Alex Brown

The Black Girl Survives in This One, Desiree S. Evans & Saraciea J. Fennell, eds. (Flatiron 978-1-25032-199-2, $19.99, 368pp, hc) April 2024.

Horror is in a golden age in young adult fiction. Just a few years ago, you could count the number of YA horror novels released each year on one hand. Last year I tracked more than 30 YA books marketed as horror. This year just in January ...Read More

The Dragonfly Gambit, A.D. Sui (Neon Hemlock 9781952086793, $13.99, 142pp, tp) April 2024.

For generations, the Rule expanded its empire by colonizing planets and systems, but for the last few decades many of the colonized have been rebelling against their overlords. Nez, Shay, and Kaya, three young adults from the system Oran, were conscripted into the imperial air force only to watch the empire destroy their homeworlds. After a ...Read More

Mirrored Heavens, Rebecca Roanhorse (Saga Press 978-1-53443-770-8, $29.99. 608pp, hc) June 2024. Cover by John Picacio.

Black Sun, the first book in Rebecca Roan­horse’s epic fantasy series Between Earth and Sky, opened with one of the most impactful first chapters I’ve read in a long time. Fevered Star, the sequel, contained one of the most intense scenes of people who kinda deserved it getting slaughtered by ...Read More

The Book Censor’s Library, Bothayna Al-Essa (Restless Books 978-1-63206-334-2, $18.00, 272pp, tp) April 2024. Cover by Joy Richu.

In a not-too-distant future in an unknown nation, we meet our unnamed protagonist in Bothayna Al-Essa’s new satire The Book Censor’s Library. All freedom of expression, individualization, and interpretation is banned. Everything revolves around God, government, and sex. Blasphemy is banned, but all holy texts have been heavily edited. No ...Read More

Sheine Lende, Darcie Little Badger (Levine Querido 978-1-64614-379-5, $19.99. 400pp, hc) April 2024. Cover by Rovina Cai.

In 2020, Darcie Little Badger had her YA debut with the utterly delightful mystery novel Elatsoe. Ellie, a 17-year-old asexual Lipan Apache teen, lives in a slightly alternate contemporary version of America where legendary creatures and magic are a normal part of life. In particular, she has the ability to call ...Read More

Dead Girls Walking, Sami Ellis (Amulet Books 978-1-41976-676-3, $19.99, 368pp, hc) March 2024.

Serial killing runs in the family in Dead Girls Walking, Sami Ellis’s debut young adult hor­ror novel. Several years ago, Thomas Baker was arrested, his reign of terror finally ended. He confessed to kidnapping, torturing, branding, and murdering more than a dozen people, burying their bodies on his sprawling farm. Temple grew up surrounded by ...Read More

The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years, Shubnum Khan (Viking 9780593653456, $28.00. 320pp, hc) January 2024.

When I started Shubnum Khan’s first novel to be published in the US, The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years, I had no idea what to expect. I haven’t read much South African speculative fiction, and nothing that delves into Indian culture transplanted to Africa. It’s not a history or culture I’m familiar with, ...Read More

A Feast for Flies, Leigh Harlen (Dancing Star Press 978-1-73214-186-5, $11.99. 163pp, pb) November 2023. Cover by Vitalii Ostaschenko.

Leigh Harlen has only published a collection and one novella, but I loved the latter so much that they immediately became one of my auto-buy authors. Queens of Noise is a riot of a novella, a fierce, funny story about were-punks trying to stop a corporate takeover of their favorite ...Read More

Bloom, Delilah S. Dawson (Titan Books 978-1-80336-575-6, $22.99, 208pp, hc) October 2023. Cover by Julia Lloyd.

I’ll admit, it’s been a while since I read anything by Delilah S. Dawson. I enjoyed her young adult speculative novels Hit and Servants of the Storm, comic book Ladycastle, her speculative romance stories, and her Weird West series The Shadow written under the pseudonym Lila Bowen. But for no reason ...Read More

Frost Bite, Angela Sylvaine (Dark Matter INK 978-1-95859-803-0, $17.99. 280pp, tp) October 2023. Cover by Eric Hibbeler.

In Angela Sylvaine’s Frost Bite, winter has hit Demise, North Dakota hard. Snow and ice have blanketed the town, making everything as cold and miserable as Realene feels. She was on her way out of town, but when her mom was diagnosed with a fatal health condition, Realene’s future crumbled away. ...Read More

The Reformatory, Tananarive Due (Saga Press 978-1-98218-834-4, $29.99. 576pp, hc) October 2023.

The great Tananarive Due is back with her first solo, full-length novel since 2011 with The Reformatory. Set in the fictional city of Gracetown FL, where many of her stories take place, this one focuses on two Black children caught in the grinding gears of Jim Crow. Robert and his older sister, Gloria, were left behind ...Read More

Forged by Blood, Ehigbor Okosun (Harper Voyager 978-0-0631-1262-9, $32.00. 400pp, hc) August 2023.

