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YA Lit & Teen Scene Newsletter June 2025 |
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Click the icon to the left to join the NHCPL Reading Challenge on the Beanstack app & website! Track your minutes and activities, earn badges and prizes, and explore specially-tailored booklists for teens! Scroll to the bottom of this newsletter to see our first month of Summer Reading programming for ages 12-18. |
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The Summer I Remembered Everything
by Catherine Con Morse
What's it about? In search of a summer escape from her overbearing family, Emily, an Asian-Latine teenager, becomes a mentee and caregiver to a chic elderly woman with Alzheimers. But as her mentor's memory starts to fade, Emily grapples with being both a loyal friend and a responsible caregiver - and is confronted with a choice that may jeopardize their friendship.
Read it for: a story of longing for an escape, finding yourself, caring for someone with an illness, and learning that sometimes the right decision is always the hardest.
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The Enemy's Daughter
by Melissa Poett
What's it about? As two settlements fight for control of untainted land, Isadora, an eighteen-year-old healer, risks her life to help injured soldiers. But when she stops an attack from Tristan, an assassin, his soldiers shoot her with a poisoned arrow. As Isadora lies dying, Tristan does the unimaginable: he offers to save her life using a rare magic. In choosing to live, Isadora is unknowingly bound to the mysterious Tristan. Worse, he's able to glean fragments of her memories and the very knowledge he needs to destroy her allies...but their magical connection works both ways. To save her people, Isadora will have to open her heart to her most cunning enemy...
Read it for: a stunning reimagining of the legend of Tristan and Isolde set in a dystopian world woven with magic, and an addictive debut YA enemies-to-lovers romantasy.
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The Red Car to Hollywood
by Jennie Liu
What's it about? Chinatown, Los Angeles, 1924. Ruby Chan considers herself a modern, independent American teen. But when her secret relationship with a white boy implodes - and then is revealed to her very traditional Chinese parents - she's in a tough spot. Horrified that Ruby's reputation is at risk, her parents hire a matchmaker to find her a Chinese husband. Ruby is determined to foil their plans. But how? A friendship with nineteen-year-old Anna May Wong, a rising Hollywood film star, may open up new possibilities... Anna May defies Chinese convention by working as an actress on the silver screen, and she scoffs at white people's assumptions about her. If she can forge her own path, surely Ruby can too.
For fans of: historical fiction, Prohibition-Era America, the Golden Age of Hollywood, and Anna May Wong - an American actress considered the first Chinese American film star in Hollywood as well as the first Chinese American actress to gain international recognition.
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Get Real, Chloe Torres
by Crystal Maldonado
What's it about? When Chloe Torres plans the perfect summer to reunite her estranged BFFs - a cross-country road trip to see their favorite boy band! - there's only one difficulty... getting them to actually go along for the ride. But with some clever finagling (and some undignified begging) Chloe gets them all on board. Of course, being in a car together for two weeks brings back old feelings... a lot of old feelings... and soon enough, Chloe wants Sienna, Ramona wants Chloe, and everything is on fireeeee.
Read it for: a sizzling summer adventure and hilarious, heartfelt romcom with a little something for everyone: fat positivity, sapphic romance, a blazing love triangle, ADHD representation, a diversity of Latine identities, and a once-in-a-lifetime roadtrip.
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Somadina
by Akwaeke Emezi
What's it about? Somadina and her twin brother are practically the same person: they finish each other's sentences and make each other whole. When the twins come of age, their magical gifts begin to develop, but while her brother's powers enchant, Somadina's cause fear. Always an outsider, she now faces blatant hostility. And things go from bad to worse when her brother -the one person she trusted - vanishes. Somadina knows that no matter the dangers, she must track him down, even if it means entering the Sacred Forest...a grueling, otherworldly travel she may not survive...
Read it for: a novel set in a magical West African world, about a teen girl who must save her missing twin while learning to navigate her own terrifying new powers, by the National Book Award finalist and author of Pet.
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Summer Girls
by Jennifer Dugan
What's it about? Every year, Cass's idyllic beach town is flooded with summer girls, the obnoxious daughters of the rich, who stay in their families' summer homes, sail their yachts, and generally make things unbearable for townies like Cass... and Birdie is the ultimate summer girl. She's the daughter of a wealthy real estate developer dad who's enlisted the help of Cass, whose dad works for him, to keep Birdie on the straight and narrow, including getting her a job at the public beach where Cass lifeguards. Birdie doesn't want a babysitter, and Cass doesn't want to be one. But as the season heats up, Birdie surprises Cass time and again, and before long both girls can't help but wonder: Are some rules made to be broken?
Read it for: a summery sapphic romance about two girls from the same vacation town whose worlds couldn't be farther apart.
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The Education of Kia Greer
by Alanna Bennett
What's it about? Sixteen-year-old Kia, the teenage daughter of a reality TV family, struggles to experience normal teenage life - and when a fake PR relationship begins to turn real, she must confront who she truly is. The pressure of the spotlight is taking its toll, chipping away at Kia's sense of self, pushing and pulling and reshaping her - body and mind - to fit the expectations of everyone around her. But what does Kia want for herself? Can her fragile new relationship survive the fallout?
Read it for: A romantic and smart story of a teen girl who longs to escape the spotlight, and the PR relationship that helps her find real happiness as she wonders, how can you trust your heart in a world that's plastic?
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Out of Step, Into You
by Ciera Burch
What's it about? Taylor and Marianna were each other's whole world - best friends, running partners, practically sisters - until Marianna moved away and Taylor promptly ghosted her. When the former best friends turned rivals end up on the same cross-country team three years later, everything is a competition...and a reminder of old feelings, as well as blossoming new ones. Can the pair figure out a way to work together before their past catches up with them?
Read it for: an angsty second-chance contemporary sapphic romance, for fans of authors Kelly Quindlen and Rachael Lippincott.
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New Hanover County Library
201 Chestnut Street, Wilmington, North Carolina 28401
910-798-6301www.nhclibrary.org |
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