The YA Book Prize announced the ten books that made 2024 shortlist for the prize. The book prize, launched in 2014, awards a YA title written by an author living in the UK or Ireland. The prize celebrates great books for teenagers and young adults and aims to get more teens reading and buying books. The prize is also run by the book trade magazine, The Bookseller, in partnership with the Edinburgh International Book Festival. These 10 books are in the running to win this year’s overall £2,000 award.

Last year, When Our Worlds Collided by Danielle Jawando took home the 2023 YA Book Prize.

The winner will be announced on Thursday, August 22 at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, but the announcement will also be livestreamed on their YouTube channel.

Here Are The Ten Books!

Gwen & Art Are Not in Love by Lex Croucher

It’s been hundreds of years since King Arthur’s reign. His descendant, Arthur, a future Lord and general gadabout, has been betrothed to Gwendoline, the quick-witted, short-tempered princess of England, since birth. The only thing they can agree on is that they despise each other.

They’re forced to spend the summer together at Camelot in the run up to their nuptials, and within 24 hours, Gwen has discovered Arthur kissing a boy and Arthur has gone digging for Gwen’s childhood diary and found confessions about her crush on the kingdom’s only lady knight, Bridget Leclair.

Realizing they might make better allies than enemies, they make a reluctant pact to cover for each other, and as things heat up at the annual royal tournament, Gwen is swept off her feet by her knight and Arthur takes an interest in Gwen’s royal brother. Lex Croucher’s Gwen & Art Are Not in Love is chock full of sword-fighting, found family, and romantic shenanigans destined to make readers fall in love. (Credit: Wednesday Books)

How To Die Famous by Benjamin Dean

Rising star Abel Miller has just landed a role in one of the hottest reboots on the Omni Channel, Sunset High. It looks like he’ll be yet another budding celebrity plucked from obscurity, but he has a secret: his brother, Adam, a mere production associate, died during the filming of the last attempt at Sunset High, and no one knows how… or why. Abel is going to find out.But when he meets the other stars of the show– Lucky, Ryan, and Ella, along with creator Lake Carter– he realizes there’s even more darkness beneath the shimmer of fame. They all have their own secrets to hide, and one of them is willing to kill to keep it that way. (Credit: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)

Girl, Goddess, Queen by Bea Fitzgerald

To hell with love, this goddess has other plans. Thousands of years ago, the gods told a lie: how Persephone was a pawn in the politics of other gods. How Hades kidnapped Persephone to be his bride. How her mother, Demeter, was so distraught she caused the Earth to start dying. The real story is much more interesting.

Persephone wasn’t taken to hell: she jumped. There was no way she was going to be married off to some smug god more in love with himself than her.

Now all she has to do is convince the Underworld’s annoyingly sexy, arrogant and frankly rude ruler, Hades, to fall in line with her plan. A plan that will shake Mount Olympus to its very core.

But consequences can be deadly, especially when you’re already in hell. (Credit: Penguin Random House Children’s UK)

This Book Kills by Ravena Guron

I’ll make it clear from the start: I did not kill Hugh Henry Van Boren. I didn’t even help. Well, not intentionally.’

When Hugh Henry Van Boren, one of the most popular and richest kids in Jess Choudhary’s school, is found dead, the student body is left reeling and wondering who the murderer could be… Jess, a student under strict instructions to keep her record clean or risk losing her scholarship, finds herself at the centre of the investigation when it’s revealed that Hugh died in the exact same way as a character in a short story she wrote. And then Jess receives an anonymous text thanking her for the inspiration.

With time running out, Jess knows if she doesn’t solve this mystery she’ll finally have something in common with Hugh Henry. She’ll be dead too.(Credit: Usborne Publishing Ltd)

This Is How You Fall In Love by Anika Hussain

Zara loves love in all forms: rom-coms and romance novels and grand sweeping gestures. She’s desperate to have her own great love story-a real one.

