Best Young Adult Books of 2025*
*In my humble opinion, and in no particular order. These are all books that I read and enjoyed throughout the year:
Blood in the Water by Tiffany D. Jackson (Catalog Link | Hoopla Audiobook + eBook)
Genre: Mystery, Thriller
Target Audience: Middle Grade
Tiffany D. Jackson was the winner of the 2025 Margaret Edwards Award, which celebrates a young adult literature author’s whole body of work. Blood in the Water is Jackson’s first middle grade title, and I think she nailed it. Kaylani travels from her Brooklyn home to spend the summer in Martha’s Vineyard with her frenemy London. Kaylani is not looking forward to the trip, only wanting to work on exonerating her father, who’s in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. While she’s preoccupied with that, a teen shows up dead on the beach. His death is ruled an accident, a shark attack, but Kaylani thinks this explanation doesn’t add up.
Kaylani is a smart and determined character. I would love to see this book get turned into a mystery series starring her. The book is short, meaning the tension in the narrative escalates quickly, adding to the excitement of the mystery. As always, Jackson highlights important socioeconomic and racial issues over the course of the narrative. These stylistic choices make the characters feel fully fleshed out, with a past, present, and future.
The Space Cat by Nnedi Okorafor (Catalog Link)
Genre: Graphic novel, science fiction, adventure
Target Audience: Middle Grade
Everyone who knows me knows I love cats and books, so of course I love books about cats! Nnedi Okorafor is also my favorite living author, so I had to check out both this and the other book she published this year: Death of the Author. When I was a kid, I used to write and illustrate stories about my cat going on adventures. The Space Cat is a really cool example of what that creative impulse can look like at a professional level.
Pumpernickel Pickle Periwinkle Chukwu Okorafor (or Periwinkle for short) believes himself to be the best, as all cats do. He builds a spaceship and races an alien cat between through the cosmos while his humans sleep. He travels with his family to Nigeria, where cats are not well liked. Even so, he wins lots of friends to his side. He learns through his travels that both on- and off-planet adventures are equally exciting.
Hollow by Taylor Grothe (Catalog Link)
Genre: Horror, fantasy
Target Audience: Young Adult
Cassie is returning to her upstate New York neighborhood after four years. In all that time, she hasn’t spoken to her childhood friends, but but they welcome her back into the group and invite her to a go on a hike with them. Multiple people have gone missing on the hiking path they’ve chosen, though. Their first night, Cassie gets separated from the rest of her friends, hurts her foot, and doesn’t really remember how the separation happened. A kindly stranger allows her to stay in his cottage, which seems to have popped out of nowhere. This debut novel is full of spine-tingling eeriness. The mystery at the heart of it will have you wondering who in the narrative is truly trustworthy.
This Thing of Ours by Frederick Joseph (Catalog Link | Libby eBook | Hoopla Audiobook)
Genre: Realistic fiction
Target Audience: Young Adult
What happens to a dream deferred? Ossie is forced to explore this question when he tears his ACL and can no longer aspire to being a star basketball player. Recovering from his injury, Ossie starts his senior year feeling aimless until others encourage him to lean more into his academic strengths. He’s chosen to participate in a competitive, prestigious writing program, where he makes new friends and reads literature that makes him feel affirmed. Unfortunately, not everyone in the class appreciates the diverse themes in the books the teacher chooses for the class. A group goes viral complaining that the teacher and the books are “woke.” Ossie and his new friends work hard to try to defend the teacher and the important lessons they’ve learned.
Frederick Joseph examines what it’s like to have to re-orient your life and find hidden strengths. I also loved the way Ossie’s friendships were shown, how they grew to trust one another, even through conflict.
The Golden Boy’s Guide to Bipolar by Sonora Reyes (Catalog Link)
Genre: Realistic fiction
Target Audience: Young Adult
Reeling from the parental rejection he and his sister receive from their father for being queer, Cesar tries to suppress his bisexuality and only date girls from now on. He’s trying to just stay friends with his ex Jamal, even though they still have feelings for one another. Under the stress of being a high-achieving student and all around golden boy, Cesar begins to think that his anti-depressants aren’t helping him, and he decides to stop taking them. Hijinks ensue.
Fans of the protagonist Yamilet of Reyes’ debut novel The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School will love this spinoff focusing on her brother. I tend not to like the common trope of “mentally ill person goes off their meds,” but I feel that Reyes handled this topic responsibly and with care.
The Yomigaeri Tunnel by Kelly Murashige (Catalog Link | Libby Audiobook | Hoopla Audiobook)
Genre: Fantasy, speculative fiction
Target Audience: Young Adult
What would you do to bring someone you care about back from the dead? Urban legend has it that you can resurrect someone by making it through the Yomigaeri Tunnel, but no one knows anyone who’s succeeded. Monika seeks the tunnel to bring back Shun, who died before the rest of the class graduated. Along the way, Monika confronts memories of other people she’s lost, and what seems like a simple quest becomes a lot more complicated. In Monika, Murashige captures what it’s like to extend care for community members, even those you didn’t know very well. The narrative explores the discrepancy between memories of a person after they’ve died and the person they were in life, all while incorporating aspects of Japanese folklore and spirituality.
