Summer, summer, summer time. And in the words of Will Smith, that means it’s time to sit back and unwind. Hopefully with a good book (or two) at hand. With the annual influx of big deal new releases that arrive every June, readers are spoiled for choice whether they’re reading fantasy books, horror stories, or young adult novels. YA is a genre that’s known for the eclectic breadth of its subject featuring books that span almost every imaginable subgroup of storytelling.
From big releases from YA heavy hitters like Karen McManus, Jennifer Lynn Barnes, and Kristin Cashore, to new titles from up-and-coming new faves like Kalynn Baron, Adam Sass, and Adalyn Grace, there’s an embarrassment of riches headed our way as days get longer.
Here are our most anticipated YA books of Summer 2024
Heiress Takes All by Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka
Release Date: June 4 from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Why We’re Excited: From the powerhouse duo behind titles like Never Vacation with Your Ex, this deliciously fun YA adventure about a vengeful daughter determined to pull off the perfect heist during her father’s wedding is perfect summer fun.
Publisher’s Description: Seventeen-year-old Olivia Owens isn’t thrilled that her dad’s getting remarried…again. She’s especially not thrilled that he cheated on her mom, kicked them out of their Rhode Island home, and cut Olivia out of her rightful inheritance.
But this former heiress has a plan for revenge. While hundreds of guests gather on the grounds of the gorgeous estate where she grew up, everyone will be thinking romance—not robbery. She’ll play the part of dutiful daughter, but in reality she’ll be redistributing millions from her father’s online accounts. She only needs the handwritten pass code he keeps in the estate’s safe.
With the help of an eclectic crew of high school students and one former teacher, Olivia has plotted her mid-nuptial heist down to the second. But she didn’t plan for an obnoxiously nosy wedding guest, an interfering ex-boyfriend intent on winning her back, greedy European cousins with their own agenda, or a vengeful second wife. When everything seems like it’s going wrong, Olivia has to keep her eyes on what really matters: getting rich. And when she’s done, “something borrowed” will be the understatement of the year.
Past Present Future by Rachel Lynn Solomon
Release Date: June 4 from Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Why We’re Excited: The charming sequel to Today, Tonight, Tomorrow, Rachel Lynn Solomon’s latest entry in her Rowan & Neil series follows the eponymous characters—who fell in love over the course of 24 hours in the first book—as they embark on a long-distance relationship during their first year at college.
Publisher’s Description: When longtime rivals Rowan Roth and Neil McNair confessed their feelings on the last day of senior year, they knew they’d only have a couple months together before they left for college. Now summer is over, and they’re determined to make their relationship work as they begin school in different states.
In Boston, Rowan is eager to be among other aspiring novelists, learning from a creative writing professor she adores. She’s just not sure why she suddenly can’t seem to find her voice.
In New York, Neil embraces the chaos of the city, clicking with a new friend group more easily than he anticipated. But when his past refuses to leave him alone, he doesn’t know how to handle his rapidly changing mental health—or how to talk about it with the girl he loves.
Over a year of late-night phone calls, weekend visits, and East Coast adventures, Rowan and Neil fall for each other again and again as they grapple with the uncertainty of their new lives. They’ve spent so many years at odds with each other—now that they’re finally on the same team, what does the future hold for them?
There Is a Door In This Darkness by Kristin Cashore
Release Date: June 11 from Dutton
Why We’re Excited: The fact that There Is a Door In This Darkness hails from the author of the Graceling series is enough to get most people (read: me) to give it a look, but its intriguing premise—a magic-tinged contemporary YA story about depression, grief, and hope that centers around a high school student who lost her senior year to the COVID pandemic—is a welcome bonus.
