Amber McBride – The Hub

Best Fiction for Young Adults (#BFYA2024) Featured Review: We Are All So Good At Smiling by Amber McBride

We Are All So Good At Smiling
Amber McBride
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Release Date: January 10, 2023
ISBN: 9781250780386

Whimsy is back in the hospital to treat her ongoing clinical depression. This time proves different and life changing when she meets another patient, a boy named Faerry. She realizes they both share magic, a fear of the forest, and a dark forgotten secret.

Amber McBride’s novel, written in verse, is lyrical and beautiful. She deftly handles the subject matters of depression and loss through magic and fairy tales. The language beautifully captures the angst and hope of adolescence. While written in verse, it feels more about the journey than the destination as the reader navigates Whimsy and Faerry’s realizations.

This title will resonate with any teen reader who loves magic, novels in verse, or is looking for creative titles dealing with mental health, bullying, or grief. Recommend this title to readers who enjoyed Home is Not a Country by Safia Elhillo or Punching the Air by Ibi Zoboi.

-Gia Ruiz

Other Nominated Titles

HighlySupciousAndUnfairlyCutebyTaliaHibbert — Release Date: January 3, 2023

The Selected Lists teams read throughout the year in search of the best titles published in their respective categories. Once a book is suggested (either internally or through the title suggestion form), it must pass through a review process to be designated an official nomination.

Each week, the teams feature a review of one of the officially nominated titles. Additional titles to receive this designation are listed as well. At year’s end, the team will curate a final list from all nominated titles and select a Top Ten.
The Best Fiction for Young Adults Committee appreciates teen feedback as members evaluate the nominated titles. Teen librarians are encouraged to share the List of Potential Nominees under consideration with their patrons and solicit feedback using the link: https://bit.ly/BFYA24TeenFB

Best Fiction for Young Adults (#BFYA2024) Featured Review: The Secrets We Keep by Cassie Gustafson

The Secrets We Keep
By Cassie Gustafson
Publisher: Simon & Schuster BFYR
Release Date: November 8, 2022
ISBN: 9781665906944

Fifteen-year-old Emma’s life is turned upside down when her father is accused of molesting Hannah, her best- and only- friend. Life in a small coastal town is barely tolerable for the socially awkward San Francisco transplant, so Emma’s loyalties are strained as her father tries to get her to find evidence that would suggest that Hannah is a liar. Both parents make it clear that what Emma knows could destroy her family forever.

Author, Cassie Gustafson, invites readers into Emma’s world and memories through a deft use of second person point of view, then propels them through Emma’s current challenges using first person narration. The topic of sexually exploitation is difficult to navigate, but each of the main characters is thoughtfully developed and carefully portrayed in all of their messy humanity without descending into titillating, irrelevant details. The grooming process is accurately portrayed, but the book ends in hope as Emma is forced to confront her own abuse. Emma’s fears are fully realized when her family- as she knew it- is destroyed. However, the plot would lack authenticity if everything was tied up in a neat, “happily ever after” bow.

Teen readers who gravitate toward the gritty fiction of Kathleen Glasgow will find this book utterly engrossing. Give this to readers who liked The Art of Breaking Things by Laura Sibson, Girl in Pieces by Kathleen Glasgow, and Practice Girl by Estelle Laure.

-Jodi Kruse

Other Nominated Titles

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

BFYA Fall Roundup Art — Due to the large number of nominees, not all titles are shown here. See full list below.

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 City Beautiful. By Aden Polydoros. Harlequin/Inkyard Press, $19.99 (9781335402509).

Amidst the glitz and glamour of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, Alter Rosen, a gay, Jewish, Romanian immigrant teen, becomes possessed by the dybbuk of his murdered friend and must avenge the deaths of his friend and a growing number of other local Jewish boys.

Curses. By Lish McBride. Penguin Random House/G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, $18.99 (9781984815590).

When Merit refuses to marry a prince, she is cursed to live as a beast. Tevin’s family runs cons on rich girls, but when his mom runs afoul of the beast she trades him for her freedom. This fresh, gender-bent Beauty and the Beast retelling examines what “beastly” really is.

Best Fiction for Young Adults (#BFYA2022) Featured Review of Me (Moth) by Amber McBride

Me (Moth) by Amber McBride
Macmillan / Feiwel & Friends
Publication Date: August 17, 2021
ISBN: 978-1250780362

After Black teen Moth is in a car accident that kills her parents and brother, she has no other options but living with her aunt in Virginia. Unable to dance since the crash, the only solace and peace she seems to be able to find are in the memories of her grandfather and his Hoodoo practice, but then Sani appears and is everything Moth needs most – stoic, solid, comforting. Moth and Sani decide to take a road trip to Sani’s ancestral Navajo homeland, and as Sani gets closer to his own roots, Moth begins to find her wings again.