BookTok Books

Published in 2015, V. E. Schwab’s A Darker Shade of Magic is a young adult fantasy novel and the first installment of the Shades of Magic series. Kell Maresh, one of the last Antari magicians, possesses the rare ability to travel between parallel worlds. When a dangerous artifact from a forbidden realm falls into Kell’s possession, he and a thief named Lila Bard become entangled in a perilous adventure. The novel—which received a Goodreads Choice... Read A Darker Shade of Magic Summary

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All the Bright Places (2015) is a young adult novel with elements of romance written by Jennifer Niven that deals with the topic of teen suicide. The book was winner of the Goodreads Choice award and has become a popular read among the BookTok community. Niven tells the story from two different voices, those of high school students Theodore Finch (who goes by “Finch”) and Violet Markey. The characters first meet at the top of their... Read All The Bright Places Summary

All the Light We Cannot See is a historical fiction novel by Anthony Doerr, published by Scribner in 2014. The novel alternates between the lives of its two central characters—Marie-Laure Leblanc, a girl who grows up in Paris and loses her eyesight to cataracts at age six; and Werner Pfennig, a boy from a mining town in Germany who joins the Nazi military to escape working in the mines. As the novel opens, Marie-Laure and... Read All the Light We Cannot See Summary

An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir (Razorbill, 2015) is the first in the An Ember in the Ashes series, followed by A Torch Against the Night. This young adult fantasy romance novel follows an elite warrior and a peasant girl as they find what it means to be free in a brutal world. An Ember in the Ashes debuted at number two on the young adult New York Times bestsellers list and was... Read An Ember in the Ashes Summary

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Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz is a young adult fiction novel published in 2012. The novel won a Lambda Literary Award, a Pura Belpre Award, and a Stonewall Book Award. It was also named a Printz Honor Book and has achieved popularity on BookTok. Told from a first-person point of view, the book is a work of realistic fiction set in El Paso, Texas, in the late... Read Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe Summary

A Thousand Splendid Suns is a 2007 novel by Afghan-born Khaled Hosseini, who was granted asylum in the US as a child during the Soviet-Afghan War in 1980. It is the story of Mariam and Laila, two women married to the same man, Rasheed, while the Taliban comes to power. The novel was chosen as one of the American Library Associations’ Best Books for Young Adults in 2008, was number one on the New York... Read A Thousand Splendid Suns Summary

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Published in 2018, Circe retells the story of the eponymous Greek mythological figure. The novel is also popular among the online BookTok community. Although traditionally viewed as a heartless, savagely beautiful witch who lures sailors to their deaths, the Circe of Madeline Miller’s imagining is quite different. This Circe is a multidimensional, flawed, and empathetic character struggling to find meaning and worth in her immortal life. Through Miller’s detailed and honest first-person narrative, which takes... Read Circe Summary

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Darius the Great Is Not Okay is a coming-of-age novel by Iranian American writer Adib Khorram. Originally published in 2018 by Dial Books, the novel echoes Khorram’s experiences growing up in a multiethnic family with a history of mental illnesses. The book, which is Khorram’s first, won the William C. Morris YA Debut Award in 2019 and is a popular BookTok read. A sequel entitled Darius the Great Deserves Better was published in August 2020. Content... Read Darius the Great Is Not Okay Summary

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Heartless, first published in 2016, is a contemporary fantasy Young Adult novel by Marissa Meyer. Meyer is best known for her dystopian sci-fi YA series The Lunar Chronicles, inspired by fairy tales such as Cinderella and Snow White. Set in a fantasy world, Heartless imagines the backstory of Lewis Carroll’s iconic character the Queen of Hearts from the 1876 novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Heartless is also popular among the BookTok community. This guide utilizes... Read Heartless Summary

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Monday’s Not Coming (2018) is a young adult novel by Tiffany D. Jackson. She employs a nonlinear narrative to explore issues of race, mental illness, and media bias. Claudia Coleman narrates the story of how her best friend, Monday Charles, disappeared for a year, and no one but Claudia seemed to notice or care.Published by Harper Collins, Monday’s Not Coming earned Jackson the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe award for new talent. It was also nominated... Read Monday's Not Coming Summary

Ninth House is a 2019 contemporary occult fantasy novel by American writer Leigh Bardugo. Inspired by the author’s undergraduate experiences at Yale University, Ninth House is part of the Alex Stern series with the next book planned for release in 2021. The novel is also popular on BookTok, a community of readers and book content creators on TikTok. The story is set in a macabre version of the real world and focuses on the occult... Read Ninth House Summary

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One of Us is Lying is a 2017 young-adult thriller by Karen McManus that revolves around the suspicious death of Bayview High School senior Simon Kelleher, author of a gossip app called About That. The story is told from the alternating first person perspectives of four students who served detention with Simon when he died: Bronwyn, Cooper, Nate, and Addy. It explores themes about the corrosive impact of stereotyping and gossip, the value of empathy... Read One of Us is Lying Summary