Publisher’s Description: Wilhelmina Hart is part of the infamous class of 2020. Her high chool years began with the election of Donald Trump and they ended with COVID. Now Wilhelmina, like so many of her peers, is in limbo, having deferred college because of the pandemic. Compounding the national trauma of 2016 to 2020, Wilhelmina has wrestled with the devastating loss of one of her three beloved aunts shortly after the 2016 election. This is a loss she felt so keenly that she’s spent the last years deep in her personal depression, only obscured by the seemingly endless waves of national trauma. Now on the cusp on the most consequential election in living memory, Wilhelmina may have found a door in her darkness and perhaps the courage to pass through it, if she can decipher the bizarre messages that keep appearing in her life.
The Color of a Lie By Kim Johnson
Release Date: June 11 from Random House Books for Young Readers
Why We’re Excited: We really don’t get enough historical fiction in the YA space, and Kim Johnson’s timely social justice thriller about a Black teen torn between two worlds when his white-passing family moves them into a “Whites Only” suburb in 1955 is a story that somehow feels timelier and more necessary than ever.
Publisher’s Description: Calvin knows how to pass for white. He’s done it plenty of times before. For his friends in Chicago, when they wanted food but weren’t allowed in a restaurant. For work, when he and his dad would travel for the Green Book.
This is different.
After a tragedy in Chicago forces the family to flee, they resettle in an idyllic all-white suburban town in search of a better life. Calvin’s father wants everyone to embrace their new white lifestyles, but it’s easier said than done. Hiding your true self is exhausting — which leads Calvin across town where he can make friends who know all of him…and spend more time with his new crush, Lily. But when Calvin starts unraveling dark secrets about the white town and its inhabitants, passing starts to feel even more suffocating–and dangerous–than he could have imagined.
Sleep Like Death by Kalynn Baron
Release Date: June 25 from Bloomsbury YA
Why We’re Excited: Another fairytale retelling from Kalynn Baron, author of the excellent Cinderella is Dead, and this one tackles Snow White? Sign us up.
Publisher’s Description: Only the truly desperate – and foolish – seek out the Knight, an ancient monster who twists wishes into curses. Eve knows this first-hand: one of her mothers was cursed by the Knight and trapped in the body of a songbird. With the unique abilities to communicate with animals and conjure weapons from nature, Eve has trained all her life to defeat him.
With more and more villagers harmed by the Knight’s corrupt deals, Eve believes she’s finally ready to face him. But when Queen Regina begins acting strangely – talking to seemingly no one, isolating herself, and lashing out at the slightest provocation – Eve must question if her powers are enough to save her family and her kingdom.
Adventures of Mary Jane By Hope Jahren
Release Date: June 25 from Delacorte Press
Why We’re Excited: A retelling of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of side character Mary Jane—who only appears in something like 30 pages of the original novel. Jahren brings her to delightful life here as a smart, thoughtful, and boldly courageous girl who is every inch as deserving of her own adventure down the Mississippi.
Publisher’s Description: Meet Mary Jane Guild — she’s on a dangerous and unpredictable adventure down the Mississippi River — and she’ll steal Huck Finn’s heart along the way.
In these chapters you’ll come to know the real Mary a girl on her own dangerous and unpredictable journey down the Mississippi River in pre–Civil War America. Equipped with an uncanny ability for mathematics, a talent for sewing, and a bale of beaver skins, Mary Jane navigates deadly illnesses, angry mobs, treacherous landowners, outright thieves and swindlers, and more than a thousand miles of muddy water. What’s more, she thrives in the face of these challenges, thanks to support from a caring boat captain, generous neighbors, a cheery peddler, a chosen family, a loyal and loving dog, and two hardworking horses. Traveling solo requires Mary Jane to grow up fast, but it ultimately leads her to a new resilience, a love of adventure, deep and enduring sisterhood, and a blue-eyed, pony-tailed boy she can’t stop thinking about.
Six of Sorrow By Amanda Linsmeier
Release Date: June 25 from Delacorte Press
Why We’re Excited: The latest creepy YA thriller from the author of Starlings, Six of Sorrow follows the story of six former best friends—all born on the same day—who are forced to reunite when one of them goes missing under mysterious circumstances. She returns deathly ill, and they’ll need to figure out the supernatural mystery surrounding them, their mothers, and their small Louisiana town before they’re all killed. Come for the small-town Yellowjackets vibes, stay for the entertaining horror tropes and messy friendships.
