You're Going To Want To Read All Of These New YA Books By AAPI Authors
All The Right Reasons
by Bethany Mangle
This young adult romance is pitched as The Bachelor meets Gilmore Girls and follows our protagonist Cara Hawn, who joins her mother on a reality TV dating show for single parents after her rant online goes viral. In Key West, Cara and her mother star as leads of the show, but there's one problem: Conner — the teenage son of one of the contestants. And he is 100% off limits to Cara. But as the show progresses, Cara struggles with catching feelings for him all while trying to keep how she really feels off-camera.
Queen of the Tiles
By Hanna Alkaf
Pitched as They Wish They Were Us meets The Queen's Gambit set within the competitive world of Scrabble. Najwa Bakri enters her first competition since her friend Trina's death, and many people are eager to take her place as reigning Scrabble champion. But Najwa isn't prepared when Trina's inactive Instagram begins posting again, and they're not just any messages, but cryptic clues that suggest they don't know the full truth about Trina's death. Najwa must figure out who's behind the messages before it's too late.
Bright
By Jessica Jung
Fans of Crazy Rich Asians and Gossip Girl will love this story that centers Rachel Kim, fashion icon and star of a successful K-pop group called Girls Forever. She may have all the glam and fame, but she doesn't have love. This is no big deal to Rachel, because in this industry love can cost you everything. But when Alex steps into her life, that all seems to change. Rachel finds herself drawn to him even as she continues to climb higher in her career. But after a shocking betrayal, Rachel must discover who she can truly trust.
Beauty and the Besharam
by Lillie Vale
In this YA rom-com, Kavya Joshi has always been told she's a little much. In other words, a besharam. It doesn't help that she goes through a very public breakup with her loser boyfriend, which is witnessed by her nemesis, Ian Jun. Kavya decided to lay low for the summer, taking on a job as a party princess. What she doesn't expect is that Ian is cast as the Prince Eric to her Ariel. Fed up with their rivalry, Kavya and Ian's friends convince them to participate in a series of challenges over the summer. And the more time they're forced to spend together, the closer the two become.
I Guess I Live Here Now
by Claire Ahn
K-drama fans will love Ahn's story about a girl named Melody living in New York City, who is eager to know her Korean side of her Korean-American heritage. But being shipped off to Seoul after a slight transgression at school isn't what Melody had in mind in order to grow closer to her roots. Melody doesn't fully embrace Korea at first. She had to leave her friends behind, after all. But as she soon grows to love it, family secrets, broken friendships, and a lost passion get in the way of her new life, leaving her to wonder if it's all worth it.
Tokyo Dreaming
by Emiko Jean
In the first book in this series, we learned that Izumi Tanaka's father is the crown prince of Japan, making her a princess overnight. Now that her parents have reconnected, a wedding is on the horizon. Everything seems to be perfect in Izumi's life until she learns The Imperial Household Council won't approve her parent's marriage, concerned about her mother's lack of pedigree. On top of boyfriend troubles, Izumi's life threatens to fall apart at the seams. Vowing to do what it takes to win over the council, Izumi will discover just how much she'll have to sacrifice for her parent's happily ever after.
Beating Heart Baby
by Lio Min
After Santi accidentally leaks his internet best friend Memo's song, Memo disappears. Three years later, Santi moves to Los Angeles and is determined to forget everything that happened with Memo. He joins the marching band and meets musical prodigy, Suwa. Suwa isn't exactly welcoming at first, but when both boys open up about their identity (Suwa is trans; Santi is queer) they begin to let their guards down around each other. And the closer they become, the harder it becomes to navigate their own dreams and passions, especially when Suwa is offered an opportunity to step into the spotlight.
An Arrow to the Moon
by Emily X.R. Pan
Pan’s highly anticipated sophomore novel is a spectacular modern take on Chinese mythology meets Romeo and Juliet. Told in multiple POVs, the two star players of this novel are Hunter Yee and Luna Chang, whose families strongly dislike each other. But Luna and Hunter are drawn to each other in a mysterious, almost magical way. Even more mysterious and magical is a strange crack spreading throughout their town of Fairbridge, and both Luna and Hunter must navigate family secrets before everything falls apart.
