2023 Gift Guide: Young Adult Books for 12 & Up
December 8, 2023 § Leave a comment
We’re closing in on the finish line, with only two posts left! Today is my Young Adult roundup, with terrific fiction and non-fiction titles for teens (excluding graphic novels, which were included here). It’s a killer list, with a wide range of topics and styles (though it’s still me, so plenty of prickly protagonists and social justice themes, and also I can’t help it if not a lot of boy protagonists are being written so don’t come at me). It also has a fair bit more 12+ titles (versus 14+) than in years past, and that’s by design. With the young adult category growing increasingly more mature (due to it being consumed by more and more adults), middle schoolers especially are at a loss for age-appropriate recommendations. Of course, I’ve also got great ideas here for high schoolers, too (yes, and adults).
My only regrets are that I didn’t get to read Pascale Lacelle’s Curious Tides (14+), a buzzy new dark academia thriller that has been getting rave reviews and that my co-workers loved (think Ninth House with less violence), and Brandy Colbert’s The Blackwoods (14+), a character-driven novel about the price of fame, with a multi-generational window into Black Hollywood (another one that my co-workers loved). Had I had time to read these two books, I feel certain they’d be on this list. Also, for your dragon fantasy lovers, there’s a new story in Christopher Paolinni’s Eragon world; it’s Murtagh (and we have signed copies at Old Town Books!).
If you’re looking for more ideas for young teens, there are some fantastic recommendations from earlier this year on my Summer Reading Guide.
Most of the books below are new this fall, with the exception of three. We Deserve Monuments came out in late December of last year, but I haven’t sung its praises on the blog before and that needs to change. The others are Star Splitter and Warrior Girl Unearthed, which came out this past May and, again, are too good not to include.
As always, please shop the Gift Guide at Old Town Books or at a favorite indie near you!
Titles presented in order of target ages.
For the Sci-Fi Fan
Star Splitter
by Matthew J. Kirby
Ages 12+
Teleportation and space exploration and aliens, oh my! My husband, then son, devoured this novel over the summer. I don’t normally gravitate towards sci-fi, but I had to see what the fuss was about. To say that Matthew J. Kirby’s Star Splitter is an intense, nail-biting read is an understatement. It’s the kind of reading experience where you stop being able to make out where the story ends and real life begins, because you’re suddenly unnerved by everything. Creepy, surprising, and provocative: this is a massive crowd pleaser, whether you come for the science or the thrills.
The year is 2199: deep space exploration is a reality, and teleportation is routine. But when Jessica Mathers wakes up in a crashed lander on the surface of Carver 1061c, where she had planned to join her parents in studying this desolate, post-extinction planet fourteen light-years from Earth, she quickly realizes that something has gone very, very wrong—beginning with the fact that the first person she meets after opening her eyes is…herself.
Told in dual timelines—neither of which we can entirely trust—we begin to put together the pieces of what went wrong and the impossible choices now facing Jessica(s). Around every twisty bend, existential questions arise: What makes us human? What role do bodies and memories play in making us uniquely us? How far would you go for science—and at what cost? You’ll thank me for not saying ANOTHER WORD.
For the Fantasy Lover
Her Radiant Curse
by Elizabeth Lim
Ages 12+
A fast-paced, lushly-penned fantasy with a feminist bent? Yes, please. Elizabeth Lim’s Her Radiant Curse is technically a prequel to her duology, Six Crimson Cranes, but it reads as a standalone (and I actually liked it better!). Part Beauty and the Beast, part Helen of Troy, with influences from Southeast Asian folklore, the mythical mashup sports a warrior heroine, a half-dragon-half-demon, a deadly betrayal, gladiator battles, and a tiny sprinkling of an enemies-to-lover romance—all spun together to tell the story of two sisters, whose fierce bond pushes back against societal expectations and toxic beauty culture.
One sister must fall for the other to rise. Channi was not born a monster. But when her own father offers her in sacrifice to Angma, the Demon Witch, in order to save his wife and second baby, the Serpent King steps in to save her, cursing her with a scaled face, poison in her blood, and the ability to communicate with snakes. Channi’s disfigurement starkly contrasts her sister, Vanna, whose seductive beauty stems from a mysterious golden light that emanates from her body. And yet, whereas the rest of Channi’s family and village scorns her as a hideous outcast, Vanna never sees a monster when she looks at Channi, their bond the only unconditional love Channi knows (not counting her wily serpent sidekick). It’s also one she is prepared to die for, since Angma has promised to come for Vanni on her eighteenth birthday, and Channi has spent years training to kill the witch before she has the chance.