Readers looking for a high-octane story with an equal amount of romance and fight scenes should look no further than Ehigbor Okosun’s Forged by Blood, the first in the debut author’s Tainted Blood duology. It’s the perfect summer adventure story.

Forged by Blood begins when Dèmi is a child living in desperate poverty with her ...Read More

A Song of Salvation, Alechia Dow (Inkyard Press 978-1-33545-372-3, $18.99. 352pp, hc) July 2023.

Although technically a standalone, Alechia Dow’s new young adult space opera A Song of Salva­tion is part of the larger world shared by her two earlier YA novels The Sound of Stars and The Kindred. It helps, but you don’t need to read the other two to enjoy and understand the third. That said, ...Read More

Vampires of El Norte, Isabel Cañas (Berkeley 978-0-59343-672-1, $28.99, 400pp, hc) August 2023.

I like historical fantasy as a subgenre, but I espe­cially love historical fantasy set in the American West with BIPOC protagonists encountering the horrors of colonialism and the supernatural in equal measure. Victor LaValle’s viciously impressive Lone Women is one of the best of the bunch of the last several years, but Isabel Cañas’ Vampires of ...Read More

Sordidez, E.G. Condé (Stelliform 978-1-77768-236-1, $16.00, 141pp, tp) August 2023. Cover by Paulina Niño.

In Sordidez, the debut novella from Taíno­futurist author E.G. Condé, we meet three Latinx people attempting to survive in the aftermath of colonial warfare and climate di­sasters. Vero, a trans man, lives in Puerto Rico, a place ravaged by American disinterest, global manipulation, and devastating hurricanes. Using his knowledge of his Taíno ancestral traditions, ...Read More

Abeni’s Song, P. Djèlí Clark (Starscape 978-1-25082-582-7, $17.99. 336pp, hc) July 2023. Cover by Michael Machira Mwangi.

P. Djèlí Clark makes his middle grade de­but with Abeni’s Song, the first in a new fantasy trilogy, and it is everything you’d expect from Clark, and then some.

The morning of Abeni’s 12th birthday begins with excitement. In her mother’s golden wrap and with fresh oils rubbed into her skin, ...Read More

You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight, Kalynn Bayron (Bloomsbury YA 978-1-54761-154-6, $19.99. 240pp, hc) June 2023.

There are two things I love so much that I will immediately consume them with little hesitation: 1) young adult horror; and 2) ’80s/’90s teen slash­ers. So, of course, when I heard Kalynn Bayron had combined both of those elements in her new novel, You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight, I had ...Read More

Against the Stars, Christopher Hartland (Tiny Ghost Press 978-1-91558-503-5, $12.99. 296pp, pb) April 2023.

If you had the chance to see your future, would you take it? What if you saw something unexpected, like that you weren’t the person you thought you were or that your life wasn’t going to go the way you planned? Would you try to change your future or would you lean into it? Is ...Read More

The Severed Thread, Leslie Vedder (Razorbill 978-0-59332-585-8, $19.99. 416pp, hc) Febru­ary 2023.

Vedder’s young-adult second world fantasy novel The Severed Thread marks the return to the ‘‘Little Red Riding Hood’’ and ‘‘Sleeping Beauty’’-inspired world she established in last year’s The Bone Spindle. In the first book, we meet our protagonists: Shane the huntsman, Fi the treasure hunter, Red the girl with dark se­crets, and Briar Rose the cursed ...Read More

That Self-Same Metal, Brittany N. Williams (Amulet Books 978-1-41975-864-5, $19.99. 352pp, hc) April 2023.

I finished That Self-Same Metal, book 1 of Brit­tany N. Williams’ Forge and Fracture Saga, about 15 minutes before writing this and I’m already desperate for the sequel. That I have to wait a whole year for it is a crime, plain and simple.

Set in London in 1605 at the beginning of the ...Read More

Linghun, Ai Jiang (Dark Matter INK 978-1-95859-802-3, $14.99. 150pp, tp) April 2023.

Not far from Toronto is a place known as the Homecoming of Missing Entities, or HOME to its residents. It is a place where the lucky are able to buy or win at auction a house where their dead can visit and the unlucky are condemned to sleeping on the lawns of homes they dream of owning. ...Read More

Tim Te Maro and the Subterranean Heartsick Blues, H.S. Valley (Hardie Grant 978-1-76058-75-3, $12.99. 320pp, tp) February 2023.

I first heard about New Zealand writer H.S. Valley’s debut 2021 novel Tim Te Maro and the Subterranean Heartsick Blues a little over year ago, and was instantly disappointed that I couldn’t acquire it through a US publisher. When I got a notification that review copies were available in the States, ...Read More

She Is a Haunting, Trang Thanh Tran (Blooms­bury Children’s Books 978-1-54761-081-5, $15.17. 352pp, hc) February 2023.

My review copy of Trang Thanh Tran’s YA horror debut She Is a Haunting com­pared it to Silvia Moreno Garcia’s Mexi­can Gothic and Emily X.R. Pan’s The Astonishing Color of After. Having read (and loved) both, I am here to say that is one of the most perfect set of comps I’ve ...Read More