STACKED

books

Hardcover to Paperback Makeovers: 6 YA Changes to Consider

|

New catalog season on Edelweiss always makes me excited. It’s not just about the new books; it’s also about those books that end up getting makeovers from their hardback looks into something fresh in paperback.

I’ve rounded up six recovered YA titles hitting shelves in the next few months that have caught my eye. Some of these are winners and some…well, they should have stuck with the original idea. Perhaps most interesting is something I’ll note at the end of the post. There’s definitely a new trend emerging in YA cover design, and while I think I get the point of it, I’m not sure it’s entirely successful at what it’s attempting to do.

I’d love to hear what you think about these make overs, too. Which ones are great and which ones leave you feeling a little cold? Sound off in the comments and feel free to share any recent cover changes you’ve spotted that have stood out to you. As always, the hardcover image is on the left, with the paperback iteration on the right.

I picked up Jennifer Longo’s Six Feet Over It last year and talked about it a little bit in a post last fall about the microtrend of the death business in YA fiction. This book runs on the lower end of YA in terms of its voice and appeal, as the main character is a young high schooler, as opposed to the older ones that have become more abundant.

When I first saw the hardcover of this book a couple of years ago, it seemed to me like the model looked photoshopped. I spent a long time looking at it, and then I asked multiple people to explain to me what seemed “off” about this image. Everyone said the same thing: her neck looks really, really long. While people who are tall can have very long necks, the way she’s posed in the picture doesn’t show her height, so she looks strange if she’s not been digitally edited. The placement of the book’s title on the headstone is really creative, but the overall feel of the cover itself is dark and not particularly appealing. I like the use of the blurb on this one, as it’s from Jennifer Holm, suggesting that this is a suitable read for the younger teen set.

The paperback makeover for this one doesn’t really do much for me on a personal level, as I’m becoming really over the illustrated cover trend. However, I think this cover fits the book a million times better. It’s not as dark or foreboding, and it has a tiny bit of tongue-in-cheek humor to it, with the way that the girl is on a headstone that has a cartoon-y skull on it. It’s really appealing and inviting in the way that the original look simply isn’t, and more, it speaks to the bit of dark humor in the book itself. The tag line here actually works better than the blurb does on the hard cover, as it says essentially the same thing to readers, just in different words and a different approach. I do find it interesting that Longo is introduced as the author of Up To This Pointe beneath her name, since that book will publish after Six Feet Over It came out.

For me, the paperback is a winner here, even though it’s not my personal taste. It will hit shelves January 12.

Ellen Hopkins was always a go-to for me for readers seeking a good, fast-paced, edgy, dark, realistic YA book at the library. And for a long time, her packaging was brilliant — the books were shorter and fatter than most, and they were easily recognizable on the shelf.

But something happened and all of her work got a redesign to it, making the trim more in line with standard YA trade paperbacks, rather than they had been. The redesign meant a new marketing look, but somewhere in there, it just got really lost.

I’m not sure how I feel about the hardcover for Rumble, as it tries to blend the original Hopkins cover looks with the new one, and I’m not sure it entirely succeeds. But compared to the paperback, which has absolutely zero connection to Hopkins branding….it’s worlds better. The paperback looks really cheap and uninspired, and since it stands apart from all of her other books, I’m not sure it’s going to draw in long-time fans nor engage potential new readers. In many ways, the paperback looks more middle grade than it does upper YA, which is actually a bit of a problem, since her books aren’t aimed at that audience in any capacity.

Who is that stick figure? Why is the font for the title so thin? How come we don’t have the signature look of Hopkins name on the redesign? This looks so flimsy and forgettable in a way that Hopkins and her work simply are not. I have a hard time imagining a teen — or any reader, really! — looking at this cover and thinking it’ll be an intense, dark, gritty read. It looks sad.

