IT'S OFFICIALLY AUTUMN! My favorite season (only partially because it's also my birthday #libraseason). While we are still suffering through up and down heatwaves, I force the fall spirit by drinking all the pumpkin spice things, buying cute coats and booties, and snuggling up in a sweater to read all the new YA releases. There are so many great books that it was difficult to only highlight a few from publishing's busiest time of year. But these titles range from the series installments we've impatiently waited for, to glittering debuts, and romances that will make you swoon all the way through Halloween.
September 2019 Releases
Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell
Simon Snow is back and he's coming to America! The story is supposed to be over. Simon Snow did everything he was supposed to do. He beat the villain. He won the war. He even fell in love. Now comes the good part, right? Now comes the happily ever after... So why can't Simon Snow get off the couch? What he needs, according to his best friend, is a change of scenery. He just needs to see himself in a new light... That's how Simon and Penny and Baz end up in a vintage convertible, tearing across the American West. They find trouble, of course. (Dragons, vampires, skunk-headed things with shotguns.) And they get lost. They get so lost, they start to wonder whether they ever knew where they were headed in the first place...
Serpent & Dove by Shelby Mahurin
Two years ago Louise le Blanc fled her coven and took shelter in the city of Cesarine, forsaking all magic. Sworn to the Church as a Chasseur, Reid Diggory has lived by one principle: Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. Then a wicked stunt forces the two into holy matrimony. Lou is unable to ignore her growing feelings, yet powerless to change what she is. A choice must be made... and love makes fools of us all.
Pet by Akwaeke Emezi
The only world Jam has ever known is that of Lucille, a town where the angels have ostensibly banished the monsters and dismantled the structures that allowed monsters and monstrous deeds to pervade. Lucille is a post-prison, post–school shooting, post–police brutality society. A society where someone like Jam, a selectively mute transgender teen, can live with complete acceptance, support, and love. Still, she can feel the hard truths of the world, can sense them in the air, hear them in words unsaid. When Jam steals into her mother Bitter's painting studio and unleashes Pet , a winged, horned, eyeless creature and monster hunter, from one of the paintings and into their world, life as she's known it begins to dissolve. Jam must confront the harsh realities of her world as she tentatively partners with Pet and ventures forward to avenge a wrong not yet discovered.
American Royals by Katharine McGee
Imagine if, after the Revolutionary War, George Washington became the king of America instead of its president. Fast forward to the present, when America's beloved Princess Beatrice will one day be the country's first queen. It is no longer only a man's role, since Beatrice's grandfather abolished the law so that the first-born could take the throne. But this princess's life isn't all glamour and no drama. Having fallen for a commoner, she must learn to sacrifice for her country, even her true love. Her sister, Princess Samantha, must learn to live in Beatrice's shadow, though she has big problem coming in second in any situation. Her brother, Prince Jefferson, struggles to determine which girl truly loves him and not his title.
The Lady Rogue by Jenn Bennett
Richard Fox is an adventurer and explorer whose 18-year-old daughter, Theodora, would like nothing more than to travel with him—but he insists on leaving her behind. As Theodora wastes away in Istanbul, the last person she ever expects to see appears: Huck, her father's former protégé, exiled when he and Theodora were caught in a compromising position. He brings news that Theodora's father has vanished on a quest to find the missing ring of Vlad the Impaler, and it's up to Theodora and Huck to journey across Romania to find him, ignoring their feelings for each other along the way. But as they venture deeper into the Carpathians, the legends surrounding Vlad's ring—Dracula's ring—grow murkier: there's true dark magic here, and people willing to go to extreme lengths for what they want.
Frankly in Love by David Yoon
High school senior Frank Li is a Limbo–his term for Korean-American kids who find themselves caught between their parents’ traditional expectations and their own Southern California upbringing. His parents have one rule when it comes to romance–“Date Korean”–which proves complicated when Frank falls for Brit Means, who is smart, beautiful–and white. Fellow Limbo Joy Song is in a similar predicament, and so they make a pact: they’ll pretend to date each other in order to gain their freedom. Frank thinks it’s the perfect plan, but in the end, Frank and Joy’s fake-dating maneuver leaves him wondering if he ever really understood love–or himself–at all.
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