Best Young Adult Books of 2021

"Six critically acclaimed, bestselling, and award-winning authors bring the glowing warmth and electricity of Black teen love to this interlinked novel of charming, hilarious, and heartwarming stories that shine a bright light through the dark"-- As a summer heatwave blankets New York City, the light go out. The city is thrown into confusion-- and a different kind of electricity sparks. People reveal hidden truths. Love blossoms, friendship transforms,...

Larissa Bogdan was supposed to spend her summer babysitting and bookselling. Instead, she tagged along with her mom to the Outer Banks, working on her tan and making new friends. Now she's back and starting her senior year at Stratford High, only to face another unexpected turn: She's finally attracted the attention of superstar quarterback Chase Harding, the guy she's crushed on since middle school. Then Jasmine Killary shows up. Jasmine, who's supposed...

"A groundbreaking portrait of Vincent Chin and the murder case that took America's Asian American community to the streets in protest of injustice. America in 1982. Japanese car companies are on the rise and believed to be putting American autoworkers out of their jobs. Anti-Asian American sentiments simmer, especially in Detroit. A bar fight turns fatal, leaving Vincent Chin-a Chinese American man-beaten to death at the hands of two white men, autoworker...

Sixteen-year-old Tessa Johnson has never felt like the protagonist in her own life. She's rarely seen herself reflected in the pages of the romance novels she loves. The only place she's a true leading lady is in her own writing--in the swoony love stories she shares only with Caroline, her best friend and #1 devoted reader. When Tessa is accepted into the creative writing program of a prestigious art school, she's excited to finally let her stories...

Cash lost his mother to an opioid addiction and his Papaw is dying slowly from emphysema. Dodging drug dealers and watching out for his best friend (and person of his heart), Delaney, is second nature. When Delaney makes a scientific discovery that gets them both full rides at an elite prep school in Connecticut, Cash has to make a choice. Will he gp with her to Connecticut, or stay in Tennessee with the grandparents who saved him? -- adapted from...

"A graphic novel about sex, sexuality, gender, body, consent, and many other topics for teens."--

"A deliciously twisty YA thriller about a mysterious club with an obsession for horror"--

Ronan, Hennessy, and Bryde are dreamers; Ronan's dreams always seem to end in random destruction, using up the power of the ley lines he cannot even sense; Hennessy makes multiple copies of herself, dreaming them into reality in search of her own fragile identity, and Bryde dreams of power and reordering his companions and the world to his own specifications; their families and duplicates are the collateral damage of their dreams--and meanwhile they...

"In this comprehensive, inspiring, and all-too-relevant history of the Black Panther Party, Kekla Magoon introduces readers to the Panthers' community activism, grounded in the concept of self-defense, which taught Black Americans how to protect and support themselves in a country that treated them like second-class citizens."--

In the secluded town of Amity Falls, Ellerie has the chance to have her secret wishes come true, but there is a price to pay in this retelling of Rumpelstiltskin.