2024 young adult highlights
2024 was a wonderful year for young adult fiction! Here are just some of our favourites ...
Contemporaries to fall in love with ...
Wrong Answers Only by Tobias Madden
Marco should be at university, studying biomedicine. Instead, he’s been sent to live on a cruise ship in the Mediterranean with his estranged uncle, all because of a ‘blip’ everyone else is convinced was a panic attack. (Which it most definitely was not.)
And even though Marco’s trip is supposed to provide answers – about himself, about his family – all he finds on board the Ocean Melody are more and more questions.
But then his best friend CeCe proposes a new plan: for someone who has always done the right thing, in every possible way, it’s time for Marco to get a few things wrong. And hooking up with a hot dancer from the ship is only the beginning ...
Read our staff review here.
Return to Sender by Lauren Draper
After three years away, seventeen-year-old Brodie McKellon has returned to live with her eccentric grandmother above the last remaining Dead Letter Office – the place letters go when no one is left to claim them.
Soon, Brodie is consumed by an unsolved mystery – the unclaimed letters of a group of teens who seemed to vanish many years ago – while also attempting to reconcile with her former best friends, Elliot and Levi.
As the trio is drawn into the riddle of the dead letter writers, they discover that the past is never truly past, and that it's never too late for old wrongs to be put right ...
Read our staff review here.
Lover Birds by Leanne Egan
When Isabel Williams moves to Liverpool, she criticises seemingly everything in Eloise Byrne’s life – her city, her accent, her trademark boldness.So if, when she catches Isabel staring, Eloise feels her pulse race, it must be because they hate each other. It surely couldn’t be for any other reason, could it? Eloise needs to get her ADHD under control in time for A-Levels, but when she meets Isabel, school becomes the least of her concerns. What begins as outright contempt turns into an oddly satisfactory rivalry, but for their rivalry to shift further into romance, their relationship must withstand Isabel's classism, Eloise’s distrust, and whatever secrets their friends are hiding from them.
With a wonderful cast of characters, an irresistible romance, and an incredibly moving and powerful portrayal of ADHD, Lover Birds is an unmissable debut from an extraordinary new voice in YA fiction.
Read our staff review here.
Fantasy worlds to get lost in ...
Fyrebirds by Kate J. Armstrong
The Nightbirds were once their city's best-kept secret, but now the secret's out. Everyone knows there are girls who can gift their magic with a kiss, and everyone wants a piece of them. Such girls are in more danger than ever. But Matilde, Sayer, Aesa, and Fenlin can do feats of magic no one has seen in centuries. They're like the Fyrebirds of old: powerful women who once moved mountains, parted seas, and led armies. But they don't want the world to know the full extent of their power – not yet.
Matilde is too busy trying to show the city that girls with magic can be trusted, while Sayer stalks the night, punishing any man who dares cross her. Fen struggles to keep her gang together and her magic hidden while Aesa tries to settle back into life in the Illish Isles.
But fate tugs them inexorably toward each other, and back into the fight to protect magical girls. As the new suzerain works to lift the prohibition on magic, the churchmen who support it – and the gang lords who profit from it – whisper rebellion. The Nightbirds' old enemies are rallying, too. Smelling blood in the water, a magic-mad Farlands king threatens to invade Eudea. As war looms, and the Republic's fate hangs from a knife's edge, the Nightbirds have to decide if becoming Fyrebirds is worth risking the lives and loves they might have had.
Immortal Dark by Tigest Girma
A lost heiress must infiltrate an arcane society and live with the vampire she suspects killed her family and kidnapped her sister, in this dangerously romantic dark academia debut.
Orphan Kidan Adane is the heiress to a fallen House of humans, bound to vampiric creatures known as draniacs. As a human, it is her responsibility to study and nurture the relationships between draniacs and humans at Uxlay University. But when her sister is kidnapped and Kidan suspects that her own house draniac, the enigmatic Susenyos, is to blame, she heads down a violent path towards vengeance, willing to hurt anyone who stands in her way.
Read our staff review here.
The Dagger and the Flame by Catherine Doyle
In the dark underbelly of a beautiful city, two rival assassins are pitted against each other in a deadly game of revenge, where the most dangerous mistake of all is falling in love …
In Fantome, a kingdom of cobbled streets, flickering lamplight, beautiful buildings, and secret catacombs, Shade-magic is a scarce and deadly commodity controlled by two enemy guilds: the Cloaks and the Daggers – the thieves and the assassins. On the night of her mother’s murder, 17-year-old Seraphine runs for her life. Seeking sanctuary with the Cloaks, Sera’s heart is set on revenge. But are her secret abilities a match for the dark-haired boy whose quicksilver eyes follow her around the city?
Nothing can prepare Sera for the moment she finally comes face-to-face with Ransom, heir to the Order of Daggers. And Ransom is shocked to discover that this unassuming farmgirl wields a strange and blazing magic he has never seen before …
Among rumours of monsters stalking the streets and the rival guilds grappling for control of Fantome’s underworld, Sera and Ransom are drawn together by something more than just magic and must face a deadly choice – forgiveness or vengeance? Kiss or kill? Dagger or Flame?
Read our staff review here.
Comes the Night by Isobelle Carmody
Will slipped on the left glove and twitched a finger to establish a link to the kite tronics. A shiver of electric energy ran through his hands as they synched to his nerves through the gloves.
Will lives with his father in a future domed Canberra where citizens are safe from extreme weather events, dangerous solar radiation and civil unrest. He does not question his carefully controlled existence until the recurrence of an old nightmare propels him on a dangerous quest.
