Posted by You may not know this about me, but I love to read. This list is ten of the books that are the reason why I still spend half my Sundays curled up in my fluffy pink chair, buried under a blanket. They all have something to say, if you give them the chance, and we all have something to learn.
Sadie by Courtney Summers (thriller, Colorado, 2018)
Narrated both by Sadie, a runaway, disabled teenage girl hellbent on avenging her little sister’s murder and Wes, the true crime podcast host equally determined to find her before she does something she’ll regret, the book seems as though it will follow a very straight line, and it outright refuses to, right up until an ending that will keep you up for many nights to come. Because Sadie refuses to let her sister be just another dead girl.
Quote: “Girls go missing all the time. Restless teenage girls, reckless teenage girls. Teenage girls and their inevitable drama…I dismissed it. Her. I wanted a story that felt fresh, new, and exciting, and what about a missing teenage girl was that?”
Song: Wolves by Selena Gomez
Wilder Girls by Rory Power (body horror / coming of age / Lord Of The Flies retelling)
A year and a half after a mysterious virus forces them into quarantine on their island, the diverse students of a private school for girls are now without almost any supervision and still completely cut-off from the outside world as the so-called “Tox” creeps ever closer. Wilder Girls functions as a sort-of feminist response to Lord Of The Flies, as the girls (who all have suffered some kind of bizarre change to their bodies, like a ridged spine, a missing eye, or a metal hand) are both desperate and savage and yet still startlingly compassionate and human, refusing to abandon each other even when it would be in their own best interest. When they’re separated, they break every rule that the island still has to find their missing friend, discovering secrets that they were never meant to learn.
Quote: “Some days it’s fine. Others it nearly breaks me. The emptiness of the horizon, and the hunger in my body, and how will we ever survive this if we can’t survive each other?…‘Stay with me,’ she says, ‘And I’ll stay with you, yeah?’”
Song: Spillways by Ghost
The House In The Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune (fantasy / found family)
A disillusioned, 9-to-5 case worker named Linus is chosen to investigate an orphanage where six magical children (a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, a shapeshifter, a tentacled slug, and the literal son of the devil) are being looked after by a mysterious man named Arthur. Though he first intends to report the children for being dangerous to their society, he slowly softens towards their bizarre and delightful personalities and finds himself falling for their caretaker, having to face the wrath of his prejudiced government bosses when they find out the truth.
Quote: “Hate is loud, but I think you’ll learn it’s because it’s only a few people shouting, desperate to be heard. You might not ever be able to change their minds, but so long as you remember you’re not alone, you will overcome.”
Song: Chosen Family by Rina Sawayama
The Kingdom by Jess Rothenberg (science fiction)
One of seven android princesses specially designed to “make dreams come true” at The Kingdom, a Disney-like theme park that most people can only afford in their wildest fantasies, Ana goes through her days without ever questioning them. But then she’s accused of a horrible murder—the murder of a teenage boy working at the park who was the first to make her feel something besides apathy—and has to prove her innocence, before she’s powered off for good. Switching between Ana and Owen’s fledgling romance of the past and the court transcripts and police records of her trial, The Kingdom is a tense almost-thriller that has both Ana and the audience questioning what it means to be human.
Quote: “Stories can be re-written, reshaped, retold. In the end, it doesn’t matter what a story’s about. It only matters who gets to tell it.”
Song: 빗소리가 들리면 (In The Rain) by Kim Sejeong
The Seven Husbands Of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid (historical fiction, California, 1940s-present)
Hired to interview an 80-year-old actress, once one of the most famous stars in Hollywood, for a tell-all novel, reporter Monique finds herself getting as entranced by Evelyn’s life as did decades of tabloids. Evelyn Hugo goes through each of her titular seven husbands: the ones she loved, the ones she hated, and how each was an important part of her rise to stardom. But in the middle, she reveals a far more poignant tale of passing, found family, loss, sacrifice, and the true love of her life, which is not who anyone expects.
Quote: “It’s always been fascinating to me how things can be simultaneously true and false, how people can be good and bad all in one, how someone can love you in a way that’s beautifully selfless while serving themselves ruthlessly.”
