Young Adult Novels You SHOULD Be Putting on Your Reading List
What makes us love Young Adult Novels is that it’s fast-paced, have relatable characters, and have a story that makes your heart swoon.
If you’re looking for a good YA novel, you’ve come to the right place! We’ve made a list of recommendations that we’re sure you’ll love.
With that in mind, let’s get started:
They Wish They Were Us by Jessica Goodman
If you’re on the hunt for a high school riff on dark academia, look no further. Now in development as a series for HBO Max, They Wish They Were Us is a murder mystery set at an elite Long Island prep school when Jill—a senior and member of The Players, the school’s vaunted semi-secret society—begins to suspect that the guy who confessed to the murder of her best friend three years ago might not be guilty after all.
Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
The high fantasy that’ll sweep you away to another place and time? Check. Are magic-wielding teenagers fleeing oppression? Check.
An epic adventure spanning a fictional version of pre-Colonial West Africa? Check, check, check.
The first book in Adeyemi’s blockbuster Legacy of the Orisha series follows Zélie, a teenage girl with latent magical powers, who must join forces with her non-magical brother and a rebel princess in order to free her nation from an oppressive regime.
The Bones of Ruin by Sarah Raughley
Iris, an African tightrope walker in Victorian London, has a secret: she cannot die. Though unable to remember her past, Iris is determined to discover who she is—a quest that grows more complicated when she stumbles across the path of a mysterious group known as the Enlightenment Committee.
When a member of the society offers to share the truth about her identity in exchange for her participation in a magical gladiatorial competition, Iris must consider whether some secrets are meant to stay buried.
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
As a resident of a poor, mostly-Black neighborhood and a student at a mostly-white elite private school, Starr Carter is used to code-switching—until the night her childhood friend Khalil gets shot and killed by a white cop while driving Starr home from a party.
Starr agrees to come forward as an anonymous witness to the shooting, but when Khalil’s murder sparks national protest, Starr’s two worlds come crashing together.
The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth
Thanks to Desiree Akhavan’s incredibly moving film adaptation by the same name, most people know Cameron Post as a story about a lesbian teenager in 1993 whose family sends her to conversion therapy after she’s caught kissing a girl from her church youth group.
But the book is about so much more than that: It follows Cameron in the years following her parents’ death as she comes to terms with her sexuality, grapples with her faith, and reckons with the fact that her family’s love may actually be conditional after all.
Lie to Me by L Aquila
This one starts off as a young adult novel and slowly transitions into adult fiction as the character ages.
At the age of seventeen, Layla wakes up one Christmas morning, to gunshots instead of presents. Her world turns upside down with the death of her parents.
She is forced to move in with her aunt and cousin. The only good thing about this is that she meets Cade. But her aunt is planning something sinister and Layla’s slowly finding out that things in the house she’s living in are not as they seem.
L. Aquila absolutely nails it as she meshes together a suspenseful thriller with a steamy romance in the first book of the Layla Duet.
The story is written in the first person, using a tone that develops as the character ages and matures. This style really helps the reader get close to the protagonist, Layla, as her character progresses.
The use of the present tense adds a lot of tension to the story, and the pacing is absolutely on point. The book shifts easily between the desperation of the main plot and the erotic romance that goes with it.
Whether you are an avid reader of romance or new to the genre, the lies Layla was told will not disappoint. This should be on your list for 2022!
The book is available on Amazon and Kindle.