Hollow Fires
by Samira Ahmed
Safiya Mirza is an aspiring journalist and editor of her school newspaper, but everything changes when she tragically finds the body of 14-year-old Jawad Ali. Jawad's cosplay jetpack was mistaken for a bomb, which led to accusations of terrorism, and eventually led to his death. Now Safiya is determined to uncover and tell Jawad's truth, that it was people's hate-based beliefs that led to his murder.
The Silence That Binds Us
by Joanna Ho
May is expected to be the perfect Chinese Taiwanese American, but she finds her world falling apart when her older brother Danny dies by suicide. Now May's parents are faced with racist accusations from those within the community, which blame them for putting too much pressure on Danny. To fight back against the ugly stereotypes, May turns to her passion for writing in order to change the narrative.
A Magic Steeped in Poison
by Judy I. Lin
In this enchanting fantasy debut, Ning is determined to save her sister from a poison that killed their mother, one that currently threatens to kill her too. Her only chance to do this is to enter a royal competition where the winner will be named the greatest Shennong-shi, a master of the magical art of tea-making. The winner will also be granted one favor from the princess, and Ning knows it's her only shot at saving her sister's life.
Only a Monster
by Vanessa Len
This contemporary fantasy debut follows our main character Joan, who has just learned a secret about her family: they're monsters with dark, hidden powers. And the attractive boy Joan works with? He's actually a monster slayer, vowing to do whatever it takes to get rid of Joan and her family. Joan battles with embracing who she is all while being forced to work with Aaron, the heir to a monster family that deeply dislikes her own.
Violet Made of Thorns
by Gina Chen
In this YA fantasy, made for fans of The Cruel Prince and Serpent & Dove, Violet is part of her kingdom's royal court working as a prophet, influencing the court with cleverly phrased divinations. Prince Cyrus plans to rid her of this role once he's crowned at the end of the summer, but things become much more complex when Violet awakens a curse after the king asks her to falsely prophesy Cyrus's love story. Faced with damnation and a difficult choice, Violet must figure out a way to save her kingdom.
The Ivory Key
by Akshaya Raman
This YA fantasy follows four distant siblings — Vira, Ronak, Kaleb, and Riya — who come together to find the Ivory Key, which legend says will lead them to a new source of magic. In their kingdom of Ashoka, magic is the only thing that stands between war and peace. With the magic mines nearly depleted, each sibling has their own reasons who seeking this Ivory Key. They each harbor secrets and conflicting agendas, but in the end they must work together in order to survive.
Night of the Raven, Dawn of the Dove
by Rati Mehrotra
In this forthcoming fantasy, Katyani is bound to the queen of Chandela and expected to become the greatest guardswoman the Garuda has ever seen. But when an assassination attempt threatens the royals, Katyani is sent to guard the prince of Chandela in an esteemed monastic school in Nandovana, known for harboring forest monsters. Katyani would prefer to return to her regular duties, though she doesn't find herself minding Daksh, the Acharya's son. When tragedy strikes, Katyani is pulled from the only life she's ever known. Her only way through is to discover who she really is in order to save what she loves.
If You Could See the Sun
by Ann Liang
This genre-bending novel follows Alice Sun, who attends an elite Beijing international boarding school among wealthy, influential teens. It's here she feels out of place, invisible. But then Alice actually begins to turn invisible. When her parents reveal they can no longer afford her tuition, Alice forms a plan. Using her new power, she'll uncover scandalous secrets that her classmates want to know — revealing them for a price
Boys I Know
by Anna Gracia
June Chu finds it impossible to meet her Taiwanese mother's unrelenting expectations. She gets by with being "good enough," though her mother would prefer if she walked in her perfect sister's footsteps. June would rather focus on making her relationship with her AP Bio partner, Rhys, official. But when that blows up in her face, she finds herself in a relationship with a guy who isn't afraid of commitment. When the pressure to make decisions about her future comes to a boil, June must figure out if she's living for her mother or if she's living for herself.
Travelers Along The Way
by Aminah Mae Safi
A remixed take on the classic story of Robin Hood, Aminah Mae Safi’s foray into the genre of YA historical fantasy is absolutely brilliant with this sharply researched, incredibly funny adventure tale. The aforementioned Robin Hood in this case is a young Muslim girl named Rahma al-Hud, a soldier who later receives a target on her back as the “Green Hood.” Set in Jerusalem during the Third Crusade, Rahma begins traveling away from Akko with her sister Zeena. On their journey, they (of course) encounter a diverse group of misfits, engage in heists, and use the rich to help those in need.
