Author: Kelly Jensen

This paperback original is one for fans of rom-coms and nerdery.

Riley loves musicals, and her goal is to become a director on Broadway. She knows getting a role in the school’s spring musical is crucial. But when Riley doesn’t get permission before borrowing her mom’s car, she’s grounded. She’ll be forced to work at her dad’s game shop as a punishment.

Riley doesn’t have time for this, of course. She’s got the musical. So she’ll convince one of the other employees to cover her shifts in exchange for flirting with him. This will help him get the attention of his crush…maybe.

Maybe because it may be that Riley starts to catch some real feelings for Nathan, thanks to some intense games of Dungeons & Dragons.

Sonia Patil hopes she’ll be able to catch the attention of her crush at the local comic-con. But in a weird twist of fate, Sonia ends up saving her crush after he faints into a canal. No one knows it was her, though, since she was dressed up, and now, everyone wants to know who the masked heroine was.

Problem? Sonia’s sister is undocumented, and her mother was deported; they’ve been trying to stay under the radar. So, as people work to uncover the do-gooder, Sonia worries that all of the positive attention might lead to some very negative consequences for her, for her family, and for her future with her crush.

This book is set up like a Bollywood movie and follows Arya during her senior year in shaadi season. Arya is excited her sister is home, though she herself is juggling a million challenging emotions after watching her best friends break up, her rival for student council become more intense, and being unable to suppress flutters for the irresistibly cute Dean.

A fun slice-of-life family story that’s been compared to Save The Date and Never Have I Ever.

A rom-com by two of the best illustrators working in kid lit? Count me in!

Val is convinced she is cursed when it comes to love. It’s generational. No one in her family has had luck with a little thing called love.

Then, she meets a pair of lion dancers. It’s chance, but something in it rekindles hope in Val. Might she be able to break the family’s curse and find true love?

Jude is a cupid. They think they’re good at it, too, even if they’ve made some mistakes. Even if they’re on probation for doing a not-great thing. But Jude is ready to prove themself once again.

Their assignment isn’t to set up two adults, though. It’s to set up two high schoolers—people Jude’s own age—who are meant to be more than the best friends they were before they had a big fight.

Jude feels confident in the assignment…until they’re thrown for a curve.

Liana is obsessed with music and hopes to do like her father does and break into the industry. He’s in A&R, and he’s been putting his entire life into his job as a distraction from the loss of Liana’s mother.

But Liana does something bad and accidentally sabotages an up-and-coming band. Now she’s going to do everything she can to get the band back on course and prove she’s got the chops for the industry. She needs to do it without the band knowing the role she played in hurting them.

The closer Liana gets to the band, though, the harder she finds hiding the truth.

Lady Ela Dalvi was betrayed by her best friend Poppy over a boy three years ago. Ela was sent away, and her reputation was tarnished over it—the boy was, after all, son of a duke.

Now, three years later, Ela wants revenge. Poppy has been rising in the elite ranks, and Ela can’t let that stand any longer.

Her plan is to disguise herself as a mysterious heiress and start to show up at elite events. Can she bring down her former best friend, or will she find herself falling hard for the boy who started this entire problem?

May’s parents put a lot of pressure on her as she’s still not the Chinese Taiwanese American daughter they want her to be. Her beloved brother Danny is, so his acceptance into Princeton pleases their mom and dad. But Danny secretly struggled with depression, and when he dies by suicide, the family experiences grief they could never imagine. The only thing making it worse is how the community responds with racism and hatred. May works through these challenges with her writing—the thing her parents didn’t see as valuable—and she’s taking back her and her family’s story.

This book explores mental health, racism, and the challenges of finding your voice.

Jake and Nate’s ex-boyfriends decided to fake that they’re doing well post-breakup. Their exes are together and sharing on Instagram just how perfect their relationship is.

Naturally, Jake and Nate decide they’re going to get back at their exes and pretend to have the best summer ever. They’ll hit the ‘Gram, too, with incredible photos of their perfect road trip. It’s a big scheme to make everything look like it’s going great, and the two of them are mourning the loss of their relationships.

What they won’t talk about is how they’re stuck in a van with Nate’s annoying parents and younger sister. Nor how they actually haven’t talked to each other in years.

Nor…how they might be falling for one another. A hilarious road trip meets social media hijinks rom-com.

Perla, 16, has done everything right in high school in order to graduate early, with honors, and get into her dream college, Delmont University. But when she’s rejected by the school, she doesn’t know what to do. Everything she’s worked for has been upended.

