 okay i'm gonna be honest with you guys this is the third video i have filmed today and like i am close to falling asleep we're gonna keep the energy up okay come back to my channel i hope you're all good today we're gonna be talking about i always say that don't i today today i am so annoying i'm so sorry i never found you funny i never found you entertaining i never found you smart i just found you annoying so we're gonna be chatting about all of my favorite YA books ever so i saw Gabby doing this the other day and i just saw what that looks like fun i want to do it too because there's something i haven't spoken about in a long time so if you're new to my channel you probably don't know how much i like them so this is a definitive list for you to come back to but before we get into the video i actually want to take a moment to tell you guys all about the sponsor for today's video which is basmo so i've been speaking about basmo quite a bit lately and how much i've been enjoying using it but one part of it that i want to tell you about specifically is the reading goals and reading statistics section of the app so something i find really useful with basmo is that you can set a goal for how many minutes per day you want to read and it's kind of like a motivation to get yourself to pick up a book every day and read even if it's only a 10 minute goal seeing that in the app seeing a goal and seeing you like fulfilling that goal i think is a really really satisfying and motivating you can also set a goal for how many books you want to read a year and it will like track that for you and tell you how many books you need to read per week from now on in order to reach your goal when you do reading sessions it tracks how many minutes you read i am currently in the top 10% of readers if i do say so myself well i'm bragging or anything but it's true all of you in the top one percent better watch out because i am coming for you you can see bar charts and graphs on how much you're reading per day so you can compare stuff and i just think it's really motivating and helpful to see this kind of stuff visually so i will link basmo down below you should definitely go check them out and yeah i really recommend it okay when gabby did this video she did it by genre and i am going to copy that so we're gonna start with contemporary i feel like contemporary is one of my most read YA genres uh first of all like i'm gonna be basic for a second and say i hate you give and on the come up by andy thomas are two of my favorites andy thomas a queen a legend she's like the queen of YA she's an icon she's a legend and she is the moment now come on now i'm sure you know by now but the hate you give is about a girl who's uh witnesses her friend being murdered by the police and on the come up is about this young girl who wants to be a rap star one thing if i'm to give you one one little tidbit of you know a little nugget of information about why i love these books i feel like andy thomas does a whole cast very well sometimes with YA contemporary i find it's only really the protagonist who is fleshed out but every single character even if they already have a line on the page and andy thomas's books are so vivid you know have so much thought behind them i feel i really feel like there's a lot of care behind every single character in her books so that's really something that stands out that you know isn't just me saying all the books great don't read it next i would recommend alice ozman's books so roger silence is a top favorite it's an iconic book i'd really recommend the audiobook it's about this girl who's like in her last year of school and she really loves this podcast and she starts like designing the art for the podcast and it's like this story of friendship really really great and i also really like loveless by alice ozman and nick and charlie by alice ozman this is a little novella about nick and charlie who will speak about a little bit later on i'll hold off talking about nick and charlie for now you naughty naughty you teasing me you naughty naughty but loveless is about this girl who has never been in love never been kissed and she's going to university which i really like i feel like not enough y a is at university because i still think i still feel like it can be y a when you're uni i don't think you turn 18 and like that's immediately like okay we can never write y a about them y a is not an age it's a state of mind delusion convince yourself and she kind of discovers what asexuality is and starts to figure out whether that applies to her and oba mentioned this probably should go in a later category but i'll just mention it quickly please ignore vera deets by as king this is the story of this girl whose best friend has recently passed away and she thinks maybe she can talk to him still so it's not really a contemporary this should be in a different category but i really really love this i think um is a great look at grief and as king is just one of my favorite writers so i listen to the audiobook of this and i really recommend it next i love all of elizabeth atavado's books so with the fire on high clap when you land and the poet x these two are told in verse so they're kind of written as poetry this one is about this um girl who likes to kind of do spoken word but has to keep it a secret this one clap when you land is about two girls who have the same father and he dies going to visit one of them and they didn't know each other existed before and then they kind of learn about each other's existence through their father's death and with the fire on high is told more traditionally and it's about this girl who is a young mother and she loves to cook and it's about her kind of figuring out how to live the life that she you know wants to live herself whilst also