Quick Answer (TL;DR) Read the trilogy in this order: To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before → P.S. I Still Love You → Always and Forever, Lara Jean. That’s both the publication and in-universe order, so it’s delightfully simple. For formats, paperbacks are easy to tote, hardcovers look great on a shelf, and the audiobooks…
Quick Answer (TL;DR) If you want A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder in Chronological Order, read Kill Joy (prequel novella) first, then the main trilogy: A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder → Good Girl, Bad Blood → As Good as Dead. That’s also the publication order—so you’re safe following either, but starting with the prequel…
Quick Answer (TL;DR) If you’re new to Alex Cross, start with Along Came a Spider and then read straight through publication order. That order is already the in-universe order for almost the entire saga (with one historical outlier, Alex Cross’s Trial, set decades earlier). After you finish the mainline novels, dip into the two bite-size…
Quick Answer (TL;DR) Introduction Leigh Bardugo’s King of Scars duology is where the Grishaverse grows up. We return to Ravka after cataclysm and revolution to find a nation short on soldiers and long on scars. At the center: Nikolai Lantsov, the charming king with a monster problem; Zoya Nazyalensky, the blade-sharp general who refuses to…
Quick Answer (TL;DR) Introduction Octavia E. Butler’s Parable duology is a near-future survival epic that feels as intimate as a diary and as relentless as prophecy. Set against climate chaos, widening inequality, and religious authoritarianism, it follows Lauren Olamina—a Black teen with hyperempathy who refuses to accept that collapse is destiny. She writes; she walks;…
Quick Answer (TL;DR) Age & content guidance: This is dark romance for 18+. Heavy trigger warnings apply (see Quick Facts). Introduction On the surface, this duet is a heady cocktail of gothic mansions, coded letters, masked strangers, and a predator-prey tension that never quite lets you breathe. Underneath, it’s a darker animal: a romance that…
Quick Answer (TL;DR) Introduction Some fantasy series make you reach back into the past to understand the present. The Legendborn Cycle does that—and then it goes further, asking who gets written into the past in the first place. Set at UNC–Chapel Hill, Tracy Deonn’s contemporary Arthurian remix braids secret societies, demons, and Merlins with Southern…
Quick Answer (TL;DR) Introduction Some love stories slip into your life quietly and then refuse to leave. Benjamin Alire Sáenz’s Aristotle and Dante duology belongs to that small shelf of modern YA classics that also read like timeless coming-of-age literature—books you can hand to a teen finding the words for who they are, or to…
Quick Answer (TL;DR) Introduction If haunted houses are a subgenre, Stephen King’s Overlook Hotel is the blueprint: a place whose walls remember, whose hallways amplify rage, and whose ghosts don’t just rattle chains—they weaponize weakness. The Shining (1977) is a masterclass in claustrophobic dread; Doctor Sleep (2013) is its elegiac, unexpectedly compassionate sequel, trading a…
Quick Answer (TL;DR) Introduction Arow-lashed dunes. A cursed forest that swallows light. A girl who hunts so her people may live—and a boy trained to kill because his father decrees it. Hafsah Faizal’s Sands of Arawiya duology merges a quest fantasy with a character-first revolution, drawing on a world inspired by ancient Arabia: marketplaces ringing…