Now, as her birthday approaches, Vanna is to be married off in a vulgar contest that will pad the coffers of the village leaders. Channi aims to defend her sister against the cruelest of these suitors, but in doing so, she becomes the target of his wrath, unleashing a grisly battle royale, a quest over land and sea, an ill-fated romance, and a series of high-stakes choices that call into question everything Channi knows about who she is—and what she wants.
For the Pioneer Gal at Heart
Buffalo Flats
by Martine Leavitt
Ages 12+
And the most pleasant surprise of the year goes to this beautifully and punchily penned YA pioneer story, with a Laura Ingalls/Anne of Green Gables-worthy protagonist. (Please look past that cheesy cover.) Martine Leavitt’s Buffalo Flats, inspired by her husband’s family records, won’t be for everyone, but gosh, I adored it, simultaneously busting out laughing at seventeen-year-old Rebecca’s prickly candor and marveling at her profound observations on nature, faith, and love.
The novel centers Rebecca, recently arrived by covered wagon in the Northern Territories of Canada with her older brothers, parents, and other members of their LDS community towards the end of the 19th century. The story has all the hallmarks of pioneer life: challenges born from freezing winters, floods, grizzlies, food scarcity, and illness, alongside gifts inherent in tightknit communities, seasonal celebrations, and the beauty of untamed land. It’s also got a boy-next-door romance that’s Gilbert Blythe-worthy.
The draw here is Rebecca herself, whose “peculiarities of personality”—her words—often prompt her to question her ability to embody the ideals of kindness and forgiveness expected in her faith. (“She wondered if it would be all right if she could Love the World by telling everyone how they could stop annoying her…”) Rebecca feels closest to God when she escapes to the mountains, and she fervently wishes for a piece of this land to call her own. With single women unable to homestead under the law, she convinces her father to buy her the land if she can earn the money. He doesn’t think she can, especially on top of daily chores, but we quickly learn that Rebecca is coming of age at a time when women are increasingly aware of their worth in the community, are willing to fight to be heard, and are all the smarter for asking the hard questions of life.
We rarely see religion depicted in mainstream middle grade or YA. For those skeptical, the depiction here is much more reflective than righteous.
For the Supernatural Seeker
Bittersweet in the Hollow
by Kate Pearsall
Ages 12+
Is it possible for a supernatural thriller to feel like a warm hug? Because, remarkably, Kate Pearsall’s debut novel, Bittersweet in the Hollow, reads like a murder mystery crossed with Appalachian folklore, topped with terror in the woods and chocolate chess pie. I adored this original, fast-paced yarn and recommend it for both teens and adults.
“What does it mean to go missing? To become lost, to disappear. None of the tales we’re told as children are useful instruction. We don’t hike with pockets full of bread crumbs to leave a trail, and no fairy godmother will appear to point the way. Sometimes, no matter how good and righteous we are, we may never find our way home.” One year ago, during Caball Hollow’s annual Moth Festival, Linden James went missing in the National Forest surrounding the rural town, only to turn up 24 hours later with no memory of what had happened. For the past year, she has thrown herself into baking signature desserts for her family’s Southern diner and done her best not to speculate on what may or may not have happened that night. That is, until another teen goes missing under eerily similar circumstances—and this one turns up dead.
Now, with rumors circulating about Linden and her sisters’ strange, supernatural gifts, which they’ve always kept on the down low to avoid being the object of a witch hunt—Linden herself can taste the feelings of others, grief “earthy and bitter like chicory root”—Linden must chase down the secrets of her and her family’s past to help solve this new mystery. Of course, that also means dealing with the rift between her and golden boy, Cole, not to mention a centuries-old mystery surrounding the fabled Moth-Winged Man.
A story brimming with sisterly love, sense of place, and themes of community and identity. And one that reminds us, “if not for the bitter, we’d miss the magic of the sweet.”
For the WW2 Historian
Impossible Escape
by Steve Sheinkin
Ages 12+
It’s no surprise that Steve Sheinkin, the award-winning historian behind Bomb: The Race to Build—and Steal—the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon and Fallout: Spies, Superbombs, and the Ultimate Cold War Showdown, has become a fan favorite on the Gift Guide over the years: no one writes more riveting non-fiction. This year’s pick, Impossible Escape: A True Story of Survival and Heroism in Nazi Europe, will be no different, recounting the story of two Slovakian Jewish teenagers racing against time during the Holocaust—one in hiding in Hungary, the other plotting escape from Auschwitz—in a way that will appeal to readers of both historical fiction and non-fiction.
