This Week In YA #Booktok (August 10, 2023)

On The Booked Shelf is a feature called “This Week In YA #Booktok” to highlight the latest buzz surrounding Young Adult titles on the bookish side of TikTok (aka #Booktok).

While the platform is filled with a vast number of creators, this is just a slice of what the algorithm has pushed onto our feed when it comes to new, backlist or upcoming titles that’ve had Booktokers eager to read, purchase or add the book to their TBR!

Our hope with this new feature is to not only highlight newer YA titles, but also seek out backlist reads that’ve been getting attention from creators on the platform ― consider this also as a resource if you ever find yourself wondering what other titles aside from the “Popular Booktok” books are pushed by the algorithm.

While its no surprise that Jennifer Lynn Barnes’s The Inheritance Games has become a YA Booktok staple, buzz surrounding her first YA series, The Naturals, has skyrocketed. While its also due to the fact that the series got a cover re-design slated for early summer (with series ft. reissued covers having released May 2, 2023) a book aesthetic/edit had also gone viral around July 19 from Booktoker (@/sapphichaze) who posted an aesthetic of the series, which garnered 800k views, spotlighting characters from the series.

In the following weeks The Naturals novels have been in B&N’s Top 100 for Teen & YA Bestsellers. The series hashtag has 4.7million views as of August 10.

From being featured in hauls to recommendation videos, Sorcery Of Thorns has garnered over 8k views this past week.

All sorcerers are evil. Elisabeth has known that as long as she has known anything. Raised as a foundling in one of Austermeer’s Great Libraries, Elisabeth has grown up among the tools of sorcery—magical grimoires that whisper on shelves and rattle beneath iron chains. If provoked, they transform into grotesque monsters of ink and leather. She hopes to become a warden, charged with protecting the kingdom from their power.

Then an act of sabotage releases the library’s most dangerous grimoire. Elisabeth’s desperate intervention implicates her in the crime, and she is torn from her home to face justice in the capital. With no one to turn to but her sworn enemy, the sorcerer Nathaniel Thorn, and his mysterious demonic servant, she finds herself entangled in a centuries-old conspiracy. Not only could the Great Libraries go up in flames, but the world along with them.

As her alliance with Nathaniel grows stronger, Elisabeth starts to question everything she’s been taught—about sorcerers, about the libraries she loves, even about herself. For Elisabeth has a power she has never guessed, and a future she could never have imagined.

That concludes the round-up for This Week In YA #Booktok! What YA Books have you seen on your Booktok fyp?

This Week In YA #Booktok (May 21, 2023)

On The Booked Shelf is a new feature called “This Week in YA #Booktok” to highlight the latest buzz surrounding Young Adult titles on the bookish side of TikTok (aka #Booktok).

While the platform is filled with a vast number of creators, this is just a slice of what the algorithm has pushed onto our feed when it comes to new or upcoming titles that’ve had Booktoker’s eager to read, purchase or add the book to their TBR!

Our hope with this new feature is to not only highlight newer YA titles, but also seek out backlist reads that’ve been getting attention from creators on the platform ― consider this also as a resource if you ever find yourself wondering what other titles aside from the “Popular Booktok” are pushed by the algorithm.

With the release of ‘Divine Rivals‘ by Rebecca Ross on April 4, 2023 throughout the month of May there were an average of 25+ videos ranging across the past couple weeks from Booktoker’s praising Ross’s newest YA Fantasy Romance for the “gritty and dark” themes, alongside the reader’s love for the “compelling” main characters of Iris Winnow and Roman Kitt ― who are rival journalists set among a fantastical world of warring gods.

As of May 24, the #DivineRivals hashtag currently has 1 million views.

Shadow and Bone meets Lore in this epic enemies-to-lovers fantasy novel filled with hope and heartbreak, and the unparalleled power of love.

When two young rival journalists find love through a magical connection, they must face the depths of hell, in a war among gods, to seal their fate forever.

After centuries of sleep, the gods are warring again. But eighteen-year-old Iris Winnow just wants to hold her family together. Her mother is suffering from addiction and her brother is missing from the front lines. Her best bet is to win the columnist promotion at the Oath Gazette.

To combat her worries, Iris writes letters to her brother and slips them beneath her wardrobe door, where they vanish—into the hands of Roman Kitt, her cold and handsome rival at the paper. When he anonymously writes Iris back, the two of them forge a connection that will follow Iris all the way to the front lines of battle: for her brother, the fate of mankind, and love.

