Are you self-isolating? Social Distancing? Looking for something to fill your time?
Read any good YA recently?
Share your YA reading recommendations in the comments, and help us create a winning TBR list for the next few weeks! Check back and see what other people are recommending, and tell us what you love about the books you post.
And whatever you’re doing – filling time at home, or working on the front lines – stay safe, and keep in touch.
Our recommendations, with links to our reviews:
The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue (Mackenzi Lee)
The Gentleman’s Guide to Getting Lucky (Mackenzi Lee)
The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy (Mackenzi Lee)
Rebel of the Sands (Alwyn Hamilton)
Traitor to the Throne (Alwyn Hamilton)
Hero at the Fall (Alwyn Hamilton)
Six of Crows (Leigh Bardugo)
Crooked Kingdom (Leigh Bardugo)
The Museum of Second Chances (AE Warren)
The Base of Reflections (AE Warren)
Rose, Interrupted (Patrice Lawrence)
With the Fire on High (Elizabeth Acevedo)
Night Swimming (MT McGuire)
Please keep your comments YA appropriate. We want to hear from you, but comments are moderated, and may take some time to appear. We’ll approve them as quickly as we can!
Anything by the great Aidan Chambers is worth reading, but This Is All: the Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn blew both EMma and me away. It’s the first person (fictional) account of an amazing young woman told in many styles and in great detail and literary experiment. EMma even added the name ‘Cordelia’ to her own as a result of reading it.
https://www.amazon.com/This-All-Dance-Sequence-Book-ebook/dp/B003X27OLA
This looks amazing! Thank you!
I’ll admit I’ve been reading the Harley Merlin series by Bella Forrest, magic fantasy but based in modern day San Diago, definitely YA but very readable with multiple books in the series to follow long running story lines 😊 I’m on book 4.
Urban fantasy is definitely going on the list! Thank you for the recommendation!
I am a young adult author Gemma Donoghue and I have five YA books out now! I’ll leave a link to my author page below.
If I Fall
Charles is broken. He’s already lost more than most people lose in a lifetime. But he’s learned how to pretend that everything is okay. Long enough to pick up a razor blade a knife or a pair of scissors.
Delicate
Lydia baker fights a war every day.
A war with herself.
A war with food.
FRAGILE
Katherine doesn’t know how her eating disorder started; was it curiosity, a jealous competition with her best friend Carol to see who would be the smallest, or was it something else?
Talk
One family damaged by tragedy. A father who drinks and fights too much; an absentee, mother. Two girls left in the middle hiding their own dark secrets. Being sexually abused by their own father.
Good Enough
Good Enough is a sharp, heartbreaking, emotional journey. From the lows of grief and suicide to the highs of first love to the lows of loss and despair, Simon’s story is a compelling read.
Author page
https://amzn.to/394nxY2
Thank you, Gemma!
More on Aidan Chambers:
If you do enjoy Pillow Book, the preceding five books in his Dance Sequence are equally good, if shorter! I particular like Dance on my Grave – a book about a young gay man in the mid eighties; Now I Know – about a teenager exploring faith (whose girlfriend turns up thirty years later as a teacher in Pillow Book); and The Toll Bridge – about depression and other mental illnesses as you find your way in the world, written in 1992. I swear these books could have been written yesterday!
Aidan’s last book, Dying To Know You, is brilliant too – we’re reading it now – about what the young can learn from the old, and, importantly, what the old can learn from the young.
A bit of context, Aidan was an English Teacher, Lay Monk, and School Librarian, and edited and published Signal, a classic journal celebrating Children’s Literature, with his wife Nancy, for 30+ years. He’s 85.
Interesting – thank you!
One of my best reads in 2017 (already that long ago?!) was Avians by Timothy Gwyn. In a high gravity world civilization clings to mountain tops and lightweight female glider pilots are the only ones who can fly them. A girl runs away from her rich family to experience the daring lure of risking her life every day. Really great characters, clever world building and a good fast paced plot it’s a great story.
Brandon Sanderson’s: Skyward. He’s more known for epic fantasy, but as a prolific writer he’s tried his hand at YA SF. Works very well. Another heroine pilot junkie, reaching for the stars and finding aliens there.
Thank you for the suggestion – ‘Avians’ sounds fab!