4 Hotly Anticipated YA Follow-Ups That Are Finally Here

Lair of Dreams, by Libba Bray
The arrival of a book by Libba Bray is always cause for celebration. Over the course of 6 wildly versatile novels, she’s proved she can do pretty much anything, and in her Diviners series, of which Lair of Dreams is book two, she does pretty much everything. The Diviners set up a 1920s world of juke joints and rent parties, glittering flappers and grimy tenement tenants, and a terrifying supernatural evil let loose through a Ouija board. A diverse group of “diviners,” supernaturally gifted teens whose abilities range from object reading to healing, banded together to put the murderous force to rest. In Lair of Dreams, a fatal sleeping sickness is sweeping through New York, and a Chinatown dream walker joins forces with the other diviners to figure out what’s behind it. Through the eyes of the diviners—a Ziegfeld girl, a radio star, a shyster, a Harlem numbers runner—we see every corner of a bygone, lightly reimagined New York. Book two is even more thrilling and just as twisted as its predecessor.

Another Day, by David Levithan
In Levithan’s Every Day, we met A, a bodyless entity who wakes up in a different body every day. Though bound by restrictions of age and location, the bodies A inhabits are otherwise random, and A makes an attempt to live as lightly as possible within these human tenants, leaving their bodies and lives relatively untouched—until spending one day in the body and life of Justin, a careless, cigarette-mouthed boy who’s indifferent to his girlfriend, Rhiannon. But A’s not indifferent, and after their perfect day is desperate to see her again. Using the bodies of the unwitting, A first reveals the secret of their existence to Rhiannon, then convinces her to attempt to build on their seemingly impossible love. In Another Day, Levithan turns narration over to Rhiannon, the hopeful, hopeless girl who wakes up one day to find her cruel, undependable boyfriend—the kind of guy who neglects her, then taunts her for neediness—has seemed to magically change into someone else, someone first tentative and kind, then spontaneous and loving. It seems like a dream come true, until she discovers the truth. Rhiannon’s story isn’t just one of new love, but a closely observed portrait of an abusive relationship. This is a searching supernatural read with deep insight into love, identity, and self-worth.

The Boy Most Likely To, by Huntley Fitzpatrick
In My Life Next Door, Samantha Reed, daughter of an uptight single mom, falls in love not just with Jase Garrett, the boy next door, but with his entire awesome clan, all eight kids, two parents, and a zillion pets of them. Readers fell in love, too, and now we get to go back to their world. This time, Fitzpatrick focuses on Jase’s responsible older sister, Alice, and his best friend, Tim, the self-deprecating, reckless user we couldn’t help but root for in My Life Next Door. Alice doesn’t suffer fools, and that proves irresistible to Tim, long prone to making himself foolish instead of taking anything too seriously. But when his past catches up with him in an unexpected way, their budding love story might fall apart before it even gets started.

Sophomores and Other Oxymorons, by David Lubar
Scott Hudson isn’t great at high school, but it’s hilarious to watch him try. In Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie, he, along with his friends Patrick, Kyle, and Mitch, jumped into the great, sweaty, hormonal adventure that is freshman year—right before his life became infinitely more complicated by his mother’s unexpected pregnancy. Even though he’s probably the least fit person to do it, Scott decides to write a survival guide for his unborn brother, filling him on on athletic embarrassments, English-class discoveries, and the mystery of girls who’ve been around forever, but have suddenly turned gorgeous. In Sophomores and Other Oxymorons, beginning on the eve of his second year of high school, another piece of unexpected news from his parents sends him back to his journal. Scott figures he’s got sophomore year on lockdown, but soon learns (lucky for us) that he’s terribly, hilariously wrong.
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