Private Label
by Kelly Yang
This contemporary novel is pitched as The Devil Wears Prada meets Far from the Tree and follows a girl named Serene who is an intern at her mother's fashion label, aspiring to make dresses as beautiful as hers. Everything comes crashing down when her mother is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Now Serene must take over the business while also attempting to uncover what happened with her dad, who left before she was born. Then there is Lian Chen, who moves to Serene's school in SoCal from China. When he starts a Chinese club and Serene joins, he starts to believe it may be worth sticking around. The two slowly begin to find refuge in each other even as their worlds feel out of control.
Wrong Side of the Court
by H.N. Khan
Like any 15-year-old, Fawad Chaudhry has big dreams. He wants to be the world's first Pakistani to be drafted into the NBA. The first step is to make his high school's basketball team. And that's not the only challenge Fawad faces. He'd like to find a girlfriend, and not one his mother wants to set him up with. Then there's Yousuf, his estranged best friend who's grieving the death of his older brother, and Arif, who tends to be a magnet for trouble.
House of Yesterday
by Deeba Zargarpur
Fifteen-year-old Sara has a lot on her plate. Her parents are divorcing, and her beloved Bibi Jan is no longer the person she once was. As a distraction from it all, Sara dedicates herself to her mom's latest home renovation project. But the home is full of secrets that only her Bibi Jan could have known, and Sara soon discovers ghostly apparitions revealing the dark truths of her family's history. As much as Sara wants to cling to her old life, she knows this is the summer that will change everything.
Her Rebel Highness
by Diana Ma
In the sequel to Heiress Apparently, we follow the story of Gemma Huang's mother, Lei, whose own mother homes a secret that could potentially disgrace their family. As the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests unfold, Lei, who has lived a privileged life, makes the decision to join, only to fall for the student leader of the protests. But as things escalate, Lei must make a difficult decision to choose between him or her family.
A Thousand Steps into Night
by Traci Chee
Chee's Japanese-influenced fantasy, set in the realm of Awara, follows Miuko, the innkeeper's daughter. But when Miuko is cursed with transforming into a demon with a deadly touch, she sets out to reverse this dark magic in order to return to her ordinary life. On this quest, she's aided by a magpie spirit, challenges a demon prince, and must escape demon hunters in order to gain what she truly wants. And as she comes into her new power, she must make a hard choice: return to a place where she never really fit in, or break the curse to save her own soul.
This Place Is Still Beautiful
by XiXi Tian
Seventeen-year-old Annalie and her older sister, Margaret, could not be more opposite. Annalie is sweet to Margaret's sharped edges. Annalie is white-passing while Margaret looks like their Chinese mother. Their father abandoned them years ago, forcing her mother to raise her daughters in their small, mostly white Midwestern town alone. When their home is vandalized with a derogatory racial slur, Margaret returns from her internship to find that her mother and Annalie are passive to what happened. Margaret's investigation begins to make the town uncomfortable, and Annalie would prefer to leave it in the past. But as summer stretches on, a huge secret threatens to tear the sister's relationship apart.
The Loophole
by Naz Kutub
In this speculative debut novel, we follow 17-year-old Sy, an Indian Muslim boy who makes a wish for a second chance with his ex, Farouk. To his surprise, a mysterious (and possibly magical?) girl offers him three wishes. And to prove she's the real deal, she instantly deposits a million dollars into his struggling bank account. Now Sy must figure out if he trusts her enough to leave Los Angeles and track down his ex for one last shot at the life he believes he wants.
Flip the Script
by Lyla Lee
Hana is obsessed with K-dramas, so she knows exactly which tropes to avoid when she lands a role in a brand new drama. She's promised to deliver a contracted romance with her costar, the super attractive Bryan Yoon, but doesn't expect for Bryan to actually fall for her. When the team throws in a new actress that challenges Hana's role as the main love interest — someone Hana knows in real life — Hana must do whatever it takes to keep her role while trying NOT to fall for her on-screen rival.
