Happy Summer!
We here at YA Books Central are looking to help you keep cool, we’ve teamed up with wonderful publishers to organize a great giveaway to make it happen!
Everything good, everything magical happens between the months of June and August. – Jenny Han
KATHLEEN CARTER COMMUNICATIONS
Title: AQUEOUS
Author: Jade Shyback
Publisher: Xeno Books / Red Hen Press
Release Date: May 2, 2023
From debut young adult novelist Jade Shyback comes the first in the Aqueous series. On the eve of Earth’s collapse, young Marisol Blaise is taken to live on an underwater mersation known as Aqueous with parents not her own. There, she must compete in the trials, grueling tests designed to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each trainee, hoping to be assigned to the all-male elite diving team known as the Cuviers. Desperate to prove to herself, the residents, and all of her parents, dead and alive, that she is worthy of this prestigious placement, she works tirelessly to shatter misogynistic beliefs, only to discover that it was not only the men who constrained her. A much uglier untruth exists.
Simon & Schuster
Title: Rana Joon and the One and Only Now
Author: Shideh Etaat
Publisher: Simon & Schuster/ Atheneum BFYR
Release Date: July 25, 2023
This lyrical coming-of-age novel for fans of Darius the Great Is Not Okay and On the Come Up, set in southern California in 1996, follows a teen who wants to honor her deceased friend’s legacy by entering a rap contest.
Perfect Iranian girls are straight A students, always polite, and grow up to marry respectable Iranian boys. But it’s the San Fernando Valley in 1996, and Rana Joon is far from perfect—she smokes weed and loves Tupac, and she has a secret: she likes girls.
As if that weren’t enough, her best friend, Louie—the one who knew her secret and encouraged her to live in the moment—died almost a year ago, and she’s still having trouble processing her grief. To honor him, Rana enters the rap battle he dreamed of competing in, even though she’s terrified of public speaking.
But the clock is ticking. With the battle getting closer every day, she can’t decide whether to use one of Louie’s pieces or her own poetry, her family is coming apart, and she might even be falling in love. To get herself to the stage and fulfill her promise before her senior year ends, Rana will have to learn to speak her truth and live in the one and only now.
Title: Infested
Author: Angel Luis Colon
Publisher: Simon & Schuster/ MTV Books
Release Date: July 25, 2023
“Infested expertly mixes mystery and monster story with family drama and very now political concerns. It’s a thrilling, I-can’t-stop-reading page-turner. If Infested doesn’t make your skin crawl, check your pulse.” —Paul Tremblay, bestselling author of The Cabin at the End of the World and A Head Full of Ghosts
The Taking of Jake Livingston meets Cemetery Boys in this YA ghost story about a Puerto Rican teen’s battle with a malevolent spirit targeting his apartment building and the all-too-real horrors of gentrification.
It’s the summer before senior year, and Manny has just moved from Texas to the Bronx in New York. So, instead of hanging with his friends and making some spending money, Manny is forced to do menial tasks in his new home, a luxury condo his stepdad is managing, while stressing about starting over.
Thankfully, he meets Sasha, who is protesting the building but turns out to be really cool. And he strikes up an unlikely friendship with Mr. Mueller, the building’s exterminator. Maybe life in the Bronx won’t be so bad.
Then the nightmares begin. And Manny swears he has roaches crawling under his skin. When building contractors start to go missing, Manny and Sasha come to the terrifying realization that Mr. Mueller is not who he says he is. Or rather, he is, but he died decades ago in a fire exactly where Manny’s new building is located. A fire that Mueller set.
Now, in a race against time, Manny must rescue his family from a deranged specter determined to set the Bronx ablaze once again.
Title: The Reunion
Author: Kit Frick
Publisher: Simon & Schuster/ McElderry Books
Release Date: August 29, 2023
From the author of I Killed Zoe Spanos comes a YA thriller in the vein of The White Lotus and Karen M. McManus’s The Cousins following a doomed family reunion at a posh Caribbean resort, where old grudges and dangerous secrets culminate in murder.
Eleven Mayweathers went on vacation. Ten came home.
