Most anticipated YA books of 2025

Whether you’re looking to explore mysterious new worlds, fall in love or solve a murder mystery, young adult novels in 2025 are sure to delight.

Available 01/28/2025

I Am Not Jessica Chen

In Ann Liang’s latest, Jenna Chen gets more than she bargains for when she wishes to become her seemingly perfect cousin Jessica Chen, who has it all: good looks, top grades and college acceptance success. Knowing Liang, the author of If You Could See the Sun and I Hope This Doesn’t Find You, Jenna will soon find out there’s more than meets the eye when she actually wakes up in the body of her cousin.

Available 02/04/2025

Wings of Starlight

By Allison Saft

Allison Saft’s young adult romantasy novels draw you in with their magic and convincing relationship development. Now, the bestselling author of A Fragile Enchantment turns towards a literary reboot of the Disney Fairies franchise, which was launched in 2005. The thrilling clash of worlds that occurs in the meeting between warm-season fairy Clarion and winter fairy Milori will draw in fans both new and old.

Available 02/11/2025

(S)Kin

Ibi Zoboi racked up accolades with American Street (a National Book Award finalist) and Nigeria Jones (a Coretta Scott King Award winner), among others in the bestselling author’s extensive bibliography. (S)kin sees Zoboi pivot to fantasy as this novel-in-verse follows two girls grappling with the magic they have inherited as soucouyants: fireball witches who, every new moon, shed their skin in order to fly into the night and feed on human blood.

Available 03/04/2025

Fable for the End of the World

Ava Reid has stunned us in the realms of both adult (The Wolf and the Woodsman) and young adult fiction (A Study in Drowning), so it’s with bated breath that we wait for Fable for the End of the World, which sees Reid pivot to a dystopian setting. This new world she presents is eerily familiar: A single corporation named Caerus controls a society based on huge amounts of debt accumulated by ordinary people. Inesa, whose mother is one of those people, finds out she’s condemned to the Lamb’s Gauntlet, a livestreamed bloodbath in which Inesa will be pursued by an assassin specially conditioned to show no mercy.

Available 03/04/2025

They Bloom at Night

By Trang Thanh Tran

Trang Thanh Tran made quite a splash with the bestselling She Is a Haunting, and they’re poised to make another one with They Bloom at Night. In this atmospheric post-apocalyptic horror novel, red algae takes over a Louisiana town, bringing with it a monster who is drowning protagonist Noon’s neighbors.

Available 03/18/2025

Sunrise on the Reaping

By Suzanne Collins

Suzanne Collins continued the legacy of the Hunger Games series through yet another smash hit with The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Sunrise on the Reaping extends this young adult saga, which has received a rare outpouring of both critical and commercial acclaim. This prequel explores the tragic backstory of fan favorite Haymitch Abernathy during his own Hunger Games, years before the original series.

Available 03/25/2025

We Are Villains

By Kacen Callender

Kacen Callender has swept awards in children’s, young adult and adult literature, and we found their YA novel, Infinity Alchemist, to be a “resonant fantasy.” The next soon-to-be-conquered frontier for Callender is, naturally, dark academia. In We Are Villains, Milo tries to untangle the mystery behind his best friend’s death, which has been deemed an accident but leaves several unanswered questions. In the process, he gets mixed up with Liam, the student king of Yates Academy, whose influence threatens to wane when he becomes the target of blackmail.

Available 04/01/2025

Run Away With Me

By Brian Selznick

The Caldecott Medal-winning author of The Invention of Hugo Cabret hardly needs any introduction, but in case you forgot: Brian Selznick is the bestselling author of smash hits like Wonderstruck (adapted into a movie by Todd Haynes) and Big Tree, which we deemed an “an awe-inspiring odyssey” in our starred review. So of course we’re anticipating Run Away With Me, the tale of a summer love that sparks between two boys in Rome.

