Archives de catégorie : Young Adult

LOVE, DECODED de Jennifer Yen

For fans of Jenny Han and Jane Austen, a rom-com that’s equal parts hilarious and heartfelt about the unexpected consequences of one teen’s quest to help her friends find love, from the author of A Taste for Love.

LOVE, DECODED
by Jennifer Yen
‎ Razorbill/Penguin YR, March 2022

High school junior Gigi Wong strives to be the best: the top student, the perfect friend, and the ideal daughter. But it’s tough when there’s always someone who is just a little bit better. With college applications looming, she can’t help but worry that she won’t make the cut. Thankfully, her best friend Kyle never fails to find the right words—and the perfect bowl of ramen—to cheer her up.
After her teacher, Ms. Harris, announces she’ll be nominating students for an app writing contest, Gigi is determined to be picked. After all, first prize is an exclusive tech internship, sure to make her application stand out. There’s only one problem: she doesn’t have a winning program. It isn’t until transfer student Etta admits she’s struggling to fit in at Superbia that Gigi stumbles on an idea. She’ll use her coding skills—and the matchmaking experience she’s gotten from weekends with Auntie Rose—to create a friend matching app! Etta will meet new people, and Gigi will guarantee her acceptance into college. It’s foolproof.
What Gigi doesn’t expect is for her app to go viral around school. Soon, she finds herself at the center of a scandal—and at odds with both Etta and Kyle. Can Gigi fix what went wrong, or will her desire to be perfect cost her the people she cares about most?

Jennifer Yen is a Taiwanese American author who spends her days healing hearts and her nights writing about love, family, and the power of acceptance. Jennifer believes in the magic of one’s imagination, and hopes her stories will bring joy and inspiration to readers. If you find Jennifer wandering around aimlessly, please return her to the nearest milk tea shop.

LIVE, LAUGH, KIDNAP de Gabby Noone

From the author of Layoverland comes another bitingly clever, laugh-out-loud funny novel, about a group of teen girls going up against an exploitative megachurch in their small Montana town.

LIVE, LAUGH, KIDNAP
by Gabby Noone
Razorbill/Penguin YR, March 2022

The only thing Genesis, Holly and Zoe seem to have in common is being stuck in Violet, Montana. Well, that and the fact that Hope Harvest Ministries is trying to ruin their lives.
Genesis lives on a commune that is now an echo of the New Age cult it once was. She’s witnessed power couple Pastor Jay and Ree Reaps transform their sleepy small town into a haven for online Influencers, who flock to Violet, bible in one hand and Ree’s bestselling Act Like a Lady, Pray Like a Boss in the other. Now, the Reaps have decided it’s God’s Will™ that they take over Gen’s ranch.
Holly is a begrudging tourist, forced to spend the summer with her estranged father as punishment for her unsavory behavior back in LA. To Holly, Hope Harvest is nothing but a gimmicky marketing ploy, but it’s threatening to put her father’s diner out of business and, for some reason, Holly cares.
All Zoe wants is to leave Violet, working thankless shifts at the diner to scrape together enough cash to start a new life with her girlfriend. But Zoe’s mother has lost everything to the church’s multilevel marketing schemes so the little money that Zoe manages to make goes right to debt collectors.
The only solution to their problems is to scam the scammers and protect what’s theirs. It shouldn’t take much – the Reaps’ golden son, an accidental kidnapping, some light blackmail – and the Reaps’ fortune will be in the girls’ much more deserving hands. As long as everything goes according to plan…

Gabby Noone is the author of the indie bestseller Layoverland. She grew up in Abington, PA and now lives in Brooklyn, NY.

THE COUNSELORS de Jessica Goodman

From bestselling author Jessica Goodman comes a twisty new thriller about three best friends, one elite summer camp, and the dark secrets that lead to a body in the lake.

THE COUNSELORS
by Jessica Goodman
Razorbill/Penguin YR, May 2022

Camp Alpine Lake is the only place where Goldie Easton feels at home. As the daughter of the camp nurse and shop instructor, plus the honorary granddaughter of the camp’s owners, she’s always had a special connection to Alpine Lake, even before she was old enough to attend. Now she’s back as a counselor, desperate for summer to start and her camp friends to arrive. Because with the dark secret she’s been keeping, she’s more in need of the comfort of home than ever.
But with everything she’s been holding back from her best friends, Ava and Imogen, things might not be as simple as she’d hoped—and Goldie’s not the only person at camp who has been lying. When a local boy turns up dead in the lake, she knows that his death couldn’t have been an accident. She also knows that Ava went down to the lake that night. But Ava’s her best friend, and despite everything that happened this past year, Goldie dives into the mystery surrounding the boy’s death.
But asking questions offers no answers, only danger and betrayals deeper than Goldie ever imagined.