In 1944, a nineteen year old by the name of Rudolf “Rudi” Vrba, barely alive after two years in Auschwitz, risks almost certain death by escaping with an older comrade. He will be credited with becoming one of the world’s most famous whistleblowers, speaking out about the methodical mass killing of Jewish prisoners in the camps. Sheinkin balances his account of Rudi’s story with another meaningful perspective, that of Rudi’s younger schoolmate Gerta Sidonová, whose attempt to mask her Jewish heritage with an assumed name while hiding with her mother in Hungary grows more and more precarious as the German Nazis rise in power. The two narratives eventually intertwine, and we gain an appreciation for the myriad of courageous, intelligent, and resourceful ways that teens weathered the atrocities of the Holocaust.
Woven alongside the two stories is a rich and detailed overview of the history of antisemitism and World War II, highlighting how issues of seeking refuge, the human cost of war, and the dangers of misinformation are still very relevant today. The book is deeply personal to Sheinkin, who is Jewish, and in addition to his trademark in-depth research, he traveled to Poland to retrace Rudi’s 80-mile journey from Auschwitz to Slovakian land. Don’t miss this incredible story.
For the Investigative Journalist
Accountable: The True Story of a Racist Social Media Account and the Teenagers Whose Lives It Changed
by Dashka Slater
Ages 12+
What happens when a high school student in the progressive Bay Area starts a private Instagram account where he turns pictures of his Black friends into “edgy” racist memes for likes and laughs? I wish I could make this required reading for every teen, parent, and educator, because what award-winning journalist Dashka Slater has done in Accountable is nothing short of extraordinary, giving us an intensely nuanced look at a timely and devastating event. Coming at it from every angle, she interrogates both the individuals and the systems, from the followers of the Instagram account to social media itself, from school administrators to a growing meme culture, from the social pressure on boys to be funny to our society’s preoccupation with punitive justice over transformative justice.
Ultimately, no one in the small city of Albany, California, is exempt from the repercussions of the racist account’s discovery. Not the girls targeted by the posts. Not the boy who created it. Not the groups of kids who followed it. Not the adults—educators and parents—whose attempts to fix it, gloss over it, sue, or channel their own agenda into it only make things worse. Slater leaves no stone unturned, weaving extensive interviews and primary sources into mini narrative chapters that allow the events to unfold chronologically, while periodically pausing to frame the happenings against larger social contexts. Who were the teens involved and what led to the creation of the account? How should we weigh free speech against hate speech? When thinking about things like expulsion or social banishment, should the accountability of the person who created the account be the same or different as someone who followed it but never commented? What role should an educational institution play in something that takes place outside of school but impacts every member of the school community? And what is the path for healing and reentry after you’ve been victimized by a grossly racist attack, or after you’ve instigated said attack?
What makes this read so powerful is that it resists every easy explanation or answer. The teens complicit in the memes were not necessarily ones you’d suspect. Every single impacted person responds differently. What Slater exposes so starkly is how, even in the most “woke” communities, many of us are still unwilling or ill-equipped to own up to the consequences of systemic racism, to have the difficult conversations, to check our own egos or agendas at the door in the name of lasting change. And we are only beginning to understand the way things like social media are feeding directly into this.
For the Poet
These are the Words: Fearless Verse to Find Your Voice
by Nikita Gill
Ages 12+
Here’s something I’ve never done in a Gift Guide before: include a poetry book for teens! When I started following British-Indian poet Nikita Gill on Instagram and was blown away by her searing, soulful poems, ripe with feminism and social justice, self-love and promise. So, when These are the Words: Fearless Verse to Find Your Voice fell into my hands, a petite red paperback with 128 poems and occasional black-and-white spot illustrations, I wanted to give it to every young woman I know. And then I thought, maybe you would, too.
Inspired by the things Gill wishes someone had told her when she was growing up, the poems are divided into the four seasons of the soul, with sub-categories including Girlhood, Womanhood and Sisterhood; Love; For When You are Hurting; For When You Need to Heal; and Friendship and Found Family. With poem titles like “For When You are Tired of Being Called Strong,” “An Ode to Body Hair,” “A Blessing for Those Still Waiting,” and “They Lied When They Said Only Romantic Break-Ups Hurt,” the collection gives teens the words to understand first love, heal from breakups, express anger alongside joy, fight for what they believe in, and even break some rules to be their truest self.
In a world designed in such a way
that the loudest voice in the room
is treated as the most valuable
I hope you remember the quiet of the trees.
How they stand here,
tall and listening,
home to everything that sings
and grows, a beacon of loss in winter
and lush hope in the summer. […]
Nothing is expected of you,
other than growing
in the most sacred of ways.
