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Set in Florida, Gods and Comics by Kat Cho offers readers insight on Korean mythology while also telling a story about the power of belief. Cho weaves her tale through the perspective of Grace Xavier Bak, a seventeen-year-old overachiever who designs webtoon episodes and is prone to anxiety attacks. As Grace works under the pseudonym Cho Sun, she unveils panels that feature Haemosu, the Korean sun god, and Yuhwa, his love interest. The “two teenage gods are trapped in human bodies, cursed to navigate the modern world” (1) while attending high school. Grace creates the episodes in part as a homage to her halmeoni whoRead More →

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Set in West Fork, Colorado, at Meddlehart Academy, A House of Vipers is Emma Jackson’s debut young adult novel. A boarding school for young people with wealthy parents, Meddlehart has a hidden treasure story, but is there really a buried treasure or is the story just one to entice the youth to join the Order of the Vipers? With mystery at its core, Jackson’s book has a three-pronged plot: a tragedy, a treasure, and a love triangle. Five students are bound by the loyalty of friendship and a bond like family, so when Sutter Heyward seeks the support of his friends: Carter Sterling, Grayson Hendricks,Read More →

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Set in 2425’s London, Burn the Water by Billy Ray begins with the world in peril. The polar ice caps have melted, the world is underwater, and the Rogues and the Crowns have been engaged in a centuries-long war. Now in its fourth century, death, water, and war are all London knows. With uncertainty and courage as her companions, Jule must conquer her doubt and prevent herself from drowning in despair. Although the “fiercest and most famous soldier the Crown Army ever produced” (4), she is also the loneliest. When on patrol, Jule spots her sworn enemy Rafe rescuing the corpse of a young boy,Read More →

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With We’re a Bad Idea, Right? K.L. Walther writes a hilarious romance for young adults. Set in Connecticut, this coming-of-age story explores themes of friendship, love, and self-discovery. Told with just the right amount of realism, the rom-com pulls in the reader with characters who are full of shenanigans but who are enduring conflicts that resonate as relevant. Just about to graduate from high school, Audrey Barbour has been accepted to Wharton School for Business, but she has also been granted an internship with the Blue Ridge Glass School. An artisan and entrepreneur with her best friend’s support, Audrey blows glass, not only as aRead More →

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Reckoning Day is coming, and seventeen-year-old Ionáin Ailm will soon find out whether he has the ability to channel magic. Since his father failed a quarter of a century earlier, the burden of saving the Ailm family name from ruin rests on Ionáin’s shoulders. However, Éadha, who has been Ionáin’s shadow from the time they were both eight years old, doesn’t want to see the boy she loves suffer the fate of a failed bloodline. So, she secretly uses her own magical powers to help Ionáin pass this test. Once he succeeds, the pair is whisked off to an academy for the magically gifted. OnRead More →

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Set in Michigan, When I Was Death by Alexis Henderson tells the story of Roslyn Volk. At the loss of her older sister Adeline who suffered from depression, Roslyn becomes a vessel of grief. Consumed and debilitated by her fixation on loss and her wondering about how Adeline died, Roslyn waitresses at a diner, moving through life as a shadow of her previous self: a star runner, an honor student, and a person full of fire and life. When a group of girls enter the diner, Roslyn is seduced by their charm and drawn to them and their carefree approach to life. The youngest inRead More →

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Set primarily in Virginia, L.S. Stratton’s recent historical fiction novel, Sundown Girls tells the story of the Stoakes family whose daughter Camryn was stolen from them when she was a baby. Now, fifteen years later, after living with a loving mother who is now in jail for kidnapping, Naomi Ward is struggling to accpet her new reality or to adjust.  Hoping to help her heal with time in nature, the Stoakes rent a cabin in Sparksburg, Virginia.  However, the retreat turns into a less than relaxing experience. Upon the family’s arrival in Sparksburg, they are met with hostility from certain community members who resent theRead More →

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Wishing to learn from the teachers at Sibylline, a college of magical arts that trains students to understand and use their powers, Atticus Garcia, Dorian Winthrop, and Raven Chen instead learn that wanting is a terrible thing. The trio is denied admission to the “oldest and best” school dedicated to the study of magic. So, they go under cover as staff members, hoping to glean whatever knowledge they can. But when they get caught up in a grand conspiracy and attacked by a shadow monster, things grow complicated. Such is the plot of Melissa De La Cruz’s novel Sibylline. In Book One of what promisesRead More →

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An investigative journalist himself, Jumata Emill writes a young adult thriller: I Don’t Wish You Well about how secrets never die. Set in Louisiana, the novel features Pryce Cummings, a journalism major at Whitmore University who hasn’t been able to snag a summer internship and is forced to return home to Moss Pointe. Hoping to advance his career prospects and to keep from growing bored, he consults his advisor Dr. Morrison about doing a podcast on a five-year old story: The Trojan Mask Murders. The murders had become the town’s cautionary tale against homosexuality, but Pryce, a closet homosexual himself, wants to prove that thereRead More →