Gradually Will discovers his dreams hold cryptic clues that lead him into a shadowy alternate dimension. Here he must grapple with dark forces that operate in both worlds, with the help of his best friend Ender, her brilliant but difficult twin sister Magda, and a mysterious gift from his uncle.
Read our staff review here.
Thrillers and mysteries to keep you on the edge of your seat ...
What’s Murder Between Friends by Meg Gatland-Veness
'I think it was one of us,' Walter says – 'We had the perfect opportunity. Everyone's thinking it, I'm just saying it.'
The last thing Hallie and her drama classmates expect to find on a high school scavenger hunt is a dead body. In a town with a population of about thirty-six, no one has experience with murder investigations, but now everyone's asking who killed Ms Lovelace.
The drama kids thought they were the only people nerdy enough to be at school on a Sunday. When they learn that Adam Tolentino, football star, drama-club nemesis and the cutest boy in school, was there too, Hallie is given the task of finding out what he knows but she soon learns there's more to Adam than meets the eye.
Although still grieving her favourite teacher, Hallie knows the show must go on. Managing a musical and a murder investigation is a lot, but Hallie and her friends won't give up on Ms Lovelace, or each other.
Read the staff review here.
Dead Girls Walking by Sami Ellis
Temple Baker knows that evil runs in her blood. Her father is the North Point Killer, an infamous serial killer known for how he marked each of his victims with a brand. He was convicted for murdering 20 people and was the talk of countless true crime blogs for years. Some say he was possessed by a demon. Some say that they never found all his victims. Some say that even though he’s now behind bars, people are still dying in the woods. Despite everything though, Temple never believed that her dad killed her mom. But when he confesses to that crime while on death row, she has no choice but to return to his old hunting grounds to try see if she can find a body and prove it.
Turns out, the farm that was once her father’s hunting grounds and her home has been turned into an overnight camp for queer, horror-obsessed girls. So Temple poses as a camp counselor to go digging in the woods. While she’s not used to hanging out with girls her own age and feels ambivalent at best about these true crime enthusiasts, she tries her best to fit in and keep her true identity hidden.
But when a girl turns up dead in the woods, she fears that one of her father’s 'fans' might be mimicking his crimes. As Temple tries to uncover the truth and keep the campers safe, she comes to realize that there may be something stranger and more sinister at work – and that her father may not have been the only monster in these woods.
Don’t Let the Forest In by CG Drews
On the first day back at boarding school, Andrew can't wait to find refuge in the twisted fairy tales that he writes for his best friend, Thomas.
But Thomas' parents have vanished, and he has blood on his sleeve. Stranger still, Thomas won't talk to Andrew, even though he's always loved sketching the monstrous creatures from Andrew's stories.
Desperate to discover the truth, Andrew follows Thomas into the forest and catches him fighting a nightmarish monster – his drawings come to life.
To ensure no one else dies, the boys must battle the creatures every night. But as their obsession with each other grows stronger, so do the monsters, and Andrew fears the only way to stop them might be to destroy their creator.
Read our staff review here.
Dystopian reads to make the real world feel slightly okay ...
Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White
Prepare to die. His kingdom is near.
Sixteen-year-old trans boy Benji is on the run from the cult that raised him – the fundamentalist sect that unleashed Armageddon and decimated the world's population. Desperately, he searches for a place where the cult can't get their hands on him, or more importantly, on the bioweapon they infected him with.
But when cornered by monsters born from the destruction, Benji is rescued by a group of teens from the local Acheson LGBTQ+ Center, affectionately known as the ALC. The ALC's leader, Nick, is gorgeous, autistic, and a deadly shot, and he knows Benji's darkest secret: the cult's bioweapon is mutating him into a monster deadly enough to wipe humanity from the earth once and for all.
Still, Nick offers Benji shelter among his ragtag group of queer teens, as long as Benji can control the monster and use its power to defend the ALC. Eager to belong, Benji accepts Nick's terms ... until he discovers the ALC's mysterious leader has a hidden agenda, and more than a few secrets of his own.
Aisle Nine by Ian X. Cho
It's Black Friday, and the apocalypse is on sale!
Ever since the world filled with portals to hell and bloodthirsty demons started popping out on the reg, Jasper's life has gotten worse and worse. A teenage nobody with no friends or family, he is plagued by the life he can't remember and the person he's sure he's supposed to be.
Jasper spends his days working as a checkout clerk at the Here for You discount mart, where a hell portal in aisle nine means danger every shift. But at least here he can be near the girl he's crushing on – Kyle Kuan, a junior member of the monster-fighting Vanguard – who seems to hate Jasper for reasons he can't remember or understand.
But when Jasper and Kyle learn they both share a frightening vision of the impending apocalypse, they're forced to team up and uncover the uncomfortable truth about the hell portals and the demons that haunt the world. Because the true monsters are not always what they seem, the past is not always what we wish, and like it or not, on Black Friday, all hell will break loose – starting in aisle nine.
Anomaly by Emma Lord
Piper Manning survived the apocalypse. Barely.
She recovered from the virus that killed millions, but it left behind a new, uncontrollable power that's forced her to isolate herself from others - for their sake.
Then an injured boy shows up at her mountain hideaway. And what hurt Seth is out to get her, too.
Now she's on the run, risking everything for a shot at an actual future. But to get there, she'll have to trust a stranger, control her abilities ... and face her ghosts.
Because the end of the world was just the beginning.
Read our staff review here.
