New YA Books By Asian American and Pacific Islander Authors

Makiia Lucier grew up in Guam and weaves connections and references to the mythology she grew up with into this romantic fantasy. Main character, Hanalei, is the much-cherished daughter of an old island family. When she becomes deathly ill, her father steals an egg from the royal family to cure his daughter and undo his life’s greatest pain. He also unwittingly condemns her to a life of exile. This book follows her as Hanalei studies her beloved seadragons and eventually crosses paths with the last remaining prince of Tamarind, a matriarchal society in which the prince hopes to cure his own mother of illness.

The first chapter of this book made me so uncomfortable in its observations of (some) privileged teenage girl talk that I almost stopped reading. I felt oddly ill at ease from the first pages. But the voice of the main character, Tara, a trans girl, made me keep going. I had to see how things would develop for her. How would Tara navigate these seemingly smooth but deeply chaotic social waters? Will she decide to keep trying to fit in? Will she be able to forge her own way forward? Will she decide to opt out entirely and find some other community besides the cisgender girls she hangs out with and her trans masculine (sort of/sort of not) friend Liam? I couldn’t leave her until I figured out how it would all turn out. I also really loved this cover design by Liam Woods and photography by Catherine Lee. Like many other readers, I am happy this book is here!

Always happy to read new graphic novels, I was particularly looking forward to this one. The love story part wasn’t the draw, and neither was the Lunar New Year connection, to be honest. I just wanted to see what Gene Luen Yang was doing next. Of course, I already knew and loved LeUyen Pham’s work, particularly in Princess in Black, Real Friends, and Outside, Inside. This book did not disappoint. It is impressive in its approach to several tough things at once: growing up, figuring out your identity and place in your community, and understanding how your family may have made choices you’d rather not face. Many readers should also pick this one up even if they, like me, don’t really care about romance. They will find a lot to appreciate here.

This drops you into a rich world and throws you into the action with the main character, Aryl, as she heads back into the research lab she has been avoiding while trying to maintain something of a life outside through dance and friends. Aryl gives you a short background of her life before a mysterious event kills her lab’s demanding head researcher, with whom she has clashed in the past. Suddenly, she and another assistant researcher, Ver, become the prime suspects and must clear their names. I loved the sci-fi murder mystery cross here. I also loved that Karen Bao included an author’s note about her background and drew attention to her experiences as a PhD student, a woman, and a Chinese American, and as someone who has lived with chronic pain and that some of those elements helped her write this book.

Hazeem is a 17-year-old grappling with grief over the death of his father when he is confronted with the loss of another loved one, his grandmother. Shocked by the second loss, he ends up wishing for her to be granted extra life and comes face-to-face with Time. He must make choices now to decide how to move forward in his life. I enjoyed this and liked the main character immensely, including his internal dialogue, which seemed to be regularly buffeted by the winds of anxiety in a very believable way.