YA reads are a mood these days. The mood tends to veer between light and swoony and mysterious and sinister, with not a lot in between. We asked agents and editors what’s on the horizon for YA this spring, summer, and beyond, and found that several of the trends seen in recent years are still holding strong. Editors report readers craving escapism, whether that’s through romance in a faraway land or treachery in a fantasy world. Authors continue to find new twists on the tropes readers love and new ways to blend elements of multiple genres to expand the most popular categories in new directions. Here’s a look at some of the upcoming releases that capture the moment.
Love takes a holiday
Summer has always been the season for rom-coms, but editors expect that with the state of current affairs, readers will be especially ready for light, fun romantic reads this summer. Sabrina Fedel’s All Paths Lead to Paris (Delacorte Romance, June) features a fashion influencer caught up in a fake-dating plot, a follow-up to her 2024 novel All Roads Lead to Rome. Love Craves Cardamom by Aashna Avachat (May) is the second in Joy Revolution’s Love in Translation series, after last year’s Love Requires Chocolate by Ravynn K. Stringfield; the new title is set in Rajasthan, India, and features a swoony romance with a prince.
“In these challenging and disheartening times, I do think that we need hopeful stories,” says Dainese Santos, editor of Always Be My Bibi by Priyanka Taslim, due from Simon & Schuster in June. Described by the publisher as Clueless meets Jenna Evans Welch, the story centers on Bibi Hussain, a Cher Horowitz–like protagonist who finds herself on an unexpected summer trip to Bangladesh when her annoyingly perfect older sister gets engaged to the heir of a princely estate. The groom’s younger brother turns out to be both infuriating and infuriatingly handsome, leading to lots of summer intrigue.
“Vacation romances are a staple of the genre, but it’s not every day we see Bangladesh highlighted as a romantic destination,” Santos says. “With her cultural knowledge and her firsthand experience as a tourist there herself, Priyanka brings Sylhet and the tea garden resort to life for those who’ve never before experienced the place. There are teens falling in love all over the world—it’s important to tell stories that remind us of that. Its setting is what makes the book extra special.”
From a tea plantation to a lemon grove, love seems to be blooming in unexpected places in YA. In When Love Gives You Lemons by Steven Salvatore, coming from Bloomsbury in May, aspiring food blogger Fielder Lemon sees the opportunity to win back his first love, Ricky, when, a year after they both graduated from high school, they attend a big wedding on Italy’s Amalfi Coast. “The energy, humor, and Italian setting of this story are such a winning combination,” says Mary Kate Castellani, Bloomsbury’s publishing director. “Who wouldn’t want to read a story where a guy tries to win back his ex at an Italian destination wedding?”
A wedding also plays into the plot in Ann Liang’s Never Thought I’d End Up Here (Scholastic, June). After a botched attempt at making a toast in Mandarin at her cousin’s reception, L.A. girl Leah Zhang’s parents enroll her in a summer travel program in China so she can learn more about her family’s heritage. Unfortunately, Cyrus, the boy who broke her heart, is also on the trip. As their group travels across the country, Leah’s dreams of revenge on him start to take a different shape. “Ann takes a beloved trope—enemies to lovers—to new territory with an instantly relatable protagonist and rich cultural detail in a unique setting I don’t see often in YA,” says Liang’s agent Kathleen Rushall. “Behind it all is a meaningful journey of self-discovery that deepens the ‘so what’ of this absolute joy ride.”
Maya Marlette, Liang’s editor at Scholastic, says there’s more to summer romances than just entertainment. “There will always be an appetite for stories where girls and women are taken seriously, respected, and where they find the love they deserve. If anything, as societal forces disenfranchise women further, I expect that an escapist, joyful woman-centered category like romance will only continue to grow.”
From light to dark
While frothy romance takes readers to a sunny place, dark academia shows that there’s still a healthy reader appetite for the shadows.
“We’re living in a broken world, which feels more broken every day,” says Roaring Brook editor Kate Meltzer. “It feels tempting to want to burn it all down, and in Boys with Sharp Teeth [by Jenni Howell, out now] you get to watch someone who does just that.” The story follows protagonist Marin James as she infiltrates Huntsworth Academy, where a group of elite boys hides a hard secret.
Storytide editor Kristin Daly Rens describes dark academia’s “enduring” appeal this way: “The school setting, the friendships, the pursuit of knowledge and academic competition are things that most of us have experienced, but here they are filtered through a darkly poetic lens, to create a moody, gothic, autumnal aesthetic.” The mood is more than window dressing, though. “The genre can also be a compelling lens to explore big, universal questions and themes of death, knowledge as power—or, alternately, the ways in which knowledge can be dangerous.”
