As Marissa Meyer states on the jacket, this is not your grandmother’s The Nutcracker. Winterspell opens in snowy New York City, 1899. Clara, the mayor’s daughter, feels trapped as her father has all but relinquished his title to the powerful gang Concordia. And since her mother’s brutal murder, Clara must rely on herself and her godfather, Drosselmeyer, to protect her broken family. She secretly hones her fighting and stealth skills with her godfather as a means to escape her current situation, though Drosselmeyer is not from this world.

In his workshop, Clara is drawn to a statue of a young prince brought from his home world. Disaster strikes on Christmas Eve when mysterious beasts invade Clara’s home and capture her father. During the ensuing battle, the prince, Nicholas, is freed from his statue, and he urges Clara to journey with him to the world of Cane to rescue her father. Together, Clara and Nicholas come to grips with this warped world ruled by a mad faery queen. While Nicholas fights to regain the throne his family lost, Clara discovers more about herself and this land than she bargained for.

With luscious writing, Legrand takes a beloved tale and twists it into something sinister and beautiful. Clara is an interesting character to follow; she has agency, which she never gives up even when others attempt to make decisions for her. Don’t be fooled by what appears to be a holiday read, Winterspell can and should be enjoyed at any time of the year.

Art. Teenagers. Tragedy. Beaches. Ghosts. Drama. Family. All this in just the first 40 pages. Jandy Nelson’s I’ll Give You the Sun is well-deserving of its 2015 Michael L. Printz Award, and draws you in on the very first page.

Twins Jude and Noah Sweetwine were made together and take on the world together. In fact, they play a game trading different parts of the world — the sky, ocean, sun, stars, flowers, and trees — for total control. But as Noah and Jude grow up together, they also grow apart.

Noah narrates the first part of the tragedies that have drawn the twins apart, and Jude shows us the later years. The story of the complex relationship between brother and sister, told by flawed, tangible teenage characters, is beautiful and touching. Full of stunning prose, I’ll Give You the Sun is true to its starred reviews: “Readers are meant to feel big things, and they will” —Publishers Weekly.

Emi Price loves everything about film. Like many Hollywood kids, she’s grown up obsessed with the industry. She’s even scored the internship of a lifetime, working as a set designer on a movie before she’s even graduated from high school. One day while scrounging around an estate sale to find the perfect pieces for her set, Emi stumbles upon a letter from a deceased silver screen legend, and sets out to find the woman it’s addressed to. She ends up finding Ava, a beautiful girl with a tumultuous past, who might be the granddaughter of one of the greatest actors of all time. Emi and Ava start to unravel the story behind the letter, in hopes of finding the truth behind Ava’s lineage. Along the way, they learn that they have more in common than they thought, and start working on a film project together. As Emi and Ava get to know and support each other artistically, a romance blossoms between them. But does Emi love the lost-granddaughter-of-a-film-star character she’s built up in her head? Or does she love Ava for who she truly is? The characters and conflicts are very believable, and LaCour does something you don’t often see in YA books; she integrates LGBT issues into the plot without making sexuality the overarching theme. With beautiful descriptive language, and a magical Hollywood setting, this book is perfect for lovers of film, contemporary romance, and stories of self-discovery.

This novel starts with a “boy-meets-girl” scene, but not the way you’d expect. Finch and Violet meet when they find themselves standing on the ledge of their school’s bell tower, both of them dealing with their own internal hardship. Violet is still struggling with her grief over the loss of her sister, who died in a car accident that Violet survived. Finch is grappling with possible mental illness, and searching for something that will keep him alive and awake.

When Violet and Finch team up on a school project (much to the surprise of their classmates) that takes them across Indiana to discover its “natural wonders”, they discover not only unexpected sights, but they also find “bright places” in being with one another. As they fall in love, Violet begins to live in the moment, while Finch still struggles to hold on.

This story covers topics that we’ve seen before in YA novels, but All the Bright Places is both unflinching and heartfelt in its treatment of grief and mental illness, and what happens in the aftermath of tragedy. Finch and Violet are honest and vibrant characters that deal with complex emotions in a relatable way. This “elegant and euphoric” book is certainly one that will stay with me. I especially recommend it to fans of books like The Fault in Our Stars and If I Stay.