Thematic Reading List: Merry YA Christmas
What made our YA list for cocoa-worthy reading? Stories featuring a seasonal job, pregnant teen, missing classmate, family mystery, and a few love interests. Here is our list of appealing YA books to cozy by the fire with.
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Billy Christmas By: Mark Pritchard Billy’s father disappeared last Christmas and his mother has been grief-stricken ever since, but twelve days before Christmas Billy is given a set of twelve difficult tasks and if he completes them he may be reunited with his missing father. |
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Briana’s Gift By: Lurlene McDaniel When a pregnant seventeen-year-old girl is hospitalized and goes into a coma, her younger sister faces several difficult choices while dealing with loss, love, and life at Christmastime. |
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Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares By: Rachel Cohn In a story told in the alternating voices of Dash and Lily, two sixteen-year-olds carry on a wintry scavenger hunt at Christmastime in New York, neither knowing quite what–or who–they will find. |
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Hide and Seek By: Jane Casey Sixteen-year-old Jess Tennant is pleased to see that tiny Port Sentinel, England, goes all out for Christmas, but when Gilly Poynter, one of Jess’s classmates, disappears leaving behind only her diary and unanswered questions, Jess joins the investigation to find Gilly before it is too late. |
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Jingle Boy By: Kieran Scott Paul loves Christmas – his family’s decorations, playing Santa at the mall, and this year spreading Christmas cheer with his new girlfriend, Sarah. But after some serious mishaps, Paul may have lost his Christmas spirit. |
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Let It Snow By: John Green, Maureen Johnson, and Lauren Myracle In three intertwining short stories, several high school couples experience the trials and tribulations along with the joys of romance during a Christmas Eve snowstorm in a small town. |
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The Lost Son By: Tamra Torero and Preston Norton Spoiled and arrogant Jacob has always been able to charm his way out of trouble, but when the sixteen-year-old drives home drunk from a party and is involved in an accident that results in the death of seventeen-year-old Cody, he’s sentenced to replace Cody at the family’s Christmas tree farm, where he is in for a harsh reality check. |
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The Princess Present By: Meg Cabot In a series of diary entries, Princess Mia describes celebrating Christmas with her friends in Genovia. |
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Secret Santa By: Sabrina James When Shawna finds out that someone is sending her boyfriend presents and Froggy plays a trick on Celia to win her heart, a series of mishaps and misunderstandings arise that finally get resolved on the night of the big Winter Dance. |
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Scrooge #worstgiftever By: Charles Dickens and Brett Wright A miser learns the true meaning of Christmas when three ghostly visitors review his past and foretell his future. For a different twist on this classic, the text is accompanied by emojis. |
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Top Ten Clues You’re Clueless By: Liz Czukas The day before Christmas, money goes missing from a donation box at GoodFoods Market and Chloe and her five of her teenage co-workers, held in the break room until the police arrive, try to identify the real thief. |
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What Light By: Jay Asher Sierra’s family runs a Christmas tree farm in Oregon — it’s an idyllic setting for a girl to grow up in, except that every year, they pack up and move to California to set up their Christmas tree lot for the season. So, Sierra lives two lives: her life in Oregon and her life at Christmas. And leaving one always means missing the other. Until this Christmas, when Sierra meets Caleb, and one life eclipses the other. |