New YA Book Releases This Week, May 14, 2025

Publishing in both hardcover and paperback simultaneously, this is Manansala’s first foray into YA (say that ten times fast!).

Danika Dizon is the daughter of a mother who is a private investigator and a father who writes mysteries. It’s kind of a given she’s got the ability to help out classmates in need, given that pedigree. Her hobby is offering anxious classmates guidance via tarot.

So when one of her classmates comes to her with anxiety that’s harder than your typical high school challenges, Danika’s cards render a reading that doesn’t allay those concerns. When that classmate vanishes and her sister comes to Danika desperate for answers, Danika tells her parents she feels prepared to get to the bottom of the missing classmate. She feels her cards will set her on the right track.

But what Danika discovers is that her classmate was living a double life. The more she uncovers, the less prepared Danika actually is to get to the bottom of the case . . . and the more her tarot cards may be leading her down a dark path.

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We’ve got an A+ book title and A+ book cover, so it stands to reason the book itself sounds A+, too.

Phyllis is a con artist who has a skill that allows him to pop off limbs. He takes those body parts to his partner Lucent, who ransoms them. While others are afraid of Phyllis’s magic, Lucent isn’t–though Lucent requires that Phyllis keep on collecting body parts. All is going fine until a mark cannot afford the ransom on his nose. That man claims his sister was taken and without her money, he’s unable to pay for his body part.

Phyllis decides he’s going to discover what happened to this man’s sister. To do so, he’ll take on the false identity of Lord Phillip of Rabbiton in order to gain trust from the local nobility. Too bad doing so has Phyllis in a number of challenging situations. First, he’s discovered there’s more than one missing girl in town. Second, and perhaps more complicated to him, he’s falling in love with the missing girl and this new identity he’s taken on. Maybe the life of crime he lived with Lucent wasn’t that great after all.

Then Phyllis–err, Lord Phillip of Rabbiton–finds the missing girl and another one. They…are not dead but rather UNDEAD. Now, he’s got to decide what future he wants to fight for. Will he go back to his life of crime or build a life constructed of some clever lies?

Kia’s life has been privileged and she’d be the first to say so. She’s the daughter of a popular and powerful influencer. But Kia wants a life that isn’t in the spotlight. She wants a normal high school experience without rumors flying everywhere about her.

So when she meets Cass, Kia gets a taste of that normalcy. At least it feels that way. Then Cass begins to garner his own levels of attention and the spotlight is one again trained on Kia.

Can she experience the messiness of first love the way she wishes? Or is Kia forever going to find herself in the spotlight that she never once asked for?

I don’t know about you, but I love a comp to Jenny Han and this one has just that.

It’s senior year and Eliza Park has it all planned out. She’s going to be the salutatorian and give a graduation speech for the ages. She’s eager to hang with her friends who are as driven as she is.

But a scheduling mishap has her taking a culinary arts class and the kitchen is NOT where she excels. Now she’s struggling to keep her class rank, and it’s made worse knowing her competition is classmate Wesley Ruengsomboon. He’s a natural in the kitchen.

Eliza knows the only way she can fulfill her dream of salutatorian is to win the midterm cooking contest. But Wesley is good at what he does, and he’s now her partner in class. How in the world will she be able to truly compete? Perhaps it’s a little luck, a little bit of the magic of her grandmother’s Korean recipes, and a little bit of letting herself get to know Wesley.

I read this one back in January or February and readers who enjoy friendship stories, road trips, and the magic of falling in love with music will dig the latest release from Maldonado.

Chloe Torres is turning 18, and while usually her birthday is a reminder that summer is over and the new school year is about to begin, she’s aware now things are much different. High school is over, and she’s mourning the loss of her two best friends.

She wants to try to knock something off a bucket list the three of them built together: a road trip to see their favorite band. Chloe’s covered all of the logistics except for the one where she approaches her ex-BFFs and asks them to come. She puts a lot on the line to do it, and when they agree, she prepares for reconciliation.

Except it won’t be that easy. Even if it’s an adventure all of them dreamed of. Friendship is challenging, and so, too, is the imminent ending of high school life. Can Chloe, Ramona, and Sienna patch things up?

It’s a multiverse spin on the second chance romance, and you can count me in, especially because Ahmed is such a great writer.

Aria likes everything to be predictable and thus, controllable. That’s why she’s gone into science for college and why she’s decided to leave her high school romance behind. It’s too unpredictable.

Unfortunately for Aria, she finds herself falling into parallel universes and she has no answers. The only predictable elements of these experiences are a poem from one of her English classes and her (ex?) boyfriend Rohan. When she wakes up in a universe that is stunningly similar to her own, she finds herself having real feelings for the familiarity. That includes her time with Rohan. But this isn’t her real life–is it?

She’s got to figure out a solution to get herself back home and recognize that the path there will be anything but predictable.

Loren invites Mara in a traditional Blackfeet Giveaway. It’s meant to help honor Mara’s missing sister and Mara’s hopeful it will help her forge some meaningful relationships on the reservation.

But then Samantha White Tail, a girl from the Giveaway, is found murdered. Now the four involved in the Giveaway are all suspects because they were last to see Samantha. Each wants to clear their names and find out who killed Samantha. The problem is each of them also had a complicated relationship with the victim.

This book originally published in 2015, but it’s being rereleased in paperback this week.

Ruth’s always been ruthless, tough, competitive, and driven. So when she wakes up in the bed of a pickup she knows she’s got to win whatever competition into which she’s just been thrust.

She’s taken to a remote cabin in the woods, and when her blindfold is removed, Ruth recognizes her captor as a man who has done this to other girls. While those girls disappeared forever, Ruth will not let that be her fate. She’s off and running into the woods, but how long will she be able to stay safe?