It’s been years since the fragmented Mayweather clan was all in one place, but the engagement of Addison and Mason’s mom to the dad of their future stepbrother, Theo, brings the whole family to sunny Cancún, Mexico, for winter break. Add cousin Natalia to the mix, and it doesn’t take long for tempers to fray and tensions to rise. A week of forced family “fun” reveals that everyone has something to hide, and as secrets bubble to the surface, no one is safe from the fallout. By the end of the week, one member of the reunion party will be dead—and everyone’s a suspect:
The peacekeeper: Addison needs a better hiding place.
The outsider: Theo just wants to mend fences.
The romantic: Natalia doesn’t want to talk about the past.
The hothead: Mason needs to keep his temper under control.
It started as a week in paradise meant to bring them together. But the Mayweathers are about to learn the hard way that family bonding can be deadly.
Algonquin
Title: Rook
Author: William Ritter
Publisher: Algonquin Young Readers
Release Date: August 22, 2023
This standalone adventure set in the world of the New York Times bestselling Jackaby series brims with humor, heart, and—of course—a hefty dose of supernatural mayhem.
Abigail Rook never intended to be the mortal bridge between the human and supernatural world. But now, the power of the Sight–and all the chaos that comes with seeing the essential truth of everything, every human, fairy, werewolf, enchanted slip of paper, and municipal building, at all times–is hers alone. With this overwhelming new gift, she should be able to solve crimes and help New Fiddleham, New England find calm in its supernatural chaos.
The only problem? She has no idea what she’s doing.
And New Fiddleham isn’t waiting for Abigail to be ready. Local witches and other magical beings are going missing, as tensions between human and supernatural residents curdle into a hatred that could tear the city apart. Abigail’s fiance, Charlie, works alongside her to unravel the magical disappearances, but as a shapeshifter, he’s under threat as well. Then Abigail’s parents appear, ready to take her back to England and marry her off to someone she’s never met. Abigail has no choice but to follow her Sight, her instincts, and any clues she can find to track a culprit who is trying destroy everything she holds dear.
Entangled Teen
Title:Sign of the Slayer
Author: Sharina Harris
Publisher: Entangled Teen
Release Date: August 29, 2023
Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets The Gilded Ones in this new paranormal series from author Sharina Harris.
She’s born to fight monsters—but what about the one inside of her?
Title: Frenemies with Benefits
Author: Lydia Sharp
Publisher: Entangled Teen
Release Date: August 29, 2023
A playful and sexy contemporary rom-com perfect for fans of The Kissing Booth and Tweet Cute by the author of The Night of Your Life.
Imbrifex Books
Title: Rubicons: A Freaks Series Book 3
Author: Brett Riley
Publisher: Imbrifex Books
Release Date: August 1, 2023
Finding themselves. Fighting together. Growing apart. It’s junior year in Quapaw City, Arkansas. With it comes a new foe that even the Freaks cannot thwart–adulthood. As they ponder what the future will be like with college and careers looming, they must contend with the ever-more-perilous threat of The Team, the shadowy government agency bent on saving the world from supernatural menaces. At the same time, they must face their most dangerous adversary yet, a creature of scales and wings that threatens every life in town—just for starters. New questions arise: can the Freaks achieve a common goal when they no longer agree on precisely what that goal should be? And what happens when they realize they just might be the villains in someone else’s story?
Title: The Eternal Return of Clara Hart
Author: Louise Finch
Publisher: Little Island Books
Release Date: June 13, 2023
You’re caught in a time loop and there’s only one way out. You have to call out your best friend.
Spence hates Anthony’s sexist jokes, but he never says anything. Anthony’s his buddy, and Spence doesn’t have many. One Friday, Spence finds Anthony assaulting their classmate, Clara Hart, at a party. Clara flees from the house, is hit by a car, and dies. But the next day, it’s Friday again and Clara is alive. Caught in a time-loop, Spence finds himself living the same 24 hours on repeat. Can he change Clara’s fate? And what if it’s not that simple?
Title: Grim
Author: Sara B. Elfgren
Publisher: Arctis Books
Release Date: June 20, 2023
A death metal mystery.
Eighteen-year-old Kasper has gone through a rough time, but now he has landed his dream job at the amusement park Gröna Lund. He befriends Iris who teaches him how to terrify guests in the haunted house.
