Riot Headline The Best Books of 2024

What Even Is An Oak Tree?

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Kelly and Hannah take a look at the settings present and absent in YA books and what they wish they saw more commonly, then highlight YA set in the rural US and across the globe.

This episode is sponsored by TBR, Book Riot’s subscription service offering reading recommendations personalized to your reading life; Instant Karma by Marissa Meyer with Fierce Reads; and Smash It! by Francina Simone, published by Inkyard Press.

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SHOW NOTES

A Heart In a Body In The World by Deb Caletti

Pointe by Brandy Colbert

The Memory of Light by Francisco X. Stork

Piecing Me Together by Renée Watson

The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer

The Lord of Opium by Nancy Farmer

Journey of Dreams by Marge Pellegrino

Sia Martinez and the Moonlit Beginning of Everything by Raquel Vazquez Gilliland

Disappeared by Francisco X. Stork

The Whippoorwill Award

The Worlds of Words Collection

Like Water by Rebecca Podos

When the Ground is Hard by Malla Nunn

Rural Voices:15 Authors Challenge Assumptions About Small Town America edited by Nora Shalaway Carpenter

Out of Shadows by Jason Wallace

Our Wayward Fate by Gloria Chao

Never Fall Down by Patricia McCormick and Arn Chorn Pond

You Should See Me In a Crown by Leah Johnson

All That I Can Fix by Crystal Chan

Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

After The Fall by Kate Hart

Dear Haiti, Love Alaine by Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite

Learning To Breathe by Janice Lynn Mather

You Must Be Layla by Yassmin Abdel-Magied

Scowler by Daniel Kraus

Bent Heavens by Daniel Kraus

Dare To Disappoint: Growing Up in Turkey by Ogze Salamaci