Teens' Top Ten 2022

Published Thursday, July 7, 2022

Another year of great books, another teen choice competition! Teens all across the country have nominated their favorite books from the previous year for the Teens' Top 10, hosted by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA). This list is an excellent opportunity to try out a variety of genres & diverse perspectives from the YA category.

Readers 12-18 years old can vote online for their favorites out of these picks. Read all about the 25 nominees below, check them out at the library, and don't forget to cast your vote starting August 15 through October 15!

10 Truths and a Dare
by Ashley Elston

It's Senior Party Week, that magical in-between time after classes have ended but before graduation, chock-full of gimmicky theme parties, last-minute bonding, and family traditions. Olivia couldn't be more ready ... But when the tiny hiccup of an unsigned off-campus P.E. form puts Olivia in danger of not graduating at all, she has one week to set things straight without tipping off her very big and very nosy extended family.

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Ace of Spades
by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé

At Niveus Private Academy, Devon and Chiamaka are the only students chosen to be Senior Prefects who are also black, which makes them targets for a series of anonymous texts revealing their secrets to the entire student body. Both students were on track toward valedictorian and bright college futures, but this prank quickly turns into a very dangerous game and they are at more than one disadvantage as it looks like things could turn deadly.

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All of Us Villains
by Amanda Foody & Christine Herman

Every generation, seven families select a champion to compete in a tournament to the death for control of high magick--the most powerful resource in the world--but this year, a salacious tell-all book draws reporters, tourists, and government agents to Ilvernath to watch the bloody curse unfold and some of the champions are determined to thwart their destinies and rewrite their stories.

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All These Bodies
by Kendare Blake

Summer 1958. A gruesome killer plagues the Midwest, leaving behind a trail of bodies completely drained of blood. Michael Jensen, an aspiring journalist whose father happens to be the town sheriff, never imagined that the Bloodless Murders would come to his backyard. Not until the night the Carlson family was found murdered in their home. Marie Catherine Hale, a diminutive fifteen-year-old, was discovered at the scene—covered in blood. She is the sole suspect in custody. Michael is pulled in when Marie decides that he is the only one she will confess to. As Marie recounts her version of the story, it falls to Michael to find the truth: What really happened the night that the Carlsons were killed?

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Any Sign of Life
by Rae Carson

Paige Miller fears she is the only person left alive in Ohio until she meets a handful of other survivors, and together they struggle with the knowledge that their new reality is the first part of an alien invasion.

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Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World
by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

High school seniors Aristotle and Dante find ways to spend time together despite being at different schools, having to keep their love secret, and nightly news of gay men dying from AIDS.

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Concrete Rose
by Angie Thomas

Seventeen-year-old Maverick Carter knows that a real man takes care of his family. As the son of a former gang legend, Mav does that the only way he knows how: dealing for the King Lords. With this money he can help his mom, who works two jobs while his dad's in prison. With a fly girlfriend and a cousin who always has his back, Mav's got everything under control. Until Maverick finds out he's a father. Suddenly he has a baby, Seven, who depends on him for everything. But it's not so easy to sling dope, finish school, and raise a child. So when he's offered the chance to go straight, he takes it.

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Counting Down with You
by Tashie Bhuiyan

Karina Ahmed's parents have a lot of rules, and for her it is worth it to follow those rules instead of her dreams. With her parents in Bangledesh for a month, she expects to relax those rules a bit, but when the guy she's tutoring says she's his girlfriend to cover up the fact that he's getting help with his schoolwork, that breaks a major rule in a major way that she's sure will end in disaster. A strict deadline -- twenty-eight days -- and payment in dozens of books changes her mind about the farce, but can Ace Clyde's bad-boy charm end up changing her heart?

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Dark Rise
by C. S. Pacat

Sixteen-year-old dock boy Will is on the run, pursued by the men who killed his mother. Then an old servant tells him of his destiny to fight beside the Stewards, who have sworn to protect humanity if the Dark King ever returns. Will is thrust into a world of magic, where he starts training for a vital role in the oncoming battle against the Dark.

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The Firekeeper's Daughter
by Angeline Boulley

Daunis, who is part Ojibwe, defers attending the University of Michigan to care for her mother and reluctantly becomes involved in the investigation of a series of drug-related deaths.