Part of me hopes this isn’t a real paperback redesign and it’s instead a mistake that got out. It’d be a real shame to see these books get this sort of treatment because it weakens the work and absolutely weakens the appeal of the way these books look. Cover art and design is really important, especially when it comes to reader’s advisory and connecting the right book to the right reader. This cover is doing this book zero favors.

The hardcover is the winner here by leaps and bounds, even though it’s not spectacular itself. The paperback hits shelves February 2 and I really hope they reconsider this look.

Rachel DeWoskin’s Blind cover is doing something that differs in the redesign than all of the rest of the covers in this batch of makeovers: it adds a model to it. The original hardcover is pretty stark — it’s black, with a title that drives the cover, even though the title itself isn’t full. It’s an unfilled set of letters. Above it are the braille designations and the simple tag line “What do you see when your world goes dark?” You know immediately what the book is about, and the tag line further amplifies that this is a story about a blind character.

The redesigned cover brings a model into the picture. Notice on all of the other cover redesigns in this post, that the human models have been removed. The redesigns are moving more towards using an image-driven, people-less look or they’re using illustrations to render an individual. Not so in this case: but it also really works here, as this particular redesign tells us even more about the story than the original hardcover. We know it’s a girl who is blind, and we know that it might have something to do with fireworks, based on the font used for the title (and spoiler, it’s a firework that causes her to lose her sight). The tag line remains the same, but I think here it’s even more effective.

While both of these are solid covers that fit the story, I suspect that the paperback might have a tiny bit more appeal. Or, at least, gives readers even more insight into what the book’s about. The paperback edition of Blind will hit shelves April 5.

Maybe it’s because I read a little bit in an echo chamber, but wasn’t Skink No Surrender supposed to be a really huge book a couple of years ago? I can’t remember seeing a whole lot about it, other than it’s a title by Hiassen and he’s popular without additional significant hype.

This redesign is really fascinating to me because it definitely feels like the intended audience for this book is being shifted. The hardcover features handcuffs — so you know there’s a crime story here — and you get a tag line that reads “A missing girl, a hungry gator, only one way out…” The title font is what drives the image, and the white-on-red makes it really pop. This cover isn’t spectacular, but it stands out quite a bit from other YA titles since it’s so simple.

The paperback edition of Skink is so different and feels like it’s trying to reach an adult, rather than YA, readership. Or perhaps this cover is really aimed at those adults who read YA and are familiar with Hiassen. Look at the pull quote — rather than make use of the tag line, this one pulls out a review from Time, which calls Hiassen a master of Florida crime fiction. Is that something teenagers care about at all? Adults, on the other hand, will know what that means.

But the thing that’s most interesting to me in the redesign is how the title looks. Where the hardcover tells you the title is Skink No Surrender, the paperback redesign looks as though the title is Skink with the “No Surrender” being almost a tag line within the life raft. This particular redesign looks in line with his adult novels, while the original hardcover looks in line with his middle grade novels.

There’s not one that does it better here. Both elicit about the same reaction from me, but I think that’s because they seem to be serving different readerships. You can snag the paperback December 1.

The redesign of Kate Hattemer’s The Vigilante Poets of Selwyn Academy might be my favorite of the bunch, which is saying quite a bit since I don’t dislike the original look, either. I think that the hardcover is pretty appealing, especially as it has two teen boys featured on the cover in a way that makes them look like your average (art school) boys. The font drives the cover and I think the choices used in mixing the fonts really works. Likewise, the green on yellow color scheme is memorable to me, since I can’t say I see it frequently in YA. Maybe by some eyes it might look a little dated, but I don’t see it.

The paperback, though, I love. I love everything that it says — this is a book about art kids. But it’s a book about art kids that’s not necessarily traditional and that might be quite funny. I get that from the scissors cutting the string there, along with the mustache drawn on the figure’s face. I will say I’m not super keen on the title font treatment, as that thin wispy look just feels weak. And interestingly, there’s been an added tag line to the redesign, which reads “can four best friends, a manikin, and a heroic gerbil save Selwyn?” I find that particular tag line intriguing because what does a heroic gerbil have to do with this?

