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Spring has sprung, and whether or not you’re able to spend time reading outside, hopefully you’re at least getting some fresh air through open windows as you sink into a good book.
It’s a very big paperback release week in the YA world, which you’ll soon see below. Some of them are paperbacks that are following hardcover releases, while others are paperback originals–something that I continue to think we need more of, as they offer the same kind of direct appeal to teen readers that books which release simultaneously in hardcover and paperback do.
There’s a really nice range of genres and voices represented this week, too. We’ve got a take on Chinese folklore, a house haunted by missing teens, inventions that conjure demons, and so much more.
New Hardcover YA Releases This Week
A Song for the Dark by Brooke Archer
Blackridge isn’t a safe town. For the past 20 years, a kid has disappeared over the summer. But after an accident kills Jo’s best friend, Jo’s mother decides that relocating to Blackridge is the fresh start the family needs.
They move into an old house, and pretty quickly, things get weird. The place is definitely haunted.
So when Jo meets Finn, she’s thrilled to have made a friend who shares so many of her interests. The problem is that Finn is a ghost, and he’s not the only one living in Jo’s house. Soon, it becomes clear that the ghosts inhabiting Jo’s home are related to the kids who’ve gone missing, and it’s up to her to figure out what happened to them–and how to save herself from a similar fate.
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Deathly Fates by Tesia Tsai
Kang Siying is a priestess whose job is to guide the dead home, and it helps her earn a living. It’s helped her not be afraid of death. But when her own dad becomes ill, Siying finds her fear and knows she needs to do everything within her power to get her dad the medicine he needs. She’s offered a really lucrative job that comes with plenty of danger: go to an unfriendly state to retrieve the corpse of a missing prince. She needs the money, so she takes the gig.
Things are not normal once she arrives, though. Putting her talisman on the corpse of the prince reanimates him, rather than simply putting him under a spell that forces him to obey her orders. Siying knows he won’t stay alive long if he doesn’t have enough life force within him.
So the prince makes her an even better offer than the one she’s already taken. She’ll help him find and purify evil spirits to build his life force. But as she’s on this quest with him, battling all kinds of evil spirits, Siying starts to learn what caused the prince to go missing, and it might be coming for her now, too.
The Chinese folk practice of necromancy inspires this one. Necromancy in general has been an interesting theme in several YA books over the last year.
The Demonic Inventions of Aurelie Blake by Mara Rutherford
The act of invention in Wisteria is forbidden, as anything that’s created conjures demons. This includes small inventions and big ones. The bigger the invention, the bigger the demons.
Aurelie doesn’t like not inventing, so she keeps her creations small. Things small enough that she’s able to ward off the demons who arise. But she wants to do bigger, more inventive things. She’s feeling stifled by the rules of her world.
After losing his parents to demons, Destrier has dedicated his life to ensuring no more people are hurt by the reckless release of demons. He’s a hunter, and every year his strength has grown, but it’s still not perfect.
So when Aurelie is offered a job to invent something huge and life-altering by a mysterious person, she takes it. She knows there will be consequences, but she has no idea how it will connect her to Destrier, nor could she imagine how their lives would become entangled, for better or for worse.
I Could Give You The Moon by Ann Liang
Chanel Cao has curated the perfect social media image, and she has scads of adoring fans. But Ares Yin isn’t one of them. A big part of that is that Ares simply wants to hide away. He doesn’t want that kind of presence.
But Ares’ brother goes missing at the same time Chanel is dealing with her parents’ secret separation. Her audience can’t know that.
When Chanel and Ares meet, though, they realize they share a similar vision: Ares’s brother appears just as Chanel’s house burns to the ground. The two realize they might be the key to solving each other’s issues: Chanel may help find Ares’s brother, while pretending to date Ares might help save her family home (and help her parents reconcile).
What emerges is a story of Chanel becoming honest with who she is through Ares, and of Ares beginning to open up, including understanding why Chanel’s facade has rubbed him so wrong. The feelings they’ve been having–including the ones they’re faking–might be leading them to something even bigger.
Hardcover YA Series Releases This Week:
New Paperback YA Releases This Week
Here’s a periodic reminder: you may need to toggle your view when you click the link to access the paperback edition.
The Black Girls Left Standing by Juliana Goodman
Beau is an artist and dreams of leaving the projects she’s grown up in. But when an off-duty police officer kills her older sister, Katia, everything changes–now she’s determined to clear her sister’s name, and to do that, she needs to find her sister’s boyfriend, the only witness to her murder.
Of course, it won’t be that simple, and Beau has to decide how much of her life she needs to put aside for Katia.
I Was Told There Would Be Romance by Marie Arnold
Fancy Augustine, a 15-year-old Haitian American, is desperate for an invite to THE party of the year: Imani Park’s birthday. Fancy’s bestie has gotten an invite, and not only that, it turns out that Tilly has had a secret boyfriend all along, too.
Then Fanny strikes a deal with Imani for an invite, but it’ll require that Fanny find a date for the party. Now Fanny promises to make a voodoo potion for her crush, Rahim, if he plays the role of her boyfriend. But as these promises build up, Fanny finds herself not only falling behind in school but also straining her friendship with Tilly and more.
Love at Second Sight by F.T. Lukens
Fifteen-year-old Cam Reynolds wants a quiet sophomore year at his school. It’s weird being a human going to a school full of supernatural creatures, but that also means he has some power to keep himself out of the limelight.
But then Cam has a vision. In it, he sees the murder of a girl through the eyes of the villain. Suddenly, it becomes clear Cam isn’t the human he thinks he is. He’s clairvoyant, and now, he’s got to figure out who at his school has the power to murder and how he can stop it before it happens.
Summer Official by Rebekah Weatherspoon
Heaven and Saylor are very, very different. Saylor is popular, bubbly, and always seems to be in a relationship. Heaven is grumpy, loves art, and prefers time alone. She’s never been in a relationship.
No one would expect them to spend a summer together, except that’s exactly what both of them do and what it turns out both of them desperately needed.
Saylor broke her arm at basketball camp, and she’s over her mother garnering social media clicks for Saylor’s recent coming out. No way can Saylor spend the summer at home with her injury or her mother. So she reaches out to Heaven–despite their differences, Saylor finds Heaven irresistible–who agrees to let Saylor join her in a Summer Bingo challenge. Saylor won’t get to just join, though. She’s agreed to help Heaven create a social media presence since she wants to start a career as a tattoo artist after high school.
As the girls spend more time together, their feelings become clearer. The problem is that Saylor doesn’t want her mom to know, for fear their relationship will become more social media fodder. It might bring more attention than either of them could ever want.
This Sapphic romance is a paperback original.
Paperback YA Series Releases This Week:
More Paperback YA Releases This Week:
Ever get a YA book title stuck in your head? If not, you’re about to with these 2026 YA book title earworms.
