Happy May! Here’s this week’s new releases, in the Teen and YA genres I’m most excited about. Not only does May bring the flowers but it also brings great books that can easily be add to your summer reading list. Hope you find your next read from this wonderful list!
For sixteen-year-old Tiffany Sly, life hasnāt been safe or normal for a while. Losing her mom to cancer has her a little bit traumatized and now she has to leave her hometown of Chicago to live with the biological dad sheās never known.
Anthony Stone is a rich man with four other daughtersāand rules for every second of the day. Tiffany tries to make the best of things, but she doesnāt fit into her new luxurious, but super-strict, homeāor get along with her standoffish sister London. The only thing that makes her new life even remotely bearable is the strange boy across the street. Marcus McKinney has had his own experiences with death, and the unexpected friendship that blossoms between them is the only thing that makes her feel grounded.
But Tiffany has a secret. Another man claims heās Tiffanyās real dadāand she has only seven days before he shows up to demand a paternity test and the truth comes out. With her life about to fall apart all over again, Tiffany finds herself discovering unexpected truths about her father, her mother and herself, and realizing that maybe family is in the bonds you makeāand that life means sometimes taking risks.
Amazon Purchase Links: Kindle/Hardcover/Audiobook
Meet Daisy Winters. She’s an offbeat sixteen-year-old Floridian with mermaid-red hair; a part time job at a bootleg Walmart, and a perfect older sister who’s nearly engaged to the Crown Prince of Scotland. Daisy has no desire to live in the spotlight, but relentless tabloid attention forces her join Ellie at the relative seclusion of the castle across the pond.
While the dashing young Miles has been appointed to teach Daisy the ropes of being regal, the prince’s roguish younger brother kicks up scandal wherever he goes, and tries his best to take Daisy along for the ride. The crown–and the intriguing Miles–might be trying to make Daisy into a lady . . . but Daisy may just rewrite the royal rulebook to suit herself.
Amazon Purchase Links: Kindle/Hardcover/Paperback/AudiobookĀ
Everyone in Tenneyās Harbor knows about the Garrison tragedy. How an unexplained fire ravaged their house, killing four of the five family members. But what people donāt know is who did it. All fingers point at Pearl Haskinsā father, who was the caretaker of the property, but Pearl just doesnāt believe it. Leave it to a town of rich people to blame āthe help.ā
With her disgraced father now trying to find work in between booze benders, Pearlās future doesnāt hold much more than waiting tables at the local country club, where the wealthy come to flaunt their money and spread their gossip. This year, Tristan, the last surviving Garrison, and his group of affluent and arrogant friends have made a point of sitting in Pearlās section. Though sheās repulsed by most of them, Tristanās quiet sadness and somber demeanor have her rethinking her judgments.
Befriending the boys could mean getting closer to the truth, clearing her fatherās name, and giving Tristan the closure he seems to be searching for. But it could also trap Pearl in a sinister web of secrets, lies, and betrayals that would leave no life unchangedā¦if it doesnāt take hers first.
Amazon Purchase Links: Kindle/Hardcover/Paperback/Audiobook
Molly Barlow isnāt that girl anymore. A business major at her college in Boston, sheās reinvented herself after everything that went down a year agoā¦ After all the people she hurt and the family she tore apart.
Slowly, life is getting back to normal. Molly has just said I love you to her new boyfriend, Ian, and they are off on a romantic European vacation together, starting with scenic London. But there on a tube platform, the past catches up to her in the form of Gabe, her ex, traveling on his own parallel vacation with new girlfriend Sadie.
After comparing itineraries, Ian ends up extending an invite for Gabe and Sadie to join them on the next leg of their trip, to Ireland. And Molly and Gabe canāt bring themselves to tell the truth about who they once were to each other to their new significant others.
Now Molly has to spend 9 days and 9 nights with the boy she once loved, the boy whose heart she shredded, without Ian knowing. Will she make it through as new and improved Molly, or will everything that happened between her and Gabe come rushing back?
Amazon Purchase Links: Kindle/Hardcover/Audiobook
Middle school is all about labels.
Izzy is the dreamer. Thereās nothing Izzy loves more than acting in skits and making up funny stories. The downside? She can never quite focus enough to get her schoolwork done.
Bri is the brain. But she wants people to see thereās more to her than just a report card full of As. At the same time, she wishes her mom would accept her the way she is and stop bugging her to ābreak out of her shellā and join drama club.