Thirty years earlier, in Stockholm of the eighties, sixteen-year-old Håkan’s life changes when he meets Grim. They live and breathe music and have big plans for their death metal band. But it all comes to nothing when Grim dies. Håkan breaks up the band.
What really happened? Kasper, who is Håkan’s son, tries to find out the truth. Together with Iris he delves into the myths and secrets surrounding the band, and his dad’s best friend. Grim, who inexplicably died at such a young age. Who was he? And why does he appear in Kasper’s dreams?
North Star Editions
Title: The Fight for Midnight
Author: Dan Solomon
Publisher: Flux
Release Date: June 20, 2023
It’s been a rough year for Alex Collins. In the past twelve months, he’s lost his best friend, become the target of the two biggest bullies at school, and been sentenced to community service. But on June 25, 2013, he gets a call for help from Cassie Ramirez, the prettiest girl in school. At last, he feels like his luck might be changing.
Cassie is at the Texas State Capitol to protest Wendy Davis’s historic filibuster of the abortion bill HB2, and she’s rallying everyone she knows to join her. Until today, Alex didn’t know what a filibuster was, and he’d never given a moment’s thought to how he felt about abortion. But at the Capitol, he finds himself in the middle of a tense scene full of pro-life “blueshirts,” pro-choice “orangeshirts,” and blustering politicians playing political games as Wendy Davis tries to run out the clock at midnight.
Alex may have entered the Capitol looking to spend time with Cassie, but the political gets personal when he runs into his ex-friend Shireen in an orange T-shirt and quickly realizes that when it comes to an issue like abortion, neutral isn’t an option. Over the next nineteen hours—as things get increasingly heated both on the Senate floor and between the two sets of protesters—Alex will struggle to figure out what side he’s on, knowing that whatever choice he makes will bring him face-to-face with his past mistakes.
Title: Cold Girls
Author: Maxine Rae
Publisher: Flux
Release Date: August 22, 2023
Eighteen-year-old Rory Quinn-Morelli doesn’t want to die; she wants refuge from reality for even a minute: the reality where she survived the car crash eight months ago, and her best friend, Liv, didn’t. Yet her exasperating mother won’t believe the Xanax incident was an accident, and her therapist is making it increasingly hard to maintain the detached, impenetrable “cold girl” façade she adopted from Liv. After she unintentionally reconnects with Liv’s parents, Rory must decide: will she keep Liv’s and her secrets inside, or will she finally allow herself to break? And if she breaks, what will she unearth amid the pieces?
Scholastic
Title: Stars in Their Eyes
Author: Jessica Walton, Aska
Publisher: Graphix
Release Date: August 01, 2023
In this lighthearted YA romance, Maisie and Ollie discover that nothing beats the feeling of falling in love for the first time.
Maisie is on her way to Fancon! She’s looking forward to meeting her idol, Kara Bufano, the action hero from her favorite TV show, who has a lower-leg amputation, just like Maisie. But when Maisie and her mom arrive at the convention center, she is stopped in her tracks by Ollie, a cute volunteer working the show. They are kind, charming, and geek out about nerd culture just as much as Maisie does. And as the day wears on, Maisie notices feelings for Ollie that she’s never had before. Is this what it feels like to fall in love?
Perfect for fans of Heartstopper and Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me, this graphic novel debut is a fresh, one-of-a-kind story that celebrates the excitement of meeting someone special for the first time.
Title: I Am Not Alone
Author/illustrator: Francisco X. Stork
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Release Date: July 18, 2023
Award-winning author Francisco X. Stork revisits some of the themes and ideas that made Marcelo in the Real World such an unforgettable novel.
Alberto’s life isn’t easy: He’s an undocumented immigrant from Mexico who lives with his sister’s abusive boyfriend—but he’d always accepted his place in the world. Until he starts hearing the voice of a man called Captain America, a voice that wants him to achieve more, no matter the cost.
Grace has it all: She has a supportive boyfriend, she’s on track to be valedictorian, and she’s sure to go to the college of her dreams. Still, nothing feels right to her any more after the divorce of her parents, and feels she needs something more.
