The new edition of my book What's New in Young Adult Novels? and Ideas for Classroom Use is now available. I have added over 50 new books from 2021 and integrated them into the lesson ideas. If you click on the picture of the book in the upper right hand corner of the blog, it will direct you to Lulu.com where you can purchase the book. As we enter the new year, I would like to recommend a few more books from 2021 that I think are terrific. Within These Wicked Walls by Lauren Blackwood is a retelling of Jane Eyre with a supernatural twist. Between You Me and the Honeybees by Amelia Diane Coombs focuses on a feud between beekeeping families and the romance between two teens ala Romeo and Juliet. You Can Go Your Own Way by Eric Smith finds estranged friends Adam and Whitney at odds over her father's attempt to take over Adam's deceased father's pinball arcade. You've Reached Sam by Dustin Thao deals with the grieving process as the main character is able to talk to her dead boyfriend by calling his cellphone. As with most young adult novels there is an element of romance in each book though they have very different storylines.
Within These Wicked Walls, which is set in a desert region of Ethiopia, introduces Andromeda, an unlicensed debtera, who exorcises the manifestation of the Evil Eye. When she is hired to cleanse Magnus Rochester's mansion, she leaves Jember, her mentor/father figure and moves into the mansion. Her relationship with her moody employer quickly heats up and complicates the exorcism. She loses confidence in herself when she finds out several other debtera have failed and Jember refuses to help her. It turns out he has a prior relationship to the situation and is reluctant to get involved. The fast-paced battle against the evil spirits and Magnus and Andromeda's angst-filled romance will keep readers turning pages until the dramatic final conflict.
Between You Me and the Honeybees focuses on Josie, a recent high school graduate who aspires to take over the family beekeeping business. She has turned down her college acceptances but puts off telling her mom and her best friend. When her grandmother's Parkinson's disease worsens, Mom heads off to Florida to check on her, leaving Josie to her own devices. She meets Ezra, the grandson of her family's beekeeping rivals and forms an immediate bond. Mom returns with Gran and Josie begins sneaking out to see Ezra. Plagued by anxiety, Josie is faced with complicated choices as she tries to prove herself as a beekeeper and navigate her romance with the son of her mom's sworn enemies. The authentic details about beekeeping taken from the author's personal experiences, as well as the sensitive depiction of Josie's anxiety issues, take this a step above many Romeo and Juliet reimaginings.
You Can Go Your Own Way alternates between the perspectives of Adam and Whitney, estranged friends who find themselves sparing on social media, as Adam tries to save his deceased father's pinball arcade and Whitney attempts to help her father acquire it for his e-sports café. When her brother destroys a pinball machine at Adam's arcade, Adam blasts him on Twitter, escalating the war. Then a blizzard threatens to derail the plans for the neighborhood Winter Festival, which will bring much needed business into the arcade. When Adam and Whitney find themselves trapped in the arcade during the blizzard, they confront old wounds and rekindle a friendship both sorely missed. Excerpts from The Art and Zen of Pinball Repair give this enemies to lovers romance a quirky twist on the genre.
You've Reached Sam is a modern day ghost story that cleverly explores the issues of grieving. Julie Clark's plans to move out of her small town with her boyfriend Sam after graduation are derailed when he dies in a car accident. Planning to attend college together and go to Japan with him over the summer, Julie now finds herself mired in guilt and grief. After an angry phone call from Julie, (he had forgotten to pick her up at the airport), he jumps in his car and heads to his death. Devastated and finding herself blamed by his friends for his death, Julie skips his funeral and throws out memorabilia from their relationship, trying to move on. But when she calls his cell phone to hear his voicemail message one more time, he answers. The phone calls give them the opportunity to reconnect, making it harder to let him go. This supernatural premise allows for an interesting exploration of the grieving process for an untimely death.
