The Colorado Blue Spruce YA Book Award recognizes recently published books that are popular among middle and high schoolers in Colorado. Throughout fall 2024, nine teams from school and public libraries across the state read several YA books and selected their favorite to nominate. We hope you enjoy reading them, too!
2024-25 Nominees | Readalikes | Past Winners
2024-25 Nominees
Teen groups at school and public libraries across the state nominated these eight books for award consideration. View their booktalks here.
A dual POV rom-com about Reggie and Delilah, who fall in love through missed connections and chance meetings on holidays over the course of a year. It's almost like the universe is pushing them together for a reason.
Four teens on the Blackfeet Reservation find themselves the suspects of an investigation when a classmate is found murdered during the annual Indian Days celebrations.
Wren Martin, the asexual student council president, plans to eliminate the school's annual Valentine's Day Dance, until his rival Leo sabotages Wren's plan by securing a sponsorship from a dating app, which leads to unexpected feelings and realizations about Leo's seemingly perfect life.
In 1930s Los Angeles Chinatown, the Chow sisters, May, Gemma, and Peony, suspect foul play in the death of Chinatown star Lulu Wong and take it upon themselves to solve the murder, revealing a conspiracy that threatens their neighborhood.
A visit to a private amusement park is the trip of a lifetime for a group of teen influencers, until they learn that getting off the island alive is not part of the plan.
A true story of two Jewish teenagers racing against time during the Holocaust: one in hiding in Hungary, and the other in Auschwitz, plotting escape.
A gripping speculative thriller about one girl with the power to see death before it happens--and the terrible consequences she faces when saving someone goes wrong.
Hanged in an annual sacrificial ritual to Poseidon, seventeen-year-old oracle Leto awakens on an island inhibited by Melantho, a strange immoral girl with oceanic powers, who tells Leto the only way to break Poseidon's curse is to return to Ithaca and kill the prince.
Prince Jones, a self-professed teen love doctor known for his radio segment on the local hip-hop station, believes he can get the bookish, anti-romance Dani Ford to fall in love with him in three dates.
Readalike for: Reggie and Delilah's Year of Falling
Both are contemporary romances where two teens find themselves and feel comfortable in their own interests while falling for each other.
Musical lover Riley has big aspirations to become a director on Broadway. Crucial to this plan is to bring back her high school's spring musical, but when Riley takes her mom's car without permission, she's grounded and stuck with the worst punishment: spending her after-school hours working at her dad's game shop. Riley convinces Nathan--a nerdy teen employee--to cover her shifts and, in exchange, she'll flirt with him to make his gamer-girl crush jealous. But Riley didn't realize that meant joining Nathan's Dungeons & Dragons game...or that role playing would be so fun. Soon, Riley starts to think that flirting with Nathan doesn't require as much acting as she would've thought...
Readalike for: Reggie and Delilah's Year of Falling
Musically gifted girls fall for D&D-loving guys in both of these sweet, tropey contemporary romances.
Perry Firekeeper-Birch has always known who she is - the laidback twin, the troublemaker, the best fisher on Sugar Island. But as the rising number of missing Indigenous women starts circling closer to home, as her family becomes embroiled in a high-profile murder investigation, and as greedy grave robbers seek to profit off of what belongs to her Anishinaabe tribe, Perry begins to question everything. Old rivalries, sister secrets, and botched heists cannot - will not - stop her from uncovering the mystery before the ancestors and missing women are lost forever.
Readalike for: Looking for Smoke
Both are thrillers that skillfully and conscientiously raise awareness of the epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.
A story about womanhood, friendship, resilience, and the anguish of a missing loved one. Miikwan and Dez are best friends. Miikwan's Anishinaabe; Dez is Inninew. When Dez's grandmother becomes too sick, Dez is told she can't stay with her anymore. With the threat of a group home looming, Dez can't bring herself to go home and disappears. Miikwan is devastated, and the wound of her missing mother resurfaces. Will Dez's community find her before it's too late? Will Miikwan be able to cope if they don't? Colonialism and the issue of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit People are explored in Natasha Donovan's beautiful illustrations.
Readalike for: Looking for Smoke
Both are thought-provoking books that explore the impact of the colonialism and the issue of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit People.
Less than a year away from graduation, seventeen-year-old Joy is too busy overachieving to be worried about relationships. She's determined to be Caldwell Prep's first disabled valedictorian. And she only has one person to beat, her academic rival Nathaniel. But it's senior year and everyone seems to be obsessed with pairing up. One of her best friends may be developing feelings for her and the other uses Caldwell's anonymous love-letter writer to snag the girl of her dreams. Joy starts to wonder if she has missed out on a quintessential high school experience. She is asexual, but that's no reason she can't experience first love, right? She writes to Caldwell Cupid to help her sort out these new feelings and, over time, finds herself falling for the mysterious voice behind the letters. But falling in love might mean risking what she wants most, especially when the letter-writer turns out to be the last person she would ever expect.
Readalike for: Wren Martin Ruins it All
Both are contemporary realistic novels about asexual teens who explore a rivals-to-lovers romance via letters and mistaken identities.
