Our Favorite YA Moms for Mother’s Day
Time to grab some flowers and pick a cute card, NOVLers! We’re celebrating MOMS! The women who raised us, who calm us down when we’re spiraling, who’ve helped to keep us on this insane Earth for as long as we’ve been here. Motherhood is NOT for the faint of heart!
All moms are different- unique, beautiful, and strong. Some are our birth mothers. Some are aunties that were always a shoulder to cry on. Some are stricter than others. And YES, sometimes we fight with them. But come on, NOT today guys. Not on this blessed Mother’s Day!!!!!!
And that’s why I’ve put together this list, celebrating my favorite YA moms. They all bring something fun and needed to the table. So, let’s give a big CHEERS to our moms out there. Pick a YA mom who will make you laugh, or maybe one to capture your heart, or one who inspires you to be a better version of yourself. Moms everywhere, WE LOVE YOU!
Dropping Beats
OMG, I LOVE Growls’ mom. She is such a boss and takes crap from nobody! As a single mom, she supports her two (absolutely bonkers) sons in this hilarious and heart-warming story, and let me tell you, she is holding it down for her boys. Add this to “books that will make the Grinch’s heart grow three sizes in one day.”
Thirteen-year-old Growls (aka Shaun) is an aspiring (awful) rapper who hopes to enter this year’s Raptology competition with his best friend, Shanks (aka Zachariah). After all, what better way to land his crush (Tanisha) and get the respect he finally deserves than winning the contest and going viral?
But when a livestream practice goes epically wrong, the two friends do go viral– and not in the way they’d hoped.
Now the laughingstock of the school, Growls is sure he’ll never have another chance to date Tanisha. Even worse, Shanks has gone MIA, leaving him terribly alone.
But when Growls meets the new girl on the block (Siobhan), things don’t seem so terrible after all. And with some patience, a little luck, and a whole lot of practice, he just might win the Raptology competition and be a hero to both Siobhan and Shanks.
Either way, he’s ready for this. He’s steady for this. It’s comeback season and they call him comeback king for a reason.
I’ll Be Waiting For You
by Mariko Turk
“You’re you,” Mom says, squeezing me to her side. “My strong, fearless girl.” I KNOW, Leander is like… sooo cute and distracting in this book… but don’t sleep on Natalie’s mom! She is absolutely WONDERFUL. She doesn’t let Natalie call herself stupid. She’s protective and funny. She makes sure Natalie goes to therapy to deal with the death of her best friend. AND, she lets Natalie watch horror movies!!!!! I love her!!!!
Natalie and Imogen are inseparable, and wildly different—Imogen is infuriatingly humble and incredibly intelligent, while Natalie is brave, jumping into danger and new adventures. Still, one thing ties them together: their love of the supernatural. Every summer, they vacation with their parents at the famously haunted Harlow Hotel. Imogen is a true believer, while Natalie sees ghost stories as nothing but pure fun.
Then, Imogen suddenly passes away from an undiagnosed heart condition that no one saw coming, and Natalie is left to take on the summer before senior year alone.
Without Imogen, Natalie throws herself into her senior project. Her passion is still horror, so she plans to spend her summer back at The Harlow Hotel recording fun fake footage that will get her on the teen ghost hunting show of her dreams. And her plans would be a lot less complicated if Leander, her irritatingly attractive arch rival from school, wasn’t working on his senior project at the very same hotel.
The longer Natalie stays at the Harlow Hotel, the more she realizes that Leander might be helpful for her project. After all, she could use an extra hand to help record her fake footage.
But, when strange things start happening at the Harlow, Natalie wonders, could there really be something to these ghosts after all?
Readers of Emily X.R. Pan, Nina LaCour, and Dustin Thao will fall for this story that explores what it means to believe—in ghosts, in the people you love, and in yourself.
Your Plantation prom is Not Okay
Harriet’s mother has passed away in this book, but she is still always with Harriet. Harriet carries her strength, looking to her mother for grace and bravery to handle the racist actions of others. Harriet’s mom, though not physically present, is a powerful and loving illustration of a mother’s love. This entire book is powerful!
Harriet Douglass lives with her historian father on an old plantation in Louisiana, which they’ve transformed into one of the South’s few enslaved people’s museums. Together, while grieving the recent loss of Harriet’s mother, they run tours that help keep the memory of the past alive.
Harriet’s world is turned upside down by the arrival of mother and daughter Claudia and Layla Hartwell—who plan to turn the property next door into a wedding venue, and host the offensively antebellum-themed wedding of two Hollywood stars.
Harriet’s fully prepared to hate Layla Hartwell, but it seems that Layla might not be so bad after all—unlike many people, this California influencer is actually interested in Harriet’s point of view. Harriet’s sure she can change the hearts of Layla and her mother, but she underestimates the scale of the challenge…and when her school announces that prom will be held on the plantation, Harriet’s just about had it with this whole racist timeline! Overwhelmed by grief and anger, it’s fair to say she snaps.
Can Harriet use the power of social media to cancel the celebrity wedding and the plantation prom? Will she accept that she’s falling in love with her childhood best friend, who’s unexpectedly returned after years away? Can she deal with the frustrating reality that Americans seem to live in two completely different countries? And through it all, can she and Layla build a bridge between them?
