The 15 Best Young Adult Novels of 2015

#8: RED QUEEN, by Victoria Aveyard

“I told you to hide your heart once. You should have listened.”

The hype is very real for Red Queen. This is because it is part Game of Thrones, Hunger Games, and Avatar. You guessed it – the book definitely involves political games of life-and-death! And everyone loves that, including me! Red Queen also features lots and lots of sinister political intrigue, a bit of a dystopian unequal world complete with rebels and a plucky heroine with newfound unique power. It’s got all the elements to make it addictive, and it is. (I stayed up all night reading this and then subsequently forced my sister to read it the next day so we could discuss. Maybe my sister is slightly oppressed by my forceful book ways, but she too agreed it was addictive.) Red Queen is the kind of book you wish you’d sat down to write with all the fantasy being thrown around these days. Features: high adventure, dystopia, addictive political games, and people with cool powers.

#9: THE LAST EVER AFTER, by Soman Chainani

“To find a happy ending with someone else, first you have to find it alone.”

“The School for Good & Evil is an epic journey into a dazzling new world, where the only way out of a fairy tale is to live through one.” In the village of Gavaldon where children are taken every four years to The School for Good and Evil to become fairy-tale characters, the beautiful and vain Sophie and morbid, bitter Agatha are best friends despite their contrasting personalities. Sophie practices being a shining fair maiden and “good” qualities while Agatha reeks of evil with her terrible cat, witch-like mother and cemetery-hangout spot. But their fortunes are reversed when Sophie finds herself in the School for Evil with classes like “Uglification, Death Curses, and Henchmen Training, while Agatha finds herself in the School For Good, thrust amongst handsome princes and fair maidens for classes in Princess Etiquette and Animal Communication. But what if the mistake is actually the first clue to discovering who Sophie and Agatha really are…?”

Soman Chainani’s YA/Middle-Grade fantasy series about the schools that fairy-tale characters attend to prepare for their fairytales is exposing, explosive, tears-of-laughter funny, good-humored and an incredibly deep tale of two best friends. Friendship and identity are explored so thoroughly in this trilogy as Chainani takes fairy tales apart for us to analyze them so, so much further. It only makes sense that his senior thesis at Harvard discussed why evil women make irresistible fairy tale villains. The School for Good and Evil series is brilliant.  (And romantic, charming, and to be a movie soon. Plus contains a lovable character named Agatha. READ IT NOW!)

If you are a Disney fan, I think this book is a thought-provoking must-read – just because of how it dissects the fairytale world so cleverly. Chainani’s world building – magical schools with a rich history, crusty and beautiful professors, and classes like Beautification versus Uglification make it one of the most interesting and ground-breaking books I’ve read about good and evil and the shades in between. The Last Ever After is the conclusion to the trilogy – be sure to start with The School for Good and Evil! Honestly, the themes in this book resonated with me deeply – self-love, friendship, evil versus good – and I will force all children and adults alike to read these books. Features: near-Harry-Potter-level brilliance, magic, and deepness.

#10: P.S. I STILL LOVE YOU,  by Jenny Han.

“There are two kinds of girls in this world. The kind who breaks hearts and the kind who gets her heart broken.”

Imagine if all your crushes came back to your life because they read your diary-like letters to them?! That’s what happens to the nauseatingly cute Lara Jean in Jenny Han’s latest duology, To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before. The plot sounds mortifying but more importantly, it answers the question of what would’ve happened if we told our crushes we’d liked them. (Honestly, it was pretty exciting to read, since potential rejections are much higher stakes than any life/death fantasy plots!)

Lara Jean’s quirky cuteness and the way she obsessed about baking, clothing, and volunteering with old people was endearing, and it’s pleasant to read this book and get lost in the old days of high school. Reading this is the equivalent to listening to T. Swift’s older albums and cleaning up your house during the Christmas season. So….it’s something you definitely want to do. PS I Still Love You is the sequel to the first book, To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before.  Features: adorable romance, unrequited love, high-school-cuteness, and all the crushes!

#11: END OF DAYS, by Susan Ee.

“You’ve fought off a gang of men twice your size, killed an angel warrior, stood up to an archangel, and wielded an angel sword.” Raffe cocks his head. “But you scream like a little girl when you see a maggot?”

End of Days is the last novel in the Penryn & The End of Days trilogy. The series takes place six weeks after less-than-heavenly angels have attacked earth and the apocalypse is near. Penryn is struggling to survive with her mother and sister among gangs when two things happen: her sister is taken by angels and she saves a crippled but mouthy angel, planning to force him to help find her sister. These two characters from enemy worlds are forced to travel and hide together as they embark on a dangerous quest that they must rely on the other for! I love apocalyptic-fight-to-survive books.

You know that addictive feeling you get whenever you reread The Hunger Games? That original surge of this intense feeling as you read about Katniss fighting, plotting and being strikingly tough to survive? That’s how Angelfall is – but in a very different, non-dystopian way. In Angelfall, the world is in the midst of crumbling, wherein dystopian novels, it’s usually crumbled about 50-100 years before. The romance in this book was intense but humorous in that Raffe and Penryn went from being enemies forced to work together, to partners falling in love as they swapped witty comments along the way. Penryn was one of those truly awesome heroines. She was admirable in the sense that she was often rescuing herself and everyone around her while humorously wishing for someone to come save her even as she sighed and had to do it herself. Features: fantastic writing, a hot angel named Raphael, fierce heroine, and apocalyptic life.

