In the past year alone, the literary world has been shaking with the release of some pretty epic, groundbreaking reads. If you haven’t picked them up for yourself yet, what are you waiting for?
1. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
The Hate U Give can easily be classified as one of the most important reads of this year. The book hasn’t even been out for an entire cycle yet and the movie rights were already purchased, the movie was filmed, and it is set to release at some point next year. Everyone in the literary world has picked up this book at one point or another, because it tells such a powerful and gripping message. The story follows Starr, a young teenager growing up in Garden Heights, and she witnesses her best friend get shot while he was trying to take care of her. What follows then is the eruption of the Black Lives Matter movement, and she finds herself struggling to use her voice when she feels that she comes from two worlds that don’t exactly blend well. What was perhaps the most successful about this book is that it doesn’t feel like you’re reading something that someone is preaching from a soapbox, because Starr is such a complex and important character, and even the lines in her own life appear to be blurred, which makes things ten times more complicated — for example, her uncle is a police officer, which makes her thoughts on Khalil’s death a lot more complicated than one would think. This book juggles racism, assumptions, and what it means to have a voice and an identity in a world where it feels like everyone is against you, and it is such an incredibly powerful read for any person that may pick up this book.
2. Dear Martin by Nic Stone
Dear Martin is another book that followed closely on the heels of the release of The Hate U Give. Justyce is a young teen that has so much going for him — he’s in an excellent school, finds himself getting accepted to Yale, and his life appears to be on the upswing. But due to a total misunderstanding while trying to help a friend, he finds himself in handcuffs and being accused of crimes that he would never commit based solely on his skin color. This book tackles a lot of series issues, from racism to sexism to what it means to be yourself when you feel like you are straddling two worlds, and it was a really incredible book to read.
3. When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon
When Dimple Met Rishi tells the story of a feisty Indian girl named Dimple Shah who manages to convince her parents to send her to a summer program for app developers. What she doesn’t know is that the only reason her parents agreed to let her go was because they knew Rishi Patel was going to be there — and Rishi was a rule-following son who wanted to adhere to his parents’ ideas of arranged marriages and traditional Indian customs. The only problem? This is exactly what Dimple doesn’t want, and this story navigates what it means to be true to yourself while still respecting your family and the values that you were raised with throughout your entire life.
4. They Both Die At The End by Adam Silvera
They Both Die At The End tells the story of two boys who get a call one day that they’re going to die at some point within the next twenty-four hours — they don’t know how or when it will happen, just that it is going to happen. So they end up meeting on an app designed for people who get that call, and then they end up falling in love with one another, even though their chances of survival seem grim. This book was such an eye-opening experience on so many levels, especially when it came to juggling questions about your own mortality. Adam Silvera is currently an author that is absolutely tearing up the lit scene right now, so if you haven’t picked up this book (or any of his others) yet, what are you waiting for?
So those were just four groundbreaking reads that are new to the scene and totally deserve being checked out — so if you haven’t read any of them yet, I definitely recommend that you give one (or all!) of them a try…you may just fall in love with a story you hadn’t contemplated reading before!