You can grab the paperback edition, which I think edges out the look of the hardcover, on March 8.

Finally, I don’t want to talk too much about the redesign of Charlie Price’s Dead Girl Moon aside from noting that this is another interesting example of new covers moving away from having anything resembling a real human model on the cover. Both covers convey the mystery here without much problem, though their color schemes and their execution of design differ.

Also interesting to me is that there’s been a pretty sizable chunk of time between the hardcover’s initial release — October 30, 2012 — and when the paperback will hit shelves — October 20, 2015. Generally, though not always, paperbacks tend to hit shelves about a year after their hardcovers come out. This can change depending upon a number of things, including a book’s popularity. That’s why books like Fangirl and The Fault in Our Stars had a good chunk of time between their hardcover edition and paperback. While I had a copy of Dead Girl Moon when it originally came out, I’m curious about the story here. Did it sell really well? Or, as I suspect the case may be, is the market right now a little bit stronger for these types of stories, so the holdup was to make sure it’d hit at the right time? That’s a question that may never be answered.

Both covers are fine, but again, the removal of actual people and models in this batch of redesigns really strikes me as noteworthy.

The Warrior, the Lover, and the Cultist: Three Brief Reviews

|

With the increased flexibility at my new job, I’ve had a lot more free time in the afternoons, which means I’ve been reading a lot more. In fact, over the past week, I’ve finished six whole books, which is quite a lot for me (and I’m well on my way to finishing the seventh, which would average a book a day). Aside from dedicating my newfound afternoon time to reading, I’ve also deliberately been eclectic in what I pick up. Two of those books have been romances, two of them graphic novels (one a memoir and one fiction), and two of them YA (a cult story and a thriller).




The Divine by Asaf Hanuka, Tomer Hanuka, and Boaz Lavie
The art in this – done by twins Asaf and Tomer Hanuka – is gorgeous, with really rich colors. The story it helps tell, though, isn’t well-crafted. It aims to be a sort of mish-mash of modern war story and ancient magic, but it comes off as kind of half-baked. It’s ostensibly about child soldiers in Thailand (the story takes place in a fictional Asian country called Quanlom), but I only knew that because of the creators’ afterword, which is a good deal more resonant than their story. The protagonist is kind of dull, his best friend is a caricature, and the central conflict about two twin Quanlom kids committing acts of violence for their country (helped along by some magical powers) never gels into anything meaningful. I wish I liked this one better; it’s a fine purchase for adult collections (for the art especially), but a bit of a letdown overall.

The Earl’s Mistress by Liz Carlyle
I read a lot of historical romance, and I enjoy pretty equally books that are on the tame side as well as those that are rather spicy. This one is definitely on the spicy side. It may be the spiciest historical romance I’ve yet read, which is saying something. Isabella Aldridge goes to interview for the position of governess with the Earl of Hepplewood, and he turns her down, but offers her a different role instead, which you can guess by the title of the book. He’s kind of skeezy in the beginning, and the book gives off a bit of a Fifty Shades vibe, though the earl isn’t really tortured like Christian is supposed to be. He gets better later in the story, and this isn’t the only historical romance guilty of making its hero a little too unlikeable at the beginning. The developing affection between the two leads is done well, though. The narration by Carolyn Morris is good and the book was enjoyable enough despite its flaws – I checked out a few others by Carlyle on its merits.

The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly by Stephanie Oakes
Kelly reviewed this one not too long ago, which made me want to read it myself. So now you have two people (at least) telling you that it’s absolutely worth a read. I normally shy away from stories set primarily in prison, but this one wasn’t all about fights and how awful prison life is (which just makes me feel sad). It was a very personal story about Minnow and how she comes to terms with what happened with the cult and what she did to land herself in the detention center (refreshingly, she actually did do what she was convicted of doing, which we learn straight off). Minnow emerges at the end of the story a much stronger person with a stronger voice and a better understanding of what she wants from her life. What really made this story stand out for me, though, was the writing. I read a lot of YA books with fairly straightforward writing styles, good for much of the fast-paced action-oriented stories I enjoy. It was nice to read a book by an author who clearly enjoys playing with language – and is good at it – for a change.

