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  • General Recommendations
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2025 PAUSD Summer Reading - YA titles

Recommended summer reading choices curated by the middle school librarians of Palo Alto Unified School District. Remember to log your reading for our Summer Reading For a Cause program. Submit a book review of your favorite summer read to earn volunteer hours! (See how at library.cityofpaloalto.org/blogs/post/pacl-teen-blog)

User from Palo Alto City Library

45 items

  • Anna Sortino celebrates Deaf culture and identity in this endearingly funny slow-burn rom-com debut following 17-year-old Lilah's return to summer camp.
    Book, 2023New York : G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2023.
  • When 17-year-old Shane's mother and a local boy go missing, she is determined to find them. But they may not be anywhere in this world, or this place in time. (Also available in e-formats!)
    Book, 2024Montclair, New Jersey : Levine Querido, 2024.
  • Nhika, a young woman hiding in the fringes of society, must use her forbidden healing ability to cure the only witness to a murder. This first book in the Last Bloodcarver duology is also available in e-formats!
    Book, 2024New York : Roaring Brook Press, 2024.
  • Bestselling author of Neal Shusterman teams up with coauthors Debra Young and Michelle Knowlden to tell an intense yet tender story about two teens in juvenile detention. (This title is also available in e-formats!)
    Book, 2024New York : Quill Tree Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, [2024]
  • This 2024 Schneider Family Book Award winner is a lyrical novel-in-verse about a local teen activist and is available in e-formats!
    Book, 2023New York : Farrar Straus Giroux, 2023.
  • Most Ardently

    a Pride & Prejudice Remix

    Novoa, Gabe Cole,
    Oliver Bennet, trapped by societal expectations to live as female, discovers the possibility of love and freedom when he forms a connection with Darcy, but is faced with the choice of living a secure but inauthentic life or risking everything for…
    Book, 2024New York, NY : A Feiwel and Friends Book, an imprint of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC, 2024.
  • When The Fourth King of Hell disappears, the underworld begins to crumble, and the human world will be next if the King is not found. Three lives bound by fate must rise against destiny before the barrier between worlds falls and all Hell breaks…
    Book, 2024New York, NY : HarperTeen, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, [2024]
  • Multiple e-formats are available of this 2024 Coretta Scott King Book Award winning novel about 16-year-old Nigeria as she searches for her mother, who recently disappeared. Along the way she uncovers a shocking truth and discovers her own place in…
    Book, 2023New York : Balzer + Bray, [2023]
  • When a curse traps a group of friends on a barrier island, they must harness the shared power of their traumatic secrets or risk being devoured. (Also available as an e-book!)
    Book, 2024New York ; Boston : Little, Brown and Company, 2024.
  • Graphic novel superstars Gene Luen Yang and LeUyen Pham join forces in this heartwarming rom-com about fate, family, and falling in love. (Also available as an -book!)
    Graphic Novel, 2024New York : First Second, 2024.
  • A cryptic message forces 18-year-old American Edda to investigate what secrets followed her across the ocean, even as she tries to make sense of her time as a telephone operator on the French front lines of World War I.
    Book, 2024New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2024.
  • Set in dictatorial South Korea in 1984, a group of teens experience a taste of freedom on a winter retreat with no parental supervision.
    Graphic Novel, 2024New York : Penguin Workshop, 2024
  • 1896: Three best friends leading very different lives after boarding school share their dreams, hopes, frustrations and romances through a series of letters. (Also available as an e-audiobook!)
    Book, 2024Somerville, Massachusetts : Walker Books, 2024.
  • When her ex-boyfriend, a member of one of the biggest K-pop bands in the world, is rocked by scandal, Sori (a K-pop idol herself) offers him a hideaway. now she must decide if her future is worth sacrificing for a second chance at love. (Also…
    Book, 2024New York, NY : HarperTeen, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2024]
  • Laekan Zea Kemp is a Pura Belpré Honor author whose work celebrates Chicane grit, resilience, creativity, and joy while exploring themes of identity and mental health.
    Book, 2023New York ; Boston : Little, Brown and Company, 2023.
  • Charity has the summer job of her dreams working at Camp Mirror Lake, a full-contact terror game experience. But on the last weekend of the season, Charity's co-workers begin disappearing and they must unravel the bloody history of the real Mirror…
    Book, 2023New York : Bloomsbury, 2023.
  • 17-year-old Kiki Siregar is a confident gamer girl that plays anonymously as a guy to avoid harassment. What will happen when she crosses paths IRL with her online BFF? (This title is also available in e-formats!)
    Book, 2023New York : Delacorte Press, [2023]
  • The Davenports are one of the few Black families of immense wealth and status in 1910 Chicago, and the two daughters, Olivia and Helen, are finding their way and finding love--even where they are not supposed to. (Also available as an e-audiobook!)
    Book, 2023New York : Dial Books, 2023.
  • 17-year-old Jade has one goal: survive five weeks pretending to be a happy family spending the summer in Vietnam visiting with her estranged father. But her father's fixer-upper has other plans. (Also available as an e-book!)
    Book, 2023New York : Bloomsbury Children's Books, 2023.
  • In Simta, the magic of women is outlawed but four girls with unusual powers have the chance to change it all. Now they must make a choice--to stay in their gilded cage or to remake the city that put them there in the first place.
    Book, 2023New York : Nancy Paulsen Books, 2023.