The Most Anticipated Young Adult Books For 2021

I loved You Should See Me In A Crown and I’m excited for this book about two girls, each going through their own stuff, who meet and click instantly at a weekend music festival and lean on each other in ways they wouldn’t have imagined by the end.

Wild Swans/The Six Swans dark fairytale retelling + Eastern mythology about a girl with forbidden magic and the betrayal that leads her on a quest to find her brothers, who were turned into swans, to keep her quiet about her magic and stop a plot to overthrow the throne.

It’s the complicated grief feels for me with this one. It’s about a girl whose father dies but she knows something that her distraught mother didn’t — he was getting ready to leave them for his young pregnant mistress the day he died. In between grieving and a photography class, she spends her spare time spying (errr stalking) her from afar until one day an emergency forces contact between the two.

This looks like a really fun romcom about a girl who has a whirlwind night of adventure with a guy she never sees again and, when she shows up at her new school and sees him again, she realizes her crush is in fact with a guy from a major K-Pop group. Love a good “normal girl meets celeb guy” story.

Fae! I love the fae. This says for fans of The Cruel Prince and A Court of Thorns and Roses (two books I loved) but I’m taking that with a grain of salt. Either way it sounds a great romance (with love triangle energy for sure) about a girl caught between two faerie courts (and their princes) as she tries to get her sister back from the king she was sold to by stealing something from the other court. Espionage & infiltration! Fae! Romance! I am here for it.

Okay when I initially started reading about this one I thought it sounded hokey like OKAY you wake up and it’s only you and some hottie left on Earth. OF COURSE HE’S HOT. EYEROLL EYEROLL.

But then I read some reviews of this new speculative novel that have me thinking it actually sounds really good and more than that as these two explore this empty world, one that keeps getting stranger,  in search for answers. Romance with a little end of the world apocalypse type stuff!

The House of Salt and Sorrows was a perfect Fall/Halloween YA read that I really loved so I am VERY excited for this YA retelling of Rumpelstiltskin. It looks ridiculously atmospheric, full of monsters and fantastically chilling.

Mystery/thriller set at an elite prep school! A group of friends are the prime suspects, thanks to an anonymous source on their school’s social media app, for the murder of their ex-best friend. They race to find the real killer before their anonymous blackmailer can expose all the secrets they’ve been hiding. Totally sounds like a good one for fans of Pretty Little Liars (me, me, me!).

Dark academia vibes for sure! A boarding school with a history of witchcraft and mystery deaths on the campus + two girl who are digging to find out about its past.

Okay I’ve already read this one and you need to put it on your reading list if you are looking for a college-set YA that is vulnerable, sex positive, funny and super voicey (like we are talking Jessica Darling level). It’s about one girl’s ups and downs during her freshman year and had me staying up late to read!

Another dark academia! This one about a girl who is working in the library over the summer at her boarding school who accidentally, thanks to a deal she made with a pain-in-the-butt patron, releases a book bound demon from an ancient grimoire they found which releases a whole host of troubles when this demon will do anything to stay free.

Jeff Zentner is one of my favorite YA authors and I’m so beyond excited for a new one from him (seriously, though, if you haven’t read The Serpent King please remedy that while you wait for this one). This one looks to be a character driven one about a teen boy, and his best friend, who has grown up in a small Appalachian town and has lived through some tough things. The two get a way out of their town when they both get full rides to a boarding school in Connecticut while also grappling with what will be left behind.

Road trip across the country! Hate-to-love romance! Sisters! This one looks so good — it’s about a girl who travels with her influencer sister and a bus full of fellow influencers on a cross country as their “merch girl” over the summer and her bunk mate is the grumpiest guy who becomes her nemesis all summer.

Y’all know how much I love YA novels in verse and here is a new one! This coming of age story sounds so, so good. It’s about a girl who loses her whole family in a car accident and now lives with her aunt but feels so alone and uprooted She ends up on a road trip with a boy, struggling with depression, who is searching for answers to his past and to his roots.

