Powerhouse Superhero Collaboration Zeroes, and Other Awesome YA Team-Ups

In Zeroes, readers are introduced to a crew of teenagers with superpowers. The hook? While everyone on the team has awesome, unique abilities, each power comes with a cost. I won’t ruin these for you, save for Scam’s ability, since you’ll learn that on the book’s jacket copy: He has an inner voice that always tells people what they want to hear…but sometimes speaks up at the worst possible times, getting him into a trouble rather than saving him from it. Like when he talks himself right into police custody during a bank robbery.
The narrative jumps perspective, giving you time with each of the six characters on the Zeroes team, as you learn something you don’t experience all that often in other superhero stories: the problems with having power. How do they affect your life? Your friendships? Especially when those friendships are on already on the rocks, as is definitely the case with the Zeroes team? They aren’t close anymore, because of something one of their members did, but have to band together again in spite of it.
Fascinatingly, this book was penned by three authors. Three! There’s Scott Westerfeld, who we know from series such as Uglies (a favorite of mine) and Leviathan. Margo Lanagan, who wrote Tender Morsels and The Brides of Rollrock Island, as well as the short story collection Black Juice. And Deborah Biancotti, an acclaimed short story author. (check out her collections Bad Power and A Book of Endings). And it isn’t all that unusual for YA authors to team up to work on books. From sci-fi to contemporary, authors you love love to work with, well, other authors you love, all the time. Here are a few more YA novels written by multiple authors that you should pick up immediately.

Illuminae, by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
Out October 20, Illuminae is the first book in a trilogy by powerhouse duo Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff (The Lotus War). It’s a sci-fi thriller that takes place at the edge of the universe, with a war raging over a little planet. There’s a plague, a rouge artificial intelligence, hacking, and oh-so-much to love. And the book is structured in a wonderfully unique way, packed with documents, emails, and reports that pull you into the world.
Also read: These Broken Stars, a sci-fi series Amie Kaufman wrote with Meagan Spooner, author of the Skylark series.

Beautiful Creatures, by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
Sometimes a partnership can lead authors to their first solo books. After Garcia and Stohl’s bestselling smash series, they went on to write their own series, The Legion (Garcia) and Icons (Stohl), both of which are amazing. But before that, there were the Castor Chronicles. With beautifully gothic imagery and a swoon-filled love story, Beautiful Creatures takes readers into a world of old curses, dark magic, and inescapable history.
Also read: Once you’ve finished all of the Castor Chronicles books, pick up the Dangerous Creatures series, which takes place in the same world.

The Future of Us, by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler
Asher, who broke our hearts with Thirteen Reasons Why, and Mackler, who wrote the Printz-nominated The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things, teamed up for this exciting novel with a time-travel sci-fi twist. Two former best friends get one of those free AOL CDs in the mail (remember those, 20 free hours?), and get logged onto their Facebook pages…only it’s 1996, Facebook doesn’t exist yet, and they’re looking at a social media window into their future lives. Every move they make alters how things turn out in their future social networking sites, with dramas playing out on profile pages more than a decade in the future.

Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist, by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
An adventure through New York City and told through alternating view points, Cohen and Levithan’s first YA teamup (more on that in a second), is a fun, swoon-filled story of a (very long) first date and a love of music. And hey, the movie adaptation of this one is actually pretty great. And after this book, Cohn and Levithan partnered up on two more titles, Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List and Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares (their next collaboration, The Twelve Days of Dash and Lily, was recently announced).
Also read: Levithan has partnered up with other authors quite a few times, and the results are always great. Check out Will Grayson, Will Grayson (with John Green) and Invisibility (with Andrea Cremer).

Roomies, by Sara Zarr and Tara Altebrando
If the combination of rock stars Sara Zarr (Story of a Girl, How to Save a Life) and Tara Altebrando (The Best Night of Your Pathetic Life, The Pursuit of Happiness) sounds way too irresistible, I encourage you to give in. When you pack up and prepare to move to college, there are universal experiences many of us go through: Separation anxiety (your own or your parents’). Dorm-room cooking disasters. And, of course, meeting your randomly assigned roommate. In Roomies, two future roommates get to know each other via email. Things at home are complicated for both Elizabeth and Lauren, and soon they find themselves relying on each other, before they’ve even met.