Hey YA Readers!
I’m in the midst of annoying my-kid-is-in-childcare garden variety crud and haven’t felt spectacular in a few days. One of my goals this year has been to really take care of my body and mind intentionally, so I’ve used this as an opportunity to slow down and rest more than I normally would. Benefit? I’ve been reading so much, and if anything helps when you’re not feeling good — and you have some attention span to use — it’s reading. I’m finishing up A Scatter of Light by Malinda Lo and it’s definitely good not-feeling-great company.
Let’s dive into this week’s new books and a look at authors who are jumping categories.
Bookish Goods
Brown Girls Reading Sweatshirt by thetrinigee
How fantastic is this sweatshirt featuring Brown girls of all kinds digging into books? $39 and available in many colors, up to size 5XL.
New Releases
It’s another excellent week for new YA book releases. Here are two that are calling out to me in hardcover, and if you’d like to see the full list of winter 2023 YA books, you can click the link.
As You Walk On By by Julian Winters
Pitched as The Breakfast Club meets Can’t Hardly Wait, Winters returns with another great queer YA title.
Seventeen year old Theo thinks he’s got it all figured out for the future. But for now? He’s putting his efforts into having the best prom ever, with plans for an epic promposal to his crush at a party. When it goes devastatingly wrong, Theo hides out in a room above where the party is happening. One by one, classmates who are hoping to avoid something are entering the room, and maybe Theo learns he’s not as lonely as he fears he might be.
(You got the title stuck in your head now? Welcome to one of this year’s YA earworms! It’s also one of this year’s YA riffs on The Breakfast Club).
One Last Shot: Based on a True Story of Wartime Heroism: The Story of Wartime Photographer Gerda Taro by Kip Wilson
Though this is a fictional verse novel, it’s based on the very real person of Gerda Taro.
Daughter of Polish Jewish immigrants, Gerda Pohorylle never quite felt like she fit in with her German classmates. But once she attends boarding school and is able to find out who she truly is, she gets involved in anti-Nazi and activist circles. When she’s arrested, though, her family decides they must leave the country for their own safety.
Once in Paris, Gerda meets André Friedma, a Hungarian photographer. Together, they polish their skills in photography and begin to travel to military combat zones and shoot. The duo take on pseudonyms as Robert Capa and Gerda Taro to hide their Jewish heritage, and their photos catch good sums of money. When Gerda goes off on her own, she begins to cover Spain’s Civil War and then the beginning of World War II.
This story is compelling and, it should be known, won’t end on a positive note. Gerda is killed during her work, but her legacy and photography tell so many vital stories of hope, of working to defeat fascism, and the role women played during the biggest war in history.
For a more comprehensive list, check out our New Books newsletter.
Riot Recommendations
One of the things I love keeping tabs on is when authors try on writing for a different audience. This year, there are several well-known YA authors who are making a leap to adult novels, and there’s at least one critically-acclaimed adult author making the leap to YA. Let’s take a look at their new books and note that the YA authors going to adult are writing adult books — YA readers might love them, of course, but they’re not specifically YA.
First, our adult author going to YA.
Imposter Syndrome and Other Confessions of Alejandra Kim by Patricia Park (2/21)
Patricia Park’s first novel was for adults, Re Jane, and it earned wide critical acclaim. Now Park is writing a YA novel following a teen struggling to fit in as a Korean Latina American. She feels too much like an outsider at her wealthy Manhattan school but in her Queens neighborhood of Jackson Heights, she doesn’t feel Latina enough. Add to these challenges is the fact Ale recently lost her father, and now, all she wants to do is escape. College will be a fresh start. Unfortunately, when she’s entangled in a situation about a microaggression, she’s thrust even more into the space between fitting in and standing out.
This one is supposed to be funny and insightful and it looks like such a solid YA title about identity, future-building, and more.
And onto some YA authors trying their hands at adult.
Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo (8/1)
This is for readers itching for a story of family legacy, featuring a cast of Dominican American women.
Flor can see the future and that skill means she can predict when someone is going to die. She informs her sisters that she will be holding a “living wake” to celebrate her life, and now her three sisters are wondering if she knows that she’s about to pass or there’s something else going on entirely.
Told over the course of the three days leading to the wake, this story unravels family secrets among and between the sisters, the cousins, and more.
For Her Consideration by Amy Spalding (2/21)
A queer romcom set against the glittering world of L.A. and celebrity, this first adult novel from Spalding follows Nina, whose life changed after a devastating breakup 3 years ago. She’s lost a lot of spark and interest for her former life as a script writer and is living with her aunt in the L.A. suburbs as she figures things out.
Ari Fox, a young, sexy, and very out actress rising in the L.A. scene, calls a surprise meeting at Nina’s talent agency and now Nina’s calling it quits might itself be calling it quits.
The Last Tale of the Flower Bride by Roshani Chokshi (2/14)
This one is pitched as Mexican Gothic meets The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue and is a gothic story about marriage and family secrets.
The man who married Indigo Maxwell-Casteñada, heiress of a family fortune, was able to do so on one condition: don’t ask about her past. But when Indigo’s estranged aunt is dying and they must return to her childhood home, the man becomes curious. He begins to snoop. And then he finds the shadow of Indigo’s childhood friend who simply and suddenly disappeared. Despite Indigo’s warnings, he starts to look deeper into her history and finds that her secrets are just that for a reason.
The Neighbor Favor by Kristina Forest (2/28)
If you’re here for a bookish romance, look no further. Lily has been wanting to get into editing children’s books, even though it is outside of what her Black family expects of her. Unfortunately, she’s been editing nonfiction and is stuck; one thing helping her through is maintaining a letter-writing friendship with a fantasy author whose work she admires. They’re building a nice connection…and then he ghosts her.
So when Lily needs to find a date to her sister’s wedding, she asks her new neighbor Nick. Nick…might just happen to be the very fantasy writer Lily’s connected with, but she doesn’t know that quite yet.
Two more YA authors with adult fiction hitting shelves this year worth taking a peek at: Kerri Maniscalco’s Throne of the Fallen
(10/3) and Ally Carter’s The Blonde Identity (8/8).
Thanks for hanging out. You’ll find me with a cup of warm tea, a cozy blanket, and another book as whatever’s rattling in my lungs wears itself out.
Until later this week, happy reading!
— Kelly Jensen