This one sounds SO GOOD! It’s about a teen with a tough home life who uses her gift for talking to the dead to make extra cash when families hire her to talk to their loved ones. Things change when she accidentally resurrects one the people she summoned and she realizes that’s an even more lucrative business for her to make money — all while dealing with a ghost who has threatened her to stop summoning and soon dark forces swirl around her. 

“The Coldest Girl in Coldtown meets They Both Die at the End” WHAT? Okay. Someone hold me. This is a vibe.

It’s about a girl who sets out on a trip to New Orleans, with her estranged best friend, to find a vampire to save her dying father.

A magical sickness is tearing through the land and has struck Finley, one of the Princes of the royal family and best friend of the main character Rora, leading Rora (a shapeshifter) on a quest for the cure in the dangerous wilderness she swore she’d never return to after growing up there.

This premise sounds EXACTLY like the show Manifest except maybe less convoluted with the different things that show tried to be and more so focusing on the main character trying to come to term with life after.

It’s about a girl who gets on a flight in 1995 but when she lands she, and her fellow passengers, find out that they have been missing for 25 years. Obviously a lot has changed, like her best friend and boyfriend being married, that she must grapple with.

I absolutely loved Fable this year (gotta start Namesake soon) so I’m excited to check out a new book (a standalone) from this author set in that same world but a different place/family — aka the Roth crime family and the girl trying to belong to her long lost family.

Sounds a bit like a Robin Hood retelling of sorts and I am definitely intrigued!

A kingdom, ruled ruthlessly by a king who was thrust into power after an assassination, is on the brink of collapse thanks to a sickness that’s killing people and also causing a lot of discord between its sectors. Out in the Wilds, a young girl is sick of people dying and being ignored by the royals so she’s been stealing moonflower from the rich and helping her people with an elixir cure. As things gets worse and her friend is captured for their endeavor, she hatches a plan to sneak into the palace.

Tiffany D. Jackson is one of my favorite YA authors at this point — seriously all of her books leave me with my mouth hanging wide open. This one is exciting because it is a psychological thriller that they are saying is The Haunting of Hill House meets Get Out — two things I thought were fantastic.

The main character and her newly blended family are getting a fresh start after she tarnishes her reputation and have moved from California to a small Midwestern town. They move into a free home to given to them by the company her mom works for. Soon after moving, it becomes something is not quite right about this house OR the town.

Is it clear I’m very into the vampires again from how many of these picks have vampires? This one is “John Tucker Must Die with a feminist girl gang of vampires.”

This one is the best story of how this book happened and I have been excited for it since these tweets. Like I LOVE THIS PREMISE — girl turns into a vampire to be with her One True Love for all of eternity (a la Twilight) and then years later the dude leaves her and she’s stuck with crimped hair and regret. Until she meets two of his other exes, who he also turned and then left, and they are on a mission to kill him before he turns another girl — a girl who she finds herself super attracted to.

This romcom/coming of age story looks so fun! It’s about two exes, one who ghosted the other with no explanation that ended their secret relationship, who are reunited when they find out their siblings are going to be married. Kiran tries to prevent the wedding from happening, because she suspects a secret that the brother is keeping, and Deen does everything to make sure the wedding goes on because he wants his brother to be happy.

Paranormal horror + thriller elements + friendship + feminism+ small towns. The summary is pretty vague but those are the key things I pulled from it and you will find me with this book on a chilly Fall day. Definitely a book with all the autumn vibes!

A young dock worker is running from his past, in an 1890’s London that no longer has magic, and discovers his destiny to train with magic and fight in an ancient battle against the Dark King’s return — a battle between the young descendants of the Dark and the Light from the ancient war from before.

Pan-African inspired fantasy following two teens, one indentured to the Night Zoo and the other the son of a decorated hero, on their journey into a magical jungle to find the monster menacing their home before they become its prey.

Tragic reincarnation love story. Let me say that again — TRAGIC REINCARNATION LOVE STORY. That’s all I needed to know to be honest but THEN the marketing copy had to go and say Outlander meets The Sun Is Also A Star. Whatever the case may actually be — I’m really excited about this story about two teens who relive their love story over and over again, in different times, until they finally discover what they need to do to break the cycle.

