The post Mirrorwoven first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.

In this gothic historical tale full of mystery and romance, two girls must uncover the secrets of their haunted home before it’s too late.

THE HARROW HOME FOR WAYWARD GIRLS has housed hundreds of young women hidden away for the duration of their pregnancies. Their homesick cries provided a haunting score to Grace Harrow’s childhood.

Now, in the summer of 1947, the Home has been sold to a wealthy hotelier and Grace expects his daughters will be spoiled brats. Eldest daughter Rose—unaware of Mr. Harrow’s abusive tendencies—is jealous of Grace’s easy confidence. Yet grudgingly, Grace and Rose become co-conspirators, and soon, friends. Fortunately so, because not all of the wayward girls made it out. One is still lingering, living in the shadows, and she’s looking for vengeance.

To uncover the secrets buried in the Harrow Home, Grace and Rose will need to learn to trust one another. Because Grace’s father will go to great lengths to keep things buried. And when they’re unearthed, it could ruin both their families.

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3 Little Blue Envelopes meets Love and Gelato in this YA coming-of-age romance about Emily, who takes a gap year in Europe to learn about life, love, and working through grief—while following in her grandmother’s footsteps.

Everything in Emily Tannenbaum’s life is going according to plan. Graduate high school as valedictorian? Check. Gain admission to Dartmouth? Check. Decide to pause everything to embark on a gap year adventure abroad? Wait, what?

Ever since her sister died, Emily has done everything in her power to be the good girl, the safe girl, the one her parents don’t have to worry about. She’s worked hard, she’s studied, she’s attended school-approved functions.

But when her grandmother, a former member of the famous Flower Sisters music duo, proposes that Emily take time off to follow the European tour the Flower Sisters took in 1966, Emily impulsively jumps at the chance as a way to embrace the messy and unexpected parts of life.

As she travels from Spain to Sweden with stops in Paris and Rome along the way, Emily begins to experience all that life has to offer. She deals with pickpockets, dances the night away, has her heart broken, and learns more about herself and where she came from than she ever could have imagined.

Story Locale: Europe (Specifically Madrid, Seville, Barcelona, Sweden, Paris, Nice, Venice, Florence, and Rome)

The post The Introvert’s Guide to Kissing in Europe first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.

A cunning king. A devious princess. Best. Week. Ever.

Rapunzel knows nothing about her neighboring kingdom, Astera – and not just because she only left her tower a month ago. The famously reclusive island has limited its contact with outsiders for decades. So when a suspicious invitation arrives welcoming Rapunzel to the Asteran princess’s coming of age ceremony, and offering her a chance to be useful for the first time since she lost her healing powers, Rapunzel accepts – and unwittingly plunges herself and her companion, Eugene, into a tangled knot of political intrigue and magical secrets.

Eugene is just happy to get one last adventure with Rapunzel before his criminal background catches up with him and prevents their happy ending. Yet as they’re drawn further into the country’s problems, they uncover truths about Eugene’s parentage that point to deeper unrest in Astera, and suddenly the fate of their own kingdom, not just their personal dreams, is at stake.

Thrust into a power struggle between Astera’s beloved princess, Verette, its domineering king, Enver, and a mysterious secret society, Rapunzel and Eugene race to protect their home from an unsettlingly familiar threat and discover that the past can either hold them back, or help them blossom.

The post Rootbound first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.

I Killed Zoe Spanos meets The Counselors in this YA thriller about the daughter of a killer who must prove her innocence after a night of fun turns deadly.

Dina Soto is used to laying low. Ever since her father confessed to murdering two of his students, Dina’s mom has kept the family on a short leash to avoid drawing any more attention. But when cute, popular, and sweet Kai Thompson invites Dina to spend the weekend with him and his friends at his cabin, Dina thinks maybe being noticed wouldn’t be so bad.

But once at the cabin, Dina realizes one night won’t change her reputation as the daughter of a killer—especially not when people start turning up dead. Told in part through police evidence, the truth of what happened that night unravels alongside long-held secrets. But one thing remains true: Dina is adamant she didn’t do it. Now, she just has to prove it.

The post I Didn’t Do It first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.

Set in a single sweltering summer, the story of two traumatized teenagers picking up the pieces of their lives in the wreckage of a bizarre gothic mansion.

Seventeen-year-old Leo Arceneaux has been raised by his mother and uncle, having lost his father in a shockingly random murder when he was two. Connor Rigby is the teenage daughter of a wealthy lifestyle influencer. She has no idea who her father is. As summer begins, Leo and Connor both find themselves in a small town in rural Minnesota, living in the rundown grandiosity of Connor’s mother’s family’s estate. Rigby Mansion is a secluded gothic monstrosity that Connor’s mother is slowly renovating without ever actually being present. Leo is there as a summer landscaping laborer, working to pay off a debt to his mother and uncle, and Connor arrives shortly after, having left behind wreckage of her own and looking for a place to lie low away from her mother.

Connor and Leo soon find themselves in an unfamiliar but intense relationship—not simply a summer romance but something that feels important and somehow tied to the combination of this particular blazing-hot summer and this weird house in the middle of nowhere.

