25 Great Books You May Have Missed This Year

Described as Emergency Contact meets Moxie, Michelle Quach's debut Not Here To Be Liked is equal parts swoony and thought-provoking, featuring an expertly orchestrated enemies-to-lovers trope, an MC who stands for what she believes in, and school newspaper drama. 

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Emma and Sophie don't see eye to eye. Emma loves love — the bigness of it all, grand gestures, and especially rom-coms. Yet, as a bisexual teen, she doesn't feel like there's enough of those that really capture her. So when a film festival presents an opportunity to make the rom-com of her dreams, Emma can't wait to get started with her friends. That is, until, Sophie returns from Paris with the idea that rom-coms are not film festival material, and that their friend group should try to make something artistic and abstract if they want to win. But despite Sophie's reluctance, she might find she's in a rom-com herself — starring Emma.

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A rich voice and a lot of self-exploration make Gretchen, aka The Girl Least Likely, a lovable character to follow as she stumbles across stand-up comedy, creating an alter ego that allows her to flirt with the funny bad boy while secretly pining for her longtime best friend, Samuel. But stand-up gives her more, too — like the ability to expand on feelings she's pushed down for a while, feelings of inadequacy, jealousy, and other stuff that comes with being the youngest in her family. Full of rom-com tropes and fun stand-up routines, you won't want to miss this one.

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Zoe, Samira, and Dahlia are done with school and ready to learn the hard way that taking trips together can really make or break a friendship or relationship. All struggling with their own personal conflicts and ideas for the future post high-school, the three girls help each other through every unexpected shift, realizing that the uncertainty of their futures is just as exciting as it is troubling. 

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Claire Winn's YA debut takes place in a cyberpunk setting, loaded with action and intrigue. The book follows tech heiress Asa Almeida who hopes to outrun her father's shadow and prove herself while saving her sister from his evil plans. Her destiny come to a halt when she crash lands in outlaw city, Requiem, and gets taken hostage by Riven Hawthorne, a girl determined to climb up the ranks of the underworld. But they have to work together to take on a powerful AI that threatens to destroy everything they've been working towards, including their new alliance.

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A deeply moving memoir, Ly Tran's House of Sticks details the author's tumultuous upbringing in Queens, New York, being the youngest (and only girl) in a family of four born to immigrant parents, helping her mom at the nail salon they eventually owned, her father's odd resistance to her getting glasses, her complicated college journey, and the love that helped her find the light again. Full of heart and forgiveness, this book will stay with you for a long time.

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In this heart-wrenching debut from Steven Salvatore, a genderqueer teen fights for their right to be who they want to be. Cary is an aspiring diva who's constantly being put down by others who refuse to let them follow their dreams. When Cary finds a friend, ally and maybe something more in singer/guitarist Cris, they gain some strength in getting closer to their dreams. 

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In this complex and eye-opening novel, twin sisters Sabina and Blythe mourn the unexpected loss of their dad, moving into a beat-up mansion in the Bay Area owned by a stranger who only showed up when their dad was dying. Their grieving processes are different, but what they find out about their parents' secret pasts brings them together. 

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In this heavily researched and entertaining book, author and science journalist Chelsea Wald deep dives into something we've been taking for granted: the toilet. How it operates in our modern society, the intricacies of sanitation systems in place, their impact on the environment, and the future of plumbing are all explored in Pipe Dreams, a must-read for anyone interested in learning more about the ways everyday living affects climate change. 

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Combining sci-fi and mystery, this novel about an unlikely pair teaming up to investigate a curious murder case is entrancing in more ways than one. With complex worldbuilding, Eason creates a delicately woven yet easy to navigate reality where humans don't take the main stage, with two aliens leading the show as the main characters working together to solve the dark mysterious murder. 

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A complicated family gets even more complicated in this heartfelt novel that finds estranged cousins Becka and KJ forced to go on a bucket-list style road trip and adventure together in order to get their late grandpa's inheritance. In their exploration, they get past the surface and learn more about each other and their family than they bargained for, ending their journey closer to each other in more ways than one. 

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Abigail Smith is the queen of Christmas — she loves it so much, she made it her job to make everyone else's holidays special with her professional tree-trimming, decorating business. Even the Scroogiest of people, like Finn Edenbury, can't resist her charms, though he does try. When the divorced dad realizes he is spending the holidays with his daughter after thinking he'd be alone, he needs Abby to help turn his daughter's holiday around. And they both find themselves wanting something unexpected for Christmas...

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This touching and beautiful middle grade novel follows a family on the heels of a tragic loss. Hazel Bly is anxious and grieving for her late mother. Together, Hazel and her other mother, Mama, and her sister Peach move around, never staying anywhere too long, until one town in Maine brings an old friend back into Mama's life with a daughter Hazel's age who introduces her to a magic she'd never believed in before, but she wants to believe in now. 

