10 Great March 2021 YA Releases to TBR

Sisters Jayne and June couldn’t be more different, and they’ve not truly spoken in years, despite both moving from their Texas hometown to New York City as soon as they each graduated from high school. Now Jayne is a struggling college student, in a quasi-relationship with a boy who’s no good for her, and struggling to hide her disordered eating when June abruptly walks back into her life. At 23, June is a highly successful hedge fund manager with more money than she knows what to do with, but she’s harboring a big secret that will rock Jayne’s world.

Wren possesses a gift for healing magic, but when she uses her magic recklessly and loses everything she holds dear, she accepts an invitation to heal a servant at a mysterious estate in the hopes of repairing her reputation. But once she arrives, she discovers her patient isn’t at all who she was told, but the sworn enemy of her nation. But Wren must work with him if they’re both to survive the mysterious manor, where monsters lurk.

Daya is the survivor of a car accident that claimed her parents’ lives, and since then she avoids human connection and contact as a way of surviving her grief. But then she stumbles into roller derby and the sport is everything she wants and needs to distract her from the pain of her loss…except roller derby is also very much a team sport, and if Daya is to succeed in it, she’s going to need to learn how to let other people in again.

Carey is a genderqueer teen who loves nothing more than Mariah Carey and singing, and dreams of being a diva. But Carey is cautious after an incident with a homophobic student…until they meet Cris. Cris empowers them to go out for the school play, and when they land the role of Elphaba, Carey is overjoyed. But Carey’s win stirs up the homophobes, so they’ll have to team up with Cris and their friends to take a stand for justice and fight against hate.

Emma is a romantic who is always brimming with wonderful, romantic movie ideas. She thinks the key to winning a film competition that sends the winner to L.A. for a film festival is the perfect romcom. Her rival Sophia has no patience for romcoms and is certain an artistic film with a deep message is what will win. The two find themselves clashing spectacularly until a twist of fate has them seeing each other in a completely different light.

Rani is a good daughter who never lies to her parents…until she meets Oliver. She falls hard and fast for him, even though she knows that her family would never approve of his tattoos and passion for art. But as their relationship deepens, Oliver’s home life becomes more and more unstable and he begins to ask more and more of Rani. Then, when Rani is sent to India for the summer, she is forced to face the truth about her relationship and what she wants.

In this fantasy, Tamsin is a powerful witch, but she’s banished from her coven and cursed with the inability to love for committing a grave sin. Wren is a source, someone made of magic but unable to use it themselves. Sources are expected to train with covens, but Wren has spent her life in hiding so as not to be separated from her sick father. When a mysterious plague spreads across their land, the two girls make a bargain that could cost them their lives — and their hearts.

When Ada decides to have sex with her boyfriend for the first time, she’s shocked and humiliated to discover that he’s cheating on her. And her older sister is no help at all, only too happy to pile on the unsolicited advice. Then, Ada discovers that her mom is having an affair…while they’re all on a family vacation in Hawaii. Ada decides that if everyone is having sex except her, she’s going to lose her virginity no matter what…but feelings complicate things, as they’re wont to do.

Daunis Fontaine is a biracial girl who has always been pulled between two worlds: her Michigan hometown and the nearby Ojibwe reservation. She dreams of escaping to college, but that’s put on hold to care for her mom. Then, when she becomes a witness to a shocking murder, the FBI ask her to go undercover for them and help discover the source of a new drug that is devastating her home. As Daunis investigates, she learns that discovering the truth is never easy and she’ll have to make some impossible choices.

Graciela’s life changed forever the night that she was assaulted at a party, along with a boy named Lock that she has never met before. When Lock shows up at her school after the assault, he doesn’t know what happened to them both that night — or that a shard of mirrored glass is stuck in his heart. It’s up to Graciela to help him, but doing so means denying the truth about what happened to her, and who assaulted them both.