In the town of Fairfold, humans and Folk live side-by-side in a delicate truce. Tourists flock to the town, eager to witness the wonders of Faerie—especially the horned boy who has slept in the glass coffin in the forest for as long as anyone can remember—but ignorant of the dangers that come with any encounter with the fae. Hazel and her brother, Ben, grew up knowing the truth about the cruel Folk that make bargains and doom unsuspecting tourists. As children, they told stories to each other about the horned boy and pretended to be a knight and a bard on a quest to save Fairfold from the vicious and cunning fae. Now in high school, the siblings have put away their stories and their quests. But Hazel has a secret; one she doesn’t fully understand herself and one she certainly can’t tell Ben. And when the horned boy finally wakes up, her childhood dream to be a knight comes true. It’s up to Hazel to save Ben, the horned boy, and all of Fairfold from the danger that lurks in the forest.

Holly Black returns to her roots in the Faerie world in this creepy and haunting tale of a girl knight who will fight to protect the people she loves. Hazel is flawed, vulnerable, kick-ass, and completely relatable. Black blends fantasy, horror, romance, and mystery genres to create the stunning world of Fairfold in a story that will stay with readers long after they’ve finished the final page.

Time travel, tangled family lines, and heart-pounding adventure and romance—Passenger by Alexandra Bracken has enough to last several lifetimes!

Etta Spencer, a violin prodigy, is a modern-day girl who is suddenly whisked back to the American Revolution–era 1700s. There she learns of her mother’s secret past, or more aptly, pasts: her mother is a time traveler and has hidden an important relic that opens time “passages” from the all-powerful Ironwood family who controls the time-traveling community. Now Etta must find this relic for the Ironwoods, or she will never see her mother again.

Passenger is told in third-person POV, but focused on two characters: Etta and Nicholas, who becomes her travel companion. Nicholas has his own reasons for traveling; he wants to buy his own ship, guaranteeing his freedom in a time where a person of color is not granted that. The split POV allows for a more intimate look at the developing relationship between Nicholas and Etta, as well as their individual motives and desires. Etta is headstrong, and Nicholas is rational, due to his familiarity with the Ironwoods’ “rules”—together they complement and strengthen each other. Nicholas and Etta’s companionship and eventual romance is one of the highlights of this novel.

Passenger is a book steeped in the cultures of various countries at various points in history. It was refreshing to see a time-travel story where the characters hop around rather than stay in one place, looking to get back to their present. I give this book a standing ovation!

When Roza disappears from her quiet town nestled in cornfields, Finn is haunted by the memory of her kidnapping. He is the sole witness of her disappearance, bearing the burden of not being able to identify her captor. As Finn searches for certainty in the haze of memory, guilt and grief eat away at Finn and his brother, causing them to grow farther and farther apart. Woven within realities of small town America— bullies, rumors, whispers in the corn—are Greek mythology tropes that are easy to miss. The town of Bone Gap is cloaked in the mundane, but the mythological elements of the narrative lend gravity to this chilling coming-of-age story. Everything seems pretty ordinary as far as disappearance stories go, until suddenly it’s not. Magical realism at its finest, this dreamy, nightmare-ish story sucks you in and doesn’t let go. Finn’s struggle to understand himself and prove his worth as he tries to remember what he saw is beautifully delicate and poignant; it’s rare for a male protagonist to have this kind of selfless introspection, and to display the kind of vulnerability that Finn does. Entangled in a simultaneously muted and epic conflict, Finn emerges as an ill-fated hero.

A few years after the vampire frenzy struck the publishing industry, I finally got around to reading Holly Black’s The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, and I’m very glad I did! Set in a world where vampire regularly infect humans, the novel follows Tana, a 17-year-old girl who passes out at a party, only to wake up next to her friends’ corpses. The only other survivors are Tana’s newly-infected ex-boyfriend, Aidan, and a mysterious vampire named Gavriel. Tana, Aidan, and Gavriel are left to seek help in Coldtown, a walled quarantine area that keeps the infected away from outer society. Needless to say, chaos ensues.

I’m a big fan of magical realism, and I think that Holly Black is one of the best magical realism writers out there. Despite the fact that Tana is surrounded by vampires, the world of Coldtown feels incredibly real. Black has added the perfect amount of myth and realism to create a spine-tingling story that might make you fear for vampires in real life!