On Wednesdays, We Read Pink Books
Mean Girls premiered 22 years ago. Lives were forever changed. We celebrate on October 3rd, and you can’t sit with us unless you’re reading a pink LBYR book. Happy Mean Girls Day, NOVLers! <3
Cliques clash and sparks fly in this delightfully fast-paced read that’s part fluffy rom-com, part murder mystery with a (literal) witch hunt. The perfect pick for Wednesday fans.
Pretty, popular, and a total witch, Embry Woodcross is queen bee at Raven’s Head School for the Magically Gifted. Entering senior year as head prefect, Embry is a celebrated fashionista and unrivaled solver of problems big, small, and unattractive. (She’s quite generous with her handcrafted magical beauty products.)
When she meets Oakley Riddle, clueless transfer student and ultrarare vampire, Embry’s mission is clear: take the new girl under her wing and make sure she’s not thrown to the (were)wolves. Coven mate Rye Knighton may scoff at Embry’s aggressive benevolence, but Raven’s Head students reward her with love and appreciation…
Until one good deed too many makes Embry the lead suspect in a murder investigation.
Suddenly, the same people who begged Embry for enchanted acne potions are convinced she’s a cold-blooded killer. Apparently, everyone loves a witch until something bad happens, and then it’s all pitchforks and anecdotal evidence. As everything she’s ever done is used against her, Embry teams up with Rye to find the real murderer, clear her name, and maybe fall in love along the way.
A teen social media star learns he can’t control everything in this delicious, queer graphic novel adaptation that relocates Jane Austen’s Emma to a modern-day high school in Queens, New York.
Evan Horowitz has it all: beauty, brains, and a not-so-secret flair for matchmaking! An Insta influencer with a talent for makeup and a taste for romance, he’s no stranger to playing cupid for those hopelessly clueless in finding love.
So when shy transfer student Natalia shuffles into school one day, Evan can’t help but get his hands messy! With so many matches to choose from, it’s not long before he sets a plan in motion for Natalia—much against the better judgement of his level-headed best friend, Davi.
But he takes things too far, creating a web of drama that spirals out of his control. Can Evan learn to put the people closest to him before his misguided ambition? Or will he lose them and his own chance at romance, too?
From the celebrated author of As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow comes a poignant novel about a Syrian American girl who uses a magical sketchbook to turn her grief into art, painting miraculous murals of her mother’s life in Syria.
Seventeen-year-old Jihad Dabbagh has always seen life with a heightened sense for colors, one of many magical blessings the women in her family possess. But Jihad’s gift changes depending on her mood. When depression sets in, the world is a colorless oasis, and in the wake of her mother’s sudden death, the world has become a permanent shade of grey.
Broken by tragedy, Jihad’s family doesn’t believe her color loss. Her father sends her to the elite Braxton Academy to finish her senior year. There, Jihad’s name and hijab put a target on her back. Her haven comes in the form of an old sketchbook carved from a tree in her hometown in Syria—a country she only knew through her mother’s stories. Jihad hasn’t picked up a brush in over a year, but finds herself channeling the colors of her hurt, pain, and grief as she paints the story of her mother’s journey in Syria.
When graffiti of that same mural starts magically popping up all over New York, her art goes viral and the world takes notice, the threat of legal consequences is imminent. To reclaim her voice, Jihad will have to paint a new future for herself and Braxton, guided by the resilience of her mother’s story.
For fans of Ann Liang and Lynn Painter, this humorous, relatable novel gives an honest look at what it’s like to fall in love for the first time—while simultaneously healing from loss.
High school senior Mayte has never been kissed, but it hardly matters. Her abuelita has cancer, her half sister with special needs has moved in, and college is off the table—family comes first. She keeps her problems to herself. Why burden everyone she loves with more?
Meanwhile, fellow senior Auggie is set on attending an elite creative writing program. But as the self-proclaimed most boring person alive, he can’t exactly write the next great American novel when he’s struggling to write a short story for college applications.
After an awful blind date (“disaster” doesn’t even begin to describe it), Mayte and Auggie never want to see each other again. When forced together by their merging social circles, the pair must at least pretend to get along…but soon they develop actual feelings. Then tragedy strikes Mayte’s family. Auggie feels compelled to write her story to help her process and heal—but are his intentions truly selfless? The best story he’s ever written could impact the best friendships he’s ever had.
How to Love You When You’re Gone is equal parts heartbreaking, soul-healing, and absolutely hilarious from the very first page.
In this sweet teen rom-com, in order to find the right guy, she will have to (fake) date the wrong one first—perfect for fans of Lynn Painter and Kasie West.
When soccer star Dru Eason’s longtime crush Kai finally asks her out, she can’t say no. She also can’t say yes. Not when she knows things with him will end just as they have with all of her exes. They’ll date, break up, and in a matter of days he’ll become someone else’s perfect boyfriend.
Because Dru is The Boyfriend Launcher.
To buy time to figure out why this keeps happening, Dru negotiates a no-dating pact with her team for the duration of the playoffs—twenty-four days. Then she asks Winston Portis, one of her best friends, to secretly fake-date her. Maybe after some feedback on what it’s like being her boyfriend, she can take her chance with Kai and keep him far away from the launchpad.
