New YA Book Releases for July 9, 2025

Greta Riley Green takes a job with the local amusement park Hyper Kid Magic Land this summer. It’s her hope to move on from The Incident last year and reinvent herself. Greta is thrilled when she and Mercy Goodwin begin to forge a friendship–Mercy is cool and effortless, confident and well-liked.

So when Mercy tells Greta she has to tell her a secret, Greta feels fully accepted. Mercy wants Greta to meet her the next day. Greta shows . . . but Mercy does not. Mercy doesn’t show up the next day or the next, either.

This isn’t the first time a team member of Hyper Kid Magic Land disappeared. It’s not the first time there’s been blood on the hands of the amusement park. Now, Greta’s summer of reinvention looks more like a summer of unearthing a dark history of the place where she hoped to find something new.

This one is pitched as Bridgerton meets The Davenports and looks like a perfect summer read.

Stella Sedgwick was banished from etiquette lessons, and she knows that making a career as a writer in 1860s England is hard enough. Add that she’s got dark skin and that she’s female? Nearly impossible.

Then, a proposition. The former employer of Stella’s late mother wants to bequeath Stella one of the estates. The thing is, in order to avoid a complicated legal battle, Stella must marry someone. With her cousin by her side, Stella is thrust into the upper crust of London, where she finds herself with rekindled feelings toward a childhood best friend.

The relocation to London also gives Stella not only the opportunity to pick up her mother’s old advice column. It unearths so many secrets that she can hardly keep up.

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Looking for a romance that is mostly realistic but is also about witches? This one has it all.

Witches and humans have a complicated history. Cayden’s mom, a witch, was shunned by her parents when she fell in love with her human dad. Her father, who owns a bakery, is seeing the business struggling now that Cayden’s small Texas town is quickly being gentrified by wealthy witches. So when Cayden realizes she went on a date with one of the children of the high society witches changing the landscape of her town, she feels bad about it. She cannot be with him. That is, until she realizes that Khy and his community might be the solution to the challenges that her father’s bakery is facing.

Enter a fake dating scheme. Cayden can’t REALLY be with Rhy, but she can pretend. Except real feelings are blooming between the two, and Cayden is quite liking the opportunity to reconnect with her witchy side. Can she really be with Khy? Or does she need to stick to her plans of only using him to help support her father’s business?

Horror lovers, this one’s for you. It’s releasing both in paperback and in hardcover this week.

Lara Williams scores her dream summer job aboard a luxury train called Banebury. It’ll be a summer for change and growth, something she needs following a lot of drama in her life. That her ex-friend (and, uh, ex-crush) is one of her coworkers will be fine.

Things get weird fast. On the first night of the trip, two carriages are attached to the train in the middle of the night. Inside are an array of botanicals and two siblings, Gwen and Gwydion, who share that the plants are part of research. Lara feels unsettled though. There’s something very strange about what’s going on and what is happening with these plants.

But Banebury holds secrets, and Lara may not be able to outrun what’s to come.

Devon and Drew are twins, but Devon has always felt second to her sister. It’s the summer before Drew leaves for college (she’s going a year early because she’s an overachiever) and Devon is insistent they have the Best Summer Ever. But when the twins and their besties play with a haunted Ouija Board they find themselves being stalked by some kind of demonic presence. That presence is doing all of the things you’d expect of a horror monster, and as that spirit continues to haunt them, Devon, the blonde, finds herself preparing to be the first victim. Devon’s long-time crush, Yaya, appears to be the final girl.

All of them will need to use their knowledge of horror tropes to get themselves out of this mess because the Best Summer Ever becomes the Worst Summer Ever.

This book is comped to Unpregnant, which, despite being adapted, I think is deeply underrated. Rarely are abortion-themed books humorous, but it is. That makes me especially eager to pick up Yasmin’s book.

It’s a not-too-distant America where abortion is illegal. Laylah and Noor, high schoolers, have their sights on becoming an OBGYN and journalists; for right now, though, the two besties are creating an illegal guide to abortion in Texas.

Getting this guide together isn’t easy and more, it’s dangerous. While both girls are passionate about helping others access reproductive healthcare, it’s work further complicated by their mosque and a local politician. But together they’ll stand and work toward helping do what’s right.