The Best New YA Books of March 2025

The big story of YA publishing in March is undoubtedly that Suzanne Collins is about to drop another Hunger Games prequel on us, telling us the story of Haymitch’s Games in Sunrise on the Reaping. It seems almost pointless to put it on this list, since pretty much everyone is already chomping at the bit to read this particular title. (Don’t worry though, it’s here.) But Collins’s latest isn’t the only great book headed our way this month, and there are plenty of other great titles arriving in the YA space that deserve your attention once you’re done going back to Panem. 

From buzzy debuts (What Wakes the Bells by Elle Tesch) and highly anticipated sequels (Oathbound by Tracy Deonn) to new titles from established faves (Our Infinite Fates by Laura Steven, Fable for the End of the World by Ava Reid), there’s an embarrassment of riches to choose from. 

Here are our picks for the must-read YA books of March. 

They Bloom at Night by Trang Thanh Tran

Release Date: March 4 from Bloomsbury YA

Why We’re Excited: Set in a post-apocalyptic drowned world in which red algae causes survivors to mutate into monsters, this haunting, frequently horrifying story from the author of last year’s excellent She Is a Haunting is disturbing on so many levels.

Publisher’s Description: Since the hurricane, the town of Mercy, Louisiana has been overtaken by a strange red algae bloom. Noon and her mother have carved out a life in the wreckage, trawling for the mutated wildlife that lurks in the water and trading it to the corrupt harbormaster. When she’s focused on survival, Noon doesn’t have to cope with what happened to her at the Cove or the monster itching at her skin.

Mercy has never been a safe place, but it’s getting worse. People are disappearing, and the only clues as to why are whispers of underwater shadows and warnings to never answer the knocks at night. When the harbormaster demands she capture the creature that’s been drowning residents, Noon finds a reluctant ally in his daughter Covey. And as the next storm approaches, the two set off to find what’s haunting Mercy. After all, Noon is no stranger to monsters . . .

While We’re Young By K. L. Walther

Release Date: March 4 from Delacorte Romance

Why We’re Excited: This delightful YA romp inspired by Ferris Bueller’s Day Off sees a group of high school seniors attempting to heal their fractured relationships over the course of a senior skip day adventure around Philadelphia. 

Publisher’s Description: Grace, Isa, and Everett used to be an inseparable trio before their love lives became a tangled mess. For starters, Grace is secretly in love with Everett, who used to go out with Isa before breaking her heart in the infamous Freshman Year Fracture. And, oh yeah, no one knows that Isa has been hanging out with James, Grace’s brother—and if Grace finds out, it could ruin their friendship.

With graduation fast approaching, Grace decides an unsanctioned senior skip day in Philadelphia might be just what they need to fix things. All she has to do is convince Isa to help her kidnap Everett and outmaneuver James, who’s certain his sister is up to something.

In an epic day that includes racing up the famous Rocky steps, taste-testing Philly’s finest cheesesteaks, and even crashing a wedding, their secrets are bound to collide. But can their hearts withstand the wreckage?

​​Our Infinite Fates by Laura Steven

Release Date: March 4 from Wednesday Books

Why We’re Excited: A time-bending love story of two immortal beings, cursed to reincarnate throughout eternity. Evelyn is fated to die again and again before her 18th birthday, at the hand of her soulmate/lover/eternal betrayal Arden. Her death triggers his, which starts the seemingly unbreakable cycle all over again. The present-day plot, in which Evelyn is desperate to stay alive long enough to save the little sister she loves, is bolstered by flashbacks that track the doomed pair through many of their previous incarnations, and deepen the connection between them. 

Publisher’s Description: They’ve loved each other in a thousand lifetimes. They’ve killed each other in every one.

Evelyn can remember all her past lives. She can also remember that in every single one, she’s been murdered before her eighteenth birthday by Arden, a supernatural being linked to her soul. The problem is that she’s quite fond of the life she’s in now, and her little sister needs her in order to stay alive. If Evelyn wants to save her sister, she’ll have to find the centuries-old devil who hunts her through each life before they find her first, figure out why she’s being hunted and finally break their curse, and try not to fall in love . . . again.

Oathbound by Tracy Deonn

Release Date: March 4 from Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

Why We’re Excited: The third installment in Tracy Deonn’s epic Legendborn series, Oathbound raises the stakes in terms of character development and worldbuilding, finally offers us multiple POVs, and ends on another devastating cliffhanger. What’s not to love?

Publisher’s Description: Bree Matthews is alone. She exiled herself from the Legendborn Order, cut her ancestral connections, and turned away from the friends who can’t understand the impossible cost of her powers. This is the only way to keep herself—and those she loves—safe.

