Hope amid the dangers of tech, magic, and bad breakups: this month’s YA recommendations
“Didn’t I tell her often enough / that the internet is full of bad people and / danger?” Fiona, mother to a teenage girl, rages. “Wasn’t I sick tellin’ her?” In He Loves Me (Not) (Little Island, €11.99), Máire Zepf delves into the fraught world of online predators. There have been novels about this particular brand of stranger danger since the 1990s, and we are about to step into an era where it will no longer be plausible that the parents of teenagers did not themselves grow up with internet access ; it is a relief, therefore, that Zepf includes these familiar fears but also interrogates them. Is Daisy, who narrates the first half of this verse novel (previously published in Irish; the prolific author for young people writes across both age ranges and languages), less sceptical of her new online friend than she could be? Yes, I would argue, and I suspect many teenagers will spot the red flags, but this friendship is taking place within the context of constant online messaging , where someone who claims to be from the nearby school may well be. The internet is no longer a niche space, as it was when these kinds of stories were first published; we cannot tell teenagers that everyone online is lying and dangerous when so many adults meet their spouses via dating apps. And so, when Daisy’s best friend speaks up after something awful happens, it is important: “Why is it that when a girl / dresses in attractive clothes / we dress her in blame too?” she wonders. “It is no life,” she argues, “for a young woman / to be imprisoned in a / safe tower / like Rapunzel.” The past cannot be undone; however, blaming teenagers for the actions of adults, of abusers, is not the path to preventing future incidents. Nor is it realistic. This stance moves this novel from cautionary tale (or out-of-touch lecture) into something more complicated and interesting; it will provoke discussion as well as keep readers turning the pages. Speaking of the ways in which technology continues its seemingly inexorable march on our daily lives (and tech bros keep demonstrating they’ve misread all those dystopian novels as guidebooks), meet Dorcas, who is “trying to get her head around her entire life being nothing more than a storyline on the server network of a planet in another galaxy”. Kelechi Okafor’s Are You Still Watching? (Scholastic, £9.99) takes us to the year 2032, to a small town where no one ever really gets out – they can, of course, but there’s a lot of red tape involved, and something always seems to go wrong – and where a teenage girl has just learned that aliens (who appear “like a pop-up ad” in her mirror) are watching her. If she doesn’t become more active – become a more dynamic character, in other words – her very existence may be at risk. “More drama. More self-belief. The more exciting you are, the more we enjoy the show, then the higher the chance you have of survival.” Okafor, who has previously written for adults and small children, uses her debut teen novel to explore the impact of reality television and surveillance on humanity, with a particular eye on the potential impact of AI in a still-racist world. Castles, conspiracies and communism: thought-provoking back-to-school YA reads The death of the fictional Sandra Taylor at the hands of robot police is a deliberate nod to the real-life deaths of Sandra Bland and Breonna Taylor in police custody; the narrator notes that even delivery drones seem to have trouble “not recognizing Black people” as human beings rather than objects. Her depiction of the alien observers also draws on Yoruba cosmology, and their role in this story is fascinating, if perhaps a little underdeveloped. (Sequel, please?) If the idea that “the universe is just one massive advertising campaign” may seem a tad bleak at first, the reader is ultimately left with much-needed hope. “My little sister is four and a half months old and already in her first courtroom.” Known troublemaker Lil is glad, sort of, that her whole family shows up to provide “visible support” at her hearing, and to be out of her “jailhouse uniform”, but returning to school on probation, with an ankle monitor, is not exactly ideal. She knows her “impulses are a problem ... most people have coffee bags of self-control, and I got at most a dusting of ground-down beans”, though is less supported in how to manage that. Her family, too, resists talking about what’s going on with her older brother at college – the strangeness that seems to have taken over him, his conversations with people who aren’t there, the belief in conspiracy theories. The ways in which neurodivergence, trauma, and mental illness collide with race and class are depicted deftly in Anger is Only a Shadow (Hot Key Books, £8.99), the latest novel from the acclaimed Elizabeth Acevedo. Lil moves between prose and verse as she steps into her new reality, making new friends and trying to stay in control while being aware that “leashed things yank and yank until they break free or break their own neck”. It is impossible not to root for this girl “made of starred and studded things, more / than wild flesh / and bones and bits that break and get / locked up and can be crushed / behind clanging doors.” Summer YA reads: from a Snow White who’d prefer not to to same-sex love-love on the tennis court The world of Sarah Dessen is much more middle class, though no less emotionally charged. After a pause of several years, the iconic YA author is back with Change of Plans (Simon & Schuster, $21.99), in which high school graduate Finley’s summer plans are upended by first her usually businesslike mother (“She was all surface, gliding. Whereas I was always aware of my feet churning beneath me”) and then by her boyfriend of two years dumping her. Summer as a liminal, transformative space has always been something Dessen does well; with care and nuance she brings us through Finley’s slow steps into becoming someone different, someone not in her boyfriend’s shadow, someone who might embrace the chaos of a new summer job and a busy extended family she comes to love. It is a pleasure to see Dessen publishing again and a reminder that quieter coming-of-age stories are still a vital part of YA literature, belonging on the shelves along with the high-concept tales and latest trends. Finally, Catherine Doyle concludes her bestselling City of Fantome trilogy with The Dragon and the Dove (Simon & Schuster, £18.99), in which her heroine struggles with the consequences of using her powers. Sera, who “endured the violent shifting inside herself. The feeling that a strip was being torn from the very fabric of her soul”, considers that this pain is to be expected. “Making saints was no small task. It was a rethreading of the tapestry of fate. Of course it was going to exact a cost. And what did it matter, so long as she could bear it in her bones?” After all, war is coming; her side need all the saints they can get. This is a solid, satisfying end to Sera and Ransom’s story, with the kingdom changed forever by the final pages.