April 2025 Teen New Books

April 1

Into the Light

by Claudia Gray

As several crises all hurtle toward their thrilling and shocking conclusions, fan-favorite Jedi Knights and Padawans must band together to save the galaxy from the Nihil, the Nameless, and perhaps worst of all, a mysterious blight that turns everything in its path to dust and is seemingly impossible to stop.

Holy Terrors

by Margaret Owen

It’s been nearly two years since Vanja brought down the cult she started, and she’s still paying the price. As the Pfennigeist, she bucks the law in order to help the desperate and haunt the corrupt all across the empire—and no matter what, she works alone. But an impossible killer is tearing through royalty, and leaving Vanja’s signature red penny on every victim. Suddenly the Pfennigeist is no longer a folk hero but a nightmare. When even the Blessed Empress falls, the empire’s seven royal families must gather to elect her successor within a matter of weeks, or risk the collapse of reality itself… even though it puts every house in the killer’s sights. Vanja tells herself she’s wading into the royalty’s vicious games only to save the name she made, and the loved ones also in jeopardy. But the Order of Prefects has also put their sharpest official on the case, the one who swore he’d always find Vanja—until she broke his heart. Journeyman Prefect Emeric Conrad may no longer be the boy Vanja knew, but they’ll have to work together one last time to have any chance of surviving the deadly catastrophe coming for them all.With bloody conspiracy, sinister magic, and old adverseries closing in, it will take everything Vanja has to save not just the people she loves, but the future she’s fought for. In this thrilling final chapter of the Indie Next series Little Thieves, New York Times-bestselling author Margaret Owen shows us the pain and beauty of choosing which demons to face, and which to forgive.

ISunlight Playing over a Mountain

by Selina Li Bi

A lyrical, mythology-tinged debut novel about a Chinese-Filipino teenager whose world of daydreams is destroyed by a family secret—perfect for fans of Emily X.R. Pan and Ann Liang. Jasmine Cheng has grown up on stories spun by her beautiful, free-spirited mother. Together, they’re the Phoenix and Dragon. Jasmine’s father is the god Pangu, creator of the heavens and earth. Her mother may have boyfriends, but Jasmine chases them away. For her mother, love brings chaos, sleepless nights, and frightening episodes, and it’s Jasmine’s job to keep their home life stable—especially now that a social worker has started to keep tabs on them. When the sudden arrival of Cal, her mother’s old flame, fractures their delicate world, events unfold that will send Jasmine on a cross-country journey to the West Coast—and into her past. Trapped in a tangle of fantasy and reality, Jasmine becomes determined to find the truth, even while her mother’s refusal to be honest drives a deeper wedge between them. Will the crack in their fantasy destroy her, or finally let the light in?

Messy Perfect

by Tanya Boteju

Cassie Perera is a star student in St. Luke’s junior class. But the new school year brings an unwelcome surprise—the return to St. Luke’s of Cassie’s former friend, Ben, who left a few years ago after a homophobic bullying incident Cassie knows she didn’t do enough to prevent.Still harboring guilt from her inaction, Cassie decides, in her usual, overzealous way, to team up with the neighboring public school to found an underground Gender and Sexuality Alliance—as a complicated strategy for making things up to Ben. Secretly, Cassie is also tempted by the possibility of opening up about her own sexuality for the first time. As Cassie’s new friends urge her out of her comfort zone, she unlocks a kind of joy and freedom she’s never felt before—even as she struggles to balance these experiences with her typical tightrope of being the perfect daughter, student, and Catholic.Cassie’s perfectly curated life unravels into turmoil, but can she embrace the mess enough to piece together something new?

The Notorious Virtues

by Alwyn Hamilton

At sixteen, Honora “Nora” Holtzfall is the daughter of the most powerful heiress in all of Walstad. Her family controls all the money–and all the magic–in the entire country. But despite being the center of attention, Nora has always felt like an outsider. When her mother is found dead in an alley, the family throne and fortune are suddenly up for grabs, and Nora will be pitted against her cousins in the Veritaz, the ultimate magical competition for power that determines the one family heir.But there’s a surprise contestant this time: Lotte, the illegitimate daughter of Nora’s aunt. When Lotte’s absent mother retrieves her from the rural convent she’d abandoned her to, Lotte goes from being an orphan to surrounded by family. Unfortunately, most of them want her dead. And soon, Nora discovers that her mother’s death wasn’t random–it was murder. And the only person she can trust to uncover the truth of what happened is a rakish young reporter who despises everything Nora and her family stand for. With everyone against her, Lotte’s last hope is hunting for the identity of her father. But the dangerous competition–and her feelings for Theo, one of the Holtzfalls’ sworn protectors–turns her world upside down.