Publisher’s Description: For most of her life, Isabeau and her five best friends were inseparable—amazingly enough, the six girls even shared a birthday. Then a rift caused their friendships to fracture, and Iz lost everyone except Reuel, the only one who didn’t abandon her.
Until now. The night of their sixteenth birthday, Isabeau leaves Reuel sitting on her front porch and heads home—and in the morning, Reuel is missing. She’s gone for two days, and when she reappears, there’s something wrong with her. She’s sick. Really sick. And she doesn’t remember anything that happened while she was gone.
If there’s any bright side to the situation, it’s that Reuel’s peculiar disappearance brings the six girls back together. Their sisterhood feels as strong as it was years ago, but when another one of them disappears, they all agree that they must have more in common than simply their birthday. They all feel it. Something’s been waiting for them, and that something has come to claim them one by one.
Deep in their bones, they know—it’s just a matter of time until they they’re all taken. And if they don’t save themselves, no one will.
Cursed Boys and Broken Hearts by Adam Sass
Release Date: July 16 from Viking Books for Young Readers
Why We’re Excited: A charming second chance romance from the author of Your Lonely Nights Are Over, Cursed Boys and Broken Hearts brings back a secondary character from The 99 Boyfriends of Micah Summers for his own shot at a fairytale love story as he joins forces with a middle school friend to save a run-down B&B.
Publisher’s Description: Grant Rossi is never getting a happily-ever-after.
Ever since he was a kid and made a wish on his family’s iconic Wishing Rose, his romantic relationships have been cursed to end. Following his most recent (and extremely public) dumping, Grant is languishing in a hot Chicago summer, abandoning his beloved design projects to sink back into depression. But when his family suggests spending the summer helping his aunt and uncle refurbish their beautiful but rundown B&B and vineyard—the home of the Wishing Rose that changed everything for him—Grant decides to accept. Maybe he can finally find a way to recover his creative spark…and break his curse.
But things at the vineyard are not what Grant expects. The place is in almost total disrepair, and—even worse—the person his relatives hired to help is his former childhood crush, Ben—the first boy who broke his heart.
As their chemistry sparks and the summer heats up, the wedge between them can’t be ignored. But while they race to restore the B&B in time for the beloved local rose festival, grumpy but lovable Ben starts to break through Grant’s carefully crafted defenses. Can Grant find a way to overcome his curse and open his heart, even when it’s broken?
So Witches We Became by Jill Baguchinsky
Release Date: July 23 from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Why We’re Excited: Described as a queer, feminist take on Stephen King’s The Mist, this revenge-tinged horror story is an ode to female rage that touches on the trauma of sexual assault and supports young women coming into their power.
Publisher’s Description: For high school senior Nell and her friends, a vacation house on a private Florida island sounds like the makings of a dream spring break. But Nell brings secrets with her—secrets that fuse with the island’s tragic history, trapping them all with a curse that surrounds the island in a toxic, vengeful mist and the surrounding waters with an unseen, devouring beast.
Getting out alive means risking her friendships, her sanity, and even her own life. In order to save herself and her friends, Nell will have to face memories she’d rather leave behind, reveal the horrific truth behind the encounter that changed her life one year ago, and face the shadow that’s haunted her since childhood.
Easier said than done.
But when Nell’s friends reveal that they each brought secrets of their own, a solution even more dangerous than the curse begins to take shape.
The Grandest Game by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Release Date: July 30 from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Why We’re Excited: A new chapter in Jennifer Lynn Barnes’s popular Inheritance Games universe kicks off when Avery Grambs and the four Hawthorne brothers launch a new contest to give anyone a chance at fame and fortune—-but it’s one that comes with plenty of challenges and dangers of its own.
Publisher’s Description: Seven tickets. An island of dreams. The chance of a lifetime.