Song: The Lucky One by Taylor Swift
The Cat I Never Named by Amra Sabric El-Reyess (memoir, Bosnia, 1990s)
A heartrending memoir by a woman who was in high school during the Bosnian genocide against Muslims, about survival, family, and, of course, the little cat that changed her life. It manages to somehow be both very specific and incredibly relatable to the trials every teenager goes through, both about the family that created her and the family she created, both a reminder of what horrible things people can do and how beautiful small kindnesses can be.
Quote: “The war didn’t spring on me all at once. Instead, like a cat, it stalked me quietly. There might have been a rustle of leaves, a glint of golden eye. But like a mouse, I didn’t believe it was there until it pounced.”
Song: Insan (Human) by Hamza Namira
She Who Became The Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan (historical fiction, China, 1300s)
A revisionist history take on the rise of Zhu Yuanzhang, first emperor of the Ming Dynasty, where instead, a girl takes her brother’s place and disguises herself as a man…while discovering that perhaps “her” new body fits her better than she thought. As Zhu’s ruthlessness faces off against her empress’ boundless compassion and her greatest foe’s desire for revenge battles his decades-long love for his commander, they discover themselves far more similar to each other than either could have imagined. Both written by a nonbinary author and focused around several characters who are not quite considered men, but not quite women either, She Who Became The Sun is a searing commentary on body dysmorphia, gender, femininity, misogyny, and the lengths people go to for power.
Quote: “She saw someone who seemed neither male nor female, but another substance entirely: something wholly and powerfully of its own kind. The promise of difference, made real.”
Song: 花戎 (Floral and Firm) by SNH48
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets Of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz (coming of age / romance, Texas, 1980’s)
In a tiny town in Texas, two Mexican-American boys on the cusp of their last few years of school have a chance meeting during the summer. As they slowly become more and more important parts of each other’s lives, they push each other to examine their identities, their dreams (possible and not) after high school, their relationships with their parents, and perhaps most terrifyingly, their growing feelings for each other. At times surprisingly poetic and at times understandably naive, it captures a quintessential teenage experience.
Quote: “Senior year. And then life. Maybe that’s the way it worked. High school was just a prologue to the real novel. Everyone got to write you–but when you graduated, you got to write yourself. Yeah. Wouldn’t that be sweet?”
Song: Never Ending Song by Conan Gray
Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein (historical fiction, 1940’s, France)
Two female spies face very different scenarios when their British plane crash lands in 1943 France: one a navigator captured by the Nazis, one a pilot found by Allies. One fights to stay alive, the other to bring her home, and both to find their way back to each other. Two best friends, unexpectedly on opposite sides of a catastrophic war, work together to bring down a Gestapo prison from the inside and out. Though it’s technically a war novel, a story of survival and pain, Code Name Verity is also a love story between its two main characters, and it is this unflinching devotion that they have to each other that truly is the heart of what is such a gut wrenching novel.
Quote: “Oh, wouldn’t I know if you were dead? Wouldn’t I feel it happening, like a jolt of electricity to my heart? It’s like being in love, discovering your best friend.”
Song: Vivre À En Crever (Live Until It Kills Us) by Florent Mothe
The Good Luck Girls by Charlotte Davis (dystopia)
When teenage courtesan Clementine kills a client in self-defense, she, her sister Aster, and their friends embark on a journey across their Wild-West-like country to find a rumored paradise and finally escape the people who have owned them since childhood. Pursued by a horde of bounty hunters and officers of the law, the runaways have to rely on a suspicious cowboy, an escaped convict, and even the girl who was once their bitterest enemy to stay alive. Along the way, they spark a rebellion in their wake and begin to dismantle the system that kept them and hundreds of other “good luck girls” in chains.
Quote: “All of them. People Aster had trusted despite her fears, people who rewarded that trust. There were times when refusing to give folks a chance could be more dangerous than putting your faith in them. Times when you couldn’t do it alone. Times when you needed help.”
Song: Mexico by Carrie Underwood
The Maroon 