When an accident on the estate’s grounds reveals the bones of two long dead people, Leo and Connor become obsessed with the couple buried beneath the fountain. Neither of them can say exactly why, but they’re sure that somehow these two corpses are tied to the to whatever comes next in their lives.

The post Summerwork first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.

For fans of Firekeeper’s Daughter, this is an edge-of-your-seat Indigenous YA murder mystery set in Costa Rica from Pura Belpré and Walter Dean Myers Award-winning author of Saints of the Household.

This enthralling murder mystery follows Ulá Dominguez, a Bribri-American teenager, searching for the truth behind her land-activist father’s mysterious death on their Native territory in Costa Rica. Ulá and her brother face off against illegal loggers, kidnappers, settlers, and the Costa Rican government while hunting for clues. Their only ally is a local journalist, who may be in danger himself.

Inspired by real-world missing, dead, and attacked Indigenous activists, award-winning author and poet Ari Tison writes her first novel in prose and pushes the envelope yet again by pulling together a propulsive story full of grief, environmental justice, and the fight for retribution that will resonate with teen readers.

Told in multiple points of view, the narrative also invokes the collective voice of Bribri ancestors. “Together we see” is the literal translation of the Bribri phrase for “goodbye.” Tison challenges the reader to sit with Ulá’s grief, to acknowledge the cost of greed, and to ask themselves “How far would you go to protect your land?”

The post Together We See first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.

This lyrical YA novel by the author of And Other Mistakes follows a girl who struggles to find hope with her sisters, her best friend, and a new crush, as the country navigates a pandemic & protests against police brutality—perfect for fans of Darius the Great is Not Okay.

“I just want to enjoy being alive. Can’t that be enough?”

Tia doesn’t know how much more she can take. Things have been weird with her best friend Drew, her older sister Mel is in a coma after a mental health crisis, a global pandemic has stolen her senior year, and racial tensions are high across the country following the killing of another unarmed Black man by a police officer.

So when Tia’s oldest sister Alexis invites her to stay at her place, Tia jumps at the chance to get out of the house and away from her daily life, if only for a little while. But getting to know the cute girl she meets while walking her sister’s pandemic puppy is not enough to distract her from the weight of her world. Will Mel finally wake up? Is Alexis also on the edge of breaking? Will her friendship with Drew survive the summer? Is protest and quarantine all Tia can look forward to?

With so much unrest in the world and in her life, Tia will have to figure out how to keep from losing hope and losing her mind.

The post When We Almost Came Undone first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.

From the bestselling author Kelly Quindlen comes a whip-smart, heart-squeezing YA rom-com about saving a gay bar, falling for the enemy, and building the kind of community you never thought you’d have.

When eighteen-year-old Louisa Wade inherits a gay bar from her late great-uncle, she figures there’s been some kind of mistake. There’s no way Uncle George—football legend and hometown hero of Rustin, Alabama—could have secretly owned a queer bar… right?

But The Frisky Cricket is real, and so is the messy legacy Uncle George left behind—including his grumpy ex-partner, Hatch, who wants nothing more than to sell the bar. Louisa may have zero business experience, but she’s determined to keep it open for the vibrant queer community that calls it home.

As the summer heats up, Louisa’s crusade puts her on a collision course with Aubrey Calhoun: the pretty, popular, and sharp-tongued daughter of Rustin University’s newly crowned football coach. The girls start off on the wrong foot, but a tentative truce leads to late nights, shared secrets, and a growing spark.

But things threaten to sputter out when Coach Calhoun sets his sights on The Frisky Cricket, scheming to replace it with a new athletic facility—celebrating Uncle George’s football career while erasing his queerness. Now Louisa must decide if she can fight for Uncle George’s legacy without losing sight of herself in the process.

The post This Must Be the Place first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.

From the New York Times-bestselling author of A Crane Among Wolves comes a warm and romantic homage to Jane Austen set in historical Korea, about a reader and a writer who secretly fight against government book banning and find themselves irresistibly drawn together.

As the dutiful second-eldest daughter of a poor family, society would have Haewon believe that her only hope of a decent life is to marry well. But during a time of rampant government censorship and book banning, she instead works as an illegal book transcriber in order to make a little extra money. It’s dangerous work, but she loves it—especially when she gets to transcribe the work of her favorite author, known as Black Lotus.

When her older sister becomes smitten with a wealthy young gentleman, Haewon is roped into chaperoning them during their courtship. Which wouldn’t be so terrible… if it weren’t for the young man’s uptight and annoying best friend who also accompanies them.

As the only son of a noble, Seojun has a lot expected of him. Wealth. Status. Respectability. Certainly not frivolous and often illicit activities such as reading fiction. But Seojun loves to do something even more scandalous: writing. He’s kept his work secret from his father and friends, but with each passing day, the pressure of being his father’s son and the dispiriting actions of the government make Seojun question the purpose of it all. The only thing keeping him going are the encouraging letters he receives from his transcriber, known only as Magpie.

When his best friend falls hard for a girl of lower social status, Seojun finds himself forced to act as chaperone to the infatuated couple—along with the girl’s younger sister, who is as irritating as she is judgmental. But as Haewon and Seojun spend more time together, they begin to suspect they may have judged each other too quickly…

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