7 Lambda Award YA Finalists You Want to Read Right Now

Anger is a Gift, by Mark Oshiro
If The Hate U Give and Dear Martin had a gay baby to be single-mothered by Juliet Takes a Breath, you’d have Oshiro’s hard-hitting, angry-making, tear-jerking, incredibly important debut. Moss generally prefers to go under the radar these days; the aftermath of his father’s murder by the Oakland Police Department six years earlier has given him a panic disorder that makes crowds, attention, and the sight of the cops all tough to handle. But meeting Javier helps him feel a little bolder these days, and when the Oakland PD starts taking over his school, instituting metal detectors and “random” locker searches to the detriment of his fellow students, his activism kicks in. Then things go further than he ever expected, and Moss doesn’t know how to handle it. If he doesn’t want anxiety to take over his life again, he’ll have to channel his anger into something productive, no matter what it may cost.

The Dangerous Art of Blending In, by Angelo Surmelis
Evan’s weighed down by two secrets he can’t share with anyone. One is that his strict Orthodox Greek mother physically abuses him—something at least his father, who’s too conflict-averse to step in, knows. The other is that he’s gay and in love with his best friend, Henry, and that’s something no one can find out. But when Henry reciprocates his attraction, Evan sees what his life could be if they were out in the open. Not to mention that loving and being loved by Henry helps him see he’s worth so much more than his mother’s sharp criticism would suggest. But can Evan have the life he dreams of without losing the only family he’s got? And can you read this powerful debut without drowning in your own tears? (Fair warning: I could not. But it was worth it.)

Darius the Great is Not Okay, by Adib Khorram
I’m so excited about this book, not just because it’s great on so many levels but because it’s so rare that we get books depicting a character’s earliest stages of questioning. This debut isn’t about sexuality at all; Darius has so many things to figure out first. Like where and how he fits in his family, including a disinterested father, Persian mother, and sister who was taught fluent Farsi while he was not. Like how he’s going to adjust to a summer of his family living with the grandparents in Iran he’s never met in person. Like how to embrace having his first true best friend—the sweet, fun, and loyal Sohrab—and how to keep up the feeling of being platonically loved when he moves back to the States and leaves Sohrab behind. But his sexuality is there, a fact about him just like his love of Star Trek and his depression, and by the time you reach the end of the book, you’ll wish more than anything you could hold his hand while he deals with it all.

Girl Made of Stars, by Ashley Herring Blake
Blake’s How to Make a Wish is one of my favorite girl-girl YA romances of all time, and yet I still think she’s outdone herself with this one, about a bi girl named Mara whose heart is torn into two when her beloved twin brother is accused of rape by her close friend, Hannah. There’s also a third piece of her heart gone awry, trying to figure out where she stands with her ex-girlfriend, Charlie. There are no simple choices in this beautifully written, careful, nuanced book and no sidestepping the issues of consent and victim-blaming as Mara, Charlie, and Hannah try to navigate the tricky waters of their shifting relationships while they all seek justice and validation in their own ways.

The Poet X, by Elizabeth Acevedo
The winner of both the National Book Award and the Printz, Acevedo’s debut is transcendent, drawing in both fans of novels in verse and those just discovering the form. Xiomara Batista is a rhymer you won’t soon forget. She’s an Afro-Latina teen who’s tired of feeling simultaneously overlooked and overly looked at, and the only time she feels she has a voice is when she writes in her leather notebook. Then she gets a chance to put sound to those words by joining a slam poetry club. Her mother would never allow it, but can Xiomara possibly resist it?

Sawkill Girls, by Claire Legrand
Marion, Val, and Zoey are the Sawkill Girls, each wildly different but all living on Sawkill Rock, an island where girls have been disappearing since well before the trio were born. Marion is the newest, having just moved with her family after her father dies to work in Val’s home. Val and Zoey aren’t friends, to say the least, but Zoey’s got plenty of other stuff on her mind, including the fact that one of her closest friends is one of the disappeared. The three of them may be an unlikely trio, but someone’s gotta fight the monster who’s ruining their lives, and it might as well be a group of kickass girls.

This is Kind of an Epic Love Story, by Kheryn Callender
Oh my lord is this book incredibly freaking cute, and it has realistic sex on the page. This second-chance romance brings Oliver James back to Nathan just as the latter is being crushed by the weight of his feelings for his ex-girlfriend and best friend, Florence. Yeah, Florence cheated on him with another girl, but that doesn’t make the feelings shut off. But it doesn’t seem like his feelings for Oliver James have really shut off either, even though those definitely should; if Ollie didn’t like Nathan kissing him back when they were friends the first time around, he’s certainly not gonna like it now that he’s got a boyfriend back home. But what if Ollie’s worth the potential heartbreak? What if, after everything, they’re just kind of an epic love story? (Callender’s middle grade book, Hurricane Child, is also on this year’s list of Lambda finalists.)