Stoked for This: April 2025

Y’all, it’s my birthday month so you can bet we’ve got some good stuff coming out! If you’ve been around for a bit, you’ll see some familiar authors I’ve enjoyed in the past and, as always, a few debut authors I can’t wait to see their talent.

April 1, 2025

From author Laurie Halse Anderson comes a historical middle grade fiction about thirteen-year-old Elsbeth Culpepper during the spring of 1776 struggling to survive not only the Revolutionary War but the smallpox epidemic as she searches for her missing father.

Rebellion 1776

By: Laurie Halse Anderson

Back with her third graphic novel, Huda Fahmy is ready for junior year – she’s going to join all the clubs, volunteer everywhere, and ace her ACTs but then she gets the news of her parents divorce and everything goes downhill from there.

Huda F Wants to Know?

By: Huda Fahmy

A Chinese-Filipino teenager whose world of daydreams is destroyed by a family secret that portrays the pains of growing up in this lyrical, mythology-tinged debut novel.

Video games, queer friends, and set in both 1998 and 2013 need any more information?

A/S/L

By: Jeanne Thornton

What else would you do after hearing about your terminal illness other than road trip to kill your estranged father?

Bad Nature

By: Ariel Courage

After the street cat, Cat, get sick in a Brooklyn, five strangers from around the neighborhood come together to help him.

Cat’s People

By: Tanya Guerrero

If you could completely erase your memories of a person, would you do it? What if a chance encounter later on makes you want your memories back?

Meet Me at Blue Hour

By: Sarah Suk

Three girls just found out they were dating the same guy, basketball star, Nate. After Nate is found bloodied and unconscious in the locker room after the big game, the girls are prime suspects. Now, they much form an alliance together to clear their name.

The Payback Girls

By: Alex Travis

April 8, 2025

Ollie is stuck between everything. They’re too girlie for their neighborhood hockey team, but not girlie enough for their boy crazy BFF, and when they have to write about “What it means to be a woman” they’re caught between fleeing and confronting their own fight for their own path.

Ollie In Between

By: Jess Callans

It’s 1954 and a former nun arrives at Gulls Next in search of answers after her pen pal’s letter mysteriously stops.

Murder at Gulls Nest

By: Jess Kidd

April 15, 2025

After a school shooting, Bea, a girl with cerebral palsy who uses a wheelchair must navigate the trauma in a world that wasn’t built for her.

Please Pay Attention

By: Jamie Sumner

I got an ARC of this one and you can read my review here 🙂

April 22, 2025

Lucretia and her mom have come to the tiny Candle Island, Maine to escape the memories of the car accident that killed her father. But the island has its own secrets, one that capture Lucretia in their wake.

Candle Island

By: Lauren Wolk

April 29, 2025

Imagine Pokémon, but with dragons and phoenixes in the skies of Seoul, meals magically appear based on your moon, and dream literally come to life.

Dreamslinger

By: Graci Kim

What would you do if you moved into a rental house with thirty feral cats? And, how would caring for them open the door for saving your home?

Poets Square: A Memoir in Thirty Cats

By: Courtney Gustafson

The sequel to Abeni’s Song where Abeni faces new challenges as she seeks to bring back the Golden Throne, evade the Witch Preist’s hunters, and find the disappeared people of her village.

Abeni and the Kingdom of Gold

By: P. Djèlí Clark

Please Pay Attention / Jamie Sumner

Please Pay Attention
By: Jamie Sumner
Genre: Middle Grade, Novel in Verse
Number of Pages: 240
Published: April 15, 2025
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Dates Read: March 15, 2025
Format: ARC / Paperback

Trigger Warning: school shooting, PTSD, grief

After a school shooting took the lives of some of her schoolmates and her teacher, Bea Coughlin must figure out how to grieve, live, and keep rolling forward. But as her community begins to rally and protest, Bea can’t get past the helplessness she felt in her wheelchair as others around her took cover.

When her foster mom signs her up for therapeutic horseback riding, Bea finally begins to feel like herself. As she begins to heal, she finds her voice and the courage to demand change.

In a way, books about school shootings make me so sad because it’s become almost a norm for children, especially in America, and to think that someone reading this book may very well feel seen is a bit bittersweet in a way. I wish we didn’t need a book like this, but I’m also glad that we had one. 

Besides the overall storyline of the school shooting, this book really focuses on Bea feeling helpless in a situation she had no control over and how with the help from her family, and a horse, she was able to get her power back.

Overall, this book is worth the read for younger students to feel seen and to help those maybe overcome the tragedy of being in a school shooting. This would also be great for adults to read to understand what the younger generation is going through just to get an education.

*Thank you Atheneum Books for Young Readers and NetGalley for a digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review