Welcome to the Grandest Game, an annual competition run by billionaire Avery Grambs and the four infamous Hawthorne brothers, whose family fortune she inherited. Designed to give anyone a shot at fame and fortune, this year’s game requires one of seven golden tickets to enter. With millions on the line, those seven players will do whatever it takes to win.
Some of the players are in it for the money. Some for power. Some for reasons all their own. Every single one of them has secrets. Amidst it all is Grayson Hawthorne, tasked with a vital role in this year’s game. But as tensions rise and the mind-bending challenges push the players to their limits—physically, mentally, and emotionally—it soon becomes clear that not everyone is playing by the rules.
Such Charming Liars by Karen McManus
Release Date: July 30 from Penguin Books
Why We’re Excited: No one does YA thrillers like Karen McManus, so any new release from her is automatically going to be a must-read. But the premise of Such Charming Liars—about a mother-daughter team of grifters trying to pull off one last jewel heist—feels like something entirely new (and all the more exciting) from her.
Publisher’s Description: For all of Kat’s life, it’s just been her and her mother, Jamie—except for the forty-eight hours when Jamie was married and Kat had a stepbrother, Liam. That all ended in an epic divorce, and Kat and Liam haven’t spoken since.
Now Jamie is a jewel thief trying to go straight, but she has one last job—at billionaire Ross Sutherland’s birthday party. And Kat has figured out a way to tag along. What Kat doesn’t know, though, is that there are two surprise guests at the dazzling Sutherland compound that weekend. The last two people she wants to run into. Liam and his father—a serial scammer who has his sights set on Ross Sutherland’s youngest daughter.
Kat and Liam are on a collision course to disaster, and when a Sutherland dies, they realize they might actually be in the killer’s crosshairs themselves. Somehow Kat and Liam are the new targets, and they can’t trust anyone—except each other.
Or can they? Because if there’s one thing both Kat and Liam know, it’s how to lie. They learned from the best.
Beneath These Cursed Stars by Lexi Ryan
Release Date: July 30 from Harper Teen
Why We’re Excited: The latest from Lexi Ryan, this follow-up to her underrated These Hollow Vows duology follows the story of Brie’s sister Princess Jasalyn who joins forces with a fae shapeshifter to destroy the evil king Mordeus, who sure seems as though he’s returned from the dead.
Publisher’s Description: Princess Jasalyn has a secret. Armed with an enchanted ring that gives her death’s kiss, Jas has been sneaking away from the palace at night to assassinate her enemies.
Shape-shifter Felicity needs a miracle. Fated to kill her magical father, she’s been using her unique ability to evade a fatal prophecy.
When rumors of evil king Mordeus’s resurrection spread through the shadow court, Jasalyn decides to end him once and for all. Felicity agrees to take the form of the princess, allowing Jas to covertly hunt Mordeus—and starting Felicity on the path that could finally take her home.
While Jasalyn teams up with the charming and handsome Kendrick, Felicity sets out to get closer to the Wild Fae king, Misha. Kendrick helps Jasalyn feel something other than anger for the first time in three years, and Misha makes Felicity wish for a world where she’s free to be her true self. Soon, the girls’ missions are at risk right alongside their hearts.
The future of the human and fae realms hangs in the balance as fates intertwine. Between perilous tasks, grim secrets, and forbidden romances, Jasalyn and Felicity find that perhaps their stars are the most cursed of all.
Under the Surface by Diana Urban
Release Date: August 13 from G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers
Why We’re Excited: A YA survival thriller about four teens who get lost in the uber-creepy Paris catacombs for days is precisely the sort of post-Olympics read I’m looking for.
Publisher’s Description: Ruby is terrified to cave to her feelings for Sean and risk him crushing her heart.
Sean is pumped to spend a week with Ruby in Paris on their senior class trip, and he’ll wait however long until she’s ready to take things further.