Heck, maybe get a copy for yourself as well, in case you, like me, have been waiting to hear these things.
For the Artist
Be That Way
by Hope Larson
Ages 14+
The high school voice in this diary-sketchbook mashup is so authentic that there were times when I wondered if Hope Larson had been in my brain 30+ years ago. (Just so happy I don’t have to relive those years…) But it’s not just the “murky goop” of teen angst—crushes, breakups, best-friend fallouts, dumb parties, the pressure to be this and that and have everything figured out—that will appeal to young adults. It’s also the art. Larson—in our house she’s best known for her graphic adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time—gives us gorgeous, often full-color illustrations or comics alongside the prose on nearly every page of this simulated diary, as our protagonist develops her own artistic style for synthesizing the world around her.
It’s January 1, 1996, and high school junior Christine is tired of being “unshiny” and “overlooked,” especially compared to her gorgeous best friend, Landry, who epitomizes coolness, even if she jumps “from boy to boy like they’re rocks she has to balance on so she doesn’t drown.” Christine decides this is the year she’ll venture beyond her Black Honey lipstick, dye her hair, start writing articles for the school newspaper, and land a meaningful romantic relationship to prove she’s not destined to be alone for the rest of her life, “a dork who pairs low status with high standards.” The trouble is that she has a crush on her good friend, Paul, but he’s dating another girl, so she convinces herself that her nextdoor neighbor, Whit, is the actual man of her dreams. The two strike up an “epistolary flirtation” while he’s away over the summer, and when he gets back, things get serious, quickly turning into a crash course on what a good relationship looks like…and what it doesn’t.
As is par for the course in high school, things go wrong as much as they go right, as hormones surge, friendships evolve (and sometimes fall apart completely), SATs loom, peer pressure strikes, first jobs are landed (hello video rental store!), and the comfort of home and family is at once longed for and flat-out rejected. Be That Way is a perfect example of how YA differs from middle-grade: there are rarely easy answers and clean resolutions, because all is fair in love and high school.
Content: underage drinking and smoking, talk of sex, actual sex (off page).
For the Skeptic
All Alone With You
by Amelia Diane Coombs
Ages 14+
Wait, do we actually have a YA rom-com that’s light on the steam, heavy on the banter, comes with its own playlist, and is actually written with young teens in mind? I adored every page of All Alone With You, which had me laughing and swooning in equal measure, but mostly had me in awe of the rich characters Amelia Diane Coombs has penned, whose growth is authentic and admirable and so much fun to witness.
Eloise Deane cares nothing for her prickly attitude; all she wants is to get through senior year, make valedictorian, and high tail it to USC. But when her college counselor tells her she needs community service hours for her scholarship application and enrolls her in a program offering social support to lonely seniors through phone calls and in-home visits, Eloise finds herself paired up Austin, a high school classmate who also happens to be the most infuriatingly positive, Golden Retriever-type boy she has ever met. (When I say the banter between these two is gold, I mean IT IS GOLD.) Their assignment: Marianne Landis, a seventy-year-old former frontwoman of a 1970s band called The Laundromats—the character is inspired by Stevie Nicks!—who has resorted to chain smoking and hoarding to escape the secrets of her past.
Prone to panic attacks around social dynamics and having recently alienated herself from her two best friends, Eloise finds herself, much to her shock and horror, enjoying her afternoons and weekends with Austin and Marianne—even opening up to them. And as much as she tries to deny it, especially when his ex-girlfriend resurfaces, her feelings for Austin begin to morph into something more than friends. But when her brashness puts her relationship with Marianne in jeopardy, just as Marianne is making strides on her own healing journey, Eloise is forced to take stock of her baggage and own up to the kind of person she wants to be.
For the Mystery Seeker
We Deserve Monuments
by Jas Hammonds
Ages 14+
We Deserve Monuments is so gorgeously written, so skillfully paced, its characters so richly developed, that it’s impossible to fathom that this is Jas Hammonds’ debut novel. It’s also impossible to categorize. It’s a coming-of-age story. It’s a mystery. It’s a rumination on female friendship. It’s a queer love story. It’s a reckoning of Southern racial history. It’s the story of a girl pushing back on her parents as she struggles to find out who she is. It’s an unexpected relationship with a crotchety grandmother who is hands down one of my favorite supporting characters in recent years. Just typing these things makes me want to start the book all over again.
