Readers Delight: It’s The Most Anticipated YA Books for 2026!

The “troubled teen” industry has been a long-time fascination, as it was such a cultural phenomenon during my own teen years (the number of daytime TV shows and shows on teen-friendly networks about “bad kids” going to camps or programs to “straighten up” is deeply disturbing to think about!).

This graphic memoir tells Sofia’s story of being stolen from her room at night when she was 13. Two strangers pulled her out of bed and dragged her to a “therapeutic wilderness camp”–something her mother thought she needed because Sofia’s behavior had gotten out of control.

But there was nothing therapeutic about this camp. It was traumatizing, and Sofia would cycle through several more similar “camps” in attempts to make her better behaved. Her story is harrowing, but it’s also darkly funny while eviscerating an unregulated industry that has done untold damage to generations of young people.

(I’m going to make the weirdest comparison here, but trust me: if this is a topic that interests you at all, you need to read Paris Hilton’s Paris: The Memoir, which talks about her experiences that sound eerily similar to Sofia’s).

A queen of YA is back with her first novel since 2019. This story follows a girl named Finley, whose life is upended when her mother announces they’re spending the summer at a family vacation house that Finley didn’t know existed. Finley’s thrown into meeting aunts and cousins that she’s never spent time with before, and she’s found community in the teens who work at her aunt’s diner. She’s also developing feelings for a local boy at the same time her relationship with long-time boyfriend Colin begins to falter. It’s a story of a girl finding herself, her voice, and her passion–something Dessen’s always done so well.

It’s 1918 on Orcas Island, Washington, and Lucy’s spent her life working at the estate of an eccentric shipbuilder. She washed ashore in a canoe as a child, and the shipbuilder took her in. Lucy’s wanted answers that the island can’t give her, but she didn’t want to find those answers by stumbling across her employer’s severed head. Lucy now not only has to ward off the local rumors of a mischievous spirit being the murderer, but she also has been unexpectedly named heir of the estate–putting her future in peril and casting suspicions she may be the killer. Stacey Lee does historical mysteries like none other and this sounds outstanding.

Derrick, a Diné living in Navajo, New Mexico, knows that taking the opportunity to go to school on the East Coast is a ticket to a life he could never otherwise have. But leaving home is hard, especially because it means leaving his great-grandmother behind.

And school? It’s difficult to balance all of the responsibilities Derrick now has, especially as it seems his classmates have no problems doing so. They’re also asking him a lot of questions about his heritage and home, completely unfamiliar with a life that differs from the ones of privilege they live.

As his great-grandmother’s health gets worse, she begs Derrick to come home and leave school behind. But that conversation sparks something in Derrick: he realizes that he knows what he’ll do his term paper on, and it’s his great-grandmother’s experience in federal Native boarding schools.

Having more Native stories from more Native voices is such a treat, and this one looks like a fantastic read about intergenerational trauma and family bonds.

Mesrobian is back with her first novel in several years, and like always, it sounds like it’ll pack a punch. Coming in at just over 200 pages, it follows two teens whose lives have been packed with trauma. Leo and Connor are spending the summer in a rural Minnesota town, where Leo’s mom is renovating her family’s estate–even though she’s not really around watching it happen at all. The two teens begin an intense relationship with one another which only escalates when they stumble upon the bones of two dead people at the estate. They’re obsessed with learning who these two people were, and they’re convinced that those two people are related to their own futures.

There’s no cover for this one as of writing.

Lola and Lisandro are siblings who are actors out to swindle the rich. Lola pretends to be a ghost haunting the home of a wealthy person, while Lisandro pretends to be a spiritualist who can help. Bixby Fairfax, newspaper tycoon and owner of The Coterie estate, is the siblings’ next target. But things start to go wrong the moment Lola and Lisandro decide to switch roles. Weird things keep actually happening at The Coterie, and no matter how hard the siblings try to solve the mystery, they’re dragged further in. Can they pull off their biggest scam or is their act about to be unraveled? This historical thriller sounds fun.