Books received from the publisher, except for the Carlyle, which I borrowed from the library.

On The Radar: 10 Books for August

|

One of the most popular posts I do over at Book Riot is the round-up of upcoming YA fiction titles, and one of the most popular questions I seem to get on Twitter and in my inboxes is “what should I be looking out for in YA?” For a lot of readers, especially those who work with teens either in classrooms or in libraries, knowing what’s coming out ahead of time is valuable to get those books into readers’ hands before they even ask.

Each month, I’ll call out between 8 and 12 books coming out that should be on your radar. These include books by high-demand, well-known authors, as well as some up-and-coming and debut authors. They’ll be across a variety of genres, including diverse titles and writers. Not all of the books will be ones that Kimberly or I have read, nor will all of them be titles that we’re going to read and review. Rather, these are books that readers will be looking for and that have popped up regularly on social media, in advertising, in book mail, and so forth. It’s part science and part arbitrary and a way to keep the answer to “what should I know about for this month?” quick, easy, and under $300 (doable for smaller library budgets especially).

For August, here are 10 titles to have on your radar. All descriptions are from WorldCat, and I’ve noted why it should be included. 
A History of Glitter and Blood by Hannah Moskowitz: Beckan, an immortal teenage fairy, and Tier, a young activist, are on opposite sides of a war, but strike up an unlikely friendship anyway.
Why: I have read nothing but positive reviews of this title, and Moskowitz continues to emerge in the YA world as an author to watch. This is her second release this year, and it’s in a completely different genre than Not Otherwise Specifed. 
The Accident Season by Moira Fowley-Doyle: Every October Cara and her family become mysteriously and dangerously accident-prone, but this year, the year Cara, her ex-stepbrother, and her best friend are 17, is when Cara will begin to unravel the accident season’s dark origins. 
Why: This one has had a ton of publicity and press, and it sounds like a fun, different supernatural tale. 

Bright Lights, Dark Nights by Stephen Emond: Walter Wilcox’s first love, Naomi, happens to be African American, so when Walter’s policeman father is caught in a racial profiling scandal, the teens’ bond and mutual love of the Foo Fighters may not be enough to keep them together through the pressures they face at school, at home, and online.
Why: I read this one, and while it’s imperfect, it’s timely and should evoke some great discussion. The romance here is well-drawn and through the perspective of Walter, which makes it stand out in the current YA world. This is also a hybrid novel with illustrations, so it has tremendous appeal. 
Court of Fives by Kate Elliott: When a scheming lord tears Jess’s family apart, she must rely on her unlikely friendship with Kal, a high-ranking Patron boy, and her skill at Fives, an intricate, multi-level athletic competition that offers a chance for glory, to protect her Commoner mother and mixed-race sisters and save her father’s reputation.
Why: I’ve read nothing but great reviews of this one, and it’s had some good publicity. Elliott is no novice in the SFF world, but this is her first foray into YA. 
Slasher Girls & Monster Boys edited by April Genevieve Tucholke: Inspired by classic tales and films, a collection of fourteen short stories ranging from bloody horror, to psychological thrillers, to supernatural creatures, to unsettling, all-too-possible realism, by acclaimed YA authors of every genre.
Why: Again, really positive reviews of this one have piqued my own curiosity, as well as a stellar lineup of writers with short horror stories. There’s always room for more horror in YA, and in this instance, a collection of short stories is a unique way to offer it. With the names included, an awesome opportunity for new readers to discover the longer works by authors’ stories they enjoy, too.
Legacy of Kings by Eleanor Herman: Katerina, on a mission to kill the queen, falls in love with Alexander, Prince of Macedonia. Jacob will go to unthinkable lengths to win Katerina, even if it means having to compete with Hephaestion, a murderer sheltered by the prince. And far across the sea, Zofia, a Persian princess and Alexander’s unmet betrothed, wants to alter her destiny by seeking the famed and deadly Spirit Eaters.
Why: Aside from the big push this one has gotten from the publisher, adults might be familiar with the author, who has written the adult non-fiction titles Sex With Kings and Sex With The Queen. She knows her stuff, and I suspect it’ll be interesting to see her take that knowledge and apply it into a YA novel. 
The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall by Kate Alender: Sixteen-year-old Cordelia and her family move into the house they just inherited in Pennsylvania, a former insane asylum the locals call Hysteria Hall–unfortunately the house does not want defiant girls like Delia, so it kills her, and as she wanders the house, meeting the other ghosts and learning the dark secrets of the Hall, she realizes that she has to find a way to save her sister, parents, and perhaps herself.
Why: Again, this is a solid horror novel, and Alender has sort of carved a niche for herself here, too. She’s an excellent writer of suspense and tension, and this particular novel features a smart main character who knows how horror works, so there’s an extra layer of tension added therein. It plays with the tropes horror readers love in unexpected ways.
Reawakened by Colleen Houck: A visit to an Egyptian exhibit brings teen Lilliana Young face to face with a recently awakened mummy-turned-handsome-sun-god as she gets caught up in an adventure with more twists and turns than the Nile itself
Why: Houck has written a series before that did quite well, and this is the first entry into a new one. A mythology-based fantasy sounds fun and different. 