But Bree’s decision has come with a terrible price: an unbreakable bargain with the Shadow King himself, a shapeshifter who can move between humanity, the demon underworld, and the Legendborn secret society. In exchange for training to wield her unprecedented abilities, Bree has put her future in the Shadow King’s hands—and unwittingly bound herself to do his bidding as his new protégé.

Meanwhile, the other Scions must face war with their Round Table fractured, leaderless, and missing its Kingsmage, as Selwyn has also disappeared. When Nick is detained by the Order’s Merlins, he invokes an ancient law that requires the High Council of Regents to convene at the Northern Keep and grant him an audience. No one knows what he will demand of them…or what secrets he has kept hidden from the Table.

As a string of mysterious kidnappings escalates and Merlins are found dead, it becomes clear that no matter how hard Bree runs from who she is, the past will always find her.

Say a Little Prayer by Jenna Voris

Release Date: March 4 from Viking Books for Young Readers

Why We’re Excited: Queer romance + a nuanced revenge plot + church camp = a must-read, in my opinion. Forced to attend church camp after getting in a fight at school and having been publicly shamed by the pastor for her sexual orientation, Riley’s determined to get revenge by penning an essay taking down his terrible views. But over the course of her sentence, she realizes that a lot of things—God, her friendships, her own feelings about everything—-are more complicated than she thought.

Publisher’s Description: Riley quietly left church a year ago when she realized there was no place for a bi girl in her congregation. But it wasn’t until the pastor shunned her older sister for getting an abortion that she really wanted to burn it all down.

It’s just her luck, then, that she’s sent to the principal’s office for slapping a girl talking smack about her sister—and in order to avoid suspension, she has to spend spring break at church camp. The only saving grace is that she’ll be there with her best friend, Julia. Even if Julia’s dad is the pastor. And he’s in charge of camp. But Riley won’t let a technicality like “repenting” get in the way of her true mission. Instead of spending the week embracing the seven heavenly virtues, she decides to commit all seven deadly sins. If she can show the other campers that sometimes being a little bad is for the greater good, she could start a righteous revolution! What could possibly go wrong? Aside from falling for the pastor’s daughter . .

I Am Made of Death by Kelly Andrew

Release Date: March 4 from Scholastic Press

Why We’re Excited: The latest novel from the author of Your Blood, My Bones mixes creeping dread, unexpected romance, a genuinely intriguing premise, and a thoughtful exploration of emotional trauma with haunting prose and a heroine who is both monstrous and powerful in all the ways that matter. Disturbing and intense, but unlike anything else you’ll read this year. 

Publisher’s Description: Following the death of his father, Thomas Walsh had to grow up quickly, taking on odd-jobs to keep food on the table and help pay his gravely ill mother’s medical bills. When he’s offered a highly paid position as an interpreter for an heiress who exclusively signs, Thomas — the hearing child of a Deaf adult — jumps at the opportunity.

But the job is not without its challenges. Thomas is expected to accompany Vivienne wherever she goes, but from the start, she seems determined to shake him. To make matters worse, her parents keep her on an extremely short leash. She is not to go anywhere without express permission. She is not to deviate from her routine.

She is, most importantly, not to be out after dark.

A selective-mute, Vivienne Farrow hasn’t said a word in years — not since going missing in Red Rock Canyon when she was four years old. No one knows quite what happened to her out in the dark. They only know that the sound of her voice is now as deadly as a poison. Anyone who hears her speak suffers a horrible death.

Ever since that fatal family vacation, Vivienne has been desperately searching for a way to regain control of both her voice and her body. Because the face staring out of the mirror isn’t hers. It’s something with teeth.

Thankfully, Vivienne has a plan. She’s finally found someone who claims to be able to perform a surgical exorcism. She just needs to find a way to get rid of Thomas first. But Thomas can’t afford to walk away, nor is he willing to abandon the mysterious girl he’s quickly falling for, no matter what dark powers threaten to swallow them both whole.

Fable for the End of the World by Ava Reid

Release Date: March 4 from Harper Collins

Why We’re Excited: The latest novel from A Study in Drowning author Ava Reid, Fable for the End of the World is a timely, propulsive dystopian tale about a post-apocalyptic society controlled by an all-powerful corporation and the teenage girl who must compete in a deadly live-streamed event where lab-modified humans hunt designated “Lambs”  to pay off citizens debts. A dark yet strangely hopeful of resistance and perseverance with a beautifully written queer relationship at its center.

Publisher’s Description: By encouraging massive accumulations of debt from its underclass, a single corporation, Caerus, controls all aspects of society.

Inesa lives with her brother in a half-sunken town where they scrape by running a taxidermy shop. Unbeknownst to Inesa, their cruel and indolent mother has accrued an enormous debt—enough to qualify one of her children for Caerus’s livestreamed assassination spectacle: the Lamb’s Gauntlet.