providing for her daughter and being a great mum these books are so touching like they're so beautifully written and emotional and i think are some of the the most like emotional YA books ever read with the fire on high is definitely my favorite i i really liked how we got to spend more time with the characters in this but all of Elizabeth atavado's books have this beautiful lyricism to them some of the most beautiful writing i've ever read yeah i think like even if i think if you've never read in verse before i would definitely recommend giving it a go linked to that i'd also really recommend the black flamingo by dean atta this is a recent read this is also torden verse it's about michael from literally when he's born almost to when he's like 18ish at university discovering drag it's about the story of his life and him being gay and black and the struggles that he faces being both of those things like oh my god like i cannot speak highly enough of dean atta's writing like genuinely i think one of the best writers i've ever read the way that i said this so many times before but the way that he uses language and can like use such a few words to say so much is so beautiful i feel like i need to reread this again soon because it doesn't take long it's only like a couple hours because it is torden verse then a cold favorite that i think about quite a bit is watch us rise by rene watson and ellen hagan this is about these two girls who run this feminist club at their school and it's about them figuring out ways in which their feminism is flawed and how they need to improve it learning about themselves and their friendship and i just always really well written more than anything i feel like in this one the girls really read as like 16 like i feel like often i read y a and either 16 years or really aged down or they're aged up and i feel like this was a real you know realistic look at what it's like to be 16 another favorite is you should see me in a crown by leah johnson this is a sapphic romance and it's about this girl who loses her scholarship i think or like something goes wrong and she can't afford to go to university so she has to try out for prom queen because in like her middle of nowhere town there's a really big money prize for being prom queen and when she is kind of like going to like the classes and stuff to try to be prom queen she meets this other girl and they start to fall in love it's a really nice y a romance i listened to the audiobook for this as well and really enjoyed that oh and another audiobook quick mention to black girl unlimited by echo brown this is like a semi-autobiographical story major major trigger warnings for this like almost anything you can imagine there being a trigger warning for there is a trigger warning for sexual sexual sort of a child death racism so many different things there's so many different trigger warnings for this it was so interestingly told it jumps back and forth in time even in the middle of sentence it will switch scene and it was really emotional i almost cried when reading it and echo brown narrates the audiobook so that is a great audiobook as well and then finally for contemporary another new favorite is fat chance charlie vega by crystal maldenado this is about charlie vega who has always been compared to her best friend and kind of boys use her to get to her best friend she is fat and it's about her learning to you know appreciate her body and wrestle with like the fat phobia in society and it's about a cute little romance she has with a guy that she works with okay oh i've put these all in front of the graphic novels so let's like scoot over a second shall we my number one favorite graphic novel series is heart stopper by alice oseman this features nick and charlie um as they meet and fall in love it's the cutest thing in the world if you haven't read this you've got to go read them it won't take you long and it's literally the best graphic novel ever is that true it's very true i love them so much i would die for nick and charlie i defend them to the death no one can touch them no one can hurt them because i love them so much another favorite is the prince and the dressmaker by genwang this is kind of like almost like an historical kind of vibe where this prince is being made to look for a bride but no one knows that he actually likes to dress up in gowns and it's about um the friendship between him and his dressmaker as she like holds his secret and it was just a really really cute graphic graphic novel you're looking at gender expectation and kind of celebrating breaking out of that boundary and then another really cute romance is bloom by clever panetta and savannah ganusho this is about two boys who meet at one of their parents bakeries and it's just about their like romance oh he fills my heart with warmth and it's all told hang on i'll show you in these blue tones and i really really liked that i really like when graphic novels are monochromatic in this way i think it's so beautiful let's do fantasy next so this is one i feel like blurs the line between young adult and adult but i wanted to give it a honorable mention i won't speak about it too much because it you a lot of you know it's like my favorite fantasy series ever but the bear the nightingale the girl the tower and the winter of the witch by kathryn ardent the winter night trilogy i love it i love everything about it we're following vassia in role old rusher as she discovers old magic and talking to the house spirit and exploring her own power and growing into her own person it's the love of my life but i do feel like it blurs the boundary because here's the thing vassia is is like we've watched her be born in the first book and then she's probably like 18 20 60 i don't know what age she is in the last book