After The Red Rain by Barry Lyga, Peter Facinelli, and Robert DeFranco: Set in a future world of environmental collapse and mass poverty, where a mysterious boy named Rose discovers he possesses inhuman powers that can irrevocably change the lives of everyone on the planet.
Why: While the description really doesn’t make this one sound particularly unique, look at the names on this book. They’re huge and this collaborative effort has seen some good reviews. 
Most Likely To Succeed by Jennifer Echols: Sawyer and Kaye fall in love despite hating each other.
Why: Weak description from WorldCat, but Echols continues to produce well-written romance-driven YA novels, and this entire series has been solid. Bonus: look at that black girl on the cover, right in the center. 

Prima Ballerinas: A YA Reading List

|

BalletinYoung Adult Fiction (1)

 

There are two things in YA that will make me pick up a book no matter what. The first are stories set in a juvenile detention facility. It’s not that I love seeing bad kids; rather, it’s about how these stories — and shows like Beyond Scared Straight, which I love — are about how adults are not giving up on teenagers who do dumb things. Rather, they’re stories about how there’s so much hope to make the lives of these teenagers better.

 

The second thing in YA that I can never get enough of is the ballet story. I used to take ballet as a kid, and I think that might be part of why. It’s a dream that never was for me, despite making a pact when my best friend at age 5 that we’d grow up together and become ballerinas together.

 

Neither of us are ballerinas.

 

Because there’s been a handful of ballet-themed YA on shelves this year and because it’s such a perennially great topic in YA with a lot of timelessness to it (competition, drive, and dance don’t change when a book is 10 years old, as opposed to brand new), I thought I’d pull together a book old booklist. All of these books, some old, some new, and some to hit shelves in the near future, include ballet as a major part of the story. Likewise, I have included non-fiction on this list because it absolutely thrills me to see that the non-fiction in YA about ballerinas we’re seeing isn’t about the ideal white girl dancers we are so accustomed to seeing. They’re different.

 

All descriptions are from WorldCat unless otherwise noted. If there are other ballet themed YA books I missed, I’d love to know in the comments. And as always, I once again plea that someone write me a book about a black male dancer, a la the story of the boy in “Save The Last Dance.” I want to read that story so bad. I suspect many a YA reader does, too.

