Our Holiday Gift Guides are here to help you find the perfect page-turner for every bookworm on your list this year!
We know. They didn’t give you a list this year. There’s “nothing they really want.” It’s alright — just get them one of the books on this list. You may still only get a mumbled “thanks,” but trust us, they’ll like it.
Phoebe’s Diary
Phoebe Wahl
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Drawn from real life, here is a bracingly honest illustrated diary of a teenage girl that captures the explosive turmoil and joy of adolescence. Meet Phoebe. She is cool and insecure, talented and vulnerable, sexy and awkward, driven and confused, ecstatic and tragic. Like you. And here is her diary, packed full of invaluable friends and heartbreaking crushes, spectacular playlists and vintage outfits, drama nerds and art kids, old wounds and new love. Based on her own teenage diary, Phoebe Wahl has melded truth with fiction and art with text, casting a spell that brings readers deep into the experience of growing up.
Wrath Becomes Her
Aden Polydoros
Inkyard Press
Frankenstein meets Inglourious Basterds in this stunning Jewish historical horror novel from the award-winning author of The City Beautiful. Vera was made for vengeance. Lithuania, 1943. A father drowns in the all-consuming grief of a daughter killed by the Nazis. He can’t bring Chaya back from the dead, but he can use kishuf — an ancient and profane magic — to create a golem in her image. A Nazi killer, to avenge her death. When Vera awakens, she can feel her violent purpose thrumming within her. But she can also feel glimpses of a human life lived, of stolen kisses amidst the tragedy, and of a grisly death. And when she meets Akiva, she recognizes the boy with soft lips that gave warm kisses. But these memories aren’t hers, and Vera doesn’t know if she gets—or deserves—to have a life beyond what she was made for. Vera’s strength feels limitless—until she learns that there are others who would channel kishuf for means far less noble than avenging a daughter’s death. As she confronts the very basest of humanity, Vera will need more than what her creator gave her: Not just a reason to fight, but a reason to live.
Rez Ball
Byron Graves
Heartdrum
These days, Tre Brun is happiest when he is playing basketball on the Red Lake Reservation high school team—even though he can’t help but be constantly gut-punched with memories of his big brother, Jaxon, who died in an accident. When Jaxon’s former teammates on the varsity team offer to take Tre under their wing, he sees this as his shot to represent his Ojibwe reservation all the way to their first state championship. This is the first step toward his dream of playing in the NBA, no matter how much the odds are stacked against him. But stepping into his brother’s shoes as a star player means that Tre can’t mess up. Not on the court, not at school, and not with his new friend, gamer Khiana, who he is definitely not falling in love with. After decades of rez teams almost making it, Tre needs to take his team to state. Because if he can live up to Jaxon’s dreams, their story isn’t over yet.
A Study in Drowning
Ava Reid
HarperTeen
Effy Sayre has always believed in fairy tales. She’s had no choice. Since childhood, she’s been haunted by visions of the Fairy King. She’s found solace only in the pages of Angharad—author Emrys Myrddin’s beloved epic about a mortal girl who falls in love with the Fairy King and then destroys him. Effy’s tattered, dog-eared copy is all that’s keeping her afloat at Llyr’s prestigious architecture college. So when Myrddin’s family announces a contest to redesign the late author’s estate, Effy feels certain this is her destiny. But Hiraeth Manor is an impossible task: a musty, decrepit house on the brink of crumbling into a hungry sea. And when Effy arrives, someone else has already made a temporary home there. Preston Héloury, a stodgy young literature scholar, is studying Myrddin’s papers and is determined to prove her favorite author is a fraud. As the two rivals piece together clues about the reclusive author’s legacy, dark forces, both mortal and magical, conspire against them—and the truth may bring them both to ruin.
