The Best Young Adult Books of 2024

From high-octane fantasies and imaginative graphic novels, to beautiful poetry collections and devastating myth retellings, the best young adult books of the year dazzled us with their complexity and thoughtfulness.

49 Days is an unusual, profoundly moving graphic novel whose elegance belies its complexity and whose emotional impact only grows upon rereading.

Ann Fraistat writes about the effects of trauma with sensitivity and care in this eminently entertaining horror tale rife with thrills, chills and heart.

By Renée Watson, Illustrated by Ekua Holmes

In Black Girl You Are Atlas, renowned poet, novelist and Newbery Honoree Renee Watson offers high-impact, widely accessible poems that address universal topics, accompanied by joyous artwork from Caldecott Honor recipient Ekua Holmes

In her extraordinary fifth novel, Icarus, K. Ancrum performs a confident high-wire act, balancing the weighty manifestations of connection, desire and contradiction.

Charming characters and multilayered mysteries will keep readers hooked from beginning to end in Into the Sunken City, a well-developed eco-thriller with a lot of heart.

A horrifyingly honest tale, Lockjaw will keep you guessing with its creative storytelling, while its full-bodied characters will keep you reading as they band together to kill the monster haunting their town.

Whether crafting authentic and immersive narration, spinning a sweet and sexy fake-dating storyline, or building a suspenseful and twisty mystery, Meredith Adamo proves herself to be absolutely an author to watch.

By Amber McBride, Edited by Erica Martin, Edited by Taylor Byas

Award-winning author Amber McBride teams up with acclaimed poets Taylor Byas and Erica Martin to curate an electric, extraordinary lineup of contemporary and classic Black poetry for young readers.

By Darcie Little Badger, Illustrated by Rovina Cai

Sheine Lende focuses on a girl who must use her experience finding missing persons with ghost dogs to track down her own mother.

Marc J Gregson’s debut novel features a stunning, harrowing world of floating islands whose citizens most value surpassing everyone else—at any cost.

With a smart, steadfast heroine, a charming love interest and compelling side characters, Song of the Six Realms is a dazzling, dreamlike escape into a world of powerful poetry, godly magic and humble heroism.

Previous Best YA lists

Recent starred YA

The Corruption of Hollis Brown is written in sharply vivid vignettes, like the literary equivalent of macrophotography: intimacy on a grand scale that makes the reader want to both back away and lean closer.

Frederick Joseph constructs a true roller coaster of a narrative in This Thing of Ours, painting his protagonist’s complex struggles with language that is both poetic and engaging for a young adult audience.

Hunger’s Bite is an intense and charming graphic novel perfect for readers seeking an emotionally charged supernatural mystery.

Banned Together is a must-have anthology for libraries, as well as an invaluable personal resource for high school readers.

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

Beautiful, complex and affirming, Ash’s Cabin will prompt deep conversations about how best to support one another and our environment, at a time when the future is uncertain and peace can be hard to find.