The girlsā lives converge in unexpected ways on the day of a school talent show, which turns out to be even more dramatic than either Bri or Izzy could have imagined.
Amazon Purchase Links: Kindle/Hardcover/Paperback/Audiobook
Graduation was supposed to be a relief. Except Quinn can’t avoid the rumors that plagued her throughout high school or the barrage of well-intentioned questions about her college plans. How is she supposed to know what she wants to do for the next four years, let alone the rest of her life? And why does no one understand that it’s hard for her to think about the futureāor feel as if she even deserves oneāwhen her best friend is dead?
Spending the summer with her aunt on the Jersey shore may just be the fresh start Quinn so desperately needs. And when she meets Malcolm, a musician with his own haunted past, she starts to believe in second chances. Can Quinn find love while finding herself?
Amazon Purchase Links: Kindle/Paperback/Audiobook
Seventeen-year-old Mira has always danced to her own beat. A music prodigy in a family of athletes, she’d rather play trumpet than play ballāand with her audition to a prestigious jazz conservatory just around the corner (and her two best friends at music camp without her), she plans to spend the summer focused on jazz and nothing else.
She only goes to the warehouse party in a last-ditch effort to bond with her older sister. Instead, she falls in love with dance music, DJing… and Derek, a gorgeous promoter who thinks he can make her a star. Suddenly, trumpet practice and old friendships are taking a back seat to packed dance floors and sun-soaked music festivals, outsized personalities and endless beats.
But when a devastating tragedy plunges her golden summer into darkness, Mira discovers just how little she knows about her new boyfriend, her old friends, and even her own sister. Music brought them together. Will it also tear them apart?
Amazon Purchase Links: Kindle/Hardcover
Note: Hardcover is a pre-order and set to be released May 15th.Ā
A dark retelling of Swan Lake set in the fantasy steampunk world of Broken Gears.
Calandra is happiest when sheās surrounded by quiet. As the younger sibling to the future Count of Bone Bay, she’s pleased by the idea of being able to assist her people without all the pressure of an official title. When Nicodemus, a magus with immense power, joins the royal court of Invarnis, Calandraās life will change forever. As a terrible curse pursues her through the centuries, Calandra will have to overcome captivity, war, and loss.
Amazon Purchase Links: Kindle/Paperback
Seventeen-year-old Flora Banks has no short-term memory. Her mind resets itself several times a day, and has since the age of ten, when the tumor that was removed from Floraās brain took with it her ability to make new memories. That is, until she kisses Drake, her best friend’s boyfriend, the night before he leaves town. Miraculously, this one memory breaks through Flora’s fractured mind, and sticks. Flora is convinced that Drake is responsible for restoring her memory and making her whole again. So, when an encouraging email from Drake suggests she meet him on the other side of the worldāin Svalbard, NorwayāFlora knows with certainty that this is the first step toward reclaiming her life.
But will following Drake be the key to unlocking Floraās memory? Or will the journey reveal that nothing is quite as it seems?
Amazon Purchase Links: Kindle/Hardcover/Paperback/Audiobook
Imani is adopted, and she’s ready to search for her birth parents. But when she discovers the diary her Jewish great-grandmother wrote chronicling her escape from Holocaust-era Europe, Imani begins to see family in a new way.
Imani knows exactly what she wants as her big bat mitzvah gift: to find her birth parents. She loves her family and her Jewish community in Baltimore, but she has always wondered where she came from, especially since she’s black and almost everyone she knows is white. Then her mom’s grandmother–Imani’s great-grandma Anna–passes away, and Imani discovers an old journal among her books. It’s Anna’s diary from 1941, the year she was twelve and fled Nazi-occupied Luxembourg alone, sent by her parents to seek refuge in Brooklyn, New York. Anna’s diary records her journey to America and her new life with an adoptive family of her own. And as Imani reads the diary, she begins to see her family, and her place in it, in a whole new way.
Amazon Purchase Links: Kindle/Hardcover
Growing up is fun . . . but itās tough, too. There are a lot of unknowns and it can be weird and messy for girls. Worry not! This book covers EVERYTHING girls need to know, and it’s all been reviewed and fact-checked by medical consultant Dr. Radha Modgil.
Learn how:
To make your body your best friend (not your enemy).
To get out there and do YOU (even when you donāt want to move off the couch).
The thoughts and feelings that make you feel alone are shared by every girl on the planet.
To feel amazing through exercise, nutrition, and skin care.
And so much more!
Amazon Purchase Links: Kindle/Paperback
~Happy Reading!
