Karen’s Favorite Reads of 2024

It’s New Year’s Eve, so I thought I would wrap up 2024 with a look at some of my favorite reads of the year. If you read to the end, I give you 2 Printz Award predictions.

Stay Dead by April Henry

I have found that I, like most readers, have a tendency to put the most literary or most “very important” books on the best of lists for each year. Just like the Oscars, fun and entertaining can take a backseat to books with big messages. So I have been trying to make it a point to make sure my lists contain fun, whether it be thrilling or funny or cutesy or whatever. In this case, I’m going with thrilling. It’s a high stakes survival story with political underpinnings that swings between two points of view: stalked and stalker. I feel strongly that you can’t go wrong with an April Henry book, and I found this one to be true adrenaline fuel that kept me wanting to turn the page. And it has such high teen appeal, which is important to me as a teen/YA librarian.

Publisher’s Book Description: New York Times  bestselling author April Henry delivers a thrilling murder mystery featuring a teen with an assassin on her trail fighting to uncover the truth behind a government cover up, perfect for fans of Karen McManus.

Sometimes, the only way to live is to make sure the world thinks you’re dead . . . 

In the aftermath of a car accident that claimed the life of her senator father, sixteen-year-old Milan finds herself adrift, expelled from her third boarding school. Milan’s mother, who has assumed the senate seat, diverts her private plane to pick up her daughter. But on their way home, a bomb rips off a wing and the plane crashes in the mountains. In her final moments, Milan’s mother entrusts her with a key. She reveals it will unlock the evidence that so many people have already died for—including Milan’s father. The only way Milan can survive, her mom tells her, is to let everyone believe she died with the other passengers.

​Milan is forced to navigate a perilous descent in freezing conditions while outwitting everything from a drone to wild animals. With relentless assassins on her trail, she must untangle the web of deceit and save herself and countless others. Will she piece together the truth in time?

Twenty-Four Seconds from Now by Jason Reynolds

Look, we all know that Jason Reynolds is one of the current literary greats. And this book is such a unique look at what it means to be a teen and all the emotions that comes with. It’s literary, it’s fresh, it’s engaging, and it’s emotionally spot on.

Publisher’s Book Description: “Jason Reynolds has done it again!…Fresh from start to finish…This is what it could be, should be, if only we were all as lucky as Aria. Girls (and everyone) wait for your Neon!” —Judy Blume, New York Times bestselling author of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. and Forever…

#1 New York Times bestselling author Jason Reynolds tackles it—you know…it—from the guy’s perspective in this unfiltered and undeniably sweet stream of consciousness story of a teen boy about to experience a huge first.

Twenty-four months ago: Neon gets chased by a dog all around the parking lot of a church. Not his finest moment. And definitely one he would have loved to forget if it weren’t for the dog’s owner: Aria. Dressed in sweats, a t-shirt, hair in a ponytail. Aria. Way more than fine.

Twenty-four weeks ago: Neon’s dad insists on talking to him about tenderness and intimacy. Neon and Aria are definitely in love, and while they haven’t taken that next big step…yet, they’ve starting talking about…that.

Twenty-four days ago: Neon’s mom finds her—gulp—bra in his room. Hey! No judging! Those hook thingies are complicated! So he’d figured he’d better practice, what with the big day only a month away.

Twenty-four minutes ago: Neon leaves his shift at work at his dad’s bingo hall, making sure to bring some chicken tenders for Aria. They’re not candlelight and they definitely aren’t caviar, but they are her favorite.

And right this second? Neon is locked in Aria’s bathroom, completely freaking out because twenty-four seconds from now he and Aria are about to…about to… Well, they won’t do anything if he can’t get out of his own head (all the advice, insecurities, and what ifs) and out of this bathroom!

Death at Morning House by Maureen Johnson

13-year-old Karen’s favorite movie was Evil Under the Sun, based on an Agatha Christie novel. I have long been a fan of Agatha Christie, and have found Maureen Johnson’s latest writings really hit that sweet spot of mystery for me. This is a another island mystery, and it entertained current Karen and that 13-year-old part of me that remembers rewatching Evil Under the Sun when all my friends were watching the latest John Hughes movie (don’t get me wrong, I liked those too).

