What Are You Looking For?

A maritime survival adventure follows Fable’s effort to leave an island and seek a place with her father, while building a working alliance with West.

This is a story about the gap between public admiration and genuine understanding. Multiple memories build a picture of Joel, while the community’s difficulty accepting him shapes the tragedy of his life and legacy.

This blends fantasy, bereavement and a challenge to a community's beliefs, with Aurelious facing uncertainty about who he is. It may appeal to readers interested in identity questions alongside upheaval.

A culturally rooted fantasy adventure combining Filipino mythology, humour, friendship and a quest involving a stolen soul key. It places grief and family longing alongside supernatural peril, while presenting courage, empathy, gratitude and teamwork as important values.

A witty, humane fantasy about growing into responsibility while facing fear, prejudice and loss. Tiffany’s work as a witch centres on caring for people, while the story also brings darker threats and emotionally difficult relationships.

This is a grief-centred thriller about vulnerability, belonging and coercive influence. Ruby’s attraction to Fox’s community develops gradually, shifting the atmosphere from apprehension towards horror as its rules and secrets become more troubling.

A fast-moving finale combines mythological adventure with questions of identity and belonging. Its emotional centre lies in characters confronting painful memories and deciding what they owe to friends, communities and the wider world.

A historical adventure about starting again after disaster, building friendships and trying to protect a new home from moving sand. Expect family upheaval, school conflict and an ending whose precise emotional shape is unclear.

A thoughtful story about how children’s curiosity can become humane attention. Its emotional centre is Carl’s dance, which makes hidden wartime suffering visible while preserving his dignity and complexity.

This is a short, otherworldly survival story about bereavement and rebuilding a life. Its central movement is inward: Green's damaged identity gradually changes as she accepts help and reconnects with care.

A richly imagined quest about grief, loyalty and finding meaning in a strange new world. Talking animals, folklore, riddles and snowbound landscapes create wonder, while the busy plot may reward patient reading.

This is a child-centred story about moving from hospital into a spirit world, where imaginative freedom, friendship and questions about life after death shape Jamie’s experience.

This is a serious, emotionally intense story about bereavement, abuse and recovery, balanced by friendship, romantic connection and the possibility of accepting help. Tyler’s choices drive the movement towards a different future.

This is a character-led friendship story about two girls confronting assumptions shaped by place, money and family life. It offers gradual mutual understanding across sharply contrasting circumstances.

This is an adventure about entering a tightly organised cat society, learning its customs and deciding what loyalty means when belonging brings both protection and pressure.

This is an emotionally intense survival story about grief, anxiety and changing relationships. Its suspenseful wilderness episodes sit alongside Case’s uncertain understanding of his brother and the difficult process of living after loss.

A coastal mystery combines shell collecting, friendship and bereavement with wartime and present-day danger. The story may suit a child who enjoys clues and adventure but benefits from space to discuss Alice’s loss.

A richly imagined mystery combines Ghanaian mythology with advanced technology and a Black diaspora community in future San Francisco. Akoma’s investigation centres on family loyalty, ancestral power and trust, while the story also includes tense magical danger and morally difficult decisions.

This is a survival adventure centred on resilience, resourcefulness, grief and connection with nature. Karana's growing self-sufficiency drives the story, while her isolation and the treatment of Indigenous characters add weight beyond the adventure.

A richly imagined fantasy combines Arthurian legend, secret societies and demons with Bree’s investigation into her mother’s death. Its strongest offering is a Black protagonist navigating grief, power and contested history alongside diverse allies and difficult questions about inherited authority.

A tense, emotionally serious science-fiction mystery about desperate choices, hidden exploitation and sibling love. Its strongest appeal is the combination of a threatening facility, ethical questions and contrasting prose and poetry voices.

A fast-paced adventure follows Ollie into The Haven, a child-run refuge and investigation network. The story combines criminal danger, missing children, bereavement and a threat to London, with friendship developing between Ollie and Dodge.

This is a fast-moving teen mystery that treats investigation as a social experience, not merely a puzzle. Missing-person anxiety, grief, online attention and community suspicion make the story emotionally weightier than a cosy whodunit.

