If you need a week to stop and take a breath when it comes to new YA book releases, this is your week. You might even be able to finish a book or two already on your TBR.
While it’s quiet on the new release front, though even with a relatively short roundup of new books to highlight, you’ll find something here to get excited by. As usual, because there are a pair of new releases in series, you’ll see those at the bottom of each respective list to avoid any spoilers.
It is worth noting that because this is a week with fewer new YA books hitting shelves, that also means that this list isn’t as inclusive as usual. That is not representative of YA as a whole but rather, it’s a reality reflected simply by the books being published on this specific release date.
New Hardcover YA Releases
I Am The Cage by Allison Sweet Grant
Elisabeth is 19 and she is determined to be alone. She’s found an isolated cabin in Fish Creek, Wisconsin, where she can shutter herself away and make sure no one can ever hurt her again.
The problem is that now she’s trapped amid a massive snowstorm that has shut off power. She has to accept help from the local sheriff—and her neighbor—Noah. The last thing in the world Elisabeth wants to do is be vulnerable with him and she certainly does not want to tell him what’s happened to her. But the more they spend time together, the more she begins to open up to the truth of her life so far.
This book melds poetry with traditional prose and explores the aftermath of medical trauma.
The Girl You Know by Elle Gonzalez Rose
Itching for a new dark academic thriller to devour? Here you go!
The story follows twins Luna and Solina. Solina attends school at the elite Kingswood Academy, and she’s supposed to be going back for her final semester. But Solina tells Luna she doesn’t plan to go back and she wants to drop out. Unwilling to let her sister do that, Luna protests…only to have Solina disappear and then turn up dead 12 hours later.
The police are calling Solina’s death an accident, but Luna doesn’t believe that for a second. Something else is going on, and Luna’s going to find out. To do it, she’s got to pretend to be her sister and learn what was going wrong at Kingswood. Something made Solina want to leave, and as Luna plays pretend as her sister, she’s discovering just how cruel Solina’s friends were, as well as learning that Solina had complicated romantic feelings toward her roommate Claudia. There are also a lot of secrets that Luna was never privy to that cast a long shadow on Solina’s experience at Kingswood…and that make it even more difficult to suss out exactly what happened that lead to her death.
But just how far can Luna go to find out what happened to Solina? Given that she has nothing to lose, perhaps she will go so far as to burn everything down in search of the truth.
Unhallowed Halls by Lili Wilkinson
Now for a dark academia fantasy!
Always an outcast, Page even managed to end her only friendship at school and now, is looking for a fresh start in a new school. That comes in the form of a scholarship to attend Agathion College, a boarding school situated in the Scottish moors.
Page begins to make friends immediately. This school is everything she could have dreamed of, and she’s no longer the weird outcast. But that’s because her new friends—and the school itself—are harboring dark secrets.
Could this new school and her new friends have ties to demonic magic? That’s what Page has to figure out as she navigates those feelings of finally belonging and discovering how many lies she’s been fed.
This book is releasing simultaneously in hardcover and in paperback, so choose the format you prefer best!
There is one new book in a series releasing this week, and that’s Rebel Witch by Kristen Ciccarelli. It’s the second entry in the series.
New Paperback YA Releases
Deep Is The Fen by Lili Wilkinson
Merry likes things as-is. She wants things to be unruffled, uncomplicated, simple. She will avoid things like magic until the end of time.
So when her best friend Teddy says he is going to join the Toadmen, a local secret society that dabbles in the supernatural, Merry is determined to stop him. She can’t lose her best friend to, of all things, magic. Much as she cannot stomach it, Merry knows she’ll need to team up with her nemesis, Caraway, to stop Teddy.
The Toadmen are holding their latest ritual in the Deepening Fen, and much as Merry doesn’t want to go there, she must. But the Fen is far from safe, and Merry’s decision to seek the help of Caraway might lead her even further astray. Will she be able to save Teddy before it’s too late?
There is one series book hitting shelves in paperback this week. That’s Clarion Call by Cayla Fay. It is the second in a series.