Publisher’s Book Description: From the bestselling author of the Truly Devious books, Maureen Johnson, comes a new stand-alone YA about a teen who uncovers a mystery while working as a tour guide on an island and must solve it before history repeats itself.

The fire wasn’t Marlowe Wexler’s fault. Dates should be hot, but not hot enough to warrant literal firefighters. Akilah, the girl Marlowe has been in love with for years, will never go out with her again. No one dates an accidental arsonist.

With her house-sitting career up in flames, it seems the universe owes Marlowe a new summer job, and that’s how she ends up at Morning House, a mansion built on an island in the 1920s and abandoned shortly thereafter. It’s easy enough, giving tours. Low risk of fire. High chance of getting bored talking about stained glass and nut cutlets and Prohibition.

Oh, and the deaths. Did anyone mention the deaths?

The Hysterical Girls of Saint Bernadette’s by Hanna Alkaf

This is one of those times when I definitely judged a book by it’s cover – and also it’s title! This novel definitely tackles important topics and has high literary value. It’s intriguing and engaging, at times maddening – anyone who knows what it is like to be a girl will find far too many familiar themes. One of the Goodreads reviewers, Wen-yi Lee, says it best: “absolutely haunting and brilliantly embedded in oppressive, violent silence, and the way teen girls’ voices and bodies are tamped down into palpable rage.”

Publisher’s Book Description:

An all-girls school is struck with mysterious cases of screaming hysteria in this chilling dark academia thriller haunted by a deeply buried history clawing to the light.

For over a hundred years, girls have fought to attend St. Bernadette’s, with its reputation for shaping only the best and brightest young women.

Unfortunately, there is also the screaming.

When a student begins to scream in the middle of class, a chain reaction starts that impacts the entire school. By the end of the day, seventeen girls are affected—along with St. Bernadette’s stellar reputation.

Khadijah’s got her own scars to tend to, and watching her friends succumb to hysteria only rips apart wounds she’d rather keep closed. But when her sister falls to the screams, Khad knows she’s the only one who can save her.

Rachel has always been far too occupied trying to reconcile her overbearing mother’s expectations with her own secret ambitions to pay attention to school antics. But just as Rachel finds her voice, it turns into screams.

Together, the two girls find themselves digging deeper into the school’s dark history, hunting for the truth. Little do they know that a specter lurks in the darkness, watching, waiting, and hungry for its next victim…

Pick the Lock by A. S. King

Regular TLT readers know that if there is a new A.S. King book, it’s going to be on my list. Pick the Lock is in many ways King’s best YA book yet, and it’s definitely her most personal. One of my favorite things about King as a writer is that she has nothing but the utmost respect for her readers, and she shows it by writing with style, substance, and not talking down to her audience. Like most of her novels, there is a surrealism that requires patience on the part of the reader to put the pieces together, and that’s just another way that King shows the utmost respect to her teen readers. This is also one of the fewer novels that directly mentions Covid and the emotional after affects of Covid on teens, which is not surprising if you are at all familiar with her compassionate care for the mental health of teens. It would not surprise me if this didn’t net her another Printz award. Also, there is a rock opera. So that’s cool.

Publisher’s Book Description: From Michael L. Printz Award winner A.S. King, a weird and insightful new novel about a girl intent on picking the lock of her toxic family with punk rock and opera. Jane’s mother is an artist constantly on tour to earn a living and support the family. While her mother is away, Jane lives in a Victorian mansion with her younger brother and their controlling, mendacious father and aunt, both of whom have conspired to confine Jane and Henry’s mother to a system of pneumatic tubes whenever she’s at home. Pick the Lock follows Jane’s bizarre and brilliant journey to rediscover and reconnect with her mother through punk rock and opera.

I don’t often make Printz predictions, but I think both Twenty-Four Seconds from Now and Pick the Lock will be somewhere on that list, with both of them contenders for the top spot.

Thanks for reading with us here at TLT in 2024. Looking forward to talking more with you in 2025. Happy New Year!

Filed under: Michael L. Printz Award, New YA, Printz, YA, YA Fiction, YA Lit, Young Adult, Young Adult Fiction, Young Adult Literature