Lucas Stoffel

Magical children, a grumpy bureaucrat finding love, and a six-year-old Antichrist named Lucy who collects buttons and just wants people to like him. That's The House in the Cerulean Sea, and I'm not even slightly embarrassed by how much I loved it. TJ Klune — who won the Alex Award for this novel — writes the kind of fantasy that feels less like escapism and more like therapy.

Dustin Thao's When Haru Was Here is his sophomore novel after You've Reached Sam, which was already proof that this author understands loneliness the way some writers understand plot or dialogue. It's his native language. And in When Haru Was Here, he's become even more fluent in it.