New Releases: Monster-Hunting Siblings, Legendary Swamps, and Magical Politics

This is Kind of an Epic Love Story, by Kheryn Callender
After the beauty that was Callender’s middle grade book, Hurricane Child, I had to read their next book ASAP, and oh my lord is it incredibly freaking cute and has realistic sex on the page and disability rep. (Love interest Oliver James is Hard of Hearing.) 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 kind of an epic love story?

Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts), by L.C. Rosen
I love this book so much, especially for all the ways it made me think “I cannot believe this got published as YA.” Jack is proud of his sexuality and the fact that he likes to have fun; so what if it inspires some rumors? He does insist on privacy when he agrees to write a sex advice column for his best friend, publishing it under the pseudonym Jack of Hearts. But there’s someone who knows exactly who he is, and that someone is blackmailing him in the creepiest of fashions, threatening not just him but his friends. Interspersed with Jack trying to get to the bottom of the mystery is the column itself, in which he dispels advice that’s helpful, kind, supportive, and blunt on everything from “how to” to “I don’t want to.” This is among the best sex ed I’ve seen in YA fiction, while never failing to feel authentic, and it tackles the issue of gay fetishization in a way I’ve never seen in the category.

You Are the Everything, by Karen Rivers
I’m not sure I’m even capable of discussing this book coherently, to be honest; I certainly wasn’t right after I read it, when I was crying my face off and begging my toddler to give me a hug. (He gave one to his teddy bear instead.) I can tell you that it’s about a girl named Elyse who’s in a plane crash with the rest of her school band on the way home from Paris, and is one of only two survivors. The other one is Josh Harris, the guy she’s been in love with forever. And now that they’re the only ones who remain, they’ve found the perfect way to move on as best they can: move to Wyoming, away from all the gawkers who touch them in the hopes of magical healing powers, and be together in a perfect romance that’s the only thing managing to occasionally distract Elyse from the fact that her best friend is gone. But life still isn’t quite right, especially since the crash left gaps in her memory…gaps she’s not sure she ever wants to fill. Reality is crushing enough, but the whole truth may be a step too far.

The Darkest Star, by Jennifer L. Armentrout
This newest sci-fi romance series from bestseller Armentrout picks up four years after the Lux series ends and stars seventeen-year-old Evie Dasher, whose world is turned upside-down when she’s caught in a raid at one of the few clubs that allow humans and alien Luxen to socialize. It’s there that she meets the stunningly gorgeous Luc, a guy she assumes is a Luxen, only to find out he’s something else entirely, something even more powerful. As girls around her begin to disappear, Evie falls into a rabbit hole of aliens, power, and a killer, threatening her very existence…unless Luc can help save her.

This Cruel Design, by Emily Suvada
How do you follow up a debut as intense as This Mortal Coil? With a sequel that brings back new cases of the virus even after Cat thinks it has been eradicated. Sure, she’s tired as all hell and already working her butt off to figure out how to stop Lachlan’s reprogramming plan, but nothing’s going according to her wishes, and joining up with Cartaxus to find Lachlan and fix the vaccine they’d thought was foolproof is now her only shot. Their hunt for him leads to Entropia, a desert city full of genehackers…and possibly the key to Cat’s past.

Where She Fell, by Kaitlin Ward
Ward’s forever bringing the perfect October reads, whether it’s a creeptastic apocalypse or a cultish contemporary, so it’s fitting that her newest is about a girl named Eliza who falls into the legendary swamp near her house during an ill-advised experiment with her friends and finds herself in a wild underground world. Beneath the earth are caves, creepy creatures, giant bugs, and a whole society that the budding geologist in her knows should be impossible. Slowly but surely, Eliza must gather the strength to dig her way out, all the while leading the group she’ll need to help her.

Salt, by Hannah Moskowitz
Indi and his siblings’ lives are spent sailing the Mediterranean to hunt down monsters, and frankly, it’s not really his jam. But he loves his siblings, and when he finds the journal his parents left behind before vanishing at sea, and sees that it contains directions to a possible treasure, he wonders if maybe this one last hunt can be a path for all of them out of this life for good.

The Brilliant Death, by Amy Rose Capetta
This Italian-inspired fantasy stars a demigirl named Teodora who possesses the power to turn enemies into objects, something no one believes is real, since no one believes in the existence of stregas, or magic users. But with Teo’s father at death’s door after a political assassination attempt, it takes another strega journeying with her to save her father’s life. See, Teo must travel as a boy, and Cielo, a genderfluid strega who shifts effortlessly between male and female, is the only person who can help her. But Cielo teaches her some things about who she really is inside, too. Between uncovering truths about her identity and quietly falling for Cielo, Teo’s got her hands full. And then there’s that whole “deadly mission of grave importance that grows increasingly more threatening” thing to contend with…