Jessica Goodman is the op-ed editor at Cosmopolitan and author of They Wish They Were Us and They’ll Never Catch Us. The Counselors is her third novel.

BEATING HEART BABY de Lio Min

A tender best friends to enemies to lovers story with Asian Americans leads, celebrating first love, second chances, indie rock, and transitions of all kinds.

BEATING HEART BABY
by Lio Min
Flatiron Books/St. Martin’s Press, July 2022

Santi has only had his heart broken one time, and it was all his fault. When he accidentally leaked his internet best friend Memo’s song, and it became an overnight hit, Memo disappeared—leaving their song’s cult fame, and Santi, behind.
Three years later, Santi arrives in Los Angeles with a mission: get over the ghost of Memo. Thankfully, his new school and its wildly-talented Sunshower marching band welcome him with open arms. All except for his section leader, the prickly, proud, musical prodigy Suwa. After a disastrous first encounter, Suwa makes Santi’s life a living hell. But when Santi realizes Suwa is trans, then Suwa realizes Santi takes his identity in stride, both boys begin to let their guards down. Santi learns Suwa’s surliness masks a painful, still-raw history of his own, and as they open up to each other, their friendship quickly takes on the red-hot blush of a mutual crush.
Just as Santi is feeling settled in this new life, with a growing found family and a head-over-heels relationship with Suwa, he begins to put together the pieces of an impossible truth—that Memo and Suwa might just be one and the same. But their fragile fresh start threatens to rip apart at the seams again when Suwa is offered the chance to step into the spotlight he’s owed, but has always denied himself. Now, as each of them faces the future, Santi and Suwa must finally reckon with their dreams, their pasts, and the boy who always seems to appear right at the wrong time.
Truly an electric “mix tape” debut, Beating Heart Baby is a coming-of-age and romance celebrating the uncertainties queer youth encounter amidst the turmoil of first love. This knockout book truly pulses with life and energy, begging to be read and shared. It’s Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist for a new generation.

Lio Min has listened to, played and performed, and written about music for most of their life. Their debut novel BEATING HEART BABY is about boys, bands, and Los Angeles, where they lived for seven years. They’ve profiled and interviewed acts including Japanese Breakfast, Rina Sawayama, Purity Ring, Caroline Polachek, Christine and the Queens, Metric, Yaeji, Speedy Ortiz, and Mitski.

SOME FARAWAY PLACE de Lauren Shippen

The third Bright Sessions novel from creator Lauren Shippen, features Rose, who has her humdrum life flipped upside down when she starts to travel into dreams.

SOME FARAWAY PLACE
(The Bright Sessions, Book 3)
by Lauren Shippen
Tor Teen/St. Martin’s Press, September 2021

Rose Atkinson’s mother can see the future. Her father can move things he doesn’t touch. Her brother Aaron can read minds. And Rose, well, she makes a mean spaghetti bolognese.
Everyone else in her family is Atypical, which means they manifested an ability that defies the limits of the human experience. At nineteen, well past the average age of manifestation, Rose is stuck defending her decision not to go to college and instead working in the kitchen of a local restaurant, hoping to gain the experience she needs to become a chef.
When a rollerblading accident sends her to the hospital, she meets a girl she can’t forget and she starts to feel like maybe her life isn’t quite so small. But when she starts falling asleep mid-conversation, she thinks, then again maybe I’m doomed to never have good things.
Rose should be happy to learn that she’s Atypical after all―that diving into dreams makes her a part of her family in the way she always wanted. But the more time she spends in the dreamworld, the more complicated her ability becomes. Trying to balance her work, her power, and a girlfriend who doesn’t know about Atypicals, Rose seeks help. But she soon discovers that being Atypical comes with dangers she never could have imagined. Even her carefully constructed dreamworld isn’t safe. This is the story of Atypical Rose, who discovers that your dreams coming true isn’t always a good thing.

“Shippen continues to expand her fascinating universe…This entry contains everything that makes the universe of this world appealing, including sympathetic, complex characters; magic powers that cause more problems than they solve; and…diversity. A must-read for Bright Sessions fans.” ―Kirkus Reviews

Lauren Shippen, author of The Infinite Noise, is a writer best known for her work in fiction podcasts. She is the creator and sole writer of the popular audio drama, The Bright Sessions. She went on to executive produce The AM Archives and co-produce Passenger List before founding Atypical Artists, a company dedicated to audio storytelling. She wrote MARVELS, an audio adaptation of the popular comic, released in 2019 by Marvel and Stitcher. Lauren was named one of Forbes’s 2018 30 Under 30 in Media and one of MovieMaker Magazine’s and Austin Film Festival’s 25 Screenwriters to Watch. She was born in New York City and grew up in Bronxville, New York. She currently lives in Los Angeles but travels frequently to New York.