Archives de catégorie : Young Adult

NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS de Meredith Adamo

Sold in a heated auction, debut author Meredith Adamo’s intricate YA novel is part mystery, part Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, and part HBO’s The Flight Attendant. The perfect combination of plot-filled page-turner and powerful coming-of-age tale, NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS announces Meredith as a major new voice in YA fiction.

NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS
by Meredith Adamo
Bloomsbury, April 2024
(via Writers House)

I think, inexplicably, of another photo. Last fall, late October. The night of the bonfire at Durand Eastman Beach. In the photo, I wear tight denim shorts, beat-up white Keds, a black zip-up that isn’t mine. It’s bad enough how I tilt my head, just so, a hickey bruised on the curve of my neck, but even worse is my smile. Sly. Coy. Like I know more in this moment than some girls ever know. I didn’t know shit. I especially didn’t know that when the night sky filled with stars, when the fire hissed, half-dead, when every phone pinged with SIX NEW PHOTOS, I’d so seamlessly become the worst of me: Jo at seventeen, outcast. But I guess that’s the trouble with girls like me. We always get what we deserve.
Seventeen-year-old Jo-Lynn Kirby used to be “brace-faced but beautiful, a tiara pinned in her sun-streaked hair.” She used to be “sophomore class president, stunned at her landslide victory […], June’s Scooper of the Month at Costello’s Frozen Custard, posing a touch too proudly with her bonus check. . . ” but now she’s. . . just not. Now Jo is a wild girl, reckless girl, difficult girl, who rolls her eyes a little too much, whose grades have plummeted to the point that she’s on academic probation; now Jo is the girl whose Nudes were leaked to the entire school. And then her former best friend: pretty, nice, Maddie Price, uncharacteristically, cryptically, and desperately asks Jo for help—telling Jo she’s in trouble, that she thinks Jo can help her—just hours before Maddie disappears.
What quickly seems to the community like a simple runaway doesn’t add up that way to Jo-Lynn—and it doesn’t seem that way to Jo’s classmate and Eastman High’s Salutatorian Hudson Harper-Moore either. To dig deeper into Maddie’s disappearance, Jo needs to get in with, and back with, the group of classmates she left behind—and Jo and Hudson decide the only way to seamlessly do that is to pretend they’re dating. But for Jo, going back to social life from social outcast means she must confront all she’d rather leave behind: the boys who betrayed her; the girls who whisper that she had it coming; the secrets that tore her and Maddie apart. Yet as Jo finds allies in girls she once alienated, a true mentor in her Senior Experience Journalism supervisor, and as she develops very real feelings for Hudson, she risks losing more than she ever knew she wanted. . . as the clues to Maddie’s disappearance pull Jo deeper and deeper into a web of lies, whose stories can and can’t Jo trust? Especially when she’s still figuring out her own story, and her own truth. . .

Meredith Adamo is a YA author based in hot, humid North Carolina, but she’s originally from Rochester, New York, which is her favorite place on the planet. She likes to write about girls who can make you laugh and break your heart—ideally on the same page. Her non-writing interests include collecting vintage bakeware, crocheting the ugliest blankets you’ve ever seen, and grocery shopping. NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS is her debut novel.

WANDER IN THE DARK de Jumata Emill

From the acclaimed author of The Black Queen comes a stunning new YA novel in the spirit of This Is Us, but with the propulsive, page-turning suspense synonymous with Karen McManus, Kara Thomas, and Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé.

WANDER IN THE DARK
by Jumata Emill
Delacorte, Spring 2024
(via Writers House)

Amir Trudeau, the troubled son of local celebrity chef and restaurateur Martin Trudeau, isn’t without his share of problems. He hates his new school, his mother doesn’t like any of his friends, and his estranged half-brother Marcel is continuously trying to repair a relationship that Amir wants no part of. As far as Amir is concerned, years of hurt feelings that began the day their father divorced Amir’s mother and then moved on to achieve fame and fortune after marrying Marcel’s mother isn’t something that will ever be undone. But when Amir wakes up in the middle of the night and finds Chloe Danvers, a pretty and popular white girl he barely knows, stabbed to death, he suddenly finds himself with much bigger things to worry about.
Chloe is from an upper middle-class family with connections, and the last person she was with is a Black man caught fleeing the scene via security cameras. Everyone thinks the killer is Amir, including the police, and so in order to clear his name he’s going to have to rely on the people he trusts least—especially Marcel. Marcel sees helping Amir clear his name as way to repair their relationship, but he quickly learns that finding out why someone fatally stabbed Chloe will force the Trudeaus to confront truths that might tear them further apart, and reveal the twisted secrets festering within the hallowed halls of the elite private school the brothers attend.

Jumata Emill is a journalist who has covered crime and local politics in Mississippi and parts of Louisiana. He earned his BA in mass communications from Southern University and A&M University. He’s a Pitch Wars alum and a member of the Crime Writers of Color. When he’s not writing about murderous teens, he’s watching and obsessively tweeting about every franchise of the Real Housewives. Jumata lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

BEAST de Jennifer Donnelly

New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Donnelly delivers an explosive reimagining of a tale as old as time! Think Beauty and the Beast meets Inside Out in this gender-reversed retelling, in which the beast is a mysterious noblewoman named Arabella, and the beauty is a handsome and cheeky thief named Beau—who stumbles into Arabella’s castle when he’s on the run after a robbery goes wrong.

