Best January - June 2024 Young Adult Book Releases

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It's time to build your 2024 reading list. Here are the upcoming young adult book releases that caught my attention.

Note: Publishing is notorious for changing release dates. Don't blame me if these are wrong! I tried.

❆  Best January - June Young Adult Book Releases  🌞

Somewhere In The Deep by Tanvi Berwah

Fantasy

January 9, 2024

Seventeen-year-old Krescent Dune is buried under the weight of her dead parents’ debt and the ruinous legacy they left behind. The only way she can earn enough money to escape her unforgiving island is by battling monstrous creatures in an underground fighting pit. After a fight goes terribly wrong, she’s banned from the pits. Now hopeless, she is offered a deal: in exchange for the erasure of her debts, she must join and protect a hunting party for a rescue mission deep within the mining caves beneath the island.

Krescent is determined to keep her head down and fulfill her role as the dutiful bodyguard, even though she is trapped underground with her childhood enemy and a company of people who would gladly kill her if they knew who her parents were. As they come across creatures she believed only existed in legends, it becomes clear they are in far more danger than she could have imagined. But someone doesn’t want her to make it out alive. And she’ll have to figure out who before she’s left alone . . . in the dark.

Why I want to read it: Cave monsters! I love caves and think they're an underutilized setting for books. I was searching for fiction set in caves and discovered this one. Now I'm obsessed with the cover and premise and need to read it immediately.

Buy it on Amazon

The Bad Ones by Melissa Albert

Fantasy
February 20, 2024

In the course of a single winter’s night, four people vanish without a trace across a small town.

Nora’s estranged best friend, Becca, is one of the lost. As Nora tries to untangle the truth of Becca’s disappearance, she discovers a darkness in her town’s past, as well as a string of coded messages Becca left for her to unravel. These clues lead Nora to a piece of local folklore: a legendary goddess of forgotten origins who played a role in Nora and Becca’s own childhood games . . .

Why I want to read it: Goodreads calls it "a poison-pen love letter to semi-toxic best friendship, the occult power of childhood play and artistic creation, and the razor-thin line between make-believe and belief." I hope it's just as creepy as the author's other book, The Hazel Wood. I loved that one.

Buy it on Amazon

The Poisons We Drink by Bethany Baptiste

Urban Fantasy

March 5, 2024

In a country divided between humans and witchers, Venus Stoneheart hustles as a brewer making illegal love potions to support her family.

Love potions is a dangerous business. Brewing has painful, debilitating side effects, and getting caught means death or a prison sentence. But what Venus is most afraid of is the dark, sentient magic within her.

When an enemy's iron bullet kills her mother, Venus’s life implodes. Keeping her reckless little sister Janus safe is now her responsibility. When the powerful Grand Witcher, the ruthless head of her coven, offers Venus the chance to punish her mother's killer, she has to pay a steep price for revenge. The cost? Brew poisonous potions to enslave D.C.'s most influential politicians.

As Venus crawls deeper into the corrupt underbelly of her city, the line between magic and power blurs, and it's hard to tell who to trust . . . herself included.

Why I want to read it: A revenge story? Sign me up. I love morally gray characters. It also sounds like it has the potential for a lot of plot twists.

Buy it on Amazon

Under This Red Rock by Mindy McGinnis

Mystery

March 19, 2024

Neely’s monsters don’t always follow her rules, so when the little girl under her bed, the man in her closet, and the disembodied voice that shadows her every move become louder, she knows she’s in trouble.

With a history of mental illness in her family, and the suicide of her older brother heavy on her mind, Neely takes a job as a tour guide in the one place her monsters can’t follow—the caverns. There she can find peace. There she can pretend to be normal. There . . . she meets Mila.

Mila is everything Neely isn’t—beautiful, strong, and confident. As the two become closer, Neely’s innocent crush grows into something more. When a midnight staff party exposes Neely to drugs, she follows Mila’s lead . . . only to have her hallucinations escalate.

When Mila is found brutally murdered in the caverns, Neely has to admit that her memories of that night are vague at best. With her monsters now out in the open, and her grip on reality slipping, Neely must figure out who killed Mila . . . and face the possibility that it might have been her.

Why I want to read it: Cave monsters! I love caves. They're a perfect place for monsters and murder. This book sounds like an intriguing mystery. Also, that cover is disturbing.