On May 22, Ross revealed through her Instagram the sequel cover to ‘Divine Rivals‘ which has been titled ‘Ruthless Vows’ slated for an April 30, 2024 release!

With the cover reveal of Gabe Cole Novoa’s upcoming YA retelling for Fierce Reads Remixed Classics Series on May 19 via Twitter as well as on TikTok the algorithm highlighted a couple videos with excitement for the Pride & Prejudice retelling. The 9th installment in the Remixed Classics Series will be a retelling in which “Darcy is gay & the second eldest Bennet is a gay trans boy”

With Booktoks garnering over 11k likes and over 53k views, Cole Novoa’s forthcoming novel had climbed up the Barnes & Noble ranks as a pre-order in the Teen & YA Bestsellers top 100 following the reveal.

A trans boy searches for a future—and a romance—in which he can live and love openly as himself in this heart-wrenching YA reimagining of Pride & Prejudice, the ninth book in the Remixed Classics series.

London, 1812. Oliver Bennet feels trapped. Not just by the endless corsets, petticoats, and skirts he’s forced to wear on a daily basis but also by society’s expectations. The world—and the vast majority of his family and friends—think Oliver is a girl named Elizabeth. He finds solace in the few times he can sneak out and explore the city dressed as a young gentleman.

During one such excursion, Oliver becomes acquainted with Darcy, a sulky, rude young man. But in private, Oliver comes to find that Darcy is actually a sweet, intelligent boy with a warm heart. And so Oliver will have to choose: Settle for safety, security, and a life of pretending to be something he’s not, or risk it all for a slim chance at freedom, love, and a life that can be truly, honestly his own.

‘Most Ardently: A Pride & Prejudice Remix’ by Gabe Cole Novoa is set to be released January 16, 2024!

That concludes the round-up for This Week In YA #Booktok! What YA Books have you seen on your Booktok fyp?

‘Better Than The Movies’ Sequel Releasing In 2024

On January 20, Lynn Painter announced through Twitter that her NYT Bestselling YA romance Better Than The Movies will be getting a sequel titled Nothing Like The Movies, which is slated for a fall 2024 release!

Initially published in May of 2021, the novel has garnered quite an audience via #Booktok (partly due to the use of rom-com and Taylor Swift references, according to readers) with the hashtag #BetterThanTheMovies acquiring 32.1 million views.

In this “rom-com about rom-coms,” as stated by Junior Library Guild, the novel follows high school senior Liz Buxbaum whose willing to do whatever it takes to win over her crush Michael, after her recently moved back into town. But, when her next-door neighbor and childhood pain Wes Bennett seems to hit it off with Liz’s crush, she realizes her only way to win over Michael involves scheming with her annoying neighbor to make sure he becomes Liz’s prom date. But as she becomes closer to Wes, she slowly starts to reexamine everything she thought she knew about love.

Passionate readers have been eagerly awaiting more of Liz and Wes, especially since during August of 2022, Painter revealed a bonus short story (Better Than The Prom) featuring the couple during a prom scene in the novel.

According to Painter’s thread, she stated “I always said I wouldn’t write a sequel because I like where those silly little love lovers landed, but then an idea popped into my head that I couldn’t shake lose. ALSO – I fell madly in love with Wes’s brain during the bonus chapters and I’m not quite ready to get out of his head.”

The novel will be told in dual POV and set during Liz and Wes’s college summer break. Painter stated more details are to be revealed “soon.” Nothing Like The Movies is available to add on Goodreads.

Liz Buxbaum has always known that Wes Bennett was not boyfriend material. You would think that her next-door neighbor would be a prince candidate for her romantic comedy fantasies, but Wes has only proven himself to be a pain in the butt, ever since they were little. Wes was the kid who put a frog in her Barbie Dreamhouse, the monster who hid a lawn gnome’s severed head in her little homemade neighborhood book exchange.

Flash forward ten years from the Great Gnome Decapitation. It’s Liz’s senior year, a time meant to be rife with milestones perfect for any big screen, and she needs Wes’s help. See, Liz’s forever crush, Michael, has just moved back to town, and—horribly, annoyingly—he’s hitting it off with Wes. Meaning that if Liz wants Michael to finally notice her, and hopefully be her prom date, she needs Wes. He’s her in.

But as Liz and Wes scheme to get Liz her magical prom moment, she’s shocked to discover that she actually likes being around Wes. And as they continue to grow closer, she must reexamine everything she thought she knew about love—and rethink her own perception of what Happily Ever After should really look like.

Nothing Like The Movies by Lynn Painter is set to be released Fall 2024!