This week is a quiet week for YA publishing. There are a handful of book hitting the shelves this week, mostly under the radar. This is the perfect time to look through all the synopses to see if there’s a gem of a book hidden for you here.

Lots of new books as well as paperback and re-releases to choose from this week! I’ve been looking forward to the release of You’re Welcome, Universe due to the involvement of graffiti. I became particularly fascinated with graffiti during my undergrad days, and have made it my mission to pick up YA novels about it. Sadly, there haven’t been all too many. I also generally love the portrayal of art in fiction, so I can’t wait to pick up Piper Perish.

Most of the time I try to identify the hyped, underrated or diverse books to help you guys pick out which books might interest you. But with all the division over Carve the Mark, self-harm and the threshold for artistic expression, I’m beat. If you want to know my stand, I tweeted a thread and posted on Instagram. Without further comment, here are this week’s YA releases.

Looking at this week’s releases, I’m happy to see that they entail a fair bit of diversity. American Street focuses on Haitian immigrants to the US, Piecing Me Together is an own voices book about a black girl who’s into art, We Are Okay also has a POC main character and involves LGBTQ+ themes, and Painless explores the life of of a teen who can’t feel pain due to a neurological disorder.

This round of new YA releases is up later than usual, for which I apologise! The past week has been much busier for me than I anticipated, so I didn’t get to collate all the titles sooner. That being said, there’s quite a selection to choose from spanning all the genres. Both new and paperback releases encompass a number of exciting books. Most hyped among these are Wintersong, Empress of a Thousand Skies, and King’s Cage. Aside from these, I look forward to Crazy Messy Beautiful, which looks to feature a cast of diverse characters.