but it does have an adult tone to it and kind of you know the level of writing i don't always feel like y a is determined by the age of the protagonist so i mention it here because it is often categorized as y a but in some ways i do view it as more adult i think it kind of straddles the line between the two another one of my all-time favorite series is girls of paper and fire by natashina yang also girls of storm and shadow i definitely prefer the first one a lot more but i'm hoping for amazing things from the last one it comes out the end of this year hopefully so i'm hoping for majestic things from that one but this is about lei who is a paper girl basically these girls are made to force to sleep with their king they have to live at the palace and they there's about six of them and they're forced to sleep with him and so it is about like sexual assault and sexual trauma and all the girls exhibit in different ways you know their reactions to that and i thought that was so well done it's also a sapphic romance and it's some of the most amazing you know y a fantasy world building i ever read it's one of my favorite world it's one of my favorite fantasy worlds i've read um in y a fantasy and also some of my favorite characters ono will mention two you guys go drag me for this uh you guys go drag me for this huh okay six of crows and cookie kingdom i know everyone obsessed but i did give these 4.5 stars and 5 stars i just think you know such amazing characters such amazing world buildings such amazing plot like you can't overstate how amazing these are and they are popular for a good reason some y a fantasy i read it like popular popular y a fantasy and i'm like choices we all make choices but that was a choice this one i feel like is popular for good reason and very deserving of it and i cried so fucking much i cooking them i cried so much here's the thing i'm noticing with my y a fantasy is i often have one book in the series that's five stars and then the rest are which is strange so honorable mention to the diviners the diviners series um the diviners layer of dreams before the devil breaks you i have not read the final one which is king of crows yet but layer of dreams the second one is by far and away my favorite i think it is the best without a shadow of a doubt i think it is amazing in this whole series it's set in like 1920s new york and we have these kids who have these special abilities and they're kind of like scooby gang vibes fighting monsters this one is set a lot in dreams and i really enjoyed that i thought our main characters because we kind of like switch up which of the group maybe have a focus on each book and i thought ling and henry who were kind of like the focus characters of this book are like the best like i love them i don't really love the other characters much but ling and henry have my heart and me and my gals we chicken nuggets together and then two quick mentions i only have one physically but the whole wayward children series by shawna maguire is about these kids who can like go into these portal worlds that are perfect for them and it's only these short novellas and they are amazing like shawna maguire has some of the most like amazing encapsulating interesting unique fantasy writing and i cannot wait to just like read these forever i do want them all physically but a bitch is broke so that will happen at some point that is not today and then a quick mention to stranger dreamer by lanie taylor the middle of this dragged a bit for me but i loved it on the whole we're following laszlo strange who is obsessed with this mythical lost city of weep and so it turns out it's not lost or mythical and he gets to go there lanie taylor's writing is so magical and whimsical and the ending of this is the most soul-destroying ending i've ever read in my life and here's the thing you kind of know it's coming you kind of know it's coming because you've kind of been told it's coming but you're in denial and you're not accepting that it's coming and it's like one of the most horrible endings i've ever read i definitely need to finish this series read the second in the geology then for thriller and mystery i only really have a few i tend to prefer adult thriller mystery first is saidi by caughtney summers i would 100 recommend the audiobook for this it is so so good this is about a girl called saidi whose sister her sister has gone missing and um she is trying to find her but saidi also goes missing and it's told through her perspective at the time before she went missing and then this podcast guy trying to figure out what has happened and doing interviews with people i don't want to think about the ending to this either a lot of these have like crazy ass endings i don't want to think about it i don't want to think about it if i pretend it didn't exist it didn't exist but i loved like the podcast element of this i really want to read more books with like a podcast the element to them they also have great um audiobooks and then quick mentions we all know i love a good girl's guide to murder this is like this girl doing this project trying to prove that this girl who went missing five years ago wasn't actually murdered by her boyfriend this is again mixed media so it's like told through interviews and production logs and pictures and stuff like that we all know this is like one of my favorite murder mystery YA series i think it's absolutely amazing i think it's hard to do a good YA murder mystery because it has to be toned down a certain amount and this just does it so well like it's it's perfect and then honorable mention sometimes i don't think this is YA again it's kind of like ageless in my view because it's so perfect the strange case of the alchemist daughter series by Theodora Goss this is my favorite series of all