April 8

Fearless

by Lauren Roberts

Paedyn Gray and Kai Azer return to the Kingdom of Ilya… And Paedyn has a life-altering choice to make. Whatever she decides will determine her fate—and the fate of those around her—forever. In the ultimate battle of love and loyalty, who wins?

Boys with Sharp Teeth

by Jenni Howell

Seventeen-year-old Marin James has spent her entire life living in the shadow of the exclusive Huntsworth Academy. And when her cousin’s dead body is found in a creek on school property, Marin knows exactly who’s to blame: Adrian Hargraves and Henry Wu, the enigmatic yet dangerously alluring leaders of the school’s social elite. Swapping her ripped jeans for a crisp prep school skirt, Marin infiltrates Huntsworth to seek justice. But her quest is quickly muddied by a confusing attraction to her new life, and to the two dysfunctional and depraved boys who somehow understand her better than anyone ever has. When Marin uncovers an otherworldly secret the boys are hiding within Huntsworth’s ivied gates, the lines between right and wrong, love and hate, and nightmare and reality begin to crumble — and nothing is as it seems. Welcome to Huntsworth Academy.

Roll for Love

by M.K. England

Dungeons & Dragons loving Harper Reid’s summer is off to a rough start. First, she and her mom moved across the country to Clintville, Virginia (population: tiny) to live on her Poppy’s farm, which means saying goodbye to her friends and finding a new D&D group to play with. The only thing keeping her going is getting to polish her carpentry skills in the farm’s woodshop so she can get an apprenticeship after graduation. That is if she can tell her mom that she doesn’t want to go to college, which is kind of hard when mom keeps asking about applications and if she has picked out the perfect school yet. What Harper really needs is to channel the confidence and bravery of her awesome D&D character, and then maybe she could find a new D&D group and tell her mom that her passion is woodworking, not a four-year university. And, hey, maybe she could find a cool girlfriend, too.The one encounter Harper wasn’t expecting was running into Ollie Shifflet: neighbor, childhood best friend, and, oh yeah, first crush. Unlike Harper, Ollie seems to have everything figured out. She plans on spending the summer digging around in her garden and hanging out with her best friends and trying D&D with them for the first time. Then after graduation it is community college, then opening a small nature-based daycare center and living her best bisexual life . . . well, as long as that last bit stays private. But when beautiful, bold, Harper Reid comes waltzing back into her life and joins her D&D group, suddenly Ollie’s plan seems to have a Harper-shaped hole in it.So when feelings start to develop in their Dungeons & Dragons game between Harper’s brash Barbarian character and Ollie’s proud Paladin, Harper and Ollie begin wondering if they are falling for each in real life or if it is all just apart of the game. As the school year draws to a close and the final boss looms on the horizon, Harper and Ollie must decide if the relationship that they have been roleplaying in the game could be as real for them.

What Wakes the Bells

by Elle Tesch

Built by long-gone Saints, the city of Vaiwyn lives and breathes and bleeds. As a Keeper, Mina knows better than most what her care of Vaiwyn’s bells means for the sentient city. It’s the Strauss family’s thousand-year legacy―prevent the Vespers from ringing, or they will awake a slumbering evil. One afternoon, to Mina’s horror, her bell peals thirteen times, shattering the city’s tenuous peace. With so much of the city’s history and lore lost in a long-ago disaster, no one knows the danger that has been unleashed―until the city begins to fight back. As the sun sets, stone gargoyles and bronze statues tear away from their buildings and plinths to hunt people through the streets. Trapped in Mina’s bell, the soul of a twisted and power-hungry Saint festered. Now free of his prison, he hides behind the face of one of Vaiwyn’s citizens, corrupting the city and turning it on itself. Time is running out, and the only chance Mina has to stop the destruction and horrific killings is finding and destroying the Saint’s host. Everyone is a suspect, including Mina’s closest loved ones. She will have to decide how far she’ll go to save her city―and who she’s willing to kill to do it.

