The INSIDER Summary:
• So many outstanding young adult novels across genres came out in 2016.
• Here are 30 picks that will sweep you into their pages.
• American Girls drops some serious truths about what it's like growing up female in America.
It seems many years there's one huge stand-out book that outshines the rest, whether in mass popularity or critical acclaim (or for the true unicorn, both!). This year, however, we had so many outstanding young adult novels that it's incredibly hard to pick a best young adult book of 2016. So, we didn't. Instead we picked 30 stand-out books that if you haven't yet read, you totally need to.
These top-notch YA books are by huge names — Maggie Stiefvater, E.K. Johnston, A.S. King, John Corey Whaley, Sabaa Tahir, and more — and newcomers who are already making their mark on the young adult world. There are series continuations, stand-alones, and the beginnings of what we know will be the next huge set of books we need.
In these stories we're sent to 16th-century England, the underworld, literally across space and time, Prohibition-era Oregon, back to Ketterdam, the time of Dracula, and our never-so-simple everyday modern life. There are fantasies, science fiction stories, magical realism, brutally honest true-to-life contemporaries, historical fiction tales, and everything in between. What they all do have in common is that these 30 books are going to sweep you up into their pages and stay with you for a long time.
When the Moon Was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore
You've never read a book quite like this one, and I mean that in the best way. It's an unconventional, magical realism love story that will wrap you up in its yarn. Miel and Sam have been BFF since she literally spilled out of a water tower when they were children. Miel grows flowers out of her wrist but she crushes and drowns them so the Bonner girls, who everyone knows can enchant any man to fall in love, don't steal them, and Sam holds his own secrets. The two, as you do, fall for each other, but don't expect 300 pages of will-they-won't-they. The story is lush, sexy, and ethereal, making you feel like you've been enraptured by some old fairy tale that, strangely, feels completely modern at the same time.
My Lady Jane by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows
You probably learned in history class that Edward VI and Lady Jane Grey had untimely deaths in 16th-century England, but three YA authors are here to give them new (hilarious) life in My Lady Jane. What if the Nine-Day Queen was never executed for treason? Well, if Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows' imaginations dictated, it would be a super-funny, high fantastical romp through history. It sounds high concept, but it's executed beautifully, giving readers a totally wacky, wisecracking adventure story that has the anachronistic fun of Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette, but much more successful.
The Serpent King by Jeff Zentner
In The Serpent King, Jeff Zentner brings to life an impoverished Southern small town named after a member of the Ku Klux Klan and the outsiders who live there without shying away harsh realities. Though the story drives its way to a brutal act of violence, what shines is the power of friendship through it all. Dill is the son of an incarcerated extremist preacher who is bullied because of his family. Travis is a kind soul who feels desperately out of place in his hometown, and Lydia dreams of traveling to New York to have a career in fashion. Zentner creates these three teenagers who feel almost impossibly real and show how friendship can withstand anything, often even more than family and romantic love.
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