2024 Reading Recap: Best YA Books of the Year

Looking back on 2024, young adult fiction readers saw many smart, thrilling, and fantastical books emerge. In this list, we have some of the most exciting reading available for teens and YA readers of all ages from the past year. Add these fast-paced, heartfelt, and fresh reads from our 2024 reading recap to your “to be read” pile.

1. Snowglobe by Soyoung Park. In Soyoung Park’s award-winning dystopian young adult novel, all is not what it seems in Snowglobe, the sunny, green, celebrity-filled city — and the last place on earth that isn’t frozen. Residents of the frozen world (the result of the climate crisis) toil to keep Snowglobe warm. In return, Snowglobe residents allow their lives to be broadcast to the frozen world 24/7. When 16-year-old Jeon, a lowly inhabitant of the frozen world, gets to replace a Snowglobe megastar who mysteriously died, she realizes that the reality television she watched her whole life isn’t real. This book was translated from the original Korean. 

2. The Deep Dark by Molly Knox Ostertag. Upon reconnecting with a childhood friend, a high school senior must confront her past if she hopes to build a future. Grayscale present-day scenes alternate with flashbacks in unbridled color to render an expansive triumph—Ostertag’s best graphic novel yet—that examines issues of grief, identity, intergenerational trauma, and reinvention via measured pacing, dynamic paneling, and robust dialogue.

3. These Deadly Prophecies by Andrea Tang. Fans of Knives Out and The Inheritance Games will love this fantastical murder mystery that keeps you guessing until the final page. Tabatha Zeng gets more than she bargained for as an apprentice to the famed Sorcerer Solomon. He predicts his own death, which tragically comes true. When Tabatha and Sorcerer Solomon’s son Callum become the prime murder suspects, they team up in a race against the clock to clear their names and find the true killer.

4. The Thirteenth Child by Erin A. Craig. Hazel is the Lafitte family’s ill-fated 13th child. They promise her to the god of death — Merrick, the Dreaded End — who gives Hazel the gift of being a healer. But Hazel can also see when death has claimed someone, and she is haunted by the ghosts of those she had to kill. When Hazel is summoned to heal the king, she and her powers are put to the test.

5. Old Wounds by Logan-Ashley Kisner. Kirkus calls Logan-Ashley Kisner’s debut YA horror novel, “an ode to the strength of trans kids in the face of all kinds of terror.” In it, Max and Erin are two trans teens escaping Columbus, Ohio, for a new life in Berkeley, California. En route, they get stranded in small-town Kentucky, where, as luck would have it, the locals are searching for a girl to sacrifice to a deadly monster that lives in the woods. But Max and Erin aren’t exactly who the locals think they are.

6. Everything We Never Had by Randy Ribay. Compact storytelling layered with Filipino American culture and history provides the backdrop for four generations of father-son relationships to unfurl. Past and present narratives from 1929 to 2020 perceptively depict personal and sociopolitical struggles such as the Covid-19 pandemic and farm workers’ rights advocacy to further flesh out Ribay’s emotionally resonant tale that reflects on masculinity, identity, and cycles of trauma.

7. The Reappearance of Rachel Price by Holly Jackson. Rachel Price vanished when her daughter Bel (Annabel) was two years old. Now, 16 years later, Bel and her father — who was acquitted for his wife’s disappearance — are part of a true crime documentary about what happened when suddenly, Rachel reappears. Bel doesn’t believe a word Rachel says — and, along with the youngest member of the documentary crew, Bel sets off to figure out what really happened.

Happy new year and happy reading! What are you reading right now?

Allison Green
Boston Tutoring Services