 

 

 

Audition by Stasia Ward Kehoe: When sixteen-year-old Sara, from a small Vermont town, wins a scholarship to study ballet in New Jersey, her ambivalence about her future increases even as her dancing improves.

Bunheads by Sophie Flack: Hannah Ward, nineteen, revels in the competition, intense rehearsals, and dazzling performances that come with being a member of Manhattan Ballet Company’s corps de ballet, but after meeting handsome musician Jacob she begins to realize there could be more to her life.

Dancer, Daughter, Traitor, Spy by Elizabeth Kiem: After a harrowing defection to the United States in 1982, Russian teenager Marya and her father settle in Brooklyn, where Marya is drawn into a web of intrigue involving her gift of foresight, her mother’s disappearance, and a boy she cannot bring herself to trust.

 

 

Dancing in Red Shoes Will Kill You by Doreen Cirrone: Sixteen-year-old Kayla, a ballet dancer with very large breasts, and her sister Paterson, an artist, are both helped and hindered by classmates as they confront sexism, conformity, and censorship at their high school for the arts while still managing to maintain their sense of humor.

Feuds by Avery Hastings: n 2135 Ohio, Davis Morrow, a fiercely ambitious ballerina, has been primed to be smarter, stronger, and more graceful than the lowly Imperfects but when a deadly virus, the Narxis, begins killing Davis’s friends she turns to Cole, a mysterious boy with his own agenda, and their love may be the only thing that can save her world.

Jersey Tomatoes Are The Best by Maria Padian: When fifteen-year-old best friends Henry and Eve leave New Jersey, one for tennis camp in Florida and one for ballet camp in New York, each faces challenges that put her long-cherished dreams of the future to the test.

 

Marie, Dancing by Carolyn Meyer: A fictionalized autobiography of Marie Van Goethem, the impoverished student from the Paris Opéra ballet school who became the model for Edgar Degas’s famous sculpture, “The Little Dancer.”

On Pointe by Lorie Ann Grover: In this novel written in free verse, Clare and her grandfather must deal with changes in their lives when Clare’s summer growth spurt threatens to end her dream of becoming a ballet dancer and her grandfather suffers a stroke.

Pointe by Brandy Colbert: Four years after Theo’s best friend, Donovan, disappeared at age thirteen, he is found and brought home and Theo puts her health at risk as she decides whether to tell the truth about the abductor, knowing her revelation could end her life-long dream of becoming a professional ballet dancer.

 

 

Rose Sees Red by Cecil Castellucci: In the 1980s, two teenaged ballet dancers–one American, one Russian–spend an unforgettable night in New York City, forming a lasting friendship despite their cultural and political differences.

Taking Flight by Michaela DePrince: The memoir of Michaela DePrince, who lived the first few years of her live in war-torn Sierra Leone until being adopted by an American Family. Now seventeen, she is one of the premiere ballerinas in the United States

The Broken Hearted by Amelia Kahaney: When seventeen-year-old Anthem Fleet is suddenly transformed into an all-powerfull superhero, she must balance her old life with the dark secret of who she has become. (This description doesn’t tell you that Anthem was a ballerina before the transformation).

 

 

The Melting Season by Celeste Conway: Giselle, the sheltered daughter of two famous ballet dancers, comes to terms with her relationships with both her late father and her mother, realizing some important truths that help her move forward both in her life and with her own dancing.

The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma: Orianna and Violet are ballet dancers and best friends, but when the ballerinas who have been harassing Violet are murdered, Orianna is accused of the crime and sent to a juvenile detention center where she meets Amber and they experience supernatural events linking the girls together.

Tiny Pretty Things by Sona Charaipotra and Dhonielle Clayton: Gigi, Bette, and June, three top students at an exclusive Manhattan ballet school, have seen their fair share of drama. Free-spirited new girl Gigi just wants to dance — but the very act might kill her. Privileged New Yorker Bette’s desire to escape the shadow of her ballet star sister brings out a dangerous edge in her. And perfectionist June needs to land a lead role this year or her controlling mother will put an end to her dancing dreams forever. When every dancer is both friend and foe, the girls will sacrifice, manipulate, and backstab to be the best of the best.

