New YA Books Hitting Shelves This Week, July 22, 2024

Juliana Zhao’s family has lost their reputation among their small Taiwanese American community because her older sister was disowned several years ago. Juliana is going to fix this: she knows she’s not only an expert on love but she is going to win the Asian Americans in Business Competition, which is a big deal.

But then Juliana’s partner for the competition drops her and she’s forced to partner with Garrett Tsai, best described as her frenemy. They’re working on a dating advice column and they continue to butt heads with how to do it—and as much as Juliana is desperate to win this business competition, she’s recognizing that she might have to face failure.

But is winning what she cares about anyway? Perhaps there’s something more to the world (and to love!) than competition. This is a rom-com for fans of enemies-to-lovers storylines.

Though there have been more stories featuring male-identifying main characters wrestling with eating disorders in recent years, they are still few and far between. Add this one to the small but growing—and necessary—list.

Brett’s stepmother has cancer and he’s been doing whatever he can to avoid facing what that means. This includes really letting himself fall into fantasy worlds, like the comic book series which features characters not too different from those in his own life. Unfortunately, the fantasies he’s been living in are starting to take a hard toll in real life, and now, Brett’s journal full of the truth of what he’s been dealing with, has been leaked online. The whole school now knows about his insecurities and anxieties, and he has to reckon with them.

Fortunately for Brett, he finds solace, companionship, and help in a new friend Mallory. With them, he is able to begin to unravel the hard truths that he’s been burying.

For readers who love mental health narratives, takes on Japanese mythology, and a bent of quirk, this will be one to have on your TBR.

Machi prays at the altar of Japanese goddess of love Benzaiten. Machi asks to be turned into a robot vacuum, not expecting to be heard; Machi has been struggling to speak and struggling in school and therapy following her two best friends choosing to have nothing to do with her. She sees no reason to be human anymore.

Benzaiten doesn’t grant that prayer but does take Machi on an unbelievable adventure. As Machi meets the souls of the dead, which tend to flock toward Benzaiten, she begins to better understand and accept why it is she is human. While she is reminded of everything she has lost, it’s through her rerouted prayer that Machi discovers what it is to be happy, too.

Nell and her friends have rented a vacation house in Florida for spring break to get away from their lives for a bit. But Nell’s secrets didn’t stay at home. They came with, and they’ve decided to team up with the island’s own history of tragedy. Now, the friends are all trapped, with nowhere to go, since the water surrounding their not-so-sweet vacation rental is infested with dangerous beasts and a toxic mist.

It’ll be work to get out. Part of that work—or maybe a whole lot of that work—will involve confronting the secrets and memories that Nell, as well as her friends, wish they didn’t need to. For Nell, it’s reckoning with an assault she experienced a year ago and a shadow that’s followed her throughout her entire life. 

But Nell’s friends all brought their own secrets and together, they’ll need to not only divulge them, they’ll need to use their combined powers to get out of this mess. What results is an angry, powerful, witchy confrontation with monsters, human and otherwise.

On August 6, Phoebe wakes up to relive the same day she just finished. In fact, she begins living the same August 6 every day for nearly a month. She wakes up, eats her mom’s pancakes, plays Scrabble with her dad in the afternoon, and researches how she can best approach a new doctor she’s seeing soon about her IBS. Phoebe is a fat girl and has been dismissed by doctor after doctor about her symptoms and hopes this will bring the change she so desperately needs. 

Then Phoebe is run into by a car. That car is driven by her former friend Jess, who is now joining Phoebe in this time loop. Rather than play things out on a loop themselves, Jess convinces Phoebe to take some new risks and adventures while living a day that resets over and over again. Phoebe is hesitant to get out of her routine, but Jess’s fun is contagious as they take Phoebe out thrifting, on a gentle revenge task, an all-night road trip, and more. As she begins to let go of her control and the anxiety controlling her life, Phoebe finds herself falling hard for Jess and wondering why their friendship changed in the first place…and she’s worrying whether or not those feelings and this relationship will exist if the time loop ever ends.

This book has two chronically ill characters, a sweet queer romance, a pair of Jewish characters, and so much more.

This one is pitched as being for fans of Elizabeth Acevedo and Angie Thomas, but I also get a nice dose of Renée Watson from the description, too.

Nelo is fiercely protective of and in love with her neighborhood, Ginger East. It’s where she’s grown up, made incredible memories with her family and community, and had so many adventures with her bestie Kate, whose parents own a corner store.

Ginger East has been struggling, though, and a violent incident at a local arcade has only further hurt the community’s reputation. Nelo won’t give up on it, especially as long as she’s got Kate.

But then the store Kate’s parents own is vandalized. Nelo and others are now thrust into a bigger national spotlight, with demands to fix the neighborhood blaring from all directions. When Kate’s parents announce they’re leaving Ginger East and Kate herself begins to retreat from Nelo, Nelo struggles with how to not only keep her head up but how to help ensure that the place she loves survives.

The romance theme this week is enemies-to-lovers, and this one features a cowboy from Nebraska and a girl from California.

Riley’s family has moved from California to Nebraska and now she’s stuck on a family trip exploring the Oregon Trail. As if she wasn’t feeling lonely and annoyed enough, the cowboy also on the trip seriously underestimates how much Riley can handle her own self. Riley wants the trip to end, even if it means being stuck in a new home where she knows no one.

Colton loves living on the plains and loves his family’s tourism business. He’s a careful guy and not sure he should try to take a chance on the girl currently on tour. She doesn’t seem to be the type who’d go for him. She’s too much of a princess and he, too much a cowboy.

But Riley isn’t all she seems, and it’s while they’re out on the prairie these two connect in a way neither expects.