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Best of the Best Teen Books 2021

A list of the highest rated and honored teen books from multiple publications for the year 2021. HerrickDL TeenPicks

Herrick District Library

30 items

  • Six critically acclaimed, bestselling, and award-winning authors bring the glowing warmth and electricity of Black teen love to this interlinked novel of charming, hilarious, and heartwarming stories that shine a bright light through the dark. A…
    Book, 2021New York, NY : Quill Tree Books, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2021], ©2021. — Teen Fic Blackout 10/22
  • An incendiary and utterly compelling thriller with a shocking twist that delves deep into the heart of institutionalized racism, from an exceptional new YA voice. Welcome to Niveus Private Academy, where money paves the hallways, and the students…
    Book, 2021New York : Feiwel & Friends, 2021. — Teen Abike-Iyimide 6/21
  • A strange darkness grows in Allward. Even Corayne an-Amarat can feel it, tucked away in her small town at the edge of the sea. She soon discovers the truth: She is the last of an ancient lineage—and the last hope to save the world from…
    Book, 2021New York, NY : HarperTeen, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, [2021] — Teen Aveyard 5/21
  • The Demon King. As Fjerda's massive army prepares to invade, Nikolai Lantsov will summon every bit of his ingenuity and charm—and even the monster within—to win this fight. But a dark threat looms that cannot be defeated by a young king's gift for…
    Book, 2021New York : Imprint, 2021. — Teen Bardugo 4/21
  • As a biracial, unenrolled tribal member and the product of a scandal, eighteen-year-old Daunis Fontaine has never quite fit in, both in her hometown and on the nearby Ojibwe reservation. Daunis dreams of studying medicine, but when her family is…
    Book, 2021New York : Henry Holt and Company, 2021. — Teen Boulley 4/21
  • A way to survive. A way to serve. A way to save. Simi prayed to the gods, once. Now she serves them as Mami Wata--a mermaid--collecting the souls of those who die at sea and blessing their journeys back home. But when a living boy is thrown…
    Book, 2021New York : Random House Children's Books, [2021] — Teen Bowen 11/21
  • Every seven years, the Agon begins. As punishment for a past rebellion, nine Greek gods are forced to walk the earth as mortals, hunted by the descendants of ancient bloodlines, all eager to kill a god and seize their divine power and…
    Book, 2021[United States] : Disney-Hyperion, 2021. — Teen Bracken 1/21
  • A novel-in-verse about a young girl coming-of-age and stepping out of the shadow of her former best friend. She looks me hard in my eyes & my knees lock into tree trunks My eyes don't dance like my heartbeat racing They stare straight back hot…
    Book, 2021New York : Crown Books for Young Readers, [2021] — Teen Browne 1/21
  • Jayne Baek is barely getting by. She shuffles through fashion school, saddled with a deadbeat boyfriend, clout-chasing friends, and a wretched eating disorder that she’s not fully ready to confront. But that’s New York City, right? At least she…
    Book, 2021New York : Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, [2021] — Teen Choi 3/21
  • Sixteen-year-old Deka lives in fear and anticipation of the blood ceremony that will determine whether she will become a member of her village. Already different from everyone else because of her unnatural intuition, Deka prays for red blood so she…
    Book, 2020New York : Delacorte Press, 2020. — Teen Forna 2/21
  • The year is 1927, and Shanghai teeters on the edge of revolution. After sacrificing her relationship with Roma to protect him from the blood feud, Juliette has been a girl on the warpath. One wrong move, and her cousin will step in to usurp her…
    Book, 2021New York : Margaret K. McElderry Books, [2021] — Teen Gong 11/21
  • Magic doesn't exist in the broken city of Lkossa anymore, especially for girls like sixteen-year-old Koffi. Indentured to the notorious Night Zoo, she cares for its fearsome and magical creatures to pay off her family's debts and secure their…
    Book, 2021New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons, [2021] — Teen Gray 9/21
  • Cee has been trapped on an abandoned island for three years without any recollection of how she arrived, or memories from her life prior. All she knows is that somewhere out there, beyond the horizon, she has a sister named Kay, and it’s up to Cee…
    Book, 2021New York : Roaring Brook Press, 2021. — Teen He 6/21
  • Izumi Tanaka has never really felt like she fit in—it isn’t easy being Japanese American in her small, mostly white, northern California town. Raised by a single mother, it’s always been Izumi—or Izzy, because “It’s easier this way”—and her mom…
    Book, 2021New York : Flatiron Books, 2021. — Teen Jean 7/22
  • Shiori, the only princess of Kiata, has a secret. Forbidden magic runs through her veins. Normally she conceals it well, but on the morning of her betrothal ceremony, Shiori loses control. At first, her mistake seems like a stroke of luck,…
    Book, 2021New York : Alfred A. Knopf, [2021] — Teen Lim 6/25
  • Nina is a Lipan girl in our world. She's always felt there was something more out there. She still believes in the old stories. Oli is a cottonmouth kid, from the land of spirits and monsters. Like all cottonmouths, he's been cast from home. He's…
    Book, 2021New York : Levine Querido, 2021. — Teen Little Badger 11/21
  • Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can’t remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club. America in 1954 is…
    Book, 2021New York : Dutton Books, 2021. — Teen Lo 2/22
  • Charlie Vega is a lot of things. Smart. Funny. Artistic. Ambitious. Fat. People sometimes have a problem with that last one. Especially her mom. Charlie wants a good relationship with her body, but it's hard, and her mom leaving a billion weight…
    Book, 2021New York : Holiday House, [2021] — Teen Maldonado 2/21
  • Moth has lost her family in an accident. Though she lives with her aunt, she feels alone and uprooted. Until she meets Sani, a boy who is also searching for his roots. If he knows more about where he comes from, maybe he’ll be able to understand…
    Book, 2021New York : Feiwel and Friends, 2021. — Teen McBride 8/21
  • When two teens discover that they were both sexually assaulted at the same party, they develop a cautious friendship through her family's possibly magical pastelería, his secret forest of otherworldly trees, and the swallows returning to their…
    Book, 2021New York : Feiwel & Friends, 2021. — Teen McLemore 3/21