BFYA2022 – The Hub

Best Fiction for Young Adults (#BFYA2022) Featured Review of Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

Last Night at the Telegraph Club Cover Art

Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo
Penguin Random House / Dutton Books
Publication Date: January 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-0525555254

17-year-old Chinese American Lily Hu has always felt a little bit different. Growing up in San Francisco’s Chinatown provides Lily with a sense of community, but the strict social mores of 1954 frequently leave her feeling stifled in ways she can’t quite put her finger on. Even more confusing for Lily is her new preoccupation with an advertisement she has stumbled upon featuring a male impersonator at the Telegraph Club. When she accidentally drops the ad in front of her white friend Kath, she’s shocked when Kath tells her that she’s been before and would be willing to go again with Lily. When Lily finally visits the Telegraph Club with Kath, she discovers not only that lesbian women exist outside of pulpy thrillers, but that she might be one.

Best Fiction for Young Adults (#BFYA2022) Featured Review of American Betiya by Anuradha D. Rajurkar

American Betiya by Anuradha D. Rajurkar
Random House / Alfred A. Knopf
Publication Date: March 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1984897152

When Rani meets Oliver, sparks fly. Unfortunately, he is her Indian parents’ worst nightmare. As their relationship deepens, Rani finds herself breaking all the rules to be with Oliver, rejecting her parents’ ideas of propriety in the name of love. Sure, Oliver tends to romanticize her culture as “exotic” and he has expectations she doesn’t always feel comfortable with, but all relationships require compromise and sacrifice, right? When an unexpected family emergency takes Rani away to her family’s home in Pune, India for the summer, she must decide how much she is really willing to give up to be what Oliver needs.

Best Fiction for Young Adults (#BFYA2022) Featured Review of Luck of the Titanic by Stacey Lee

Luck of the Titanic by Stacey Lee
G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers / Penguin Random House
Publication Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1524740986

17-year-old British-Chinese acrobat Valora Luck has a plan. The first thing she needs to do is find a way to get aboard the Titanic where her twin brother is working. Once she finds him, she’ll need to convince him to perform with her again so that the two of them can impress a business partner from the Ringling Brothers Circus and become the next big act, a job they’ll need if they are to find a way around the Chinese Exclusion Act in America.

Best Fiction for Young Adults (#BFYA2022) Featured Review of Dustborn by Erin Bowman

Dustborn by Erin Bowman
HMH Books for Young Readers
Publication Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-0358244431

Delta of Dead River knows that survival in the Wasteland means two things: a family you can trust and a shoot first, ask questions later attitude. But there are some secrets that should never be shared, ones that put everyone in danger. When her village is attacked by the mysterious General and her family is kidnapped, Delta knows they are after her and the secret map branded on her back. With everyone she knows gone and in danger, Delta sets off to rescue them with the help of an old childhood friend, Asher. But the search for her family and the lost paradise of Verdant is long and perilous, filled with solar flares, geomagnetic storms, armed enemies, and endless seas of dust and desert.

Best Fiction for Young Adults (#BFYA2022) Featured Review of The Forest of Stolen Girls by June Hur

The Forest of Stolen Girls by June Hur
Macmillan / Feiwel and Friends
Publication Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1250229588

Five years ago, Hwani and her sister Maewol got lost in the forest and were later found unconscious, just a few paces away from the apparent suicide of a young woman. Then Hwani’s father, Detective Min, disappears in the same area, and Hwani returns to the hometown they left after the incident, following cryptic clues in her father’s journal that seem to connect the Forest Incident–as it came to be called–with the recent disappearance of thirteen girls. As she reconnects with her estranged sister and doggedly follows in the footsteps of her father’s investigation, lost memories begin to bubble to the surface — memories that someone else would like to see buried forever.

Best Fiction for Young Adults (#BFYA2022) Featured Review of The Cost of Knowing by Brittney Morris

The Cost of Knowing by Brittney Morris
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Publication Date: April 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-1534445451

Since his parents’ death in a car crash, Black sixteen-year-old Alex Rufus has somehow developed the ability to see the future of any object or person his hand touches. Seeing himself scooping ice cream whenever he touches the handle of a scoop at work is not much more than a nuisance, but with every inadvertent foreseeing, Alex becomes more certain that his abilities are a curse. When Alex touches a family photo and sees a series of events leading to his brother Isaiah’s death, he resolves to do something, anything, to repair their relationship and save Izzy in what little time he has left.

Best Fiction for Young Adults (#BFYA2022) Featured Review of The Seventh Raven by David Elliott

The Seventh Raven by David Elliott
HMH Books for Young Readers/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0358252115

Once upon a time, there were seven brothers. Six of them were named Jack, like their father. They were rowdy, bold, and brash, like their father. But the seventh son was unlike his brothers. He was quiet and thoughtful, and his name was Robyn. Jack and his wife loved their sons, but they wished for a daughter, and when their dream came true, they were happy. But April was sickly and dying, and Jack cursed his sons in anger, turning them into birds. The six brothers were sad and confused and wanted to return to their lives. But Robyn was not like his brothers. As a raven he felt like he was finally free. When April grows up, she learns about her brother’s curse and sets off on an adventure to bring them home.

Best Fiction for Young Adults (#BFYA2022) Nominations Round-Up, Spring

Each quarter, the Selected Lists teams compile the titles that have been officially nominated to date. These books have been suggested by the team or through the title suggestion form, read by multiple members of the team, and received approval to be designated an official nomination. At the end of the year, the final list of nominations and each Selected List’s Top Ten will be chosen from these titles.

The Awakening of Malcolm X. By Ilyasah Shabazz and Tiffany D. Jackson. Macmillan/Farrar, Straus & Giroux Books for Young Readers. $17.99 (9780374313296).

While serving a sentence in Charlestown Prison, Malcolm Little is introduced to the teachings of Islam and begins to correspond with Elijah Mohammad. As he struggles to process his anger and his past, he begins to solidify his beliefs and become the man known as Malcolm X.

Best Fiction for Young Adults (#BFYA2022) Featured Review of Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley

Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley
Henry Holt and Co. (BYR) / Macmillan
Publication Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-1250766564

In 2004 Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan, eighteen-year-old Daunis Fontaine is navigating her complicated identity as the daughter of a white French mother and an Ojibwe father. Though she’s delayed college due to her grandmother’s ill health, Daunis has her family, her best friend, and the cute new boy on her brother’s hockey team to pass the time. But then tragedy strikes in the form of a deadly new drug that rocks her close-knit community. Using her love of science and her understanding of traditional Anishinaabe medicine, Daunis agrees to go undercover for the FBI, but what she finds cuts close to the bone, and Daunis will have to draw on all her strengths to face the hardest truths.

Best Fiction for Young Adults (#BFYA2022) Featured Review of One of the Good Ones by Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite

One of the Good Ones by Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite
Inkyard Press / Harlequin
Publication Date: January 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1335145802

Happi is still mourning the loss of her sister, Kezi, who died in police custody after attending a protest. Kezi, who was Black, was “one of the good ones” — a bright student, activist, and educational YouTuber with a dedicated following. Reluctantly, Happi agrees to join her older sister Genny, Kezi’s former girlfriend, and a friend on the graduation road trip Kezi never got to take, using the route Kezi planned on Route 66 based on her passionate research of the Negro Motorist Green Book, the book that helped Black drivers navigate trips through the Jim Crow South.