Words in Deep Blue and 8 More YAs No Book Nerd Could Resist

Cath Crowley is one such wise author. Her latest, Words in Deep Blue, creates a star-crossed Australian love story, with a secondhand bookstore as its setting and secret letters stowed between chapters as its love language.
Before Rachel and her family moved away, she revealed her feelings for Henry Jones, her childhood friend and adolescent crush, in a note she tucked into his favorite book at his family’s bookshop. Henry never responded.
In the ensuing years, Rachel is consumed by another heartbreak: the accidental drowning of her brother. When she moves back to her old hometown, she’s emotionally numbed and would rather avoid the boy who broke her heart the first time. Instead, Rachel and Henry begin working together at Howling Books, a refuge under siege where grief and love mingle among the stories in the store’s Letter Library.
Words in Deep Blue is a gorgeous, rewarding read, and it continues a fine tradition of books about books, libraries, and the art of stories. And we’ve got a few more favorites, which run the gamut from hysterical to haunting, that no self-respecting book nerd could turn down.

Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares, by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
The authors of Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist know a thing or two about adventurous and intoxicating love stories. Lily is looking for love, but only with the right guy. She’s left a red notebook filled with challenges on her favorite shelf in the bookstore. Whoever picks up the book and completes those challenges will earn the right to the fair maiden’s heart. Enter Dash, and a whirlwind romance that leaps off the page.

Fangirl, by Rainbow Rowell
You can’t very well have a list of book-nerd bait without including Fangirl, the ultimate ode to fan fiction and the escapist power of a good book. Cath has spent most of her life plunged into the magical world of Simon Snow, a sensation any Potterhead will understand. Not only has she read and reread the series, but she’s also produced some prolific fan fiction about Simon and his nemesis/OTP Baz. That fan fiction was so well-grounded and fully realized it later carried its own full-length novel, Carry On.

Outrun the Moon, by Stacey Lee
Mercy Wong has “bossy cheeks” and big ambitions, namely to crawl out of a life of poverty in the Chinatown of turn-of-the-20th-century San Francisco. She lives and dies by the principles of her favorite book, The Book for Business-Minded Women, a how-to guide for thriving in the male-dominated business world. Armed with these tenets, Mercy manages to gain entrance to St. Clare’s School for Girls, where mean girls and systemic racism are a preamble to the real trouble: the historic 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

The Archived, by V.E. Schwab
The library at the heart of The Archived is what you might call nontraditional. Mackenzie has been groomed by her grandfather to serve as a Keeper of the Archive, a library of the dead, where each soul is called a History. Mackenzie’s role is to make sure the Histories stay tucked away on their shelves and don’t escape into the world at large. But lately, they’ve been roaming in large numbers, a symptom of a far greater danger to the Archive…

Thanks for the Trouble, by Tommy Wallach
The hook to this narrative is that it’s a college admissions application written by Parker Sante. Parker uses the space to retell his encounter with the mysterious Zelda Toth, a seeming teenaged girl who claimed to be 200 years old and who entered Parker’s life at his lowest point. Following his father’s death, Parker hasn’t spoken in five years, communicating through his journal instead. When Hurricane Zelda rolls in, however, his world is upended once more.

Every Heart a Doorway, by Seanan McGuire
Portal fantasy is a classic trope of literature, whether it’s the Pevensies tumbling through the wardrobe into Narnia, Alice falling down the rabbit hole, or the Darling children following Peter Pan through the window to Neverland. In Every Heart a Doorway, we find out what happened to the children all these wonderlands spat back out. At Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children, these refugees from worlds of magic confront the trauma of returning to the real world, a world that doesn’t know what to do with them.

Enthusiasm, by Polly Shulman
Julie’s best friend Ashleigh is an Enthusiast, someone whose obsession of the day changes early and often and earns her full devotion. Her latest enthusiasm is Pride and Prejudice (we’ve all been there), which is also Julie’s great love. As the pair embark on a quest to live a Jane Austen life, complete with exquisite frocks and balls (okay, prep school dances), they’re also on the hunt for their own Darcy and Bingley.

Ink and Bone, by Rachel Caine
One of the biggest what-if’s in history is, “What if the Great Library of Alexandria hadn’t been destroyed?” The Great Library series is here to answer that question. In this world, the vast Library, fueled by alchemy, is intact and can dispense any piece of the world’s knowledge at a moment’s notice. But the Library also operates as a giant censor, forbidding the ownership of books and distributing information as it deems appropriate. The son of a book smuggler, Jess is dispatched to act as a spy within the Library, a service with dangers greater than paper cuts.