7 Brand-New YA Books to Kick Off Your Summer Reading List
1/9Not only does June mark the official end of the school year and the even more official beginning of summer, it’s also LGBT Pride Month. Fittingly, transgender teen advocate Jazz Jennings’ first memoir hits the shelves, along with YA contemporary You Know Me Well (co-authored by Nina LaCour and David Levithan), which takes place at San Francisco’s Pride parade. It’s also a great month for thrillers and historical fantasy, with Kiersten White’s new project and a debut about a supernatural spy. Check out some of our favorite June releases!
2/9Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen by Jazz Jennings
Release Date: June 7, 2016
In her first memoir, 15-year-old Jazz Jennings describes her personal journey throughout elementary and middle school, how she and her family became advocates for transgender youth, and how she’s now navigating high school. Kirkus says the thoughtful project is “an ideal book for trans kids to hand to worried loved ones after they’ve finished reading it.”
3/9With Malice by Eileen Cook
Release date: June 7, 2016
In what resembles a YA fictionalization of the infamous Amanda Knox case, an Ivy League-bound high school senior wakes up in a hospital bed to the news that her best friend has been murdered and she’s the prime suspect. The case gets blown up into a media firestorm of global proportions, and readers must parse out the truth through text and Facebook messages, police reports, blog posts, emails, and televised specials. This multimedia project is a perfect thriller to stow in your beach bag.
4/9You Know Me Well by Nina LaCour and David Levithan
Release Date: June 7, 2016
After sitting next to each other in school for an entire year without speaking, Mark and Kate collide in San Francisco during the Pride festival. Each of their planned romantic encounters has gone awry, and they end up spending a fateful night in the city — and fostering a life-changing friendship.
5/9Julia Vanishes by Catherine Egan
Release Date: June 7, 2016
In the first of a genre-bending fantasy trilogy, we meet Julia, a witch’s daughter who can vanish at will. This unique skill makes her the perfect spy, and she finds herself going undercover as a maid in the mysterious Mrs. Och’s house to learn more about the strange people who live there. But she needs to be careful — in an alternate history of post-revolutionary Europe, witches like her mother are executed.
6/9Mirror in the Sky by Aditi Khorana
Release Date: June 21, 2016
Tara, a scholarship student at an elite prep school in Connecticut, is forced to navigate junior year alone when her best friend decides to study abroad in Argentina. But then, NASA discovers a planet called Terra Nova, on which a parallel universe exists. Following the news, odd things start happening to Tara (like being invited to a party by the popular kids) and she wonders if other versions of the people around her — and another version of herself — exist in outer space.
7/9And I Darken by Kiersten White
Release Date: June 28, 2016
So, Vlad the Impaler. His brutality served as the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula and earned him a spot in high school history classrooms. But what if he was a she? Kiersten White’s latest book follows ruthless princess Lada and her meek brother Radu as they are whisked away to the Ottoman Empire and taken hostage by the sultan. But when they meet Mehmed, the sultan’s heir, they’re thrust into an unconventional love triangle. The first of a trilogy, And I Darken subverts gender norms, which is something we rarely see in historical fiction and a welcome change.
8/9Never Missing, Never Found by Amanda Panitch
Release Date: June 28, 2016
When she was 8, Scarlett was kidnapped and held hostage. Years after her escape, the now-17-year-old has settled back into a semblance of a normal life, and is excited to start working at a local amusement park. But on her first day, a coworker disappears, and Scarlett is drawn back into her dark past. In a starred review, Publisher’s Weekly calls Never Missing, Never Found “a jaw-dropping final twist gives way to a surprising, satisfying conclusion to this tense, clever thriller.”
