Alex Brown

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

Blood Like Fate, Liselle Sambury (McElderry 978-1-53446-531-2, $19.99, 480pp, hc) August 2022.

A young adult fantasy set in the near future that blends technology and magic? Yes, ma’am! Liselle Sambury’s Blood Like Magic duol­ogy tells the story of Voya, a teen witch in Toronto in the mid-21st century. Her family, the Thomases, is one of the original founding witch families in Canada. Centuries ago, her ancestors escaped slavery in ...Read More

Tread of Angels, Rebecca Roanhorse (Saga Press 978-1-66800-663-4, $22.99. 208pp, tp) November 2022.

With Tread of Angels, Rebecca Roanhorse blends tropes from Westerns and noir with Biblical my­thology. In the western town of Goetia are the bones of a dead divine being. What is mined from those bones is used to power just about everything, from automobiles to strange mechanical objects. The town is mostly populated by two ...Read More

Direwood, Catherine Yu (Page Street Publishing 978-1-64567-612-6, $18.99. 288pp, hc) Septem­ber 2022.

Sisters Fiona and Aja are part of the only Chinese American family in their entire suburban town. It’s the 1990s, the era of grunge and disillusion­ment, and no one is more disillusioned than Aja. Or so she thinks. Fiona is the golden child. She is the perfect daughter beloved by everyone in town. Aja, meanwhile, is rough ...Read More

Rust in the Root, Justina Ireland (Balzer + Bray 978-0-06303-822-6, $18.99. 488pp, hc) September 2022.

Justina Ireland’s latest YA alternate history novel Rust in the Root feels a bit like a cross between P. Djèlí Clark’s Ring Shout, Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation, and Victor LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom. If Ireland’s Dread Nation series (set just after the Civil War and involving zombies, queer Black teens, ...Read More

A Girl’s Guide to Love & Magic, Debbie Rigaud (Scholastic Press 978-1-33868-174-1, $18.99, 288pp, hc) July 2022.

Pro: today is Cicely Destin’s 15th birthday. It’s also the West Indian Day Parade, her favorite day of the year. It seems like all of Brooklyn has converted into a massive carni­val, and Cicely wants to experience it all. Con: Cicely has to lie to her mom to sneak off with her ...Read More

How to Succeed in Witchcraft, Aislinn Brophy (G.P. Putnam’s Sons 978-0-59335-452-0, $18.99, 416pp, hc) September 2022.

Shayna is a junior at the prestigious T.K. Anderson Magical Magnet School in Aislinn Brophy’s debut novel, How to Succeed in Witchcraft. For years she’s been neck and neck with Ana Álvarez, her academic nemesis, but this time she’s determined to come out on top. The Brockton Scholarship is her ticket to ...Read More

The Bruising of Qilwa, Naseem Jamnia (Tachyon 978-1-61696-378-1, $15.95. 192pp, pb) August 2022.

With Naseem Jamnia’s debut novella, The Bruising of Qilwa, we get blood magic, dark secrets, political upheaval, body dysmorphia, and imperial oppression as much as we get queer love, true friendship, and self-acceptance.

Firuz-e Jafari, introduced as they-Firuz, works blood magic in their homeland of Dilmun. When a plague sweeps through the land, they and ...Read More

Ordinary Monsters, J.M. Miro (Flatiron 978-1-25083-366-2, $28.99. 660pp, hc) June 2022.

In a freight train boxcar, a runaway servant dis­covers a glowing baby in the arms of his dead wetnurse. In a dusty theater in Meiji-era Japan, a girl tries to save her monstrous little sister. In a fetid jail cell in Mississippi, a Black teen is tortured by racist townsfolk. In a dank alleyway in Vienna, a boy ...Read More

The Loophole, Naz Kutub (Bloomsbury 978-1-54760-917-8, $24.99, 336pp, hc) June 2022.

Debut author Naz Kutub’s The Loophole may be light on fantasy, but is nevertheless well worth the time for fans of young-adult fantasy fiction. Split between a present-day gay teenager on a quest to find his missing ex, scenes of said teen lovers during their high school romance, and an ancient story about two lovers separated by magic ...Read More

The Fae Keeper, H.E. Edgmon (Inkyard 978-1-33542-591-1, $18.99. 432pp, hc) June 2022.

H.E. Edgmon’s The Fae Keeper, the se­quel to last year’s excellent young-adult fantasy The Witch King, is more vi­cious than its predecessor, taking the premise of oppressed witches fighting back against their fae oppressors and cranking it up to eleven.

This second book opens a couple weeks after the events of the first. Wyatt and ...Read More

An Arrow to the Moon, Emily X.R. Pan (Little, Brown 978-0-31646-405-5, $18.99, 400pp, hc) April 2022.

Emily X.R. Pan’s debut, The Astonishing Color of After, was a heart-wrenching young-adult novel about a teenager realizing her parents are as flawed and emotional as she is. Her sophomore novel, An Arrow to the Moon, treads similar territory but with the added inspirations of Romeo & Juliet and the Chinese ...Read More

In the Serpent’s Wake, Rachel Hartman (Ran­dom House 978-1-10193-132-5, $18.99, 512pp, hc) February 2022.