March 18

The Hallow Hunt

by Margie Fuston

Bly won the Revenant Games, but she lost everything else.In her desperation to resurrect her sister, Bly betrayed Kerrigan, the vampire who she’d planned to sacrifice to the witches before she fell in love with him—only to find out that Elise was never dead. With nothing left, Bly will do whatever it takes to locate her sister.Her only lead on Elise lies with Kerrigan’s brother, Donovan, who she turned over to the witches in place of Kerrigan. She spends her nights tracking down witch prisons to rescue him. Meanwhile, Kerrigan is also searching for Donovan, but after Bly’s treachery, he refuses her help. But when the vampire queens accuse the two of them of treason, they’re only offered one escape from retrieving a mystical root that only grows on the banks of the Hallow Pool, where legend says that vampires and witches were created. Now Kerrigan and Bly must find a way to work together if they want to keep their lives and save their siblings. But they’re not the only ones hunting in the forest, and as their feelings for each other rekindle, they risk being torn apart once more.

Sunrise on the Reaping

by Suzanne Collins

When you’ve been set up to lose everything you love, what is there left to fight for? As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes. Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves. When Haymitch’s name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He’s torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who’s nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he’s been set up to fail. But there’s something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.

True Life in Uncanny Valley

by Deb Caletti

Eleanor, like so many others, is used to watching her famous father from afar. To the world, Hugo Harrison is the brilliant and charismatic tech genius whose AI inventions seem to create a new, better reality. But to Eleanor, whose mother had an affair with Hugo years ago, he is something even more intriguing, and dangerous—a secret. When Eleanor’s spying leads her to a posting for a live-in summer nanny job for Hugo’s young son—her half-brother—she knows she has to apply. This is finally her chance to learn about her father, his family, and the life that could have been hers. She only has to do one become someone else. With just a few well-placed lies, Eleanor is catapulted into an unfamiliar, intoxicating whirlwind of money and ego, and into a new romance with a cute boy who works for Hugo. But in a place where image is everything and reality can be rewritten, is anything real—even the Harrisons themselves?Caught between her own secrets and the ones she’s uncovering about her father and his latest invention, Eleanor faces a question that technology can’t what is your true self, and how do you know when you find her?

March 25

The Deathly Grimm

by Kathryn Purdie

The story hasn’t ended yet. After surviving the Forest Grimm and defeating the Wolf, Clara and Axel have made it back to their village, the one place they can be safe behind the forest’s borders. But when the forest itself begins luring in more villagers, it’s clear that Clara and Axel have only treated the symptoms of the forest’s curse, not the cause—and it’s getting worse. Burdened with visions of the past and learning to navigate her fragile new relationship with Axel, Clara finds herself entering the forest with Axel yet again to discover the truth once and for all: the identity of the murderer who caused the curse. As they fight murderous woodsmen with incomprehensible riddles, ladies who will drag you into an eternal dance, and ghosts with the power to wield the forest against them, Clara and Axel realize the stakes are higher than ever. If they don’t survive the dark, deadly twists of the forest once more, not only will they never escape, they may also no longer have a home to escape to. Romantic, eerie, and beautiful, The Deathly Grimm is the triumphant conclusion to Kathryn Purdie’s bestselling Forest Grimm duology.

When We Ride

by Rex Ogle

Diego Benevides works hard. His single mother encourages him to stay focused on school, on getting into college, on getting out of their crumbling neighborhood. That’s why she gave him her car. Diego’s best friend, Lawson, needs a ride—because Lawson is dealing. As long as Diego’s not carrying, not selling, it’s cool. It’s just weed. But when Lawson starts carrying powder and pills and worse, their friendship is tested and their lives are threatened. As the lines between dealer and driver blur, everything Diego has worked for is jeopardized, and he faces a deadly reckoning with the choices he and his best friend have made. Award-winning memoirist and poet Rex Ogle’s searing first novel-in-verse is an unforgettable story of the power and price of loyalty.