time like genuinely my favorite series of all time we are following the daughters and female versions of men from classic Victorian literature so our stars are Mary Jekyll and Diana Hyde we have Justine Frankenstein who's the female Frankenstein we have Catherine Moro and Beatrice Rappuccini and they um i like trying to solve mysteries with Sherlock on Watson and it's about them being this found family of women um this is another one where i love the way it's told basically the idea behind this is that Catherine is writing the book and the other girls will cut in like saying things like that's not how it happened or i don't say things like that and so it just adds this whole other character element to the story and then our final category we're almost there ladies and gentlemen don't give up on me now is what i would call weird books weird books first we have you must not miss by Katrina Leno this is about this young girl who's been going through this really tough time her mother is struggling with alcohol addiction and her father isn't reading the picture anymore and so she writes about this place called near which is perfect and one day she has dreamt near up so well that it appears in the garage in her back garden and things start going not so perfect basically me trying to pretend this book wasn't going to shit when it was in fact going to shit no it was a mistake trigger warnings in this for sexual assault i've always said that this book does such a good job of encapsulating anger anger after being abused or being put in a shitty situation it doesn't shy away from the anger and i thought i did that so well next another as king is dig by as king this is about these people in this really like American town and it it kind of boils down to being about like white supremacy and ingrained racism and familial lines of privilege and racism in kind of you know like the south of America some of the characters in this are like called the freak or the shoveler like they're not given names for portions portions of the book and it's just told in this very strange way but it's such a clever book such a clever YA book i would recommend this to everyone everyone who i have lent this to has loved it so so much and it's so unusual i don't feel like there's anyone out there doing it like as king is doing it then we have the wicker king by k anchor this is about two boys who have like this very close like interdependent relationship with each other and one of them starts kind of like hallucinating or seeing things that aren't there and the other boy kind of decides that the way to help him is to like help him believe in what he's seeing even more it's told in this format where chapters are often only a page or two and there's like pictures in this as well and like posters and mixtapes cd mixtapes this was such an interesting book you'll fly through it will only take you like 10 minutes to read no it'll take you like a couple hours but not very long at all i thought jack and august the two boys in this were two of the most interesting characters i've ever read they've a very interesting relationship there's a lot in this book that is kind of inferred i feel like k and crumb infers stuff really well and it's up to you to like pick up the pieces which i don't think is done enough in y a i think why sometimes not like this is of course a generalization but it can simplify stuff right so i feel like this k and crumb kind of leaves you to pick up the pieces somewhat excuse me i'm a genius look then we have wilder girls by rory power this is about these girls who are at this boarding school and a kind of plague has overtaken them when they all get like these physical deformities there's like this trio of girls who are very close and one of them goes missing and the other girls need to go follow weird book weird fucking book such a weird book the ending to this is very strange the whole book is this is one of the weirdest books i've ever read but i really really enjoyed the experience of reading it and finally we have watch over be monina lecore this is about this young girl who is aged out of the foster care system so she goes to stay and work at this house there's a lot of other foster kids and she kind of teaches there and she can see these ghosts everyone can see these ghosts like floating around the field at night and it's seen as like a normal thing in this you really don't know who can who you can trust and again this is very much like about a girl dealing with her manifestation of trauma like you must not miss but this one where that was anger this is much more quiet and sadness and melancholy and like that kind of quiet sadness that borrows down to the the depth of someone and so i think these two are really great to like read in comparison with one another and they both do such a great job similar to like how i feel like girls are paper and fire does a great job at showing how different girls can react differently to sexual assault and there's no one right reaction this and you must not miss both show girls reacting to trauma in different ways that are both equally valid so there we have it that is all of my favourite YA books i hope i haven't missed out anything i don't think i have again there were some books i feel like blurred the lines between young adult and adult but i think i got it all let me know if you've read any of these what you thought of them if you liked them if you've gone to the end comment a flower emoji for you must but you must not miss but watch over me i hope that this video will be a great place you guys to come back to whenever you need a YA recommendation and you know what i would recommend the most basically thank you so much for watching this video i hope you enjoyed it and i will see you very very soon in another video bye