What Are You Looking For?

This is a character-led coming-of-age romance about uncertainty rather than a straightforward love story. Ellie’s relationships, creative ambitions, family life and friendships overlap, offering humour, emotional complication and culturally specific family tensions.

This is a character-led YA romance combining K-pop, classical cello, Seoul, family ties and coming-of-age pressures. Jenny and Jaewoo’s ambitions matter alongside their relationship, while school, performance and family obligations shape their choices.

Expect fast-moving fantasy adventure: Emily and her friends train, discover powers and attempt a dangerous rescue while war approaches. Family tensions and questions of trust sit alongside battles and emotional uncertainty.

A comic family-and-school story about a child navigating ambitious parents, a new school and competing ideas about attention. Its main appeal is the child’s perspective on adult expectations and the awkward question of whether independence can become neglect.

A lively, idea-rich fantasy adventure about a girl searching for her sister inside a wish-granting game controlled by powerful corporations. Expect rapid world-building, friendship, mystery and a playful surface alongside serious social questions.

This is a poignant historical family story about isolation, hardship and perseverance. Its emotional centre is Laura’s longing to help, belong and reunite her family, alongside compassion for a vulnerable turtle.

This is a character-led wartime coming-of-age story: relationships and growing up receive sustained attention before and during the conflict. Its view extends beyond the front to family life, nursing and shortages in England.

A mythic rescue adventure centred on Marcy’s fear, determination and relationship with her father. Egyptian gods, the Sphinx and a legendary book create a vivid fantasy setting, while the illustrations carry substantial visual detail and action.

This is a character-led fantasy romance about two girls navigating attraction, family expectations and a threat to connected worlds. It offers cosy magical adventure, contrasting realities and a focus on personal growth over action.

This is a performance-centred coming-of-age story about pursuing talent while resisting narrow ideas of beauty. Its strongest offering is a protagonist whose confidence and vulnerability coexist, alongside representation of bisexual and Korean American identities.

This is a coming-of-age story about a Muslim teenager finding confidence and voice while facing social pressure, racism, family expectations and manipulation. Its serious subject matter is presented alongside humour, relationships and hope.

A relationship-led YA novel about a young woman reconsidering a carefully shaped career while navigating renewed feelings for an ex-boyfriend. Its appeal lies in emotional decisions, family dynamics, K-pop settings and a South Korean cultural backdrop.

This is a queer romantic mystery-comedy about rivalry, attraction and uncovering what lies behind public expectations. It offers energetic plotting, multiple queer characters and relationships, alongside a school setting where stigma shapes how people present themselves.

This is a friendship-led coming-of-age romance centred on one adventurous day before graduation. Philadelphia provides the setting while secrets, old relationships and worries about the future put pressure on the group.

This is an identity-focused coming-of-age romance about Jessie’s attempts to belong, manage expectations and understand herself after an autism diagnosis, with Palestinian Canadian and Greek Orthodox family context woven into the story.

Expect a brisk, comic swashbuckling story: pirates take Molly, but her courage and cleverness unsettle them. The story’s main pleasure is the reversal of who appears powerful and who needs to be feared.

A grief-laden investigation gradually turns a picturesque summer academy into a threatening, psychologically unstable place. The novel combines queer identity, family pressure and gender-role criticism with folk-horror imagery, suspense and disturbing supernatural danger.

This is a multi-viewpoint historical romance about four young Black women balancing love, work, family expectations and social change in 1910 Chicago. It offers ambitious characters and a setting shaped by racial inequality and restricted opportunities for women.

A thoughtful historical coming-of-age story about desire, identity, family loyalty and imagined futures. Lily’s romance unfolds alongside Chinese American community life, scientific ambition and the pressures of 1950s racism, homophobia and anti-Communist suspicion.

A brisk historical adventure about a determined young performer entering London’s theatrical world, with family pressure, friendship and danger shaping his efforts to follow William Shakespeare. Its glossary and postscript can support interest in period language and the boundary between invented story and historical fact.

This is a dual-perspective queer romance about learning to resist pressure from friends and family. It combines warmth and humour with uncomfortable moments involving identity, belonging, prejudice and competing expectations.

A warm, issue-rich coming-of-age romance about being seen honestly within family, faith and school life. Its humour and friendships sit alongside serious questions about racism, homophobia and cultural ownership.

This is an emotionally intense verse novel about a young person seeking freedom within a controlling family situation. Its rhythmic, varied presentation foregrounds Amber’s inner life, while running, friendship and resistance provide movement and moments of agency.

A fast-moving fantasy mystery with an underwater setting, missing-person investigation and environmental concerns. It may appeal to readers who enjoy suspense, sea folklore and protagonists confronting difficult questions about trust, identity and responsibility.

This is a character-led school story about a young person who is often judged by her behaviour but wants to belong, make friends and change direction. Its central appeal is the possibility of second chances.

This is a high-pressure family and sports story about twins whose ambitions, rivalry and difficult circumstances lead them towards separate dangers. It combines emotional conflict with themes of loyalty, adversity and recovery.

This is a reflective historical fantasy combining medieval life with an Arthurian story seen through a magical stone. Its strongest appeal is Arthur’s search for identity, belonging and a future of his own.

This is a focused story about autonomy, belonging and the pressure to appear “inspirational”. It gives particular weight to how adults, peers and public attention can misunderstand an autistic child’s needs.

This is a speculative adventure about a young person testing inherited beliefs against unfamiliar experiences. Its strongest appeal is likely the combination of shifting surroundings, divided loyalties and questions about belonging, truth and humanity.

This is a socially engaged fantasy in which an unlikely friendship crosses a sharp class and political divide. Expect adventure, supernatural conflict and sustained attention to prejudice, power, resistance and difficult choices.

This offers an atmospheric supernatural mystery centred on mortality, family loyalty and a young woman questioning restrictive social expectations. Its emotional appeal lies in Gothic tension, romance and Signa’s developing self-understanding.

This is a family-centred coming-of-age story: Katy’s energetic adventures give way to pain, dependence and gradual change. Its strongest appeal lies in a vivid household, an imperfect heroine and a sustained focus on how relationships respond when ordinary life is disrupted.

A humorous school-and-family story about adapting to Hong Kong, managing changing friendships and finding confidence when familiar support is far away.

Expect imaginative, episodic fantasy: children explore changing magical lands, meet memorable inhabitants and encounter both treats and danger. The story’s cosy, conversational narration sits alongside distinctly old-fashioned social assumptions.

A culturally rooted historical story about a boy finding confidence through football while negotiating family expectations and hostility at school. It offers a child’s perspective on belonging, tradition and personal freedom.

This is comic fantasy adventure about an underestimated boy whose intelligence, courage and loyalty matter more than physical strength. Its lively illustrations, eccentric names and slapstick tone may make the story especially inviting.