OK, but specifics? When Avery Anderson’s family abruptly locates from Washington DC to Bardell, Georgia, in the middle of her senior year, she goes kicking and screaming. It doesn’t help that they’re there to care for her dying grandmother, whose only source of entertainment is to throw around insults. Then there’s the strained relationship between Avery’s mother and the neighbor, a dynamic that hints at unsettling secrets. In fact, the more time Avery spends in this small town, where her mother grew up and couldn’t wait to leave, the more Avery begins to suspect that dangerous secrets abound.
Enter a bright spot. Two of Avery’s classmates immediately take her into the warm fold of their friendship, and for the first time Avery feels like she knows who she is, especially as she develops romantic feelings for one of them. And yet, the three girls cannot entirely detangle their friendship from the larger forces of racism and bigotry that cut through the town’s history. One of the girls hails from a prominent family, still living on the plantation that made them their fortune. The other is Black (Avery is biracial) and the daughter of the neighbor who is strangely frosty towards her mother.
Quiet and thrilling, with an ending to make you gasp, this is one to remember.
For the Literary Fiction Lover
The Blood Years
by Elana K. Arnold
Ages 14+
For all of you who asked me for something as good as last year’s All My Rage, by Sabaa Tahir, I give you another crossover YA every bit as spectacular: Elana K. Arnold’s The Blood Years, the most devastatingly beautiful read of the year. I will read anything Arnold writes, for any age, because her storytelling is magic. But the characters here are so richly spun that I never wanted to let them go. Perhaps because the coming-of-age novel is inspired by Arnold’s own grandmother as a Jewish teenager in Nazi-occupied Romania, it reads like the fiercest testament to familial love, that even in its heartbreaks and contradictions, it can sustain us through the impossible.
In the city of Czernowitz, long considered a safe haven for Jewish people, young ballerina Frederieke Teitler (Rieke) and her older sister, Astra, share a tiny apartment with their Opa—dear, sweet Opa!—who supports them with his watch repair business after their father runs out and their mother is left crippled by depression. Opa’s presence feels increasingly like the only thing Rieke can count on, as the sister she idolizes grows ever distant and distracted by romantic pursuits, and antisemitism escalates around them, as first the Russians, then the Germans, invade the city and threaten everything and everyone they love.
Many of the horrors of starvation, sickness, and dehumanization that unfold here will feel familiar to readers of Holocaust literature, though it’s worth noting that the Romanian experience has been represented far less than that of other European countries. What sets this novel apart is the vulnerability and heart with which Rieke tells her story. It’s a story that speaks to her unflappable desire to understand the thought processes of others, her fight to preserve her dignity, and her loyalty to friends and family, including and especially to a sister “both beautiful and terrible.” It’s a story about the randomness of luck, the abuses of power, and the contagion of hate, and the way hope and compassion push back as our best and sometimes only lines of defense.
Content: besides violence, there is some sexual assault.
For the Disrupter
Warrior Girl Unearthed
by Angeline Boulley
Ages 14+
I’m concluding with my favorite protagonist of the year. In Warrior Girl Unearthed, Angeline Boulley returns to the world of Firekeeper’s Daughter (a 2021 Gift Guide pick!), this time through the eyes of Daunis’ niece, Perry Firekeeper-Birch. It’s another brilliant piece of writing, exploring the intersection of history, culture, and identity against a coming-of-age story and a nail-biting heist, but it’s Perry herself—nicknamed Perry Pulls-No-Punches—who steals the show. Whip smart and sharp tongued, impatient and loyal, righteous and vulnerable, she has us rooting for her even (and especially) in her mis-steps.
Pitted against her overachieving, tightly-wound twin sister, Perry has always been laid back and nonconformist, preferring to spend time fishing with Pops and speeding in her jeep. But she’s also fiercely protective of her Anishinaabe ties and fed up with the rise in local Indigenous women going missing. When she takes a summer internship offered by her tribe to pay for jeep repairs, her education is supercharged. With a front row seat to the red tape surrounding the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) and the discovery that a nearby private collector is sitting on a storeroom of pilfered bones and burial artifacts, Perry discovers her passion: returning her ancestors to Sugar Island. But how far is she willing to go? Who should she involve, and at what cost?
I learned a lot about Anishinaabe culture while reading this book, especially on the topic of repatriation. (It has been 30+ years since NAGPRA was signed into law, requiring federal agencies and museums that receive federal funds to repatriate or transfer from their collections certain Native American cultural items, including human remains and funerary objects; and yet, more than half of these remains have still not been repatriated.) As a reader, we are introduced to these contradictions through the eyes of an idealistic, quick-to-fire teen, which means we are treated to the same education she is, moving into a more nuanced understanding of the issues at hand and an appreciation for the tools of strategy, planning, and diplomacy when it comes to fighting our fiercest battles.
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