Welcome back to Hot New Titles! This feature has been on hiatus for a while because life got supremely busy for me, but things are slowing down now and I’m ready to help you buy all the books. Huzzah!
New releases include The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma, Written in the Stars by Aisha Saeed and Boys Don’t Knit by T.S. Easton.
Book Deals to put on your radar: The Freedom Dress by Suzanne Nelson, Touch Me Not by Stacey Lee and Beast by Brie Spangler.
Cover reveals include the US and UK covers for Queen of Shadows by Sarah J. Maas, Winter by Marissa Myer and Beastly Bones by William Ritter, our fav of the week!
Did we miss a cover? Want your cover featured on HNT? Email us!
Hot New Titles is Cuddlebuggery’s weekly post for YA releases and cover reveals. Don’t forget you can follow us on Facebook for all the cover reveals throughout the week and more fun. Clicking the covers takes you to the book’s GoodReads page. As always, we thank Stories and Sweeties, who compiles great lists of new releases and hosts monthly New Releases Giveaways! For all the latest book world news and book blogging gossip, check out our weekly Friday feature, Buzz Worthy News.
New Releases
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The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma
“Ori’s dead because of what happened out behind the theater, in the tunnel made out of trees. She’s dead because she got sent to that place upstate, locked up with those monsters. And she got sent there because of me.” The Walls Around Us is a ghostly story of suspense told in two voices—one still living and one long dead. On the outside, there’s Violet, an eighteen-year-old dancer days away from the life of her dreams when something threatens to expose the shocking truth of her achievement. On the inside, within the walls of a girls’ juvenile detention center, there’s Amber, locked up for so long she can’t imagine freedom. Tying these two worlds together is Orianna, who holds the key to unlocking all the girls’ darkest mysteries. We hear Amber’s story and Violet’s, and through them Orianna’s, first from one angle, then from another, until gradually we begin to get the whole picture—which is not necessarily the one that either Amber or Violet wants us to see. Nova Ren Suma tells a supernatural tale of guilt and innocence, and what happens when one is mistaken for the other.
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Written in the Stars by Aisha Saeed
This heart-wrenching novel explores what it is like to be thrust into an unwanted marriage. Has Naila’s fate been written in the stars? Or can she still make her own destiny? Naila’s conservative immigrant parents have always said the same thing: She may choose what to study, how to wear her hair, and what to be when she grows up—but they will choose her husband. Following their cultural tradition, they will plan an arranged marriage for her. And until then, dating—even friendship with a boy—is forbidden. When Naila breaks their rule by falling in love with Saif, her parents are livid. Convinced she has forgotten who she truly is, they travel to Pakistan to visit relatives and explore their roots. But Naila’s vacation turns into a nightmare when she learns that plans have changed—her parents have found her a husband and they want her to marry him, now! Despite her greatest efforts, Naila is aghast to find herself cut off from everything and everyone she once knew. Her only hope of escape is Saif . . . if he can find her before it’s too late.
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Boys Don’t Knit (Boys Don’t Knit #1) by T.S. Easton
Knitting is a man’s game. After an incident regarding a crossing guard and a bottle of Martini & Rossi (and his bonehead friends), 17-year-old worrier Ben Fletcher must develop his sense of social alignment, take up a hobby, and do some community service to avoid any further probation. He takes a knitting class (it was that or his father’s mechanic class) under the impression that it’s taught by the hot teacher all the boys like. Turns out, it’s not. Perfect. Regardless, he sticks with it and comes to find that he’s a natural knitter, maybe even great. It even helps ease his anxiety and worrying. The only challenge now is to keep it hidden from his friends, his crush, and his soccer-obsessed father. What a tangled web Ben has weaved . . . or knitted.
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We All Looked Up by Tommy Wallach
Four high school seniors put their hopes, hearts, and humanity on the line as an asteroid hurtles toward Earth in this contemporary novel. They always say that high school is the best time of your life. Peter, the star basketball player at his school, is worried “they” might actually be right. Meanwhile Eliza can’t wait to escape Seattle—and her reputation—and perfect-on-paper Anita wonders if admission to Princeton is worth the price of abandoning her real dreams. Andy, for his part, doesn’t understand all the fuss about college and career—the future can wait. Or can it? Because it turns out the future is hurtling through space with the potential to wipe out life on Earth. As these four seniors—along with the rest of the planet—wait to see what damage an asteroid will cause, they must abandon all thoughts of the future and decide how they’re going to spend what remains of the present.
