The Best YA Books of 2025 So Far

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Geek out with this younger YA book, which follows two high school freshmen learning how to navigate school, friendship, family drama, and falling in love for the very first time. Pacy and Cecil meet on their first day of school, but neither has it together enough to fess up to their feelings. Both are forced into helping plan the freshman dance, and no matter how much they try to deny what’s going on, the sparks only get brighter. The dynamic writing duo behind this book has created two memorable characters who will have you weighing in on their ongoing battle: Star Wars or Star Trek? – Me!

(And you cannot miss the interview this fantastic author duo did with me for Hey YA about this book, about collaborative writing, about humor, and about writing “younger” YA books)

This a novel in verse is based on Caribbean folklore following 15-year-old Marisol, who is the daughter of a soucouyant. When the new moon arrives each month, Marisol sheds her skin and turns into a fireball, launched into the sky where she must sip from other people’s lives to sustain her own. That is really difficult in Brooklyn, where it seems the lights never dim and folks keep themselves locked inside at night. Marisol wishes she didn’t need to do this, but her mother kept her tied to their magical past.

Genevieve, 17, is dealing with a skin condition that, in addition to her new baby siblings, keeps her up all night long. There’s a hunger inside her that wants nothing more than to recall her estranged mother. But it’ll be a new nanny in her house that begins to show a link between Genevieve and Marisol and it goes far more than skin deep.

I loved this book so very much, and would I have had more picks for “best of,” I’d have included it. You can read my in-depth review of it over here, and put it in your mental calendar that I’ll be talking with the author for an episode of Hey YA later this summer.

Jim Jones, leader of one of the most notorious cults in history, The People’s Temple, managed to convince 900 people to drink cyanide to their ultimate deaths. But how did he do it? This book traces Jones’s story from his youth growing up during the Great Depression to where and how he convinced people to follow him and his beliefs. You’ll follow Jones and his devotees from California to their off-grid Jonestown compound in the depths of Guyana.

Told in two timelines, this comic shares the journey of Emma Bergsma who, in 1943 Amsterdam, is so disgusted by watching Jewish families being sent to concentration camps that she joins the Dutch Resistance. She knows the work she’s going to take on is important.

In 2011, also Amsterdam, Annick needs a bone marrow donor for her oma. Her world is upended though when Annick learns that her oma was adopted, and it’s through a signature on several art prints on the wall–reading “Emma B”–that Annick may discover the truth of her family’s lineage.

The women in Nell’s family have always been gifted — err, rather cursed — with some kind of magic when they turn 15. The magic is cool, but there’s always some kind of not-great side effect. Nell’s mom is a different age every single day, which means Nell often feels like she doesn’t have the mother she needs. Nell’s sister bleeds music and wants nothing more than to get the songs inside of her outside of her.

So when Nell wakes up and sees ladybugs lighting up her piano keys, she thinks she’s okay. But then come the other bugs, each seeming to connect to an emotion she’s feeling. Moths show up when she’s disappointed. Beetles, when she’s feeling judged. And then there are the wasps that arrive at the hint of Nell’s anger.

The only way Nell seems to be able to make the unpleasant creatures disappear is to lock her darker feelings inside. But is it a life if she can’t express what she’s truly feeling?

It’s London, 1848, but for four hundred years, an immortal fae queen has ruled after tricking her way into power. To keep up appearances, Queer Mor allows each of her subjects the opportunity to bargain for one of their deepest desires.

It’s about to be Ivy’s turn for this opportunity, but she’s feeling hopeless about her fate. The Queen can’t possibly fix everything that’s wrong . . . or can she?

Worried about her lack of romantic prospects, Ivy learns of a competition the Queen is holding that would give away the hand of her son, Prince Bram. Ivy quickly signs onto the competition, and it’s not long before she discovers she’s a front runner. That’s thanks to Prince Bram’s brother, who promises to help Ivy win–but it comes with a price.

In early 17th century Rome, Carmela Tofana is eager to go behind the scenes of her mother’s apothecary. So when she’s finally invited back when she turns 16, Carmela begins to see that for every lovely potion concocted, there are others that aren’t especially pleasant. But it’s Aqua Tofana, one of the deadliest potions imaginable, that causes worry and fear for Carmela. It could kill them all if they’re not careful. . .and keeping it a secret will be tough.

This one blends McCollough’s signature verse with prose.

Caerus controls all of society, and they’re able to do that by bankrupting the lower class. Inesa lives among the poorest in society, and she and her brother run a taxidermy shop to try to survive. Her father, a prepper, is long gone, and her mother is constantly sick—”sick”—and racking up untold amounts of debt. Her mom has so much debt that Inesa has been tapped as the next Lamb for Caerus’s televised assassination event.

Melinoë is a trained Caerus assassin. She’s just come off a run where she was forced to kill a small child, and she’s also struggling with the failure of Caerus’s technology to wipe her memory of what happened. She keeps having terrible flashbacks, and though she’s determined to do her job as an assassin, it’s made harder as her memory keeps popping up before her eyes.

It’s now Inesa who Melinoë needs to kill. But what happens when the two girls find themselves outside the realm of technology thanks to some glitches? Do they keep playing the roles they’re assigned from Caerus? Or do they take a different route and work to help one another survive?

(Psst: you can listen to Ava Reid talk about this book, about fandom, and about YA dystopia more broadly in this interview she did with me for Hey YA).

This graphic novel has been on none of my lists and I have not seen it mentioned before finding it among the most starred titles this year. I both love and hate that–love that it means discovering something new and hate that it means the title might be falling quite under the radar.

Alas!

Neeta Pandey and Emery Botwrigh have grown up on the SS Lark. They’re at the point, though, where they’re trying to decide what to do with their futures. Emery wants to sail the Lark like her father; Neeta wants to travel the world, but not necessarily aboard the Lark. There’s a big problem: Mr. Honeycutt, new owner of the Lark.

The rich passengers love Mr. Honeycutt. But the crew? They don’t love him. He makes their lives horrible, and it doesn’t help that the rich passengers seem to be turning into something decidedly not human, which is pushing staff to the ends of their patience.

There’s something on the ship, and it’s not human. It’ll be up to Neeta, Emery, and the vampire-secret agent-paranormal investigator Wick Farley, to figure out what’s going on–and what they need to do to save everyone from being consumed by its hunger.

Danny’s spending summer in Rome as his mom is working at a mysterious museum. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a 16-year-old, of course, and he’s taking advantage of getting to know the ancient city. That’s when he encounters Angelo.

Before long, Danny and Angelo are spending every moment together. At first, it’s all about the city. Soon, though, they begin to share bits and pieces of their own lives with one another. That helps them build a home between them and romance begins to flourish.

But as much as Danny worries about telling Angelo about never feeling like he has had a home or fallen in love with another boy, the reality is that Angelo might be harboring even darker secrets that could end things between the two before they ever really begin.

Maeve Abenthy lost everything seven years ago. She’s been living under a fake name, moving constantly, as she’s trying to avoid being connected to her father’s history of crimes. So when Maeve gets a mysterious letter with the phrase “your father was innocent,” she knows she needs to figure out where it came from and what it means.

She takes an apprenticeship with the Otherwhere Post. There, she’ll learn the dangerous and magical art of scriptomancy, which allows for enchanting letters and sending them to other worlds. Maeve can’t outrun her past or her father, though, and the more she begins to discover about him, the more worried she becomes about her identity and the secrets she’s keeping.

As she begins to unravel her father’s secrets through the apprenticeship, she’s begun to receive threats herself to stop investigating…and her mentor is well aware she’s hiding something from him, too.