Kathleen Glasglow writes some hard-hitting, powerful realistic YA (tackling tough subjects in YA) and this one sounds like another to add to that. This one, set in a small town, explores the impact of addiction on that town after a tragedy — particularly that of the main character and her family.

Love morally grey characters? Love things that are dark and terrifying? Incorporating Japanese folklore, it’s about a young woman who works as Reaper in England, not accepted by her fellow Reapers because of her heritage, she tries to prove herself and find acceptance in Japan among her fellow reapers by taking on the task to find and kill three dangerous demons.

Love thrillers with a huge revenge plot? This one is about a girl who is haunted by her kidnapper, who is still taunting her years later with notes and threats of coming back for her, and decides to fight back by exacting revenge when she reconnects with 3 old friends who want revenge on those who wronged them.

Anastasia retelling! I really do love historical fiction related to Romanovs/Russian Revolution so I’m eagerly anticipating this book.

I adored Eric Smith’s Don’t Read The Comments and I’m very excited for this book. Set in Old City Philadelphia, it’s about a teen who is trying to save his late father’s failing pinball arcade from the tech mogul who wants to turn it into another one of his gaming cafes. When he and the daughter of the tech mogul, once former friends turned enemies, are snowed in together at the arcade they rekindle their friendship and maybe even something more.

No doubt this book is going to have the city of Philly being a character itself with Philly’s own Eric Smith writing it! But I’m so excited for it all — the romance, the tension, the grief, the potentially Philly Twitter war. Going to be a perfect wintry read, I think!

“An aspiring magician dons an enchanted disguise in order to take revenge on her rival, only to discover they are both entangled in a dangerous game of court intrigue.” ←- that was the initial description I saw and OOF I have a mighty need for this. Pitched as The Night Circus meets The Cruel Prince.

This one is set in the 18th century in the Scottish Highlands and inspired by “The Wild Swans” fairy tale!! Feels like it’s going to be one of those lush settings with enchanting magic books. It tells the story of a young witch, with raw magic, who needs to learn how to tame it after the death of her mother brings about some events that release a curse on her family causing her to flee to save them and dodge strangers who want her magic for their own benefit.

I will pick up any book about friendship breakups! This one looks like an interesting one that explores, through two different timelines, what went disastrously wrong between the friend group. 

A twist on Back to the Future about a gay teen, unable to go to prom with his boyfriend thanks to school rules, who bumps his head and time travels back to 1985 to when his parents were in high school to save a closeted teen’s life from the tragic end he knows that he meets that lives on his school’s history.

Brothers Grimm meets Game of Thrones in this story about two siblings, who each receive half of the kingdom intended to be ruled together when their father dies, but one isn’t satisfied and wages an invasion on the other causing much death and destruction. When the dust settles, the sister rises up with survivors to take back the whole kingdom.

This just might be one of my most anticipated YA fantasies!! It’s an Ethiopian-inspired fantasy retelling of JANE EYRE!!! I am salivating.

It’s been awhile since I’ve read a mermaid YA and this one sounds mind-blowingly good. It’s about a mermaid who goes against the ancient decree and saves a boy who falls into the sea instead of collecting his soul who must now take a dangerous journey to make amends with the gods.

It’s set in a world like ours but everybody has small bits of magic, a unique aptitude, that can help them get through the day. The main character Vera has started to feel like she’s forgetting something big — like huge parts of her life are just missing like a gaping hole within her. When she finds out she’s not the only one feeling this way, she and her best friend set out to find out who or what is causing this and fix it.

Karen McManus is my new go-to when it comes to fast YA thrillers I can’t put down so I’m excited, even if I have to wait til the end of the year, to get my hands on this one! Ferris Bueller but make it murder-y.

A lesbian vampire is hired to recruit a human girl with the power to see the death of anyone she touches, still reeling from her brother’s death she couldn’t prevent, to stop a paranormal killer on the streets.

A cute romance about two best friends, one a cynic and one a hopeless romantic, who try to teach each other about love after another heartbreak leads to lessons in how not to fall in love — lessons that might not have anticipated falling in love with one another. Friends to lovers goodness!