Melinoë is a Caerus assassin, trained to track and kill the sacrificial Lambs. The product of neural reconditioning and physiological alteration, she is a living weapon, known for her cold brutality and deadly beauty. She has never failed to assassinate one of her marks.

When Inesa learns that her mother has offered her as a sacrifice, at first she despairs—the Gauntlet is always a bloodbath for the impoverished debtors. But she’s had years of practice surviving in the apocalyptic wastes, and with the help of her hunter brother she might stand a chance of staying alive.

For Melinoë, this is a game she can’t afford to lose. Despite her reputation for mercilessness, she is haunted by painful flashbacks. After her last Gauntlet, where she broke down on livestream, she desperately needs redemption.

As Mel pursues Inesa across the wasteland, both girls begin to question everything: Inesa wonders if there’s more to life than survival, while Mel wonders if she’s capable of more than killing.

And both wonder if, against all odds, they might be falling in love. 

How to Survive a Slasher by Justine Pucella Winans

Release Date: March 11 from Bloomsbury YA

Why We’re Excited: YA horror is a subgenre that’s really doing the most right now and Justine Pucella Winans’s How to Survive a Slasher both honors its roots and finds a way to say something new. In the town of Satterfield, rebranded as Slasherville thanks to its infamous Wolf Man murders, CJ Smith is just trying to keep their head down. But when the genderqueer teen whose father was killed in the second attack by a man wearing a wolf mask receives an unpublished manuscript hinting at a third set of murders that suddenly start to come true, they’ll have to step up and find a way to stop the killing.

Publisher’s Description: Few people can say they faced the infamous Satterville Wolf Man and lived. But CJ Smith can.

She doesn’t talk about that, though.

CJ has survived the horror movie that is her life by following one rule: blend in and stay out of it. But that’s hard to do when your trauma gets turned into a bestselling book series. The Slasherville books are a true crime phenomenon, documenting the Wolf Man massacres that changed CJ’s life forever. CJ hates everything about the books and their fans, but at this point she’s just grateful there aren’t any more murders to write about.

Until one day when an unpublished Slasherville book shows up on her doorstep predicting new Wolf Man killings. CJ is sure it’s a bad prank. But then the events in the book start coming true, and when CJ breaks her one rule, the Final Girl-the person who, according to the book, was supposed to stop the Wolf Man-ends up dead. Suddenly, blending in and staying out of it is not an option, and CJ will have to use everything she knows about the rules of horror to make it out alive.

What Wakes the Bells by Elle Tesch

Release Date: March 11 from Feiwel & Friends

Why We’re Excited: The book with the most original premise on this month’s list, Elle Tesch’s debut What Wakes the Bells is inspired by a legend surrounding the largest bell at St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague. Supposedly, if the heart of the bell is broken, it is a harbinger of great doom for the city. Set in a sentient city that’s as alive as any of its residents, the story follows Mira, a Bell Keeper charged with guarding one of Valwyn’s five Vesper Bells. Each night she must cut the clappers that grow back on her designated bell to prevent it from ringing: If any of the Vespers toll 13 times, the evil will be freed and the city will find itself in dire peril.

Publisher’s Description: Built by long-gone Saints, the city of Vaiwyn lives and breathes and bleeds. As a Keeper, Mina knows better than most what her care of Vaiwyn’s bells means for the sentient city. It’s the Strauss family’s thousand-year legacy—prevent the Vespers from ringing, or they will awake a slumbering evil.

One afternoon, to Mina’s horror, her bell peals thirteen times, shattering the city’s tenuous peace. With so much of the city’s history and lore lost in a long-ago disaster, no one knows the danger that has been unleashed—until the city begins to fight back. As the sun sets, stone gargoyles and bronze statues tear away from their buildings and plinths to hunt people through the streets. Trapped in Mina’s bell, the soul of a twisted and power-hungry Saint festered. Now free of his prison, he hides behind the face of one of Vaiwyn’s citizens, corrupting the city and turning it on itself.

As the death toll rises, the only chance Mina has to stop the destruction and horrific killings is finding and destroying the Saint’s host. Everyone is a suspect, including Mina’s closest loved ones. She will have to decide how far she’ll go to save her city—and who she’s willing to kill to do it.

Every Borrowed Beat by Erin Stewart

Release Date: March 11 from Delacorte Press

Why We’re Excited: An emotional story of a heart transplant and what happens afterward, Every Borrowed Beat wrestles with the unique grief and guilt that walk hand in hand with getting a second chance at life only because someone else has died. The story follows 17-year-old Sydney Wells as she investigates the identity of the girl whose heart she received and discovers that the experience is much more complicated than she ever expected.

