YA Gems: BookBrowse's Young Adult Award Winners

Did you know that BookBrowse’s annual awards, based on votes from our subscribers, include a prize for the best young adult novel? If you’re searching for titles for a young reader in your life, or if you're a YA fan yourself, check out our award winners page for some high-ranking ideas. You can also browse the list below to see our top YA books from recent years. In the meantime, we’ll keep bringing you reviews and previews of the most engaging new young adult books. Subscribe to get all the latest updates in our e-zines.

Remember Us
by Jacqueline Woodson

Hardcover Oct 2023. 192 pages
Published by Nancy Paulsen Books

Winner of the 2023 BookBrowse Award for Best Young Adult Novel

Remember Us is set largely across a single hazy summer of the 1970s in Bushwick, New York. With the neighborhood nicknamed "The Matchbox" by the press due to an ongoing spate of deadly housefires, 12-year-old Sage has grown up against a backdrop of sirens, ash, and dread over whose home will be next to burn. Woodson strikes an excellent balance of accessibility and poignancy with her writing, lending the novel genuine appeal to a broad readership. While Remember Us is aimed at younger audiences and her adolescent protagonist feels authentic, its themes of place, memory, identity, and belonging will ring true for readers of any age. It never seems as though Woodson is patronizing younger readers by simplifying the complex themes and emotions at play, and she never resorts to clichés or saccharine prose. (Callum McLaughlin)

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Firekeeper's Daughter
by Angeline Boulley

Paperback Apr 2023. 496 pages
Published by Square Fish

Winner of the 2021 BookBrowse Award for Best Young Adult Novel

Angeline Boulley's young adult novel Firekeeper's Daughter follows 18-year-old Daunis — biracial member of the Ojibwe tribe, former ice hockey star and traditional herbal medicine savant — as she witnesses the horrifying murder of her best friend at the hands of her meth-addicted ex-boyfriend. Due to her unique knowledge and connections, she is soon recruited by the FBI to assist in an ongoing investigation into a new strain of crystal meth that is devastating her community. Despite being almost 500 pages, the novel never drags, but keeps a slow and sustained pace. This adds an extra layer to what would otherwise just be your average thriller, as it allows the reader to truly digest every new piece of information that comes to light and become fully immersed in the world of the book. However, the faster-paced, more adrenaline-filled chapters will have you on the edge of your seat. (Althea Draper) 

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We Are Not from Here
by Jenny Torres Sanchez

Paperback May 2021. 336 pages
Published by Philomel

Winner of the 2020 BookBrowse Award for Best Young Adult Novel

Pulga and Chico are only dimly aware of the danger around them — the corruption, the drug dealing and the gang violence — as they grow up in a small town in Guatemala. But on the day their friend Pequeña has her baby, the three teenagers lose all semblance of innocence. And so, under cover of night, a teenage girl who gave birth days before, a gentle giant of a boy, and his best friend who feels the world too much, set off together on a journey many able-bodied men do not survive. Their ride through Mexico on La Bestia is depicted as a multisensory experience, sometimes nightmarish, sometimes triumphant. We Are Not from Here, with its young, sympathetic, genuinely desperate characters, is a heart-wrenchingly real novel to hand to any teen or adult who wonders how and why that journey can be so urgent and imperative for some. (Catherine M Andronik)

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Butterfly Yellow
by Thanhha Lai

Paperback Oct 2020. 320 pages
Published by HarperCollins Children's Books

Winner of the 2019 BookBrowse Award for Best Young Adult Novel

After graduating high school, LeeRoy sets out to follow and emulate his hero, rodeo bareback rider Bruce Ford. Nothing is going to stop him, not even his lack of experience with animals, which he tries to gloss over with a brand-new outfit and Ford F-350 truck. Real life interferes in a convenience store parking lot when a Good Samaritan couple suddenly thrusts upon him the responsibility of driving a stranded Vietnamese refugee to Amarillo. Ordinary moments provide touching beauty, such as Hằng speaking English phonetically in Vietnamese as she learns it, and lingering over the Vietnamese words she teaches LeeRoy. Above all, Butterfly Yellow seeks to remind us that a genuine and profound human connection can happen anywhere, at any time, with anyone. (Rory L. Aronsky) 

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Children of Blood and Bone: Legacy of Orisha
by Tomi Adeyemi

Paperback Mar 2019. 560 pages
Published by Square Fish

Winner of the 2018 BookBrowse Award for Best Young Adult Novel

In her debut novel, Children of Blood and Bone, Tomi Adeyemi takes readers to Orïsha, a land ruled by a murderous king where those with the potential for magic, divîners, are ostracized and persecuted, and not allowed to pass on their traditions or their language, Yoruba. This is the first in a series that is going to challenge everything that readers know about what makes good YA fantasy. It's going to leave them demanding more, not only from the series, but from what the standard of "good enough" in publishing already is. Growth, confrontation, trauma, and the search for a better way by two strong women are all part of this epic fantasy. (Michelle Anya Anjirbag) 

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