#12: BURN (The Rephaim 4),  by Paula Weston

For some reason, a kick-butt girl finding out she is a half-angel from a hot, snarky blonde guy never gets old to me. 21 year-old-me loved reading the first book in this series as much as 15-year-old-me loved reading City of Bones for the first time…and I seriously loved that book. Gaby is living a hazy, sad life in Australia as she tries to recover from her twin brother’s terrible death the year before. She dreams weird dreams about killing demons until the guy in her dreams appears in real life and tells her she’s part of the Nephilim race and used to be one of the most fearsome warriors around town. Amnesia stories get me every time! And so did The Rephaim, because reading about Gaby re-learning about her life and this new world was compelling and quite interesting. I mean, what would you change if you re-entered your life with no memories or biased knowledge against others? Also, it was crazy romantic – books with witty angelic characters named Raphael, I’m yours! Features: snarky half-angels, amnesia plot, and Australia.

#13: ALL THE BRIGHT PLACES, by Jennifer Niven

“It’s my experience that people are a lot more sympathetic if they can see you hurting, and for the millionth time in my life I wish for measles or smallpox or some other easily understood disease just to make it easier on me and also on them.”

Goodreads summary:

“The Fault in Our Stars meets Eleanor and Park in this exhilarating and heart-wrenching love story about a girl who learns to live from a boy who intends to die.”

My much-improved summary:

Mental health, teens, much feels, much cry, very well written.

Undoubtedly, you will cry during this book. It’s not my typical go-to fantasy or contemporary romance, but it’s an important YA book about mental health, family, friendship, and love. Regardless of synopsis or characters, Jennifer Niven is an excellent writer – she could write any story, about anything, and I would read it because her dialogue, characters, and words are just plain good. Not entrancing or lyrical or alive – just good.

Features: great names like ‘Finch’ and ‘Violet’, real and deep contemporary writing, and humor.

#14: LAIR OF DREAMS, by Libba Bray

“You can’t blame a fella for kissing the prettiest girl in New York, can you, sister?” Sam’s grin was anything but apologetic. Evie brought up her knee quickly and decisively, and he dropped to the floor like a grain sack. “You can’t blame a girl for her quick reflexes now, can you, pal?” – The Diviners

No joke, I have waited for the sequel to the electrifyingly fabulous Diviners for three years. Libba Bray’s latest creepy historical fantasy takes place in New York in the 1920s and has a sinister plot involving 6 characters realizing they have other-worldly powers. The Diviners, in true Libba Bray fashion, combines mystery, just enough romance, historical fantasy and the supernatural in a way that defines Bray as one of the best writers in YA. While The Diviners focuses more on stoic Jericho and outgoing doll faced Evie, Lair of Dreams gives more chapter time to Henry, Sam, Theta and a newcomer, Ling. If you only read this for Libba’s funny one-liners that reference old-timey phrases, it’s worth it. While I would give The Diviners ten stars out of five, Lair of Dreams fell to five stars out of five. A weird scale, I know, but Libba Bray writes the best kind of weirdness. Features: many romances, supernatural creepiness, teasing romances, and the 1920s.

#15: A Court of Thorns and Roses, by Sarah J. Maas

“You look . . . better than before.” Was that a compliment? I could have sworn Lucien gave Tamlin an encouraging nod. “And you hair is . . . clean.”

This book is an agonizingly romantic Beauty & the Beast retelling with tall faeries. Also, it has a hot Spring faerie named Tamlin and a Hunger-Games-style fight for love, kingdom and survival. We swoon, we hope Feyre dismembers people, and we laugh in this book filled with sacrifice, love, and hot enemies. If you are a fan of the highly-rated Uprooted, this starts off a bit similar (attractive young ‘beast’ taking young girls as payment only to treat them with kindness and love). Features: big-time romance, fantasy, and a retelling.

Bonus Book: CARRY ON, by Rainbow Rowell

“It’s just—I really hoped there’d be sandwiches.”

If you’ve read Fangirl, you know that throughout the book Cath fangirls over two characters, Baz and Simon, from a fictional series very similar to Harry Potter. Carry On was written by Rowell to pay homage to those characters, and it reads like a well-done Harry Potter fanfiction. The plot, humor, side characters and magical world are there and fine to read (I especially liked Rowell’s humorous version of spells) but the book was primarily written JUST FOR SHIPPING PURPOSES OF BAZ AND SIMON. I have never known a love so deep, and honestly, you will root for these characters from page one. It’s great, fun writing (who wouldn’t like to read an enjoyable HP fanfic?) and Baz and Simon truly steal the show with their torrid, slow-burn romance.

NOTES

• 9/15 of these books feature hate-to-love romances. Either I’m biased, or that kind of romance makes for the best stories. Maybe both? Additionally, many of these are sequels. 2015 was a year for the conclusions to many trilogies, and I reveled in it.
• I realize I used my extensive vocabulary of words like ‘amazing, brilliant, clever, favorite’ to describe all of these books. How can you say that about all of them, Amirah, if those superlatives are supposed to apply to singular books to highlight individual awesomeness? I don’t know, readers, but I tell you this: you just must read all of them.
• Finally, if you think this post seems to have been an attempt to catalog the photos I took with best-selling authors, you might be right.

There are a lot of great 2015 books I’ve surely missed because I did not devour books fast enough and partially because so many cute boys kept interrupting me as I read in the cafeteria at work. (Can you blame them?) I’ve heard Uprooted, Winter, I Was Here, These Shallow Graves, My Heart and Other Black Holes, and Red Rising were also very good. Comment below on if you agree with my top picks for young adult novels of 2015 or on which books I’ve missed and need to read!

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