, hitting shelves soon.
- USA Today has profiled a few big YA authors recently, and the last entry in the series is Sabaa Tahir.
- More YA (and middle grade and children’s) books you may have missed because we’re still in a pandemic.
- A giant roundup of the SFF YA hitting shelves this month.
New YA Books
Hardcover
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Cazadora by Romina Garber (series)
Dagger Hill by Devon Taylor
Ebonwilde by Crystal Smith (serires)
The Endless Skies by Shannon Price
How We Fall Apart by Katie Zhao
Living Beyond Borders edited by Margarita Longoria
Moth by Amber McBride
Phantom Heart by Kelly Creagh
Redemptor by Jordan Ifueko (series)
Paperback
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If These Wings Could Fly by Kyrie McCauley
Lobizona by Romina Garber (first in a series)
The Scapegracers by Hannah Abigail Clarke (series)
The Secret Runners by Matthew Reilly
Vicious Spirits by Kat Cho (series)
This Week at Book Riot
- New and forthcoming YA disability nonfiction.
- A huge list of books like Six of Crows.
- How many of these nostalgic ’90s teen series do you remember?
- Four YA books about races.
- Leander ISD in Texas has pulled even more books from their classrooms.
- This is a manga-related post but because much of manga has teen appeal, I wanted to include this fascinating look at why manga is so hot right now in North America. It had a huge popularity spike around the time I was working in libraries, then cooled for a while, but it is back!
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This bookmark tells nothing but the truth. Snag one for $3.
Thanks for hanging out, and we’ll see you on Saturday with some great YA ebook deals.
— Kelly Jensen, @heykellyjensen on Instagram.