Expect a darkly funny, morally complicated fantasy heist: Elle rebuilds her crew to pursue a seemingly impossible rescue from the Afterlife while translating a mysterious manuscript and avoiding powerful syndicates.

A spooky adventure places family duty alongside questions about death, memory and letting go.

Expect an intense crime thriller about grief, anger and the pursuit of revenge. The brothers face secrecy, hostility and danger while investigating their sister’s death, with an unsettling atmosphere and a strongly action-driven climax.

A serious, emotionally charged story about a bereaved child facing prejudice, instability and threats to her bond with Joe. It may invite empathy, but its portrayal of rescue and belonging appears partly sentimentalised.

Louie’s grief after his brother’s death unfolds alongside parental separation and a community’s devastation. The story uses ghosts and Endlander mourning traditions to explore how people remember the dead, communicate loss and begin rebuilding.

A grief-centred verse novel combining letters, school and home life, and cryptid mystery. Its emotional focus is Noah’s search for connection and belonging while navigating loss and identity.

This offers a clear way into talking about death without euphemisms. The birds’ shared rituals and differing reactions may help a child recognise that grief can look and feel different.

This is a direct, emotionally serious story about a child living through her mother’s death. It offers language for grief, shows that support can coexist with loneliness, and uses a familiar garment to represent continuing love and memory.

Fox dies after a long life, and his friends share memories that help a tree grow. The story moves through grief, remembering and renewal, while keeping Fox’s influence alive in their community.

A thoughtful speculative story about whether a digital recreation can be treated as a person. Its emotional centre is Isla’s changing relationship with her returned sister, alongside family disagreement and the island community’s divided response.

A dark supernatural mystery combines witchcraft, ghosts, grief and romance. Viola’s investigation is supported by friendships and a search for justice, while the story also builds suspense through murder, dangerous spirits and unsettling deaths.

Choose this for a reader who enjoys horses, richly imagined landscapes, folklore and a slowly tightening mystery. Its emotional centre is a complicated family whose love and resilience coexist with absence, suspicion and uncertainty.

A gentle magical story about making, companionship and renewed connection. Its wonder comes alongside an older character’s loneliness and a child’s experience of missing her father, holding sadness and happiness together.

Expect an imaginative underwater adventure with a determined heroine, a strong sibling bond, unusual creatures and a richly developed river community. The story combines quest tension with questions about trust, belonging and changing long-held assumptions.

Expect an ambitious animal epic rather than a gentle animal tale: the rabbits travel through perilous landscapes, develop their own culture and stories, and confront competing models of leadership and community.

A colourful, emotionally layered coming-of-age story about Mira facing her grandmother’s declining health while friendships, family relationships and a first romance reshape how she sees life and loss.

This is a supernatural family drama about a dead teenager’s unexpected return and its consequences. It offers emotionally serious reflection on grief, regret, identity, memory and the possibility of repair.

A tense boarding-school mystery about disappearance, grief and alliance-building. Its international, multi-ethnic and multi-religious cast includes positively portrayed queer characters, while Gothic atmosphere and several intertwined storylines create a more demanding emotional and structural experience.

A thoughtful choice for readers interested in history, family secrets and how stories preserve identity. Expect a serious, emotionally demanding account of enslavement alongside a slower contemporary mystery that becomes more absorbing as the connections emerge.

A formally varied, emotionally serious story about friendship and recovery. Its urban green space, ravens, artwork and shifting voices give the characters’ grief, exclusion and difficult choices a layered setting.

This is a lively but grief-heavy coming-of-age story: boarding-school camaraderie, pranks and desire give way to questions about guilt, responsibility, idealisation and how little one person may know about another.

Expect a fast-moving, imaginative adventure in which time travel connects family relationships, grief and responsibility. The story also makes room for humour, friendship and emotional growth, with Al facing both practical dangers and difficult choices.

This is a direct, emotionally serious story about a child living through her mother’s death. It offers language for grief, shows that support can coexist with loneliness, and uses a familiar garment to represent continuing love and memory.

This offers a clear way into talking about death without euphemisms. The birds’ shared rituals and differing reactions may help a child recognise that grief can look and feel different.