5 Metaphysical YA Books That Question the Universe and Life Itself

Learning to Swear in America, by Katie Kennedy
At 17, Dr. Yuri Strelnikov is the world’s youngest physicist and is primed to win a Nobel in the near future—assuming he can stop the asteroid headed for Earth, of course. When Moscow loans Yuri to NASA, he expects to use his research on antimatter to help avert disaster, but everyone keeps shutting him down. They say antimatter’s too volatile and dangerous, but that’s only because they won’t listen to his calculations. Frustrated and homesick, he meets Dovie, a regular teenage girl who attends high school, worries about algebra, and doesn’t have a date to prom. Yuri knows he can save the world if given the chance, but his friendship with Dovie shows him exactly what’s at stake if he doesn’t.

The Square Root of Summer, by Harriet Reuter Hapgood
Something has gone wrong in Gottie H. Oppenheimer’s sleepy seaside town. It’s not just that Thomas, the best friend who abandoned her years ago, is back. Or that Jason, the boy she loved in every way last summer, will barely acknowledge her. It’s not even that Grey, her grandfather, is dead. Wormholes are opening up seemingly at random, sucking Gottie back in time to relive pieces of her past. As they begin to happen more frequently, Gottie loses more and more of her present. She’ll need to figure out how to stop them before she loses her future, too.

Mirror in the Sky, by Aditi Khorana
Tara Krishnan has never quite fit in at her nearly all-white prep school, and it looks like she’ll be even more isolated once her best friend takes off for a year abroad. But when an alternate Earth called Terra Nova is discovered, the idea of a mirror world populated by almost-but-not-quite copies of Earth’s citizens inspires subtle changes—changes like Nick Osterman, the most popular boy in school, paying attention to Tara, or her mother becoming obsessed with the strange planet. No one, not even Tara, is immune to the tantalizing what ifs of Terra Nova: what if I’d made a different decision then—and what if I make a different one now?

Where Futures End, by Parkey Peevyhouse
Told through a series of interconnecting novellas, Where Futures End takes us progressively further into the future. In one year, Dylan will somehow be able to see another world. In ten, Brixney is desperate for a social media following massive enough to get her out of a debtor’s colony. In 30, Epony unplugs entirely. In 60, Reef navigates a Seattle turned virtual gameboard. And in 100, Quinn discovers what ties them all together.

The Summer Prince, by Alaya Dawn Johnson
Palmares Três is the jewel of what was once Brazil. Within its pyramidal walls, June Costa lives and makes her art, desperate to create not only beauty but everlasting change. When she meets Enki, the new Summer King chosen to burn bright for one year before being killed, June finds a fellow artist. One with the power and desire to challenge their inherently unequal society, the restrictions on the advanced technology that makes Tokyo 10’s citizens immortal, and the tradition of sacrificial Summer Kings. With Enki, June can use her art to start a true rebellion.