Available 07/15/2025

Fateless

By Julie Kagawa

Julie Kagawa is adding a new trilogy to her already long list of bestselling endeavors, which includes the Iron Fey series and the Talon saga. The first installment, Fateless, introduces us to a desert world with two suns and our protagonist, Sparrow, a member of the Thieves Guild who is given a dangerous mission to enter the city of the Deathless Kings that now lies buried beneath the sands and steal a relic that may unlock secrets from the ancient past. This will be no easy task—the long-forgotten undercity is full of magical traps, and an assassin is on her tail.

Available 08/26/2025

The Executioners Three

By Susan Dennard

Susan Dennard’s fans have much to celebrate: The Luminaries series continues—with the second installment, The Hunting Moon, having been released last year—and the Witchlands series has a TV adaptation in development. In case we didn’t have enough to wait for, Dennard is graciously offering yet another title to anticipate: The Executioners Three, a mystery with supernatural flair following an escalating prank war—which happens to coincide with an increasing number of corpses being found in the woods.

Available 11/04/2025

Where There’s Room For Us

By Hayley Kiyoko

Singer-songwriter Hayley Kiyoko has already shown her chops for storytelling with the iconic Girls Like Girls—the novel her song and its viral music video inspired. The fact that our sapphic queen is about to storm the world of Regency romance with Where There’s Room For Us is welcome news, indeed. When Yada Lovell, an American, moves across the Atlantic with her brother, her intent is to use her knowledge of courting women to help him navigate the world of debutantes—not to fall in love herself. But obviously things won’t be going according to plan.

Available 12/02/2025

There’s Always Next Year

By Leah Johnson, By George M. Johnson

A release by an author as critically acclaimed as the Emmy-nominated George M. Johnson (All Boys Aren’t Blue, Flamboyants) is something to mark on your calendars. But double your excitement, since There’s Always Next Year is a collaboration with mighty powerhouse Leah Johnson, whose You Should See Me in a Crown won a Stonewall Honor and was listed as one of TIME’s “100 Best Young Adult Books of All Time.” Together, the two authors are bringing you a rom-com switching between the perspectives of two cousins who are both racing to fix their individual love lives before New Year’s Day is over.

Book publication dates are subject to change.

Most anticipated by genre

Previous most anticipated YA lists

Recent YA reviews

Book jacket image for The Queen's Spade by Sarah Raughley

The Queen’s Spade

The Queen’s Spade introduces readers to the incredible story of Sarah Forbes Bonetta and broadens it into a powerful tale that readers seeking historical fiction and high-stakes mystery are sure to enjoy.

Book jacket image for Honeysuckle and Bone by Trisha Tobias

Honeysuckle and Bone

Readers who enjoy twisted thrillers in bright tropical settings will revel in Honeysuckle and Bone’s exploration of the contrast between glittery surfaces and the secrets buried beneath them.

Everything is Poison

The desperation and determination of the women in Everything Is Poison draw from rich historical detail while creating obvious parallels to modern struggles.

Kaya of the Ocean

In Gloria L. Huang’s fantastical, heartfelt coming-of-age tale Kaya of the Ocean, the protagonist’s gradual willingness to trust herself will resonate with readers on their own journey to self-confidence, magic-infused or otherwise.

This is the Year

While This Is the Year is unflinching in its portrayals of natural, social and economic disasters, it is also careful to demonstrate how healing is possible.

Book jacket image for Visitations by Corey Egbert

Visitations

Visitations is a haunting, complex memoir about religion, mental illness and broken families, told through the eyes of a young boy.

Book jacket image for What the Woods Took by Courtney Gould

What the Woods Took

An atmospheric thriller with genuine scares, What the Woods Took examines how teenagers can go through the worst and still choose to trust, over and over again.

For She Is Wrath

A fantasy-fuelled retelling of the Count of Monte Cristo, For She Is Wrath takes the tension and mystery of Alexandre Dumas’ classic novel and transfers it to a lush, exuberant, Pakistan-inspired setting.