WHAT TO READ NEXT IN YOUNG ADULT
JULY 2025
by Sydney Spell
Welcome to Texas Reads YA! As a teen who loves to read YA, I sometimes have a hard time finding quality YA novels.
Both of these novels present possible futures—one through fantastical elements, the other through a plausible path. Each offers a compelling storyline set against a dark backdrop.
Linsey Miller
There is only one school worth graduating from, and it creates as many magicians as it does graves…
First in his class and last in his noble line, Fabian Galloway’s only hope of a good future is passing his elite school’s honors class. It’s only offered to the best thirteen students, and those students have a single assignment: kill their professor.
If they succeed, their student debt is forgiven. However, if an assassination attempt fails or the professor is alive at the end of the year, the students’ lives are forfeit.
And dealing with the professor, a devil summoned solely to kill or be killed, is no easy task.
Fabian isn’t worried, though. He trusts his best friends—softhearted math genius Credence and absent-minded but insightful Euphemia—to help. After all, that’s why he befriended them.
As the months pass and their professor remains impossibly alive, the trio must use every asset they have to survive. Or else failure will be on their academic records—and their tombstones—forever.
That Devil, Ambition contains compelling characters and is paced well. The novel has a dark and chilling atmosphere. The mystery aspect was well written and engaging.
Written in Purple follows the lives of several teens and adults facing a strange, robotic America.
The newly implemented robotic teacher program sends several teens into a carefully planned attempt to rebel, led by a senior at Robotics Readiness High by the name of Jason Fontenot.
However, their plans are interrupted with the onset of a major hurricane. Jason and his friend, Carson, are surprised when unexpected visitors arrive and complicate their initial plan.
The mysterious woman, Nicole Thibodeaux, and her granddaughter, Princess, become an integral part of the plan after arriving to assist their Louisiana family in preparation for the upcoming storm.
A series of unfortunate events forces the teens and adults involved into multiple confrontations with the oppressive government that ultimately will alter the course of their future.
A football game gone wrong, an impending storm, and corrupt politicians drive strangers to become friends and allies as they face the realities of the United States of the Greater World, a new order formed after the second pandemic.
The United States Constitution has been rewritten, but not forgotten by the individuals that survived the second pandemic; among them are Nicole Thibodeaux and Officer Antonio Moreno, both dedicated to restoring freedom in the country they once loved.
Written in Purple is fast paced and interesting to the very last page. The realities of what our future could look like is chilling and elicits varied emotions.
Sydney Spell is a college freshman at UT Austin. She has enjoyed reading through adolescence and is a big fan of YA novels specifically.