So she decides to do what anyone else would do: forge an acceptance letter and show up anyway. If she can lay low but see how things work, maybe she can actually get an acceptance when she reapplies for next year.

In the meantime, she’ll be crashing classes.

Nova Albright is going to be the first Black homecoming queen at Lovett High School. This is a huge deal, especially because the system at Lovett has been rigged in favor of white courts since the beginning, as the school came to be post-Katrina and combined the rich white students from one part of the Mississippi town with the lower-income Black students from another part of town. The Black students are de facto segregated at the school: they’re not in the AP classes, but they ARE there to help the school’s sports teams excel. This little factoid is important for several reasons, including why Nova’s crowning is especially important.

So it’s incredibly suspicious when Nova is found dead days before Homecoming on the same night a viral video of Tinsley McArthur emerges. Tinsley, who believes she deserved the crown. Tinsley, who has a family legacy to uphold. Tinsley, who was drinking with her friends that night and said she was going to murder Nova.

But Tinsley swears she’s innocent. This was a setup by her ungenerous so-called friends. She was drunk when she made that statement. She absolutely did not kill Nova. 

Or did she?

Looking for a teen sports memoir about coming of age as a queer person? This is a winner for that and more.

Karina skated at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships and quickly became a fan favorite. She then became the first skater on Team USA to come out as queer.

Her memoir explores life on the ice, as well as growing up in a big school where, even in an era where queerness became more accepted than in the past, she knew virtually no one else having the experiences she was. Because this is a sports memoir, it also explores the ups and downs of figure skating, including the unreal pressures placed upon athletes to look and act in a certain way.

This book cover is one that has stood out to me this year—it’s bright, and it is delightful—and the description is making me even more excited to pick it up.

Kalvin is a high school sophomore with a unique side hustle: he sells candy at his school, and because he’s got the good stuff with no drama, it’s a successful underground business. Then, one day, his long-time crush, Sterling, stumbles into the storage closet where Kalvin keeps his supply and he begins to talk with her about the bad relationship she is in. Now he’s accidentally become a romance therapist, too—but how long can he put on the act before the truth of his own experiences and models of good relationships emerge?

What happens when his feelings for Sterling become too difficult to hide?

Calli is 18 and lives in a small town where it seems everyone knows everyone—and everything. She’s just buried her father, and everyone has gone home. Or so she thinks.

Standing there alone is a girl who is scared, bruised, dirty. She can’t speak. Calli knows right then she needs to help the girl, whom she has started to call Ash, but Calli cannot let anyone know about her.

When a detective comes around asking about whether or not Calli has seen or heard anything about a girl who has disappeared from another town, she’s not saying anything.

But it seems as though Ash might have a whole lot to tell.

A diverse heist story set aboard the ill-fated Titanic? That’s right.

Our thief, Josefa, is not out for money, though: it’s a book encrusted in gems worth millions of dollars. Josefa recruits three other girls to help take the book. As much as securing the prize would ensure them all success down the road, their infighting, mistakes, and romantic side quests might put them in danger…and, as we know, that ship is also going down.

Seelie might look just like her twin, Isolde, but she knows she’s different. She’s autistic, dropped in the human world by a fae as a baby. Seelie’s magic is a little unpredictable, but she’ll use it to her advantage as she and her sister take up the hunt for treasure. Too bad the girls end up in a heist that goes south and now, they’re discovering a bigger mystery connecting the world of the fae to humans.

If you like fairy tales, fae/faeries, mystery, and twins at the center of your fantastical world-building, this is written especially for you.

Devin Baez has been looking forward to winter break at his family’s cabin in Lake Andreas. But then he runs into the neighbors, the Seo-Cookes, who have been dominating in the local winter games for years. The families decide to amp things up this year with a bet: the Baez family offers up their cabin as a prize if the Seo-Cookes win again this year.

Julian Seo-Cooke needs a fake boyfriend, and Devin agrees. He sees it as a chance to score some secrets and win the games this year.

But as much as Julian and Devin are supposed to be hating each other…there might be more complicated feelings involved.

This book will be available in hardcover and paperback at the same time.

When they were younger, Ethan and Rebecca met and became quick friends. They shared secrets and kisses until Ethan’s mom took him away. He’s able to visit periodically, and when he does, he leaves a flower on Rebecca’s windowsill.

Four years later, Ethan is gone for good. He’s now responsible for taking care of his mom, who struggles with substance use.

Two years ago, Rebecca and her father were in a terrible car accident that left him dead. She became a wheelchair user.

Now, Ethan and Rebecca are reconnecting. But can they find common ground in their grief and trauma? Or are they forever pulled apart?