Welcome to 2025. No matter how you feel about the dawn of the new year, we might as well make the best of it. I don’t know about you, but I plan to kick things off with a good book. After digging through an impressive list of young adult science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels being traditionally published in January and February, I pulled together my top 25.

The Wildest Things by Andrea Hannah
I didn’t know I needed a sapphic dark fantasy take on Snow White until now. After twenty years of a cursed sleep, Snow White wakes to her kingdom of Roanfrost in an apocalyptic state. Her family is dead, diseases are spreading like a plague, and mutant animals wander the blighted landscape. The only way to save the kingdom is to kill Queen Iliana, the daughter of the Evil Queen who cursed her years before, a feat that becomes even more challenging when romance sparks between them. (Wednesday Books; February 25, 2025)

Read the rest at Reactor Magazine here.