Kelly is a former librarian and a long-time blogger at STACKED. She's the editor/author of (DON'T) CALL ME CRAZY: 33 VOICES START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH and the editor/author of HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD. Her next book, BODY TALK, will publish in Fall 2020. Follow her on Instagram @heykellyjensen.
Writing this piece in advance of a supremely consequential election is challenging. It’s unclear what kind of tone to take when highlighting new books when it’s unclear what the community’s pulse is right now. So, no big introduction this week. Let’s get right into the new releases. May we be reading them with relief, rather than out of a need to dissociate.
New YA Hardcover Releases
Dead Girls Don’t Dream by Nino Cipri
Voynich Woods are haunted and no one is supposed to go in alone. But Riley does when her younger sister Sam enters because she wants to learn of the local legend. It is not long before Riley becomes the victim of what lies in the woods.
Madelyn, who lives in the woods and has never been allowed to wander, decides to do just that one night when she realizes a stranger needs her help. She’s used her magic to resurrect Riley and now the two girls’ lives are twisted together as they learn about one another–and about the thing in the woods that may not be solely legends.
Flopping in a Winter Wonderland by Jason June
I’m not going to give a lot of description here because sometimes you only need vibes. This is a holiday-set queer rom-com that takes place in Winter Wonderland, a year-round Christmas theme park on an Alaskan island.
Midnights With You by Clare Osongco
Deedee’s life has been anything but easy, and it’s made more complicated by her strict single mother who won’t teach her how to drive. But Deedee’s determined, and she starts to get secret driving lessons from her neighbor Jay. Jay, too, comes from a family with a lot of secrets, and as they spend their time between dusk and dawn together, feelings between the two bloom. But will the trauma of their pasts keep them from having a happily ever after?
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Rani Choudhury Must Die by Adiba Jaigirdar
Meghna and Rani used to be best friends. They’re not anymore, and Meghna is tired of being compared to her former perfect, do-no-wrong, brilliant former bestie Rani. Rani, on the other hand, is over having no agency in her own life. All Rani wants this year is to do well at the Young Scientist Exhibition.
But soon, Meghna and Rani realize that both of them are being played by Zak. Instead of it amping up their frenemy relationship though, the girls team up to take him down. They’re going to work together on a project for the Young Scientist Exhibition to create an app that exposes cheaters and liars.
Their target? Zak.
It won’t go smoothly and easily, but as the girls work to solve their little problem Zak, they discover that maybe the feelings between them are not gone. They’re just different.
There are a lot of new releases for ongoing series books. Because I don’t want to give descriptions in the event there’s an accidental spoiler, here are several books hitting shelves this week that continue a series:
- The Davenports: More Than This by Krystal Marquis
- Heist Royale by Kayvion Lewis
- I Am the Dark That Answers When You Call by Jamison Shea
- Our Deadly Designs by Kalyn Josephson
- Skyshade by Alex Aster
- Thunder City by Philip Reeve
- A Wild and Ruined Song by Ashley Shuttleworth
New YA Paperback Releases
A Warning About Swans by R. M. Romero
In 1880 Bavaria, Hilde and her five sisters were given coats by their creator Odin. These coats transform them into swans and each comes with a gift unique to them. Hilde is not interested in her gift, which would allow her to help transport souls of dying creators into the afterlife. She uses it anyway, and when helping a hawk cross over, she meets Baron Maximilian von Richter. Hilde is taken with him immediately and makes a deal with the inheritance-less boy: she’ll make him rich if he can take her to the human world.
Hilde does not fit in the human world though, and the story follows what happens as she tries and when she finds herself in the center of a potential love triangle. Then her coat goes missing…
This one is described as Swan Lake meets The Last Unicorn by way of the Brothers Grimm.
Kingdom of Without by Andrea Tang
Zhong Ning’er is a thief, and when she takes her most recent job, she expects it to be quick and fast. But instead, she finds herself among a group of young revolutionaries. Ning’er doesn’t consider herself the type, but as it becomes clearer that the Beiyang Army is crushing the pulse of Beijing—which has been under its rule because of General Yuan Shikai’s emperorship 150 years ago—she might be changing her tune.
This is a cyberpunk read that sounds like it’ll be the kind of fast-paced adventure readers of Leigh Bardugo or Fullmetal Alchemist will dig.
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