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Gilded
by Marissa Meyer

Long ago cursed by the god of lies, a poor miller's daughter has developed a talent for spinning stories that are fantastical and spellbinding and entirely untrue. Or so everyone believes. When one of Serilda's outlandish tales draws the attention of the sinister Erlking and his undead hunters, she finds herself swept away into a grim world where ghouls and phantoms prowl the earth and hollow-eyed ravens track her every move. The king orders Serilda to complete the impossible task of spinning straw into gold, or be killed for telling falsehoods. In her desperation, Serilda unwittingly summons a mysterious boy to her aid. He agrees to help her… for a price. Soon Serilda realizes that there is more than one secret hidden in the castle walls, including an ancient curse that must be broken if she hopes to end the tyranny of the king and his wild hunt forever.

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The Great Gatsby: A Graphic Novel Adaptation
by K. Wooman Manyard

The first graphic novel based on the classic by Jazz Age author F. Scott Fitzgerald. Jay Gatsby had once loved beautiful, spoiled Daisy Buchanan, then lost her to a rich boy. Now, mysteriously wealthy, he is ready to risk everything to woo her back.

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The Hawthorne Legacy
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Thanks to a DNA test, Avery Grambs knows that she is not a Hawthorne by blood, but clues pile up hinting at a deeper connection to the family than she had ever imagined. Grayson and Jameson, the enigmatic and magnetic Hawthorne grandsons, continue to pull Avery in different directions. Tobias Hawthorne left his entire fortune to Avery, a virtual stranger, rather than to his own daughters or grandsons, and there are those who will stop at nothing to see Avery out of the picture -- by any means necessary.

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Heartless Prince
by Leigh Dragoon & Angela De Vito

Evony is an orphaned princess from a kingdom destroyed by a power-hungry witch. Prince Ammon has recently been drawn to her, or at least he's drawn to her uncanny ability to sense when familiars--servants to the witches--are approaching his kingdom's borders. And Evony, well Evony has always longed for something more with Ammon. Wanting to prove himself to his kingdom and parents, Ammon takes Evony outside the borders to fight the familiars head-to-head. All is well until they're captured by witch Aradia, who steals Ammon's heart and leaves his body to turn into one of her familiars. What's worse, his sister Nissa has been taken hostage by Aradia's daughter. Evony makes it her misson to retrieve Ammon's heart and save Nissa, taking her into the mysterious Witchlands. There, she will discover a secret about her past that will change everything.

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Here's to Us
by Becky Albertalli & Adam Silvera

When Ben and Arthur, two very different boys, and ex-boyfriends who are stuck in the past, keep running into each other in the present, they wonder if fate is giving them a second chance at love.

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Idol Gossip
by Alexandria Leigh Young

Offered a spot at the Star Academy, one of the biggest K-pop companies, seventeen-year-old singer Alice Choy must navigate culture clashes, egos and extreme training practices to come out on top, despite the efforts of an influential blogger trying to tear her down.

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Instructions for Dancing
by Nicola Yoon

Evie Thomas doesn't believe in love anymore. Especially after the strangest thing occurs one otherwise ordinary afternoon: She witnesses a couple kiss and is overcome with a vision of how their romance began . . . and how it will end. As Evie tries to understand why this is happening, she finds herself at La Brea Dance Studio, learning to waltz, fox-trot, and tango with a boy named X. X is everything that Evie is not: adventurous, passionate, daring. His philosophy is to say yes to everything--including entering a ballroom dance competition with a girl he's only just met. Falling for X is definitely not what Evie had in mind. If her visions of heartbreak have taught her anything, it's that no one escapes love unscathed.

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The Ivies
by Alexa Donne

The Ivies, five prep school elites who would kill to get into the colleges of their dreams, have a showdown after Liv gets into Harvard and queen bee Avery does not. They are the Ivies of Claflin Academy. Five girls who will stop at nothing to get into the college of their dreams. They scam club elections, sabotage academic competitions . . . among other things. When one of the Ivies is found dead hours after getting into Harvard, Olivia begins to question how far her friends are willing to go. Will her own acceptance letter become her death sentence?