When Alberto and Grace meet, they have an immediate and electric connection. But when Alberto is present at the scene of a terrible crime, he becomes a suspect. And with his developing schizophrenia, he’s not even sure he believes in his own innocence.
Can Grace find a way to prove Alberto’s innocence to himself and the world?
This is a page-turning thriller and a sensitive story about mental health, love, and community that will appeal to anyone who has struggled with their place in the world, from award-winning author Francisco X. Stork.
Title: The Library of Broken Worlds
Author: Alaya Dawn Johnson
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Release Date: June 6, 2023
A girl matches wits with a war god in this kaleidoscopic, thought-provoking tale of oppression and the cost of peace, where stories hide within other stories, and narrative has the power to heal — or to burn everything in its path — from World Fantasy Award–winning author Alaya Dawn Johnson.
A girl and a god, alone in communion …
In the winding underground tunnels of the Library, the great peacekeeper of the three systems, a heinous secret lies buried — and Freida is the only one who can uncover it. As the daughter of a Library god, Freida has spent her whole life exploring the Library’s ever-changing tunnels and communing with the gods. Her unparalleled access makes her unique — and dangerous.
When Freida meets Joshua, a Tierran boy desperate to save his people, and Nergüi, a disciple from a persecuted religious minority, Freida is compelled to help them. But in order to do so, she will have to venture deeper into the Library than she has ever known. There she will discover the atrocities of the past, the truth of her origins, and the impossibility of her future.
With the world at the brink of war, Freida embarks on a journey to fulfill her destiny, one that pits her against an ancient war god. Her mission is straightforward: Destroy the god before he can rain hellfire upon thousands of innocent lives — if he doesn’t destroy her first.
Tor Teen
Title: All of Our Demise
Author: Amanda Foody & C.L. Herman
Publisher: Tor Teen
Release Date: August 29, 2023
All of Our Demise is the epic conclusion to Amanda Foody and C. L. Herman’s New York Times bestselling All of Us Villains duology.
“I feel like I should warn you: this is going to be absolutely brutal.”
For the first time in this ancient, bloodstained story, the tournament is breaking. The boundaries between the city of Ilvernath and the arena have fallen. Reporters swarm the historic battlegrounds. A dead boy now lives again. And a new champion has entered the fray, one who seeks to break the curse for good… no matter how many lives are sacrificed in the process.
As the curse teeters closer and closer to collapse, the surviving champions each face a choice: dismantle the tournament piece by piece, or fight to the death as this story was always intended.
Long-held alliances will be severed. Hearts will break. Lives will end. Because a tale as wicked as this one was never destined for happily ever after.
The All of Us Villains Duology:
#1) All of Us Villains
#2) All of Our Demise
Title: Wildbound
Author: Elayne Audrey Becker
Publisher: Tor Teen
Release Date: August 29, 2023
Wildbound is the thrilling finale to Elayne Audrey Becker’s epic fantasy saga of forest magic and a kingdom on the brink of war.
With the assassination of Telyan’s king, the time for peace has passed.
Determined to make up for his failure to procure the stardust, Helos finds work as a healer at Fendolyn’s Keep, the historic garrison to which Telyan’s exiled royals—and half its civilians—have fled. Racing against the Fallow Throes’ ticking clock, he endeavors to repair his relationship with Prince Finley and dreams of his claim to a faraway throne, as the base around him prepares for war.
Half a continent away, his sister Rora is doing everything she can to reawaken the land and end Eradain’s slaughter of magical beings. Still reeling from the revelation that Eradain’s violent monarch is her half-brother, she journeys to the kingdom determined to infiltrate his court in disguise—and finds the seeds of rebellion are already stirring.
With a magical illness running rampant and the continent arming for battle, the three realms’ long-feared destruction seems inevitable. But the two shifters they believed would bring about Alemara’s ruin may in fact hold the key to its survival.
*GIVEAWAY DETAILS*
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So many books to read and so little time! I love a good ya thriller during the summer.
Such a good collection!
This is a great collection of books!
These are great summer reads!
So many amazing books!!
Lots of amazing books!
Wow what an amazing line up
This is an excellent group of books.
My kids would love this!
As a former Middle School ELA teacher, I can confidently say that students DO judge a book by its cover. I think that all of these covers would pass their test!
What great titles!