New YA Books Hitting Shelves This Week, July 22, 2024

Juliana Zhao’s family has lost their reputation among their small Taiwanese American community because her older sister was disowned several years ago. Juliana is going to fix this: she knows she’s not only an expert on love but she is going to win the Asian Americans in Business Competition, which is a big deal.

But then Juliana’s partner for the competition drops her and she’s forced to partner with Garrett Tsai, best described as her frenemy. They’re working on a dating advice column and they continue to butt heads with how to do it—and as much as Juliana is desperate to win this business competition, she’s recognizing that she might have to face failure.

But is winning what she cares about anyway? Perhaps there’s something more to the world (and to love!) than competition. This is a rom-com for fans of enemies-to-lovers storylines.

Though there have been more stories featuring male-identifying main characters wrestling with eating disorders in recent years, they are still few and far between. Add this one to the small but growing—and necessary—list.

Brett’s stepmother has cancer and he’s been doing whatever he can to avoid facing what that means. This includes really letting himself fall into fantasy worlds, like the comic book series which features characters not too different from those in his own life. Unfortunately, the fantasies he’s been living in are starting to take a hard toll in real life, and now, Brett’s journal full of the truth of what he’s been dealing with, has been leaked online. The whole school now knows about his insecurities and anxieties, and he has to reckon with them.

Fortunately for Brett, he finds solace, companionship, and help in a new friend Mallory. With them, he is able to begin to unravel the hard truths that he’s been burying.

For readers who love mental health narratives, takes on Japanese mythology, and a bent of quirk, this will be one to have on your TBR.

Machi prays at the altar of Japanese goddess of love Benzaiten. Machi asks to be turned into a robot vacuum, not expecting to be heard; Machi has been struggling to speak and struggling in school and therapy following her two best friends choosing to have nothing to do with her. She sees no reason to be human anymore.

Benzaiten doesn’t grant that prayer but does take Machi on an unbelievable adventure. As Machi meets the souls of the dead, which tend to flock toward Benzaiten, she begins to better understand and accept why it is she is human. While she is reminded of everything she has lost, it’s through her rerouted prayer that Machi discovers what it is to be happy, too.

Nell and her friends have rented a vacation house in Florida for spring break to get away from their lives for a bit. But Nell’s secrets didn’t stay at home. They came with, and they’ve decided to team up with the island’s own history of tragedy. Now, the friends are all trapped, with nowhere to go, since the water surrounding their not-so-sweet vacation rental is infested with dangerous beasts and a toxic mist.

It’ll be work to get out. Part of that work—or maybe a whole lot of that work—will involve confronting the secrets and memories that Nell, as well as her friends, wish they didn’t need to. For Nell, it’s reckoning with an assault she experienced a year ago and a shadow that’s followed her throughout her entire life. 

But Nell’s friends all brought their own secrets and together, they’ll need to not only divulge them, they’ll need to use their combined powers to get out of this mess. What results is an angry, powerful, witchy confrontation with monsters, human and otherwise.