Buy it on Amazon

Future Tense: How We Made Artificial Intelligence—And How It Will Change Everything by Martha Brockenbrough

Technology Nonfiction

March 19, 2024

Human history has always been shaped by technology, but AI is like no technology that has come before it. Unlike the wheel, combustion engines, or electricity, AI does the thing that humans do: think. While AI hasn’t reproduced the marvelously complex human brain, it has been able to accomplish astonishing things. AI has defeated our players at games like chess, Go, and Jeopardy!. It’s learned to recognize objects and speech. It can create art and music. It’s even allowed grieving people to feel as though they were talking with their dead loved ones.

On the flip side, it’s put innocent people in jail, manipulated the emotions of social media users, and tricked people into believing untrue things.

Why I want to read it: Like pretty much everybody else, I'm fascinated and terrified by AI. Is it going to take my job? What will it do to art? How will we know what's true? This book explores how "AI has touched every corner of our world, including education, healthcare, work, politics, war, international relations, and even romance." It sounds interesting.

Buy it on Amazon

Icarus by K. Ancrum

Mythology Retelling
March 26, 2024

Icarus Gallagher is a thief.

He steals priceless art and replaces it with his father’s impeccable forgeries. For years, one man—the wealthy Mr. Black—has been their target, revenge for his role in the death of Icarus’s mother. To keep their secret, Icarus adheres to his own strict rules to keep people, and feelings, at bay: Don’t let anyone close. Don’t let anyone touch you. And, above all, don’t get caught.

Until one night, he does. Not by Mr. Black, but by his mysterious son, Helios, now living under house arrest in the Black mansion. Instead of turning Icarus in, Helios bargains for something even more dangerous—a friendship that breaks every single one of Icarus’s rules.

As reluctance and distrust become closeness and something more, they uncover the bars of the gilded cage that has trapped both of their families for years. One Icarus is determined to escape. But his father’s thirst for revenge shows no sign of fading, and soon it may force Icarus to choose: the escape he’s dreamed of, or the boy he’s come to love. Reaching for both could be his greatest triumph—or it could be his downfall.

Why I want to read it: Normally, the word "retelling" is an automatic No from me, but I trust K. Ancrum. She's awesome at writing morally gray characters. If you like books about young people who do questionable things, check out The Wicker King. It's a quick, memorable read.

Buy it on Amazon

Otherworldly by F.T. Lukens

Fantasy

April 2, 2024

Seventeen-year-old Ellery is a non-believer in a region where people swear the supernatural is real. Sure, they’ve been stuck in a five-year winter, but there’s got to be a scientific explanation. If goddesses were real, they wouldn’t abandon their charges like this, leaving farmers like Ellery’s family to scrape by.

Knox is a familiar from the Other World, a magical assistant sent to help humans who have made crossroads bargains. But it’s been years since he heard from his queen, and Knox is getting nervous about what he might find once he returns home. When the crossroads demons come to collect Knox, he panics and runs. A chance encounter down an alley finds Ellery coming to Knox’s rescue, successfully fending off his would-be abductors.

Ellery can’t quite believe what they’ve seen. And they definitely don’t believe the nonsense this unnervingly attractive guy spews about his paranormal origins. But Knox needs to make a deal with a human who can tether him to this realm, and Ellery needs to figure out how to stop this winter to help their family. Once their bargain is struck, there’s no backing out, and the growing connection between the two might just change everything.

Why I want to read it: A romance between a skeptic and a magical creature is a hilarious premise. One of my goals is to read happier books. This story sounds fluffier than the chaos and gore I usually read. I'm looking forward to reading something different.

Buy it on Amazon

The Reappearance Of Rachel Price by Holly Jackson

Mystery / Thriller

April 2, 2024

Lights. Camera. Lies.

18-year-old Bel has lived her whole life in the shadow of her mom’s mysterious disappearance. Sixteen years ago, Rachel Price vanished and young Bel was the only witness, but she has no memory of it. Rachel is gone, long presumed dead, and Bel wishes everyone would just move on.

But the case is dragged up from the past when the Price family agree to a true crime documentary. Bel can’t wait for filming to end, for life to go back to normal. And then the impossible happens. Rachel Price reappears, and life will never be normal again.

Rachel has an unbelievable story about what happened to her. Unbelievable, because Bel isn’t sure it’s real. If Rachel is lying, then where has she been all this time? And–could she be dangerous? With the cameras still rolling, Bel must uncover the truth about her mother, and find out why Rachel Price really came back from the dead . . .

Why I want to read it: I don't usually read thrillers, but this one is about a true crime show. I have a love/hate relationship with true crime. I love it because human behavior and forensic science are fascinating. I hate it because it turns murderers into celebrities. I hope this book shows how morally complicated true crime can be.

Buy it on Amazon

Which 2024 books are you looking forward to reading?