Publisher’s Description: Sydney Wells should have died. She was supposed to die.

She never expected, after years of waiting, to receive a heart transplant. Now, seventeen-year-old Sydney doesn’t know what to do with her life. Her daily routine consisted of staying indoors, eating heart-healthy foods, and posting about her transplant list experiences on TheWaitingList with her long-distance BFF (and heart failure buddy) Chloe.

Now, Sydney latches onto the one thing that gives her meaning: learning as much as she can about the person whose heart she inherited. After finding the family of her likely-donor, Mia, Sydney falls deep into her world—and may also be falling for Mia’s best friend, Clayton.

But Sydney isn’t the only one hiding something. Mia’s brother Tanner won’t talk to Clayton, and Clayton won’t tell Sydney why. And hundreds of miles away, Chloe’s health has taken a turn for the worse. Sydney needs to face what’s in her heart—the truth, the guilt, and the future—before it’s too late.

Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins

Release Date: March 18 from Scholastic Press

Why We’re Excited: While some of us may have questioned author Suzanne Collins’s decision to give Cornelius Snow an origin story no one asked for in A Ballad of Songbird and Snakes, virtually every Hunger Games fan will be seated for Sunrise on the Reaping, the Haymitch prequel we all never knew we needed, but suddenly desperately want.

Publisher’s Description: As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes.

Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves.

When Haymitch’s name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He’s torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who’s nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he’s been set up to fail. But there’s something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.

A Catalog of Burnt Objects by Shana Youngdahl

Release Date: March 18 from Dial Books

Why We’re Excited: A novel of grief, loss, and carrying on in the wake of disaster that feels even more timely in the wake of the devastating L.A. wildfires of recent months, and the story wrestles with predictably dark and heavy topics. Not for the faint of heart, but well written and moving all the same. 

Publisher’s Description: Seventeen-year-old Caprice wants to piece her family back together now that her older brother has returned home, even as she resents that he ever broke them apart. Just as she starts to get a new footing—falling in love for the first time, uncertainly mending her traumatized relationship with her brother, completing the app that will win her a college scholarship and a job in tech—wildfires strike Sierra, her small California town, forcing her to reckon with a future that is impossible to predict.

To Steal From Thieves by M.K. Lobb

Release Date: March 25 from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Why We’re Excited: A high-stakes heist historical fantasy from the author of Seven Faceless Saints, To Steal From Thieves follows an alchemologist—someone who uses magic to alter mechanical devices—and a con man who must team up to steal a rare necklace from the Great Exhibition at London’s Crystal Palace in an alternate version of mid-nineteenth century London.

Publisher’s Description: Within the dazzling halls of London’s Crystal Palace, the event of the season has arrived: The Great Exhibition. An opportunity for the greatest minds of the century to come together under one roof in an unprecedented display of art and invention. And for two unlikely partners in crime, it’s about to become the score of a lifetime.

Charming con man Kane Durante works alone—or on occasion with his best friend, Fletcher. But when his boss, the infamous Kingpin of London’s magical dark market, gives him the impossible task of stealing a priceless artifact from the Great Exhibition, he knows it’s a job he can’t pull off alone. Enter Zaria Mendoza, daughter of one of London’s greatest alchemologists. Ever since her father’s death, Zaria’s been struggling to keep her underground business afloat, and impatient clients are becoming violent. When the infuriatingly handsome Kane offers her the promise of enough money to get out of debt and leave London entirely, she knows she can’t walk away from this dangerous partnership.

But robbing one of the most public, heavily-guarded buildings in London isn’t going to be easy, especially when love and betrayal threaten to ruin everything they’ve worked so hard for.

The Shadow Bride by Shelby Mahurin

Release Date: March 25 from HarperCollins

Why We’re Excited: The highly anticipated conclusion to Shelby Manhurin’s The Scarlet Veil duology, The Shadow Bridei picks up in the aftermath of its predecessor’s massive cliffhanger, and will have to not only reckon with Célie and Michal’s slow burn romance, but the fact that Célie herself is now a vampire.

Publisher’s Description: Célie’s life is over. She took her final breath trying to save the people she loves—including the powerful and enigmatic vampire king, Michal, who refused to let her go. When Célie wakes, she cannot walk in the sun; she can hear her friends’ heartbeats and she craves their blood. Michal has cursed her to the eternal existence of a vampire.

But Célie isn’t the only dead roaming the earth. Her sister, Filippa, has returned as a shadow of her former self, and other revenants are rising from their graves intent on revenge. The fragile balance between life and death has broken, awakening an even darker force—and he is coming for Célie, ready to claim her as his Bride. With the fate of their world at stake, Célie and Michal must set aside their searing attraction to mend the veil and right the balance, once and for all. 

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 and Bluesky at @LacyMB