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Made in Korea
by Sarah Suk

Two entrepreneurial Korean-American teens butt heads - and fall in love - while running competing Korean beauty businesses at their high school.

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A Pho Love Story
by Loan Le

If Bao Nguyen had to describe himself, he’d say he was a rock. Steady and strong, grades are average, his social status unremarkable. He works at his parents’ pho restaurant, and even there, he is his parents’ fifth favorite employee. If Linh Mai had to describe herself, she’d say she was a firecracker. Stable when unlit, but full of potential for joy and fire, loves art and dreams pursuing a career in it. The only problem? Her parents rely on her, working practically full-time at her family’s pho restaurant. For years, the Mais and the Nguyens have been at odds, having owned competing, neighboring pho restaurants. A chance encounter brings Linh and Bao in the same vicinity despite their best efforts and sparks fly, leading them both to wonder what took so long for them to connect.

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Piece by Piece: the Story of Nisrin's Hijab
by Priya Huq

Nisrin is a 13-year-old Bangladeshi-American girl living in Milwaukie, Oregon, in 2002. As she nears the end of eighth grade, she gives a presentation for World Culture Day about Bangladesh while wearing a traditional cultural dress. On her way home, she is the victim of a hate crime when a man violently attacks her for wearing a headscarf. Deeply traumatized by the experience, Nisrin spends the summer depressed and isolated. Other than weekly therapy, Nisrin doesn't leave the house until fall arrives and it's time for her to start freshman year at a new school. The night before class starts, Nisrin makes a decision. She tells her family she's going to start wearing hijab, much to their dismay. Her mother and grandparent's shocked and angry reactions confuse her--but they only strengthen her resolve. This choice puts Nisrin on a path to not only discover more about Islam, but also her family's complicated relationship with the religion, and the reasons they left Bangladesh in the first place.

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The Quantum Weirdness of the Almost-Kiss
by Amy Noelle Parks

Seventeen-year-old Evie Beckham has always been too occupied with her love of math and frequent battles with anxiety to want to date. Besides, she's always found the idea of kissing to be kind of weird. But by senior year, thanks to therapy and her friends, she's feeling braver than before. Maybe even brave enough to enter the national math and physics competition or flirt back with the new boy. Meanwhile, Evie's best friend, Caleb Covic, has always been a little in love with her. So he's horrified when he is forced to witness Evie's meet-cute with the new guy. Desperate, Caleb uses an online forum to capture Evie's interest--and it goes a little too well. Now Evie wonders how she went from avoiding romance to having to choose between two--or is it three?--boys.

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Realm Breaker
by Victoria Aveyard

Corayne an-Amarat discovers that she is the last of an ancient lineage -- and the last hope to save the world from destruction. She is joined by a band of unlikely companions: a squire, forced to choose between home and honor, an immortal, avenging a broken promise, an assassin, exiled and bloodthirsty, an ancient sorceress, whose riddles hide an eerie foresight, a forger with a secret past, a bounty hunter with a score to settle. Together they stand against a vicious opponent, invincible and determined to burn all kingdoms to ash, and an army unlike anything the realm has ever witnessed.

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Rule of Wolves
by Leigh Bardugo

As Fjerda's massive army prepares to invade, Nikolai Lantsov will summon every bit of his ingenuity and charm to win this fight, and Zoya Nazyalensky must embrace her powers to become the weapon her country needs. Meanwhile, Nina Zenik risks discovery and death as she wages war on Fjerda from inside its capital.

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We Can't Keep Meeting Like This
by Rachel Lynn Solomon

Their families have been in business together for years: Quinn Berkowitz's parents are wedding planners (she's the harpist), and Tarek' Mansour's own a catering company. At the end of last summer, Quinn confessed her crush on him in the form of a rambling email-- and he left for college without a response. When he shows up as a waiter at the first wedding of the summer, they clash immediately. Tarek loves grand gestures-- the flashier, the better; Quinn sees them as fake. Thrown together at wedding after wedding, Quinn can't deny her feelings for him are still there.

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About the Author

Kristen is a Youth Services Librarian and has been working at EPL since 2013. She is a wannabe gardener who loves movies, the night sky, and avoiding the claws of her cat. Her reading interests tend toward short stories, as well as novels that are a blend of eerie, insightful, and magical.

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