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YA Fantasy Books to Add to Your Spring TBR


Curated by Ashley Dickson-Ellison (@ashley_dicksonellison)


I don't know about you, but I'm definitely looking toward some fun, fast-paced, thought-provoking books as spring starts to bloom all around me. This desire prompted me to look back at our book reviews, and I noticed we have quite a few young adult fantasy book recommendations within our reviews, many of which I haven't read yet. I found some to put on my TBR stack, and I hope this compilation helps you find some for your TBR as well.



From the review: "I know next to nothing about the Teen Titans, other than what I learned when watching of Teen Titans Go! to the Movies with my boys. Kami Garcia and illustrator Gabriel Picolo’s graphic novel Teen Titans: Raven does a beautiful job communicating the backstory of Raven . . . even to the uninitiated like me. Rachel Roth (also known as Raven) is a complex protagonist who has been stricken with amnesia after a car accident that killed her foster mother, Viviane Navarro. At first, the only hint about Raven’s powers is her declaration that she’s dangerous and her mother’s reassurance that she’s strong enough to handle herself. Then, the crash ends the conversation and Raven’s understanding of her identity." Click to read the full review.



From the review: “Annie Sullivan acknowledges the roots of her novel Tiger Queen in the book’s epigraph in which she thanks her 'middle school English teacher, Mrs. Desautels, for first asking the question, "The lady or the tiger?"' As a fan of retellings of classic literature, I was hooked. I’ve always loved the complexity of the original story, which offers up a princess who’s barbaric enough that she may just send her lover to his death by tiger rather than see him in the arms of another woman.


"Sullivan’s young adult novel uses this story, Frank R. Stockton’s 'The Lady, or the Tiger?,' as a springboard for a story about class division, corruption, and power. At the novel’s heart is Kateri, the daughter of the powerful king who rules a small kingdom built on a formerly lush oasis. Now, the kingdom suffers because of a murderous drought that requires strict rationing of water for its citizens." Click to read the full review.


Aiden Thomas's LOST IN THE NEVER WOODS - A Dark and Twisty Peter Pan Retelling (Ashley's review)


From the review: "In this retelling of Peter Pan, we meet Wendy Darling as she turns 18. We quickly learn that she and her brothers disappeared five years earlier, and she was found in the woods six months later without her brothers. She has no memory of what happened during that time. In the present, she works as a volunteer at the local hospital and spends a lot of time with the children there. The town has been shaken once again by the recent disappearances of two of the local children, bringing up the painful past for Wendy.


"On her way home from her shift, shaken by the events and missing children, she sees a dark shadow land on her window and then finds a body in the road. The body belongs to none other than Peter Pan himself, whom Wendy knows from the stories her mother told them as children and the ones she went on to tell her brothers and the kids at the hospital, but who she does not believe to be a real person. Wendy can't fathom how he's there, but she quickly realizes that it's up to her and Peter, who has come all the way from Neverland, to figure out what is happening with the missing children, more of whom are disappearing daily." Click here to read the full review.


Mary Weber's TO BEST THE BOYS - Jen's Review


From the review: "Rhen Tellur lives in a world of limitations. She is bound by her gender and by her class in a society that—despite its fantasy roots—feels all too real. Mary Weber’s standalone young adult novel To Best the Boys is a delight.


"The premise centers on an annual competition: the boys of Pinsbury Point enter a labyrinth and vie to be the first to exit. The winner receives a full scholarship to Stemwick Men’s University. This opportunity is open to both the Uppers and the Lowers, the two classes in the kingdom of Caldon, and so it’s an equal chance for boys—but only for boys—to grab on to a potentially life-changing education."



From the review: "Cat Winters’s The Raven’s Tale is a sort of origin story focusing on a seventeen-year-old Edgar Allan Poe struggling to find self-acceptance. Poe has an early conflict in nearly every facet of his life. His adoptive father, John, expects young Edgar to give up his art for a “more serious” career in something like business, holding hostage funding for Poe’s education in exchange for his compliance. ​ Edgar also fights against his own poverty-stricken beginnings, in the disparity between the luxurious lives of his current peers and his childhood with impoverished actors. His society as a whole is set against him. His church criticizes his parents’ lifestyle and is literally built on the ashes of their theater. His friends and romantic interests can not definitively move past his low parentage. And there is, again, Pa, who does not hesitate to remind him of every area in which he falls short.


"Enter: Edgar’s muse. Yes, his muse, Lenore, comes into his life as the physical embodiment of a grotesque drawing, there to provoke and bully Poe into accepting his affinity for death and all things Gothic." Click here to read the full review.


(A note to our readers: click on the hashtags above to see our other blog posts with the same hashtag.)


Interested in what else we're reading? Check out our Featured Books page.


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