I didn’t plan to fall in love with Rachel Hart­man’s Tess of the Road. I went in expecting a light fantasy quest with dragons and ended up with a powerful coming-of-age story about trauma and finding your place in the world. Four years later, we are finally gifted with the sequel, In the Serpent’s ...Read More

This Wicked Fate, Kalynn Bayron (Bloomsbury YA 978-1-54760-920-8, $18.99, 320pp, hc) August 2022.

Kalynn Bayron concludes her riveting This Poison Heart duology with This Wicked Fate. Briseis Greene begins the novel still reeling from the revelation that her family is descended from Greek gods. She is desperate to save her mother from her untimely death. With her family and friends at her back (and with her god-given gifts ...Read More

The Lost Dreamer, Lizz Huerta (Farrar, Straus, Giroux 978-1-25075-485-1, $18.99, 384pp, hc) March 2022.

Short fiction writer Lizz Huerta makes her young-adult novel debut with the sumptuous The Lost Dreamer. The first book in a planned duology, it tells the story of two young women in a fantasy world inspired by ancient Mesoamerica.

In the city of Alcanzeh live the Dreamers, women who can enter the Dream realm ...Read More

Fevered Star, Rebecca Roanhorse (Saga 978-1-53443-773-9, $27.99, 400pp, hc) April 2022.

Fevered Star picks up almost immediately after the end of Black Sun, the first book in Rebecca Roanhorse’s Between the Earth and Sky series. The city of Tova is in turmoil, the sun is locked in a perpetual eclipse, and the clans across the Meridian are hastily forming alliances in preparation for all-out war. Old scores are ...Read More

Fire Becomes Her, Rosiee Thor (Scholastic 978-1-33867-911-3, $18.99, 368pp, hc) Febru­ary 2022.

In Rosiee Thor’s Fire Becomes Her, Candesce, a nation similar to the United States in the 1920s, is on the cusp of an historic presidential election. Gwendolyn Brooks, a former entertainer, is chal­lenging Senator Holt, an excessively wealthy man everyone believes is a shoe-in. When she was a child, Ingrid Ellis’s father was thrown in jail ...Read More

The Kindred, Alechia Dow (Inkyard Press 978-1-33541-861-6, $18.99, 400pp, hc) January 2022.

I’ve been on a bit of a science fiction kick lately. Lots of spaceships, aliens, climate crises, and dystopian futures in my to-read queue. So far, my favorite book of the bunch is Alechia Dow’s The Kindred. This young-adult novel is set in the same world as her debut The Sound of Stars, about a ...Read More

A Snake Falls to Earth, Darcie Little Badger (Levine Querido 978-1-64614-092-3, $18.99, 384pp, hc) November 2021. Cover by Mia Ohki.

I’ve seen Darcie Little Badger’s A Snake Falls to Earth described as young-adult fantasy and young-adult science fiction, but it’s re­ally young-adult Indigenous futurism. The term was coined by Grace L. Dillon, an Anishinaabe professor and author. In her book Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction ...Read More

Skin of the Sea, Natasha Bowen (Random House 978-0-59312-094-1, $18.99, 336pp, hc) November 2021. Cover by Jeff Manning.

Blending “The Little Mermaid”, West African culture and spiritual traditions, and real history from the 15th century, Skin of the Sea by debut novelist Natasha Bowen is a striking young adult historical fantasy. The only downside to reading this book now is that you’ll have to wait until next year for ...Read More

Journey to the Heart of the Abyss, London Shah (Little, Brown 978-0-75955-507-5, $18.99, 384pp, hc) November 2021.

Journey to the Heart of the Abyss, the second book in London Shah’s Light the Abyss duology, begins 80 years in the future, when the world is covered in water. In the mid-21st century, an asteroid slammed into the planet, turning the surface into a toxic morass of violent storms, ...Read More

Redemptor, Jordan Ifueko (Abrams 978-1-419-73984-2, 336pp, $18.99, hc) August 2021.

At 11 years old, she was Tarisai of Swana, a lonely girl who was desperate to be loved. Now at 17, she is Tarisai Idajo, Empress Redemptor, the ruler who was never supposed to exist. Tarisai was raised in a secret estate, cut off from the world by her enigmatic and largely absent mother, a woman known only as ...Read More

White Smoke, Tiffany D. Jackson (Katherine Tegen Books 978-0063029095, $18.99, 384pp, hc) September 2021.

After her public collapse and a stint in rehab, Marigold, a Black high school track star, is finally getting a second chance. When her artist mom gets a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a residency that comes with a free house, Mari, her mother, brother, step-father, and step-sister move from coastal California to a rundown Midwestern town. ...Read More

Bacchanal, Veronica G. Henry (47North 978-1542027816, $24.95, 352pp, hc) June 2021.

In her debut historical fantasy novel Bacchanal, Veronica G. Henry takes readers on a tour of the Depression-era American south and southwest. In Louisiana, lonely Eliza Meeks encounters the mostly all-Black carnival as it comes to her town. With no prospects, no family, and no money, joining the carnival may be her only chance at independence. Clay, ...Read More

This Poison Heart, Kalynn Bayron (Bloomsbury 978-1547603909, 384pp, $18.99, hc) June 2021.

Briseis Greene has a thing for plants. Liter­ally. Ever since she was little, Bri has had the inexplicable ability to make plants grow. Plants react to her emotions and often bend toward her as if she were a walking, talking ray of sunshine. Her adoptive mothers, Thandie and Angie, don’t quite know what to do with her. ...Read More