 

 

Unlovely by Celeste Conway: A boy is torn between his newfound love for a ballet dancer and the fear that she might be out to kill him.

Up To This Pointe by Jennifer Longo (January 19, 2016): Harper is a dancer. She and her best friend, Kate, have one goal: becoming professional ballerinas. And Harper won’t let anything—or anyone—get in the way of The Plan, not even the boy she and Kate are both drawn to.
 
Harper is a Scott. She’s related to Robert Falcon Scott, the explorer who died racing to the South Pole. So when Harper’s life takes an unexpected turn, she finagles (read: lies) her way to the icy dark of McMurdo Station . . . in Antarctica. Extreme, but somehow fitting—apparently she has always been in the dark, dancing on ice this whole time. And no one warned her. Not her family, not her best friend, not even the boy who has somehow found a way into her heart. (Description via Goodreads).

Various Positions by Martha Schabas: When talented, dedicated fourteen-year-old Georgia Slade becomes a student in an elite Toronto ballet academy, her confusing feelings toward one of her teachers lead to disaster.

 

Third Quarter To-Read

|

I love Kelly’s quarterly round-ups of YA books to look forward to over at Book Riot (in a totally unbiased way!). It’s an easy way to organize my to-read pile and is great for planning blog posts. Here are a few titles that I’m really looking forward to diving into this quarter.

Silver in the Blood by Jessica Day George
This is a new twist on the Dracula story from an author I like. Really gory or dark Dracula retellings are not my cup of tea, but George’s stuff is usually pretty light so I feel a Dracula story from her would be a good fit for me.

A History of Glitter and Blood by Hannah Moskowitz
I’ve heard a lot of good things about Moskowitz, but she hasn’t written a book with a plot that really hooked me enough to give her a try. This one, with its storyline full of fairies and other magical creatures, looks to be that book.

Con Academy by Joe Schreiber
Y’all may know how much I love books about heists, con artists, and the like. The synopsis for this book makes it seem a little like Holly Black’s Curse Workers series (without the magic) with a dash of E. Lockhart’s Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks.

Legacy of Kings by Eleanor Herman
This is historical fantasy about Alexander the Great as a teenager and a host of fictional characters. I really dig historical fantasy in the vein of Grave Mercy and Herman is well-known for her historical nonfiction for adults, so I have high hopes for the quality of this story.

The Shadow Behind the Stars by Rebecca Hahn
I read Hahn’s first novel, A Creature of Moonlight, for the Cybils last year and was impressed with the writing, though I thought the plot itself was a bit slight. Her next book, a spin on the Greek Fates, seems perfectly suited to her dreamy writing style.

The Hired Girl by Laura Amy Schlitz
This is historical fiction set in 1911 Pennsylvania that seems a little bit Hattie Big Sky with a smattering of A Northern Light. Funnily enough, I liked the concept of both of those books better than I liked their actual execution, but I have high hopes for Schlitz’s take on this time period.

Ash and Bramble by Sarah Prineas
It’s a retelling of Cinderella with magic and a girl in a pretty dress on the cover. Deep down (or maybe not so deep down), I am still that girl who just wants to have magical powers and wear a really pretty dress.

The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen by Katherine Howe
I really liked Howe’s first try at YA, Conversion, and I have high hopes for her second outing. While the historical aspect is missing here, it does seem to have that same thread of is-it-or-isn’t-it-magic throughout. (The synopsis for this would be a turnoff if the book were written by a man, but in Howe’s hands I have more trust in it.) Also, that cover design is pretty cool.

Sound by Alexandra Duncan
Salvage was one of my favorite books of 2014 and I’m super excited to read the companion novel, which focuses on Ava’s adopted sister Miyole. Thankfully, the cover for this book features a girl who looks alive.