All the Noise at Once by DeAndra Davis (Catalog Link)
Genre: Realistic fiction, sports
Target Audience: Young Adult
Aiden, a high school junior, wants nothing more than to play on the same football team as his older brother Brandon, a senior. However, Aiden has a meltdown during his tryout and almost doesn’t make the team. One night, a fight between the teammates attracts the attention of the police, and Brandon is accused of assaulting an officer. Although Aiden is present, he can’t see anything. However, he’s determined to clear his brother’s name. The relationship between Brandon and Aiden is at the heart of this book. The brothers’ support of and care for one another is portrayed in a genuine and deep way. I loved that one of their forms of bonding is exchanging animal facts, something I also love to do.
This book is also recommended in the Maplewood Library’s Neurodiversity-Affirming Book List
If It’s You, I Might Try Falling in Love by Maru Kubota (Vol. 1 Catalog Link)
Genre: Manga, Realistic Fiction, Romance
Target Audience: Young Adult
If you’re looking for a sweet, slow, slice-of-life romance, this is the series for you. Amane is a new high school student in the town of Enoshima, where he’s now living with his grandma. Shortly after moving, he meets Ryuuji, a kind, generous boy who works at his family’s restaurant. Amane tends to push people away before they can hurt him, having been rejected for being gay in the past. Is Ryuuji someone he can trust not to break his heart?
This series technically started in 2022, but the English translations just began coming out this year. I’m looking forward to the third installment in 2026!
The Forgotten Teachers by Brian Isett, Illustrated by Claudia Biçen (Catalog Link | Hoopla eBook)
Genre: Nonfiction, Ecology, Earth Science
Target Audience: General
While this book is not a teen book per se, it’s on the long list for the Garden State Teen Book Awards. Through art and poetic prose, Isett and Biçen depict how our planet came into existence, why it works the way it does, and how all species are interdependent. The illustrations are gorgeous, mimicking the beauty of illuminated manuscripts.
While I’m typically agnostic to format, in this case I’d highly recommend the physical print book, rather than the eBook version. The eBook does not capture the intentional formatting of the print version, which means the reader is left with large blocks of text that are not present in the latter.
Illustra Book 1: Daybreaker (Catalog Link | Libby eBook | Hoopla eBook)
Genre: Graphic Novel, Fantasy
Target Audience: Middle Grade
A celebration of the culture, folklore, and languages of the Philippines, Illustra Book 1: Daybreaker is beautiful, funny, and heartfelt. I’m sure the rest of the volumes in the series will be just as fun. Mika is an outcast at her boarding school, forging her dead grandmother’s signature on forms to be able to stay on campus during the summer. Fellow students Halle and Matteo blame Mika for getting them in trouble and forcing them to have to spend the summer in detention with her. Soon, though, they encounter magic, and Mika learns her grandmother’s stories were not just stories after all.
The Girl You Know (Catalog Link)
Genre: Murder Mystery, Thriller, Dark Academia
Target Audience: Young Adult
Author of romance novels such as 10 Things I Hate about Prom and Caught in a Bad Fauxmance, Elle Gonzalez Rose takes a darker turn in this book. Luna knows her twin sister Solina’s death was not the accident most other people think it is. When the police give up investigating, Luna goes to her sister’s elite private boarding school, pretending to be Solina, to find answers. There, Luna learns Solina was a completely different person at school than at home. Solina’s classmates also have their own mysteries to them, and Luna needs to solve them before she gets targeted next.
In this book, Gonzalez Rose explores what it’s like to struggle financially in a small town, only to have a loved one with a bright future snuffed out. The book also explores class and race dynamics, the emotional toll of sacrificing for one’s family, and how hard it is for talented people to achieve greatness if they come from modest means. The pacing and side characters are both very well developed.
Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins (Catalog Link | Libby Audiobook & eBook | Hoopla Audiobook & eBook)
Genre: Science Fiction, Dystopian
Target Audience: Young Adult
Of course, this book would not be complete without one of the most popular books this year: Sunrise on the Reaping. Across the BCCLS consortium, the 200+ copies of this book have circulated 1647 times (including the Spanish version and the book on CD)!
Something I enjoy about the prequels in The Hunger Games series is that their existence feels necessary, not like frivolous padding. In Sunrise, a young Haymitch is reaped for the second quarter quell, in which the Gamemakers select two boys and two girls from each district. Like all the books in the series, the characters have unforgettable personalities, and other than Haymitch, we get to see some characters from games that took place before. This title gives thorough and heartbreaking insight into how Haymitch came to be the way he is in the rest of the series.
Fable for the End of the World by Ava Reid (Catalog Link | Libby Audiobook & eBook | Hoopla Audiobook & eBook)
Genre: Science Fiction, Dystopian
Target Audience: Young Adult
If you’ve read all the books in The Hunger Games series and you’re looking for similar works, I’d highly recommend this standalone novel. Similar to the world of The Hunger Games, the world of Fable is ravaged by climate change, and most people are struggling to make ends meet. Inesa runs a taxidermy shop with her brother in their impoverished, rundown town. One day, her mother enters Inesa in The Gauntlet, a televised death game, to pay off debts. Inesa, as a Lamb, will have to escape an Angel, a bioengineered assassin. Inesa’s Angel is Melinoë, who struggles with the trauma of ending so many innocent lives in the past. As The Gauntlet progresses, Mel and Inesa will realize they have more in common than they might have thought.
If you’re looking for heartbreaking tension and themes of trust and power, you’re in for a treat with this one.
Do you have any favorite reads for the year? Feel free to send them to teens@maplewoodlibrary.org