As promised, here’s my list of 2021 Must Read YA Books. I’m featuring six titles here, but of course I’m tracking a longer list over on Bookshop.org. And while it’s targeted for a teen audience, as a reader who rarely if ever saw herself represented in YA fiction, I’m devouring and championing these stories every chance I get.
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Release Date: February 9, 2021
As someone who grew up in one of the largest Viet-American communities in the United States, I have been ALL OVER Loan Le’s A Pho Love Story. A debut author serving up a romance between teens from two rival pho shop families? Set in Westminster, CA?! Yes, please.
Get A PHO LOVE STORY from The Ripped Bodice | Bookshop.org| IndieBound |Amazon | Apple Books
Release Date: March 16, 2021
In The Firekeeper’s Daughter, 18-year old Daunis Fontaine goes undercover as part of an FBI investigation into a new drug. Feeling like she’s never fit in in her hometown or on the Ojibwe reservation, Daunis is ready for a fresh in college. But she ends up putting those plans aside to take care of her mother. The bright spot in all this is Jamie, the new recruit on her brother’s hockey team.
It becomes clear that Jamie is hiding something. Daunis finds herself pulled into the investigation to help uncover the drug’s source. As the investigation progresses, secrets and lies come to light, and Daunis must contend with “how far she’ll go for her community, even if it tears apart the only world she’s ever known.”
Get Firekeeper’s Daughter from The Ripped Bodice | Bookshop.org | IndieBound |Amazon|Apple Books
Release Date: April 6, 2021
I couldn’t even attempt to write my own summary for this, but it sounds so dark and creepy, I had to put it on the list.
Publisher’s Description: Iris Hollow and her two older sisters are unquestionably strange. Ever since they disappeared on a suburban street in Scotland as children only to return a month a later with no memory of what happened to them, odd, eerie occurrences seem to follow in their wake. And they’re changing. First, their dark hair turned white. Then, their blue eyes slowly turned black. They have insatiable appetites yet never gain weight. People find them disturbingly intoxicating, unbearably beautiful, and inexplicably dangerous.
But now, ten years later, seventeen-year-old Iris Hollow is doing all she can to fit in and graduate high school on time–something her two famously glamorous globe-trotting older sisters, Grey and Vivi, never managed to do. But when Grey goes missing without a trace, leaving behind bizarre clues as to what might have happened, Iris and Vivi are left to trace her last few days. They aren’t the only ones looking for her though. As they brush against the supernatural they realize that the story they’ve been told about their past is unraveling and the world that returned them seemingly unharmed ten years ago, might just be calling them home.
Get HOUSE OF HOLLOW from The Ripped Bodice | Bookshop.org | IndieBound| Amazon| Apple Books
Release Date: May 11, 2021
Sarah Kuhn’s From Little Tokyo with Love reinvents the Cinderella narrative with Rika, an orphaned teen taken in by her aunt and cousins. A chance encounter with Grace Kimura, “America’s reigning rom-com sweetheart, during the Nikkei Week Festival” sets Rika on a search to determine if Grace is actually her mother. In the process, she’ll explore “Little Tokyo’s hidden treasures with cute actor Hank Chen…and maybe…finally” find her place in the world. But happy endings are usually reserved for princesses, can Rika find hers?
Get FROM LITTLE TOKYO WITH LOVE from The Ripped Bodice | Bookshop.org | IndieBound| Amazon |Apple Books
Release Date: May 25, 2021
For every reader who imagined themselves as the average kid who’s actually royalty, but never saw themselves represented, Emiko Jean is bringing us Tokyo Ever After. Izumi Tanaka grew up with a single parent, the only Japanese-Americans in a very white Northern California town. Never knowing her dad, she discovers he’s actually the Crown Prince of Japan. And it sends her to Japan on an adventure to get to know her dad. But it’s not all glamorous. Between the media, conniving cousins and having to learn all the protocols, “Izumi soon finds herself caught between worlds. Will Izumi crumble under the weight of the crown, or will she live out her fairy tale, happily ever after? Sign me up.
Get TOKYO EVER AFTER from The Ripped Bodice | Bookshop.org | IndieBound|Amazon | Apple Books
Release Date: August 3, 2021
Who’s up for a YA thriller set a prep school? When Jamie Ruan, a top-ranked student at Sinclair Prep is found dead, shocked is the only way to describe Nancy Luo’s feelings. But then rumors start to spread via the school’s social media app, speculating that Nancy and three of her friends were responsible.
Sure, the five of them used to be thick as thieves, keepers of each others’ secrets. But somehow the anonymous poster, “the Proctor,” knows them, too. With the threat of losing everything, including scholarships, hanging over them, Nancy and her friends must identify Jamie’s killer before the Proctor lays bare all their secrets. The question is, who’s been holding back?
Get HOW WE FALL APART from The Ripped Bodice | Bookshop.org | IndieBound| Amazon
For more 2021 must reads, check out our list of 2021 Most Anticipated Romance Reads.