A Scatter of Light
by Malinda Lo
Lo's most recent coming-of-queer-age story is set 60 years after the end of Last Night at the Telegraph Club. We follow Aria Tang West, exiled to California to stay with her grandmother after a graduation party goes wrong. Aria's expectations for summer are rock bottom, but then she meets her grandmother's gardener, Steph. Soon, Aria begins second-guessing who she is and who she wants to become as she gets lost in the working-class queer community Steph introduces her to.
Seoulmates
by Susan Lee
Hannah Cho expected to spend the summer before her senior year with her boyfriend, Nate, but that fantasy comes to an abrupt end when he breaks things off. They don't have anything in common. For instance, Hannah doesn't like K-dramas, but all of her friends, including Nate, are obsessed. She's spent so long shunning the Korean side of her Korean American identity to fit in only to discover it's the very thing that's positioned her as an outsider. But when Hannah's former BFF, a real-life K-drama star, takes a break from his fame to return home, they attempt to piece together what went wrong when they last saw each other all while navigating new feelings that slowly develop between them.
Love, Decoded
by Jennifer Yen
There's a lot of pressure on Gigi Wong to be the best, but she worries about standing out among all of her other brilliant classmates. In order to set herself apart, she decides she must secure the nomination to represent her school in an app writing contest, giving her the chance at a prestigious tech internship. When a new classmate gives her inspiration, she sets out to create a match-making app. But when her app goes viral, it causes a scandal at her school and ultimately hurts her two close friends. Will she be able to repair the damage she's caused?
Rebel Skies
by Ann Sei Lin
This Asian-inspired YA fantasy adventure follows Kurara, a servant who possesses the ability to make paper come to life. But when the empire gets word of her skills, she joins a skyship, along with its motley crew, to become a Crafter. Her mentor, Himura, teaches Kurara how to become a shinigami hunter, wild paper spirits who are sought after by the princess. But upon digging deeper, Kurara begins questioning if these shinigami are mindless creatures or if they're actual beings who possess souls of their own.
The Darkening
by Sunya Mara
If you like sweeping epic fantasies, then follow Vesper Vale, daughter of failed revolutionaries, whose mother was captured and killed by the queen and her cursed storm. Now the queen's soldiers are close to capturing Vesper's father, and she'll stop at nothing to prevent him from that same kind of death. But when Vesper learns there might be more to her mother's history than she previously knew, she'll have to decide if she'll save her city, trust a devious prince with her secrets, or experience the same fate as her mother.
The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea
by Axie Oh
Oh's latest YA fantasy is a feminist retelling of the Korean folktale, The Tale of Shim Cheong. Mina's homeland has been ravaged by storms for generations. Her people believe that the Sea God has cursed them, so each year a beautiful maiden is sacrificed into the sea to serve as the Sea God's bride. They hope one day their suffering will end when the "true bride" is chosen. When her brother's beloved is chosen, Mina sacrifices herself to save them both and is then pulled into the Spirit Realm. There she finds the Sea God is caught in an enchanted sleep, so she seeks help from a mysterious young man named Shin, along with his motley crew, to wake the Sea God and put an end to the devastating storms for good.
The Dragon's Promise
by Elizabeth Lim
Lim's YA fantasy adventure tale follows Princess Shiori, who has sworn to return the dragon's pearl to its rightful owner. In order to do this, she must travel to the kingdom of dragons. But that comes with its own challenges, and Shiori finds herself caught up in the politics of both humans and dragons. In order to succeed, she'll have to fend off thieves and continue to defend the very pearl that threatens to destroy the life and the love she's worked hard to keep.
The Red Palace
by June Hur
Set in 1758 Korea, 18-year-old Hyeon has earned a position as a palace nurse, a difficult task for an illegitimate daughter, but all she wants is to do good work and potentially win her estranged father's respect. Suddenly, four women are murdered in a single night, and Hyeon's closest friend and mentor is painted as the main suspect. In order to try and help, Hyeon begins investigating alongside Eojin, a young police inspector. When evidence begins to reveal that the crown prince may have had a hand in this crime, the two must work together to uncover the deadliest secrets within the palace in order to find the truth.
The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories: A Collection of Chinese Science Fiction and Fantasy in Translation from a Visionary Team of Female and Nonbinary Creators
by Yu Chen
Written, edited, and translated by a female and nonbinary team, these award-winning authors and editors have created an illuminating and enriching Chinese science fiction and fantasy short story collection. Escape to new worlds by diving into these captivating and immersive stories.
