11 Books We’re Thankful For

I have so much gratitude for Tess Sharpe’s beautiful, fearless Far From You, about a grieving girl who solves a mystery and saves her own life while grappling with recovery from addiction and living under the iron fist of chronic pain. After Sophie’s best friend (and more), Mina, is killed by a masked man, it’s framed as a drug deal gone wrong. Forced into rehab, Sophie hones her hunger for answers, revenge, and vindication, then returns to a life she barely recognizes. It’s a tense, page-turning thriller, a tender love story, and an amazing depiction of the trials of chronic pain.
–Melissa Albert

I’m so thankful for Suri Rosen’s Playing With Matches, for showing me what it really looks like to see yourself in a book. I’d never read a YA with a Modern Orthodox Jewish main character before, and this one was funny, sweet, charming, and so, so recognizable to me in ways big and small that reading it made my heart explode a little.
–Dahlia Adler

This is a tough one, as there are so many books I’m happy for across the board. Books that inspired me, made me want to write, etc. But if I had to choose a book this year that I’m thankful for, I think I’ll pick Mosquitoland, by David Arnold. It’s a book that’s a work of art inside and out (that COVER, you guys), and it was one of the few books this year that I literally hugged after I finished it. Touching on mental illness, family, and the lonely place that is the open road, it’s a moving, beautiful book I’ve spent all year recommending. I’m thankful it exists.
–Eric Smith

I don’t think I can quantify the impact Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak had on me the first time I read it as a teenager. I had never experienced anything like it. And it was an experience. We often throw around the word “authentic” pretty haphazardly, but the story of Melinda’s ordeal—and her inability to talk about what happened to her—seems so real that rather than beat you over the head with a “message,” Speak draws you in and tears your heart out. This year, I want to reiterate how thankful I am that YA is a place we can have these kinds of difficult conversations; I don’t know if we can ever understand how important that is.
–Nicole Hill

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith, follows a few generations of a dirt-poor family living in a Brooklyn tenement from 1902 to 1919, but focuses mainly on Francie Nolan, a thoughtful, intelligent, and lonely girl who loves to read and write. I’ve read it nearly every holiday season since 2008, and always associate it with the holidays, perhaps because of that memorable and heartbreaking scene in which Francie and her younger brother get a tree hurled at them on Christmas Eve. They survive the ordeal and are therefore granted the right to take the Christmas tree home. It makes me nostalgic for a time and place I’ve never experienced, yet feel connected to because of this novel.
–Sarah Skilton

Like so many others, I was completely blown away by Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief. Liesel Meminger is a foster child living in World War II–era Germany who can’t seem to stop herself from stealing books. But this isn’t just Liesel’s story; along the way, you will meet unforgettable characters like Liesel’s beloved foster father, her neighbor and best friend, Rudy (my personal very favorite character), and the Jewish man named Max hiding in Liesel’s foster parents’ basement. Perhaps most mesmerizing of all, the book is narrated by Death, who is busier than ever during this harrowing period in human history. This utterly unique book is beautiful and haunting. I first read it nearly a decade ago, and it has stayed with me ever since.
–Alyssa Sheinmel

I was going to highlight a classic like Tamora Pierce’s Alanna: The First Adventure, but then I realized that all of my favorite elements of Pierce’s writing in Naomi Novik’s stirring fairy tale Uprooted: the girl who gets overlooked, plucked by destiny for greatness; her tenuous friendship with her more graceful and brave best friend; her cranky teacher-slash-gasp-love-interest; a wholly unique take on magic that’s astonishingly grounded; corruption in the palace and in nature. I don’t read a lot of fantasy because I often find the worldbuilding too much to buy into, but I’m sold on Novik’s epic but not overblown tale. I’d follow her into the woods anytime.
–Natalie Zutter

Two of my favorite movies are John Hughes’s Pretty in Pink and Sixteen Candles, and Megan McCafferty’s Sloppy Firsts is basically both of those movies in book form with a 21st-century update. Sixteen-year-old Jessica Darling is understandably devastated when her best friend, Hope, the only person in the whole world Jess thinks actually gets her, moves away after Hope’s brother dies of a drug overdose. Now Jess is forced to face the pitfalls of high school, her parents, and her engaged older sister alone. And then there’s Hope’s brother’s “dreg” friend, Marcus Flutie, who keeps popping up in Jess’s life and totally confusing her—and did I mention how crazy-hot Marcus is? His hotness just vibrates off the page, as does Jess’s sharp humor, hyperaware nature, and poignant observations about the roller-coaster that is the teenage experience. I’m so thankful McCafferty brought these characters to life in such an engaging, compelling, and realistic way.
–Jen Harper

This Thanksgiving I’m grateful for Love Letters to the Dead, by Ava Dellaira. I stumbled across it in a used bookstore and found myself wrapped up in it immediately. Very Perks of Being a Wallflower. I worried the writing-letters-to-dead-people thing (“Dear Kurt Cobain…”) would get old fast, but I actually found that format charming and even believable. Laurel’s emotions are so raw, so close to the surface, and so true. Plus, Dellaira turns some stunningly beautiful phrases that had me pausing just to savor them. It’s not a perfect book, but it’s one I’ll think about into 2016.
–Kathryn Williams

If I’m honest, I’ll always be most thankful for Harry Potter, as the boy who first instilled a love of YA books in me. But in E. Lockhart’s The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, Frankie, with her very real struggle to find her place in the world, is a close second. Her story takes place in a boarding school as she slowly becomes a criminal mastermind and infiltrates an all male secret society. She’s smart, and she knows it, but she doesn’t feel like other people know it. The problem is that Frankie wants to be respected as a person and desired as a woman, but she finds (unfortunately) that the two desires often aren’t compatible. I love this story because it reminds me of how easy it is to lose ourselves and cultivate an image that doesn’t reflect reality. While it doesn’t offer easy answers, it asks the big questions about identity and gender equality, complete with Gilmore Girls level witty dialogue. It’s a must read for any person who’s ever felt underestimated and misunderstood.
–Rachel Paxton-Gillilan

If you threw Pride and Prejudice and the movie Mean Girls into a mixing bowl to make soup, but then added a boarding school, some blackmail, and a dash of magic, well, then Libba Bray’s A Great and Terrible Beauty would be that soup. I first read this book in the formative years of middle school, and it had such an influence on me both as a reader and a writer. Not only is it big on fleshing out female friendships and tackling issues of gender politics, it’s also hilarious and somewhat scary in the monster-under-the-bed way. Our witty narrator, 16-year-old Gemma Doyle, cleverly navigates rigid Victorian society and sneaking out after dark to drink wine by the light of the moon, and contends with the haunting visions that ultimately lead her to a magical land of dreams. And she does it all in a corset.
–Elodie