Blackout is an adorable love story, written by 6different popular YA authors, Dhonielle Clayton, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Ashley Woodfolk, Angie Thomas, and Nicola Yoon. All of these amazing authors came together to write 6 different love stories, all happening on the same day. One day in New York, the entire city experiences a blackout, casting New York into darkness in the middle of a heatwave.
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson is a realistic fiction book about Pippa Fitz-Amobi, a young girl writing her senior project. She decides to write her project about a local murder that took place 5 years ago, using her senior project as an excuse to do her own investigation. Her goal is to prove the innocence of Sal, the alleged killer who was also found dead, and find out who really killed Andie, Sal’s girlfriend.
Normal People follows the story of Connell and Marianne, who in high school were total opposites to the outside world, but secretly the same people. As they grow up, they simply can’t stay away from each other. Now for me, this is one of my favorite romance ‘tropes’. The ‘We hate that we love each other but can’t stay away from each other enough’. If you also like that, I 100% recommend this book.
A Raisin in the Sun is a 1959 play by Lorraine Hansberry that focuses on an embattled family in south Chicago as they attempt and discuss ways to improve their lives financially after an insurance payout following the death of the patriarch in the family. In this quick but compelling play, Hansberry thoughtfully focuses heavily on racism, housing discrimination, and assimilation.
Tangerine by Edward Bloor centers on Paul Fisher, an eighth-grader with impaired eyes who moves to Tangerine County, Florida, with his whole family. In the novel, Paul juggles making new friends, dealing with the constant harassment from his football-star brother, joining his middle school’s soccer team, and uncovering strange occurrences that keep happening in Tangerine. Overall the book is a gripping story with many twists and turns from beginning to end.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a dystopian science-fiction novel by Philip K. Dick. The story takes place in 2021 in post-apocalyptic San Francisco. The world has become dramatically destroyed by nuclear war, and the reader follows Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter tasked with killing escaped androids. This novel is more mature than other dystopian novels, and, that being said, it does include a lot of adult topics and themes.
Catch Me if You Can is a semi-autobiographical novel based on the novel’s author, Frank W. Abagnale, criminal venture into being a con-man and exploiting multiple companies and the FBI. In this partly fictionalized yet riveting story, the reader follows Abagnale’s criminal beginnings as a teenager to his attempts to become a law-abiding citizen in adulthood.
One year has passed since the destruction of These Violent Delights, and Shanghai is on the brink of upheaval. Whispers of civil war hang in a mist over the streets, and the Scarlet Gang is stretched thin between the leadership of Juliette and her ruthless cousin Tyler, who threatens to usurp her.
Axie Oh’s XOXO is an adorable contemporary romance novel. All Jenny wants is to be accepted into a prestigious music conservatory, but when she meets Jaewoo at her uncle’s karaoke bar in Los Angeles, her life will change drastically. Suddenly, Jenny finds herself moving to South Korea to take care of her sick grandmother. Unbeknownst to her, the boy she met in the karaoke bar is a famous K-pop idol.
The Cruel Prince is the first novel in The Folk of the Air trilogy, a young adult fantasy series by Holly Black. Jude Duarte is a mortal raised in the realm of the fey. Trained by her adopted father, a formidable fey general, Jude becomes vicious and cunning. She wants nothing more to belong among the people that hate her for being mortal, and when a great betrayal threatens the existence of Fairie, Jude must form an alliance with the person she hates the most to save the realm.