Raina Petree is crushing her senior year, until her boyfriend dumps her, the drama club (basically) dumps her, the college of her dreams slips away, and her arch-nemesis triumphs. Things aren't much better for Millie Goodwin. Her father treats her like a servant, and the all-boy Mock Trial team votes her out, even after she spent the last three years helping to build its success. In an unlikely meeting in the girls' bathroom, Raina inspires Millie to start a rival team and recruit four other angry girls to not only take on Mock Trial, but to smash the patriarchy in the process.
Readalike for: Wren Martin Ruins it All
Both are contemporary, character-driven realistic fiction written in a witty, comedic style about asexual teenagers who are fighting against a school policy/group.
In 1931 Shanghai, two Nationalist spies pose as a married couple to investigate a series of brutal murders causing unrest in the city.
Readalike for: Kill Her Twice
Both are suspenseful and action-packed historical murder mysteries.
A journalist enlists a teen star to go undercover to learn the truth about [the star's] brother's death.
Readalike for: Kill Her Twice
Both are suspenseful, intricately plotted mysteries set in Hollywood; this one is contemporary instead of historical.
When high schooler Arcadia unexpectedly secures the notorious game-maker's internship, she and the other interns become players in the most twisted game yet.
Readalike for: The Island
Both are creepy, menacing thrillers where teens participate in life-or-death competitions on remote islands.
Jay discovers that mountain resort where he lives and works with his friends and family is also a doomsday oasis for the rich and powerful who expect top-notch customer service even as the world outside the resort's walls disintegrates.
Readalike for: The Island
Both are horror-thrillers set in amusement parks (with a dark side) that teens must escape from.
For fourteen-year-old budding artist Minoru Ito, her two brothers, her friends, and the other members of the Japanese-American community in southern California, the three months since Pearl Harbor was attacked have become a waking nightmare: attacked, spat on, and abused with no way to retaliate--and now things are about to get worse, their lives forever changed by the mass incarcerations in the relocation camps.
Readalike for: Impossible Escape
Both share stories of teens imprisoned in camps during WWII; this historical fiction focuses on experiences of Japanese-Americans rather than Jewish Europeans.
Edie is a talented dancer and skilled gymnast with hopes of making the Olympics. Between her rigorous training and her struggle to find her place in a family where she's considered the daughter "with brains but no looks," Edie's too busy to dwell on the state of the world. But life in Hungary in 1943 is dangerous for a Jewish girl. Just as Edie falls in love for the first time, Europe collapses into war, and Edie's family is forced onto a train bound for the Auschwitz concentration camp. In this young adult edition of her bestselling, award-winning memoir The Choice, renowned psychologist and Holocaust survivor Dr. Edith Eger gives readers a gift of hope and strength.
Readalike for: Impossible Escape
Both are moving portraits of Auschwitz survivors.
Yolanda Alvarez is having a good year. She's starting to feel at home at Julia De Burgos High, her school in the Bronx. She has her best friend Victory, and maybe something with José, a senior boy she's getting to know. She's confident her initiation into her family's bruja tradition will happen soon. But then a white boy, the son of a politician, appears at Julia De Burgos High, and his vibes are off. And Yolanda's initiation begins with a series of troubling visions of the violence this boy threatens. How can Yolanda protect her community, in a world that doesn't listen?
Readalike for: The Darkness Rises
Both are about suspenseful books about teens who foresee death or violence and must navigate the impacts.
An intimate and unflinching look into the devastating consequences of a mass shooting for one girl and her close-knit family.
Readalike for: The Darkness Rises
Both explore the aftermath and impact on people who are adjacent to those who survived mass shootings.
The Gods of Olympus randomly select humans as their tokens and then gamble with their lives. 16-year-old Ara is seeking revenge on the Gods for allowing her sister to die in the games. She's determined to be selected as a token, but when she is, she realizes that it isn't just her life at stake, but also her heart. With the odds stacked against her, it will take an unlikely hero to twist her rage into something much more complicated. Ara is playing in the games of life and death... and love. What will she sacrifice?
Readalike for: Lies We Sing to the Sea
Both books are based on Greek mythology and explore romance and revenge.
Transgender demigod Teo is unexpectedly selected for the Sunbearer Trials, a fierce competition among demigod heroes where the winner sacrifices the loser to Sol, their blood fueling the Sun Stones that protect Reino del Sol.
Readalike for: Lies We Sing to the Sea
Both stories are about mythological worlds where teens are frequently sacrificed to deities, resulting in compelling explorations of power.
Seventeen-year-old Ross Quest, a master thief, enters the Thieves' Gambit, a competition consisting of dangerous, international heists, in order to save her mother's life.
When fifteen-year-old Iranian American Marjan discovers her murdered father was secretly a veterinarian to magical creatures, she realizes she must take up his mantle, despite the many dangers.
Maverick feels strongly about family ties, making choices he feels necessary to help support his mom while his father serves time, and leave him literally holding his son in a doctor's waiting room after he gets paternity test results back and his babymomma ghosts. Now the child he's raising is impacting the lives of his family and his girlfriend, and the gang life he led to support them all financially could leave them all bearing his responsibilities since it endangers his life. It looks like he may have been offered a chance to go straight, but leaving the King Lords won't be easy, and a "real" job has high demand for low return.
Soon after receiving an anonymous message stating that she has twenty-four hours to play a game by the sender's rules or he will kill her sister, sixteen-year-old Crystal Donovan realizes that cooperating will destroy her friends' lives and she must figure out a way to beat the kidnapper at his own game before she loses everything.