Hey YA Readers!
As always seems to be the case, my eyes were bigger than my reading time, so my plans to do a ton of reading on my week off didn’t really happen. I could be sad, but I’m not. I got to spend an excellent few days with my daughter playing, making chocolate, painting, and more.
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Let’s dive into this week’s look at new paperback releases and YA book news!
Bookish Goods
Cute Dog Bookmark by VanessaForteArt
How adorable is this little doxie bookmark? I want to cuddle it, even though it is made of paper. $5 and you can have your very own adorable dog bookmark.
New Releases
It’s definitely spring here in the midwest finally, and as I’m writing this, we’re rolling into our second day of strong storms in the past week. This is the season I dub paperback season, as getting out and about — and indeed, going down to the basement — is a little easier with a paperback.
Here are two great paperbacks that hit shelves this week. You can grab the entire roundup of spring 2023 YA paperbacks over here.
Burn Down, Rise Up by Vincent Tirado
Kids have been disappearing in the Bronx, and it seems like only the missing white kids are getting any attention. Raquel, who is 16, does, too. That is, until her crush disappears and her mom comes down with a mysterious illness.
Teaming up with Charlize, the cousin of her missing crush, Raquel soon learns that the missing are all tied to an urban legend called the Echo Game. The rules of the game are related to a dark part of New York City’s history and those who play find themselves trapped in the underground.
To save themselves and find those who have gone missing, Raquel and Charlize will need to try their hand at the Echo Game themselves.
If you like horror with social commentary, you’re going to love this one. It’s sapphic to boot!
We Used To Be Friends by Amy Spalding
Friendship breakups are the pits, and Spaldiing’s novel about the slow disintegration of the friendship between Jamie and Kat is one that will resonate with so many readers.
James’s narrative moves backwards from her leaving for college after the summer post-senior year, while Kat’s moves forward from the first month of senior year and as readers, we see all of the things that add up as they come, but we’re left moving forward in the story because we’re looking for that one thing. But there is no single thing. It’s a lot of things, on both sides.
Kat discovers she’s bisexual, while James’s parents are breaking up because her mom has found a new partner, and those are two big revelations in the story, connected because of how they define each of the girls to themselves and one another. Kat becomes close with her girlfriend, whiles James finds herself needing to spend more time better understanding herself and what it is she really wants in her life.
This book has humor, heart, and heartbreak, and it pairs so nicely with Ashley Woodfolk’s When You Were Everything.
For a more comprehensive list of new releases, check out our New Books newsletter.
YA Book News
- Some excellent trans and nonbinary science fiction and fantasy authors (including several YA!).
- I…don’t know why we keep having the same conversation about YA books with 13-15 year old protagonists as if we haven’t been having this conversation for over a decade. The answer is those books don’t get marketing money. They exist! There are many! But you don’t get them on all of your social media. Could there be more? Yes. But they are not not there. Here’s Tiffany Schmidt and I on this very topic in 2021.
- Groundbreaking queer YA writer Julie Anne Peters has died.
- There is a director attached to the adaptation of Maggie Stiefvater’s Shiver.
- Suzanne Young had a book signing for her new YA release and…no one came. She talked about the experience on social media and garnered so much support. I think that we’re going to see this a lot, and I am pretty sure it isn’t due to a lack of care. We are still in a pandemic but the world continues on as if we aren’t, and so now, there is SO MUCH stuff to do that there are too many things going on at once from which to choose (and conversely, there are a lot of folks still being cautious with anything in person). That folks online rallied says a lot of good.
- The audiobook cast for Girls Like Girls looks incredible!
- The story behind Sweet Valley High.
Thanks for hanging out, and thanks for being so great to Erica last week, too. We’ll see you on Saturday for some excellent YA book deals.
Until then, happy reading!
— Kelly Jensen, currently reading No Boy Summer by Amy Spalding