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Liars, Inc. by Paula Stokes
For fans of Gone Girl, I Hunt Killers, and TV’s How to Get Away with Murder. Max Cantrell has never been a big fan of the truth, so when the opportunity arises to sell forged permission slips and cover stories to his classmates, it sounds like a good way to make a little money and liven up a boring senior year. With the help of his friends Preston and Parvati, Max starts Liars, Inc. Suddenly everybody needs something and the cash starts pouring in. Who knew lying could be so lucrative? When Preston wants his own cover story to go visit a girl he met online, Max doesn’t think twice about hooking him up. Until Preston never comes home. Then the evidence starts to pile up—terrifying clues that lead the cops to Preston’s body. Terrifying clues that point to Max as the murderer. Can Max find the real killer before he goes to prison for a crime he didn’t commit? In a story that Kirkus Reviews called “Captivating to the very end,” Paula Stokes starts with one single white lie and weaves a twisted tale that will have readers guessing until the explosive final chapters.
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Half Wild (The Half Bad Trilogy #2) by Sally Green
“You will have a powerful Gift, but it’s how you use it that will show you to be good or bad.” In a modern-day England where two warring factions of witches live amongst humans, seventeen-year-old Nathan is an abomination, the illegitimate son of the world’s most powerful and violent witch. Nathan is hunted from all sides: nowhere is safe and no one can be trusted. Now, Nathan has come into his own unique magical Gift, and he’s on the run–but the Hunters are close behind, and they will stop at nothing until they have captured Nathan and destroyed his father.
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Catalyst (Control #2) by Lydia Kang
For fans of Uglies and The Maze Runner comes a complex, thrill-filled love story that will make you question exactly what it means to be human In the past year Zel lost her father, the boy she loves, her safety, and any future she might have imagined for herself. Now she, her sister, and the band of genetic outcasts they’ve come to call their family are forced on the run when their safe house is attacked by men with neural guns. But on the way to a rumored haven in Chicago, Zel hears something–a whisper from Cy, the boy who traded himself for her sister’s safety. And when she veers off plan in order to search for him, what she finds is not what she expected. There’s more to their genetic mutations than they ever imagined…aspects that make them wonder if they might be accepted by the outside world after all.
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The Door in the Moon (Chronoptika #3) by Catherine Fisher
This New York Times bestselling author once again shows us that she is a master of world-building and surprising plot-twists. The vast, intricate world, fascinating revelations, and unexpected turns in the final book of the Obsidian Mirror trilogy will appeal to readers of Cassandra Claire, and will satisfy existing fans fully.
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Finding Mr. Brightside by Jay Clark
Abram and Juliette know each other. They’ve lived down the street from each other their whole lives. But they don’t really know each other—at least, not until Juliette’s mom and Abram’s dad have a torrid affair that culminates in a deadly car crash. Sharing the same subdivision is uncomfortable, to say the least. They don’t speak. Fast-forward to the neighborhood pharmacy, a few months later. Abram decides to say hello. Then he decides to invite her to Taco Bell. To her surprise as well as his, she agrees. And the real love story begins.
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The Haunting of Sunshine Girl by Paige McKenzie and Alyssa B. Sheinmel
Based on the wildly popular YouTube channel, The Haunting of Sunshine Girl has been described as “ Gilmore Girls meets Paranormal Activity for the new media age.” YA fans new and old will learn the secrets behind Sunshine—the adorkable girl living in a haunted house—a story that is much bigger, and runs much deeper, than even the most devoted viewer can imagine…
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In the Time of Dragon Moon (Wilde Island Chronicles #3) by Janet Lee Carey
An epic fantasy about dragons, dark secrets, Pendragons, and magic On the southernmost tip of Wilde Island–far from the Dragonswood sanctuary and the Pendragon Castle–live the native Euit people. Uma, who is half Euit and half English, and not fully accepted by her tribe, wants to become a healer like her Euit father. But the mad English queen in the north, desperate for another child, kidnaps Uma and her father and demands that he cure her barrenness. After her father dies, Uma must ensure that the queen is with child by the time of the Dragon Moon, or be burned at the stake. Terrified and alone, Uma reaches out to her only possible ally: the king’s nephew Jackrun, a fiery dragonrider with dragon, fairy, and human blood. Together, they must navigate through a sea of untold secrets, unveil a dark plot spawned long ago in Dragonswood, and find a way to accept all the elements–Euit, English, dragon, and fairy–that make them who they are.