But is twenty-four days enough time to uncover her issues? Or is it just long enough for Dru to wonder: Has she been overlooking the perfect boy, or is she just launching Winston for the next girl? And is she finally brave enough to take a shot at finding out?
Perfect for fans of fake dating, friends to lovers, sports romance, and romantic comedies!
A contemporary young adult romance about moving on, finding your place, and recovering after life falls apart.
Gymnast Caroline Kepler has three state balance beam titles, a new trick even most elites can’t do—and chronic, undeniable back pain. While she might never be an Olympian, she has dreams of leveling up to elite, making Nationals, and competing in college. But when one epic face-plant changes all that and Caroline’s back pain goes from chronic to career-ending, her dreams are shattered and her life is flipped upside down.
Enter Alex Zavala, a three-sport athlete who’s both incredibly cute and incredibly off-limits. He offers to give Caroline a crash course in all the sports she’s missed, and she has an offer for him in return: For every sport Alex teaches her, she’ll play matchmaker for him. Deal done, Caroline “dates” new sports with Alex for the rest of the summer, which is loads more fun than wallowing in despair. Just as Caroline starts to see herself as more than her past athletic successes, she picks up something she didn’t bargain for: a big fat crush on Alex.
Turns out life was way easier when it was just layout-fulls and beam burns….
As a presidency unravels and the fight for women’s rights intensifies, a teen girl’s future will be determined by her willingness to seek the truth, in this stunning work of historical fiction perfect for fans of Monica Hesse and Malinda Lo.
Patty Appleton is making history. As one of the Senate’s first female Congressional Pages, she’s not only paving the way for other politically minded girls, she has a front-row seat to debates dividing the nation, especially around women’s rights and roles. The battle between the old ways and the new polarizes the women in Patty’s life, and she finds herself torn between traditional expectations—to be anobedient daughter aspiring to become a perfect wife—and questions new friends like fiercely feminist Simone encourage her to ask.
But the questions don’t stop at women’s rights: The Watergate scandal is intensifying. As evidence mounts that the White House engaged in crimes, smears, and cover-ups to manipulate an election, Patty worries her dad, a fundraiser for President Nixon, could somehow be involved. Determining truth from lies becomes ever more essential for the nation’s future—and for Patty’s as well.
Illustrated throughout with remarkable real-life images and headlines, this timely exploration of 1973—the year of Watergate hearings, the Equal Rights Amendment, and Roe v. Wade—unfolds through the story of a young woman driven to question everything as she learns to think for, and rely on, herself.
“They’re teen royalty. If North Shore was Us Weekly, they would be always on the cover.” — Damian
American Royals meets Elite in this contemporary YA set in a glamorous boarding school where four teens compete to inherit a European kingdom.For fifty years, King Leander Eldana has ruled Ashland without naming an heir to the crown. After sending away his grandchildren to be raised out of the public eye, it’s finally time to secure his nation’s future by appointing one definitive heir. The best way to appraise his successor? In the halls of Almus Terra Academy, a boarding school infamous for breeding the world’s next generation of leaders—and liars.
Titus Eldana has always known he’d inherit Ashland’s future. Now he must prove he has what it takes. Alaric Eldana was not raised with a silver spoon. His secondhand clothes might not be fit for a king, but he knows how to rule: with his fist. Emmeline Eldana only wants to please her neglectful parents. If that means securing the crown, she won’t hesitate to destroy anyone in her way. Sadie Aurelia has no idea why she’s been given a chance to bring new blood to the throne. With nothing left to lose back home, she’s ready to take it.
Filled with competition, secret alliances, enemies-to-lovers romance, and cunning revenge, Royal Heirs Academy is a breathless, entertaining read set in modern-day. This gossip-filled school for the global elite is inspired by UWC of the Atlantic, which Vanity Fair has described as “Hippie Hogwarts.”
For fans of the breakout television hit Maxton Hall — The World Between Us.
For fans of You’ve Reached Sam and Rachel Lynn Solomon’s See You Yesterday, this captivating and mind-bending second-chance romance explores the very nature of self– and what it means to love someone across the multiverse.
Aria Patel likes stability, certainty, predictability. It’s why she’s so into science. It’s why she dumped her boyfriend before they went to different colleges because the odds were that something would go wrong, eventually. In a life that’s already so chaotic, why obsess over complicated relationships and shadowy unknowns when the scientific method gives you direction and a straight path to avoid all the drama.
But there’s no avoiding anything when Aria finds herself suddenly falling through parallel universes and there’s no formula that can save her. She can’t explain why she’s been waking up in a new reality almost every day, or why Rohan, and a poem from her English class, seem to be following her through every new life.
As Aria desperately attempts to find a way home, she eventually ends up stuck in a parallel world very similar to her own. She cherishes this new version of her family, and she finds herself unable to deny the yearning she has for Rohan…but it’s not her life or her Rohan. It belongs to another Aria, another girl, and unless Aria can get back home, she’ll have taken this happiness away from someone else forever. And she may never find her own.
This whirlwind novel from New York Times bestselling author Samira Ahmed will whisk you through worlds unknown, all while putting a multiverse spin on one of BookTok’s favorite tropes: second chance romance.