But when Ruby’s best friend sneaks out the first night to meet a mysterious French boy, Ruby goes after her with two classmates, but caves to another temptation: attending mystery boy’s exclusive party in the Paris catacombs, the intricate web of tunnels beneath the city, home to six million long-dead Parisians. Only they never reach the party.
Underground, as something sinister chases them, they get lost in the endless maze of bones, uncovering dark secrets about the catacombs… and each other. And if they can’t find a way out, they’ll die in the dark beneath the City of Light.
Aboveground, Sean races to find the girl he loves as a media frenzy over the four missing teens begins.
Wisteria by Adalyn Grace
Release Date: August 20 from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Why We’re Excited: The highly anticipated conclusion to Adalyn Grace’s bestselling Belladonna trilogy, Wisteria will shift its focus to Signa Farrow’s cousin Blythe Hawthorne and her relationship with Fate, the immortal she bound herself to at the conclusion of Foxglove. Besides the peak enemies-to-lovers vibes, Blythe’s a fascinating character, whose POV chapters were a highlight of the previous novel. The prospect of her essentially getting her own story is extremely tantalizing.
Publisher’s Description: Blythe Hawthorne has never let anyone tell her what to do—not society, not her overprotective father, and certainly not the man she’s bound herself to, no matter how rude and insufferable he is. In fact, she’s determined to be a thorn in his side for the rest of her days, even as he ensures that her life in his palace is anything but a fairytale. But as Blythe discovers a new side of herself linked to his past, she’ll have to decide if she’s willing to let an unexpected spark ignite…and to discover the truth about who she really is.
My Salty Mary by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows
Release Date: August 20 from Harper Teen
Why We’re Excited: Following My Contrary Mary and My Imaginary Mary, this latest Mary-themed installment from the “Lady Janies” trio remixes The Little Mermaid and the real-life story of female pirate Mary Read into something fantastical and new. If you like this series, you already know if this particular group’s blend of fantasy meets history works for you, and this is more of the delightful same.
Publisher’s Description: Don’t call this mermaid “little”—call her “captain,” unless you want to walk the plank.
Mary is in love with the so-called prince of Charles Town, except he doesn’t love her back. Which is inconvenient. Since she’s a mermaid, being brokenhearted means she’ll—poof!—turn into sea foam.
But instead, Mary finds herself pulled out of the sea and up onto a pirate ship. To survive, she joins them. But Mary isn’t willing to just sing the yo-ho-hos. She wants the pirate life, all of it, and she’s ready to make a splash . . . by becoming captain. But when Blackbeard dies suddenly, Mary has a chance to become so much more: Pirate King . . . or Queen. She won’t let anyone stop her—not Blackbeard’s cute son, not her best friend from back under the sea who’s having a bit too much fun with his new legs, and certainly not everyone who says she can’t be a pirate just because she’s a girl.
She may not be the best man for the job, but she’ll definitely prove that she’s worth her salt.
The Lies of Alma Blackwell by Amanda Glaze
Release Date: August 27 from Union Square & Co.
Why We’re Excited: A modern Gothic tale from the author of The Second Life of Edie and Violet Bond, this creepy, atmospheric tale follows Nev, who’s readying herself to take over her family’s business—which involves keeping the restless spirits of the seaside town of Hollow Cliff at bay.
Publisher’s Description: For over a century, the Blackwells have protected the town of Hollow Cliff from vengeful spirits. Seventeen-year-old Nev is ready to take over for her ailing grandmother as the town’s witch protector—unlike her mother, who left when Nev was a child and never looked back. When a stranger arrives at Blackwell House of Spirits to fill a tour guide opening, Nev reluctantly offers him the job. Nev doesn’t trust Cal Murphy. He knows more than he’s letting on about Blackwell House—and about Nev herself. But Nev soon learns that she has been lied to her whole life. By following the trail of clues left behind in Blackwell House by her most powerful witch ancestor, Nev uncovers an unspeakable legacy of murder and lies…and realizes that a stranger may be the one person she can trust.
Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter @LacyMB