Rens is the editor of That Devil, Ambition by Linsey Miller (June), which she calls “a fresh, compelling take on dark academia that’s by turns clever, terrifying, and absolutely gut-wrenching” and “a deft and thoughtful exploration of the lengths that people will go to be the highest achievers in the class.”
Among the other standouts in the current crop of dark academia offerings are The Tournament by Rebbeca Barrow (June), described by McElderry as They Wish They Were Us meets Nothing Left to Tell set at a boarding school with a survivalist bent, and We Are Villains by Kacen Callender (Abrams, out now), in which a student investigates his friend’s mysterious murder. The stakes couldn’t be higher than those in Immortal Consequences, a debut by I.V. Marie, out from Delacorte in July: the academy is located in purgatory, and students must compete to “ascend” or face the opposite fate.
With a real-world setting—Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario—A Mastery of Monsters by Liselle Sambury (July) is set against “a dark and mysterious background,” says Sarah McCabe, the book’s editor at McElderry. Sambury “weaves cutting social commentary into her novel, delving into gender, racial, and class divisions in an academic setting, and acknowledging the pressure put on Black girls to be perfect in order to be perceived as having value.”
On the take
McCabe is also editor of The Art of Exile by Andrea Max (May), about a teen who infiltrates a secret school for the descendants of exiled Renaissance masters to steal their long-lost arts and sciences. McCabe says it’s “an example of dark academia’s sister category—light academia,” with “all the exciting elements that make dark academia great, but the voice has a lighter tone” and the stories are more hopeful.
It’s also a twist on the heist trope, which has been having a moment for the past few years. Increasingly, heists are incorporating elements of fantasy and romance. In Den of Liars by Jessica S. Olson (Feiwel and Friends, July), Lola, an orphan thief, undertakes a heist during a high-stakes casino tournament. “Warring brothers—think the Salvatore brothers—an enemy-to-lovers romance, heists, lies, and magic, all set against a sparkling 1920s-inspired world,” says Christa Heschke, Olson’s agent at Macintosh and Otis. “It checks off so many of the boxes that I look for when picking up a new book. It’s the perfect novel to sweep you away into another world—and don’t we all need that kind of escape right now?”
Blending a heist with dark romantasy, The Beasts We Bury by D.L. Taylor (out now), features a royal heir who can summon an army of animals, and a thief who plans to manipulate her to pull off a once-in-a-lifetime heist. Holt editor Brian Geffen says that blend of elements gives the book “an entry point for both avid fantasy fans and casual ones” along with “impressive worldbuilding you can sink your teeth into, and above all, a swoony enemies-to-lovers, will-they-won’t-they romance with enormous stakes.” There’s also a “big, traitorous secret—and possible betrayal—that’s the cherry on top.”
Up next
According to many editors, romantasy isn’t going anywhere. “It’s always been beloved, even before we had a portmanteau for it,” Meltzer says. “But I think the same can be said of any trend. The trends follow the good books, not the other way around.”
Just because it’s evergreen doesn’t mean the category is staid, Geffen says. “It’s just going to keep growing broader and more welcoming, with romantasy tropes branching out into more and more subgenres, and with more crossover appeal in all directions.” Some of those directions include dark, edgy plots, but also “a lot of cute, cozy vibes, and even some dystopian and space opera–style sci-fi,” he adds. “I think it’s becoming more and more a space where you can choose your vibe depending on your mood.”
Wendy McClure, editor of the upcoming novel Secrets of the Blue Hand Girls by Rowana Miller, due from Sourcebooks in October, is noticing a similar expansion in the dark academia category. “I’m seeing more stories where the school is, for better or worse, the heart and soul of a wider world—one that’s a little darker or more enchanted than our own, with more elements of fantasy and horror woven in,” she says. “These stories are also increasingly about challenging institutions and finding out where they hide their secrets, their incriminating evidence, their skeletons.”
On the lighter side, according to agents Ariele Fredman and Gwen Beal of United Talent (co-representatives for Immortal Consequences author Marie), “cozy” appears to be top of mind—whether it’s cozy fantasy or cozy horror.” Both agents also reported that they’ve noticed teen readers seem to be “eager for young adult books that feel truly meant for them.”
At Scholastic, Marlette says her inbox has featured an uptick in new takes on fairy tales. “Maybe a lot of us are just trying to make sense of a familiar world that now seems mixed up and darker than we previously understood?” she muses.
And citing Secrets of the Blue Hand Girls as an example, Lia Ferrone, assistant publicity and marketing manager at Sourcebooks, floats a new category idea: #weirdgirlbook. “Sanitized, perfect protagonists are out; flawed, obsessive, and morally gray girls are in,” she says.
Joanne O’Sullivan is a journalist, author, and editor in Asheville, N.C.