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In this memoir told through essays, creative writing professor and skateboarder Kyle Beachy lends time to a lesser-explored sport and pastime in literature: skating. A sport and hobby that many find in youth, that becomes all-consuming, and that only some carry into adulthood is certainly worth writing about and worth reading about. Beachy writes about the culture, the exploitation of it in fashion, and the love of it all. 

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Love makes you do crazy things. Sometimes those things are traveling to New Orleans with your former best friend in search of a vampire and completing various tasks including singing with a band and scarfing down beignets in order to prove yourself a worthy candidate to be immortal, all so you can turn into a vampire and save your dad who's dying of cancer. Well, at least this is true if you're Victoria, the MC of Vampires, Hearts & Other Dead Things, an unforgettable book ripe with grief, hope, and healing. 

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Broke, unemployed and still not out to her parents, Jess has to live with her parents post-Harvard graduation. But her father is sick and they're going back to Malaysia, and she's coming with them, leaving her secret girlfriend behind. Alone, she starts hearing a voice that belongs to her grandmother, a now deceased once powerful medium who needs Jess's help to cross over. 

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Brian Broome's debut memoir is often funny, often sad, sometimes relatable and always cleverly written, rich in voice. The memoir finds the author reminiscing on growing up gay and Black in Ohio in the '90s, when it was hard to be himself, and all the messes he found himself in along the way.

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While short in length, this novella is rich in worldbuilding, imagining a heroine in an Afrofuturist Ghana who is haunted by Death. With only a fox as her companion, Sankofa, who forgot her old name, walks the land in search of an object she remembers that gave itself over to her, careful as not to just take someone down with a look — that's all it takes. Her search for answers leads her down different paths of thinking as she considers who she's meant to be.

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Aideen doesn't want to face her own problems: her mother's drinking, her issues with her best friend, her anxiety. So when she's approached to help overachieving student Meabh fix her problem, she welcomes the distraction. Soon, a chain of favors is underway, getting Aideen and her newfound friends and peers into a variety of messes. And the feelings bubbling up between Aideen and Meabh are hard to ignore. 

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This Studio Ghibli-reminiscent graphic novel is heartwarming and full of adventure, following Sophie, a young witch who is forced to stay with relatives she isn't close to so she can hone in on her magic skills and strengthen her chances of getting into the Royal Magic Academy. But when she arrives, she finds she's more alone than before, practicing magic by herself and getting herself and others into messes that aren't easy to get out of. 

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There are too many queer Grease-inspired books, said no one ever. Dahlia Adler's Cool For The Summer is a masterful exploration of the ups and downs of discovering new feelings and new love when you're not even sure what you're looking for. Lara starts senior year with a Jasmine-shaped pit in her stomach after a curious summer with a dark and mysterious girl, but her longtime crush, football star Chase Harding, is trying to keep her occupied. When the girl she was never supposed to see again shows up at her school, things get complicated.

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With wit and dry humor, Syed M. Masood tells a story of two very different Muslim people who move to California from their respective countries under very different circumstances. Anvar is jaded by his perception of religion, feeling left out, while Safwa has been dealing with unimaginable grief, holding onto faith. In spite of their differing circumstances, the two find themselves living in the same building that offers a "good Muslim discount." Taking place over the '90s and 2000s, the book shows how their lives intertwine in a deeply layered depiction of being a Muslim in America at a turning point in time.

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Haunting and harrowing, this fantasy novel follows a young mother forced to flee the only life she's known in search of a better future for herself and her children, away from her abusive husband and the cult she grew up in. Rich with historical references to America's damning culture, Sorrowland is an engulfing read that you won't be able to get out of your head. 

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A chance meeting in a California karaoke bar, mysteriously unanswered texts, an unexpected reunion in Seoul, a major K-pop group, and a forbidden romance are just a few of the main elements in Axie Oh's delightful and dreamy XOXO. There's also the beauty in new friendships, the journey of finding yourself and your passion, and navigating complicated family dynamics — and so much more. 

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Full of life lessons and universal truths about the art of growing up, It Goes Like This is a lively debut from Miel Moreland. Moonlight Overthrow hasn't been a band in years. The once-larger than life queer pop quartet has dissolved, each member doing their own thing: reckoning with their new identities and supporting their families, having public and messy breakups, venturing into the quieter world of songwriting...but when the opportunity to reunite in support of a charity show for their hometown presents itself, they don't pass it up, no matter how complicated things might get.

Get it from Bookshop or from your local indie via Indiebound here.