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Me Being Me Is Exactly as Insane as You Being You by Todd Hasak-Lowy
A heartfelt, humorous story of a teen boy’s impulsive road trip after the shock of his lifetime—told entirely in lists! Darren hasn’t had an easy year. There was his parents’ divorce, which just so happened to come at the same time his older brother Nate left for college and his longtime best friend moved away. And of course there’s the whole not having a girlfriend thing. Then one Thursday morning Darren’s dad shows up at his house at 6 a.m. with a glazed chocolate doughnut and a revelation that turns Darren’s world inside out. In full freakout mode, Darren, in a totally un-Darren move, ditches school to go visit Nate. Barely twenty-four hours at Nate’s school makes everything much better or much worse—Darren has no idea. It might somehow be both. All he knows for sure is that in addition to trying to figure out why none of his family members are who they used to be, he’s now obsessed with a strangely amazing girl who showed up out of nowhere but then totally disappeared. Told entirely in lists, Todd Hasak-Lowy’s debut YA novel perfectly captures why having anything to do with anyone, including yourself, is: 1. painful 2. unavoidable 3. ridiculously complicated 4. possibly, hopefully the right thing after all.
Book Deals
Stealing Snow by Danielle Paige
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Publication: Fall 2016
Rights: World English
Agent: Joanna Volpe (New Leaf Literary)
In which 17-year-old Snow escapes a mental institution in upstate New York and ends up lost in Algid, a Winterland of ice, reimagining Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen.”
The Freedom Dress by Suzanne Nelson
Publisher: Knopf (Random House)
Publication: Fall 2017
Rights: World
Agent: Ammi-Joan Paquette (Erin Murphy Literary Agency)
The story of a debutante in 1950s New Orleans whose life changes when her race is unexpectedly called into question, prompting her to uncover long-buried family secrets.
The Factory Girl by Josanne La Valley
Publisher: Clarion Books
Publication: Fall 2016
Rights: North American
Agent: Marietta B. Zacker (Nancy Gallt Literary Agency)
Roshen, a Muslim, is forced from her homeland in northwest China to work in a remote factory where she endures harsh conditions and abuse, and resolves to use her budding gift as a poet to expose these wrongs.
Touch Me Not by Stacey Lee
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books (HarperCollins)
Publication: Fall 2016
Rights: World
Agent: Kristin Nelson (Nelson Literary Agency)
In the new novel, a 16-year-old aromateur with an extraordinary nose, the last in a long line of love witches, scrambles to reverse the effects of a love elixir after giving it to the wrong target – all while trying not to fall for the woman’s attractive son.
Beast by Brie Spangler
Publisher: Knopf
Publication: Fall 2016
Rights: North American
Agent: Mackenzie Brady (New Leaf Literary & Media)
A modern retelling of “Beauty and the Beast” in which the tallest, hairiest boy in town meets and falls for his dream girl, who also happens to be transgender.
Weaving a Net is Better Than Praying for Fish by Ki-Wing Merlin
Publisher: Balzer + Bray (HarperCollins)
Publication: Fall 2016
Rights: World English
Agent: Tamar Rydzinski (Laura Dail Literary Agency)
About a first-generation Chinese-American girl navigating school and classmates while concealing secrets from friends and family, who must learn to rely on others to catch the thief when her father’s store is robbed.
Source: Publishers Weekly
Natalie M.
Yay, Hot New Titles is back! I’m a bit disappointed by Winter’s cover. I thought it’d be darker, like blood dripping from an apple. And the hand is white. That better be Levana and not the publisher whitewashing Winter’s hand.
Kyra
I so badly want to read We All Looked Up – it looks AMAZING!
Fida
I’m excited for WRITTEN IN THE STARS by Aisha Saeed and The Factory Girl by Josanne La Valley. I love the QoS and Winter covers!
Holly J
So, so, so excited for Written in the Stars and Liars, Inc.! And ooh yay, new book deals! I love those. 🙂