Freshman Year
by Sarah Mai
Going off to college is one of the times you need your mom the most, and that’s why I love Sarah’s mom in Freshman Year. She’s always there to answer the phone when Sarah is having a spiral, and she’s super chill and understanding. The kind of mom that bakes cookies for your whole friend group. Everyone gets a fresh start. Who do you want to be? Sarah is leaving suburban Wisconsin for college in Minnesota. She has high hopes for the future: impress her professors, meet interesting new people, stay close to her best friends and boyfriend back home, flourish as an artist, and shed her lingering high school anxieties. What seems manageable at first quickly unravels into a tailspin and she is overwhelmed by the freedom, the isolation, and all the possibilities that await in this new environment. Based on the author’s personal college journal and comics, Freshman Year navigates the inner workings of an 18-year-old girl in witty and heartfelt detail.
Lovesick Falls
by Julia Drake
Celia’s mom cracks me up. She is a bit hippie-dippy, a bit new-age… the kind of mom who knows all of your friend’s zodiac signs (which they love but you hate), provides organic snacks, and blasts Enya from her speakers. But she is ALWAYS spitting some wisdom, as mothers tend to do!
Celia Gilbert is the perfect friend—loyal, trustworthy, and committed to mending her best friends’ broken hearts.
She’s the reason the trio is spending the summer in Lovesick Falls, the idyllic little town where Touchstone’s sort-of-uncle’s cabin was waiting to be house-sat by three unsupervised (but totally responsible) teenagers.
After all, Celia, Ros, and Touchstone have been best friends since childhood. Sure, Celia is in love with Ros, and Touchstone was once in love with Celia — but that’s the beauty of a place like Lovesick Falls. If you fell in love, you could fall out.
Unless you can change the other person’s mind.
They started the summer closer than ever. Will living together tear them apart?
Little & Lion
Something about Suzette and Lionel’s mom feels so safe and secure. You can tell her anything- she’s one of the warmest and most accepting moms I’ve ever seen in YA. Little & Lion are dealing with a LOT! But their mom supports them through it all ❤️
When Suzette comes home to Los Angeles from her boarding school in New England, she’s isn’t sure if she’ll ever want to go back. L.A. is where her friends and family are (as well as her crush, Emil). And her stepbrother, Lionel, who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, needs her emotional support.
But as she settles into her old life, Suzette finds herself falling for someone new…the same girl her brother is in love with. When Lionel’s disorder spirals out of control, Suzette is forced to confront her past mistakes and find a way to help her brother before he hurts himself–or worse.
“Little and Lion is beautifully insightful, honest, and compassionate. Brandy’s ability to find larger meaning in small moments is nothing short of dazzling.” — Nicola Yoon, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Everything, Everything
The Next New Syrian Girl
I absolutely adore this book, and Leene and Khadija’s relationships with their mothers. They are SO OPPOSITE!! They are trying to live up to their mother’s expectations, of course, but along the way, everybody learns and grows. Both moms just want to protect their daughters, but are also awed by their bravery. This book is a heart wrenching ray of hope for all.
Khadija Shami is a Syrian American high school senior raised on boxing and football. Saddled with a monstrous ego and a fierce mother to test it, she dreams of escaping her sheltered life to travel the world with her best friend.
Leene Tahir is a Syrian refugee, doing her best to adjust to the wildly unfamiliar society of a suburban Detroit high school while battling panic attacks and family pressures.
When their worlds collide the result is catastrophic. To Khadija, Leene embodies the tame, dutiful Syrian ideal she’s long rebelled against. And to Leene, Khadija is the strong-willed, closed-off American who makes her doubt her place in the world.
But as Khadija digs up Leene’s past, a startling and life-changing discovery forces the two of them closer together. As the girls secretly race to unravel the truth, a friendship slowly and hesitantly begins blooming. Doubts are cast aside as they realize they have more in common than they each expected. What they find takes them on a journey all the way to Jordan, challenging what each knows about the other and herself.
Fans of Samira Ahmed’s Love, Hate, and Other Filters and Tahereh Mafi’s A Very Large Expanse Of Sea will love Khadija and Leene’s sharp-witted voices in this dual POV narrative. The Next New Syrian Girl is a poignant and timely blend of guilt, nostalgia, devotion, and bad-ass hijabees.
The Singular Life of Aria Patel
by Samira Ahmed
Aria’s mom (in her OG timeline) is amazing. But she has a different (but the same?) mom in every universe!!! Pick up this mind-bending book to see how far Aria will go to save her real mom! (But are they ALL her real mom?!?!) You’ll have to read to see…!!!
Aria Patel likes stability, certainty, predictability. It’s why she’s so into science. It’s why she dumped her boyfriend before they went to different colleges because the odds were that something would go wrong, eventually. In a life that’s already so chaotic, why obsess over complicated relationships and shadowy unknowns when the scientific method gives you direction and a straight path to avoid all the drama.
But there’s no avoiding anything when Aria finds herself suddenly falling through parallel universes and there’s no formula that can save her. She can’t explain why she’s been waking up in a new reality almost every day, or why Rohan, and a poem from her English class, seem to be following her through every new life.
As Aria desperately attempts to find a way home, she eventually ends up stuck in a parallel world very similar to her own. She cherishes this new version of her family, and she finds herself unable to deny the yearning she has for Rohan…but it’s not her life or her Rohan. It belongs to another Aria, another girl, and unless Aria can get back home, she’ll have taken this happiness away from someone else forever. And she may never find her own.
This whirlwind novel from New York Times bestselling author Samira Ahmed will whisk you through worlds unknown, all while putting a multiverse spin on one of BookTok’s favorite tropes: second chance romance.