What If It’s Us by Adam Silvera and Becky Albertalli (HarperTeen, October 9)

This was a sweet, charming love story about two boys who meet by chance at a  post office in New York City, have an epic time trying to find each other again (after failing to exchange any info at the post office), and then share a lot of tender and awkward moments as they start...

The Diviners by Libba Bray

I absolutely loved this glittering, creepy, magical romp through 1920s New York. It centers on Evie O'Neil, who is sent to live with her uncle in Manhattan after causing trouble in her Ohio hometown, thanks to her ability to read people's secrets from objects belonging to them. Evie is a sixteen year old in search...

Anger Is A Gift by Mark Oshiro

Anger Is a Gift is devastating and spectacular. This one literally took my breath away. It made me cry, but it also filled my heart right up. The fact that it did both of these things--that it was often painful to read, but that just as often, it was filled with warmth and love and...

The Astonishing Color of After by Emily X.R. Pan

I'd heard a lot of rave reviews of this debut novel, so I was super excited to pick it up. In the beginning of the novel, Leigh's mother commits suicide, and in the wake of her death, Leigh becomes convinced that her mother has turned into a bird. At the bird's urging, Leigh travels to...

A Girl Like That by Tanaz Bhathena

I got a bit too carried away with my library holds this year, requesting new releases. Usually I don't get around to reading books until years after they're published, and while it's fun to read new books while everyone's talking about them, I keep reading books that are less than amazing, just because they sounded...

Not Your Villain by C.B. Lee

I enjoyed the first book in C.B. Lee's Sidekick Squad series, Not Your Sidekick. Set a few hundred years in the future, after a solar flare ignited a gene mutation that created meta-humans. The US, Canada and Mexico have reformed into the North American Collective, and The Hero's League of Heroes wars with the United...

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

For me, this was a case of the book not living up to the hype. I enjoyed it--mostly--but I was not especially impressed by it, and in the end, the unsatisfying and frustrating bits outweighed the gorgeous world-building and smart racial commentary. The book takes place in a Nigerian-inspired fantasy kingdom. Magic has been wiped...

We Are Okay by Nina LaCour

We Are Okay is a slow, lush, sad, beautiful book. After her grandfather dies, Marin flees her home of San Francisco for college in upstate New York. She leaves everything behind: her home, her possessions, her best friend Mabel and her family. She is a young woman starting over in a new place, completely alone...

Let’s Talk About Love by Claire Kann

Eh. That was my overall feeling, upon finishing this book: eh. I was excited to read it, and I certainly didn't hate it, but I didn't find much to love about it, either. It was fantastic to see a black biromantic asexual woman starring in her own story, but overall, the story itself, for me,...

All Out: The No-Longer Secret Stories of Queer Teens Throughout the Ages edited by Saundra Mitchell

I was pleasantly surprised by this YA story collection of queer historical fiction. I wasn't expecting it to be bad, of course, but I also wasn't prepared for just how much it moved me. In All Out, seventeen fantastic YA authors writes stories about queer teens, representing a diverse range of gender, sexuality, race, class...