BEAST
by Jennifer Donnelly
Scholastic, May 2024
(via Writers House)

A roaring fire and a grand feast await Beau when he arrives at Arabella’s domain, but it abruptly ends when a golden clock strikes midnight and a savage beast emerges. Beau escapes the vicious creature but becomes a prisoner in the castle. The next day, he meets the beautiful, disdainful Arabella, her tight-lipped servants, and a collection of sinister courtiers who behave very strangely, including the smile-until-your-face-cracks (literally) Lady Elge; the shuffling, mumbling Lady Iglut; and the rampaging Lady Rega.
Determined to escape, Beau steals a master key and lets himself into the cellar, where he hunts for a way out, but instead of finding the tunnel he’s certain must exist, he finds a child who’s been locked away. Her name is Hope. She appears to be a pitiful creature, but it’s a ruse. She steals his key, then leads him on a chase through the castle as she searches for her lost sisters, Faith and Love.
With Hope’s help, Beau learns that Arabella was cursed to turn into a beast every night when the clock strikes twelve,

and that the one who cursed her is none other than the forbidding Lady Espidra—the most fearsome of all Arabella’s courtiers. He also discovers why Arabella was cursed—and that the wounded, gifted young woman is as much a prisoner in the castle as he is. As he begins to fall in love with Arabella, Beau becomes determined to help her break the curse, but what he doesn’t know is that the golden clock is ticking—and time is running out.
BEAST is a story about two damaged people learning to love and forgive, but it’s also about how we all get trapped in prisons of our own making—and how we need to learn how to tear down walls and build bridges if we’re ever going to escape them.

Jennifer Donnelly is the author of A Northern Light, which was awarded a Printz Honor and a Carnegie Medal; Revolution (named a Best Book by Amazon, Kirkus Reviews, School Library Journal, and the Chicago Public Library, and nominated for a Carnegie Medal); the Deep Blue series; and many other books for young readers, including Lost in a Book, which spent more than 20 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. She lives in New York’s Hudson Valley.

NO BOY SUMMER d’Amy Spalding

Lydia and her younger sister Penny make a pact to avoid boy drama for the summer—but Lydia can’t help looking for a loophole when she falls for a cute girl.

NO BOY SUMMER
by Amy Spalding
Amulet Books/Abrams, April 2023
(via KT Literary)

Lydia Jones and her younger sister Penny have had it with boy drama. Last year was marred by relationship disasters for both of them, threatening Lydia’s standing with her school’s theater tech club and Penny’s perfect GPA. Penny has, naturally, diagnosed the problem and prescribed a drastic solution: a summer off from boys.
Lydia and Penny decide to stay with their Aunt Grace and her boyfriend Oscar in Los Angeles while their parents are off on a European cruise. Penny follows her future-business-school dreams with an internship at Oscar’s office, and Lydia gets a part-time job at Grace’s neighborhood coffeeshop, Grounds Control.
Even when they spent hours, days, weeks dissecting their various boy drama, Lydia’s never felt this connected to her sister before, and it makes her wonder what else in her life could be different. She finds herself drawn to a group of friends she meets through her Grounds Control coworker, Margaret, as well as an intriguing customer, Fran, an aspiring filmmaker and—while not the first girl Lydia finds herself attracted to—the first girl who has mutual feelings for her. But she’s not breaking her pledge to Penny, right? That was just about boys. Even though in her heart Lydia knows she’s bending the rules, she hasn’t had a connection with anyone as strong as her connection with Fran, so she thinks it can’t be wrong. And Penny won’t mind as long as she’s happy . . . Right?

“Buoyant and genuinely funny. A love letter to summer friends, summer girls, and the city of Los Angeles.”―Rainbow Rowell, No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of Scattered Showers

“Lydia’s relationship validates the bisexual experience through an enjoyable romance. This body- and sex-positive story will hold readers’ interest until it eventually reaches its satisfying conclusion. A cute, queer romance plus a sweet exploration of the special bond between sisters.”―Kirkus Reviews

Amy Spalding is the author of several novels, including Kissing Ted Callahan (and Other Guys), The Summer of Jordi Perez (and the Best Burger in Los Angeles), and We Used to Be Friends, which Becky Albertalli called “complex, earnest, and unflinching.” She lives in Los Angeles.

MEET ME IN THE FOURTH DIMENSION de Rita Feinstein

A YA novel-in-verse that follows a college freshman as she encounters pushback to her anti-science, New-Age beliefs for the first time and falls heavily into disinformation as a way to cope with her newfound doubt and the separation from her best friend.

MEET ME IN THE FOURTH DIMENSION
by Rita Feinstein
Page Street YA, Winter 2024
(via KT Literary)

An honest portrayal not only of the dangers of misinformation but also the humanness of the people who get pulled into it. It’s a beautiful and painful examination of friendship and unexpected connection and a lesson in empathy, accepting growth, and learning to forgive yourself. Though fiction, MEET ME IN THE FOURTH DIMENSION is heavily based on Rita’s own life and experiences with the allure of antiscience, New Age rhetoric online. For fans of Nina LaCour’s WE ARE OKAY and Amber McBride’s ME (MOTH).

Rita Feinstein is the author of the poetry chapbook Life on Dodge (Brain Mill Press, 2018) and the full poetry collection Everything is Real (Brain Mill Press, 2022). She received her MFA from Oregon State University.