New YA Book Releases This Week, December 4, 2024
I suspect that I speak for many of us who are breathing both a sigh of relief that we’re in the final month of the wretched year 2024 and holding my breath about what 2025 may bring in with it. In either case, one thing is true: there are still books coming out, and we still have the ability to read and fill our lives with good things.
That said, it should be unsurprising at this point to anticipate fewer new releases. We’ll certainly see an uptick come January, but for the month of December, the calendar slows down. Use it as an opportunity to spend time with these books, as often they’re the most overlooked of the year, and use the time to catch up with your TBR.
As with other recent newsletters, I’ll share books that are part of an ongoing series as a list with links, rather than try to write a description that may unintentionally spoil the story.
New YA Hardcover Releases
Dust by Alison Stine
When Thea’s father has a premonition, he moves their family to southern Colorado’s Bloodless Valley. The plan is to unschool Thea and her sister, but it quickly becomes apparent that living on a remote farm takes far more time than they have, so Thea and her sister are left to educate themselves. Except the girls are forbidden from going to the library, as they might become “poisoned” by the internet or books.
But the real poison isn’t in knowledge. The farm where they’ve moved and how it won’t grow anything because of the climate.
So when Thea is allowed to take a job at a local café and meets Ray—a partially Deaf teen just like her—she begins to put together the pieces of the world she’s just entered. It’s declining, and quick.
My Fairy God Somebody by Charlene Allen
This new novel has comps to Far From The Tree by Robin Benway and We Deserve Monuments by Jas Hammonds, meaning that if you’re looking for a novel that blends realism with a bit of the fantastical, this will be up your alley. It is also a “one magical summer” story, which is something I can never get enough of myself.
Clae lives with her mom in coastal Massachusetts. It’s always just been she and her mom, as her dad took off when she was born. That’s at least the story mom has told her. To make things more complicated, not only does Clae have this strange family history, she’s one of the only Black girls in her community.
Things start to get suspicious, though, as she starts to discover clues about a part of her family history that doesn’t jive with what mom has told her. These clues are coming from someone Clae calls her fairy god somebody. Now, having scored the internship of a lifetime in New York City, Clae plans to expand her skills in investigation to learn the truth behind the clues.
Clae quickly befriends two other girls during her New York City summer, and not only do they have an amazing time getting to know the bustling, brilliant city, but Clae has decided to exercise her talents even further to figure out who her fairy god somebody is. There’s a big secret about her own family history that someone has tried hard to bury, but Clae is bound and determined to find the truth.
It’s a summer of incredible friendship, of a fantastic internship, and of finding out who you truly are when the truths have too often been hidden.
When The Mapou Sings by Nadine Pinede
This work of historical fiction is one that would read so well with the American classic Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, and this will make sense as you get to know the premise of Pinede’s novel.
It’s 1930s Haiti, and 16-year-old Lucille and her best friend dream of growing up and opening a school where young girls like them can learn everything their heart desires. They want to teach others how to be Haitian, including how to carve and sew, how to appreciate and listen to the mountains and forests, and how to sing the songs of the island’s sacred trees, the Mapou.
Unfortunately, Lucille’s best friend disappears. Though Lucille knows she shouldn’t, she listens to the advice of the Mapou and goes to the chief of her village. Rather than help her, the chief puts her life and the life of her whole family in danger, and now, they’re forced to flee.
Lucille takes a job in Port-au-Prince working for an elite woman of Haiti. Things should be okay, but they’re not. Lucille has fallen for her boss’s son, who she was strictly forbidden from engaging with. Forced to flee once again to save her life, Lucille ends up working for an American woman doing fieldwork and research in Haiti. That woman is Zora Neale Hurston. As sweet as that should be for Lucille, well, her life cannot be the easy, carefree existence she wishes it were. Instead, she needs to figure out how to find her best friend and keep her own life safe in the meantime.
Readers who love a novel in verse will want to pick up this little gem, which marries the historical with the thrilling.
Series book out in hardcover this week:
- To Shatter The Night by Katherine Quinn
New YA Paperback Releases
As always, you might need to toggle your view in order to see the paperback edition of each title when you click the links.
The Alchemy of Moonlight by David Ferraro
Ferraro’s book is about a secret buried within a secret and is likely the queer gothic romance of your dreams.
Emile is a queer marquis and has no interest in living up to the expectations set upon him to be straight and fit in. So when his aunt demands that he must get married and have an heir or he’ll be disowned, Emile does what seems natural: he decides to disguise himself as a servant and run away.
He just needs to keep his identity on the down low long enough to come of age and be free. But that is difficult when he takes employment under Count Montoni, whose family has a big secret. Every full moon, an affliction takes over the family and they all require sedation. So when one of those full moons ends up producing a mangled corpse, and that discovery aligns with a fight that broke out among the family members, Emile becomes entangled in a web of secrets about the Count.
Soon, Emile captures the attention of a handsome doctor and the count’s nephew Henri. But balancing trust and a little bit of love is extremely difficult when you’re not only holding the secrets of the Count and his paranormal family but your own secrets, too.
Sinner’s Isle by Angela Montoya
Rosalinda cannot escape Sinner’s Isle, a land where witches who are too dangerous for society are banished. But Rosalina and her fellow Majestics are not solely feared. Men seek them out, eager to exploit them. At 18, Rosalinda is a prize in the annual Offering, and rather than be given away to the wealthy, she decides to flee.
Marino is a Prince of Pirates, but when his father’s ship is attacked by the king’s fleet, he’s trapped on Sinner’s Isle. All he has with him is an enchanted chain that is to lead him to his heart’s desire.
That desire? Rosa.
As the two begin to fall quickly for one another’s wit and banter, they realize that in order to save themselves and each other, they need to escape Sinner’s Isle before the annual Offering concludes.
Somewhere in the Deep by Tanvi Berwah
Krescent is 17, and when she should be preparing to enter her own adulthood, she’s instead saddled with incredible debt from her parents. It’s not just monetary debt, though. She’s also struggling under the reality that her parents left behind a not-great legacy for her.
She needs to get off her punishing island, but the only way she can do that is through making money…and the only way she can make money is by battling creatures in an underwater fighting pit.
Except that doesn’t go well. She’s been banished from the pit following a fight gone bad, and now, she’s desperate enough to take a sketchy and dangerous deal. She’ll have her debts forgiven if she joins a rescue mission deep underseas in the mining caves.
Krescent will do it. She’ll keep her head down. The reality is she’s now not only stuck with a childhood enemy on this mission, but if anyone were to find out who her parents were, she’d become a target in seconds. As she encounters more and more creatures underseas that she thought was only fiction, Krescent also discovers that there is someone on this mission whose goal is to take her down.
Series books out in paperback this week:
- Dark Star Burning, Ash Falls White by Amélie Wen Zhao
- Loveboat Forever by Abigail Hing Wen
- The Scarlet Veil by Shelby Mahurin
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