Everyone thinks Zara and her best friend, Adnan, obviously belong together. And they do love each other-just not like that. So when Adnan begs Zara to help cover his new, secret relationship by pretending to be his girlfriend, she doesn’t really hesitate. How difficult can it be? It isn’t the kind of great romance she had in mind, but with fake dating comes fake hand-holding and fake kissing and . . . real feelings?

And when a new, exciting boy arrives in Zara’s life, things get more confusing than ever. Her fake romance might be making everyone around her happy, but should it be real, and can Zara and Adnan really be in love if they both have real feelings for somone else? (Credit: Bloomsbury YA)

The First Move by Jenny Ireland

Juliet believes girls like her – girls with arthritis – don’t get their own love stories. She exists at the edges of her friends’ social lives, skipping parties to play online chess under a pseudonym with strangers around the world. There, she isn’t just ‘the girl with crutches’.

Ronan is the new kid: good looking, smart, a bad boy plagued by guilt over what happened to his brother Ciaran. Chesslife is his escape.

Juliet thinks Ronan thinks someone like Ronan could never be interested in someone like her – and she wouldn’t want him to be anyway – he always acts like he’s cooler than everyone else.

Little do they know they’ve already discovered each other online, and have more in common than they think . . . (Credit: Penguin Random House Children’s UK)

Yours from The Tower by Sally Nicholls

Tirzah, Sophia, and Polly are best friends who’ve left boarding school and gone back to very different lives. The year is 1896, and Polly is teaching in an orphanage, Sophia is scouting for a rich husband at the London Season, and Tirzah is stuck acting as an unpaid companion to her grandmother. In a series of letters buzzing with atmosphere and drama, the friends air their dreams, hopes, frustrations, and romances. Can this trio of very different young women–one industrious, one artful, and one in exile–find happiness and love near the dawn of the Edwardian era? From the award-winning author of the Carnegie Medal-nominated historical romance The Silent Stars Go By comes a playful, feel-good story of friendship and aspiration pitched just right for fans of Jane Austen and her contemporary disciples. (Credit: Walker Books US)

HappyHead by Josh Silver

We are in an epidemic. An epidemic of unhappiness.

Friends, here is the good news: HappyHead has the answer.

When Seb is offered a place on a radical retreat designed to solve the national crisis of teenage unhappiness, he is determined to change how people see him and make his parents proud. But as he finds himself drawn to the enigmatic Finn, Seb starts to question the true nature of the challenges they must undergo. The deeper into the programme the boys get, the more disturbing the assessments become, until it’s clear there may be no escape. (Credit: Oneworld Publications)

Every Exquisite Thing by Laura Steven

Penny Paxton is the daughter of an icon. Her supermodel mother has legions of adoring fans around the world, and Penny is ready to begin her journey to international adoration, starting with joining the elite Dorian Drama School.

When Penny’s new mentor offers her an opportunity she cannot refuse, to have a portrait painted by a mysterious artist who can grant immortal beauty to all his subjects, Penny happily follows in the footsteps of Dorian’s most glittering alumni, knowing that stardom is sure to soon be hers.

But when her trusted mentor is found murdered, Penny realises she’s made a terrible mistake – a sinister someone is using the uncanny portraits to kill off the subjects one by one. As more perfectly beautiful students start to fall, Penny knows her time is running out . . .(Credit: HarperCollins UK)

Murder On A School Night by Kate Weston

There’s never a good time to find a dead body, sure. But what about finding a dead body while you’re trying to kiss your crush?

Kerry had different plans for her first high school party–like not going. All she wanted to do was stay home in the safety of retro rom-coms and her strict retainer schedule. Instead her BFF, fiercely outgoing mystery-fanatic Annie, has roped her into going to the party to investigate who’s cyberbullying Heather, the most popular girl in school.

Finding herself getting close with her dreamy crush is odd enough, but when the two of them discover Heather’s second in command, Selena, suffocated with a menstrual cup, things get really weird.

And when a second student turns up dead, this time with a sanitary pad across the eyes, Annie and Kerry–no matter how much she resists–are officially on the case to stop the menstrual murderer . . . period. (Credit: Katherine Tegen Books)

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