YA Shout Outs: Badass Heroines

Bold, beautifully defiant, and not to be messed with! Time to make some noise for our favorite badass heroines! Check out this hardcore list of fiery female characters our Tor Teen team can’t stop shouting about. ⚔️🔥

All of Our Demise by Amanda Foody & Christine Lynn Herman

All of Our Demise is the sensational follow-up to the New York Times bestseller, All of Us Villains—and the level of badass-ery in this epic series conclusion will have readers floored. For the first time in Ilvernath’s ancient history, the bloody tournament is breaking. And as the curse teeters closer and closer to collapse, the surviving champions each must decide whether to dismantle the tournament piece by piece, or continue fighting to the death as the story was always intended. Readers will continue to follow the journeys of all the surviving champions, but it’s two of them in particular, Briony Thorburn and Isobel Macaslan, who truly stand out in their resolve for triumph—and survival. Former best friends, they put past differences aside to work together and formulate a plan to rewrite the legacy of this brutal tournament and end the curse for good. Make sure to check out this epic conclusion to see if they succeed!

Anthony Parisi, Senior Associate Director of Marketing and School & Library

The Endless Skies by Shannon Price

The Leonodai are a society of shapeshifters who live in a floating city called the Heliana. Dedicated to protecting the world’s sparse remaining magic from humans, the Leonodai are fierce in combat, and even more deadly when they shift into their true form: winged lions. Rowan is a young warrior steps from taking her oath when the Heliana is rocked by calamity. She’s got a big choice in front of her: Stay in the Heliana and live the warrior dream she’s dedicated her whole life to realizing, or embark on a deadly mission that might save her city.

Andrew King, Digital Marketing Coordinator

The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi is the groundbreaking memoir that still stands the test of time. Satrapi uses the charming comic strip graphic novel to share the ups and downs of growing up. Navigating adolescence into womanhood in the middle of the Islamic Revolution is no easy task, and Satrapi shares balancing identity, family, and autonomy with grace. Maneuvering a world where everything seems uncontrollable is relevant for so many young people today. The Complete Persepolis reminds young readers that maturing is daunting and gruesome yet beautiful and hilarious for us all!

Kayah Hodge, Marketing Assistant

A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow

YA readers obsessed with fairy tales and the MCU won’t be able to resist the first book in New York Times bestselling author Alix E. Harrow’s Fractured Fables novella series—a Sleeping Beauty remix with a spider-verse twist! In A Spindle Splintered, Harrow introduces readers to Zinnia Gray, a young woman in the midst of celebrating her Sleeping Beauty-themed 21^st birthday party—a birthday that might be her last due to a rare and fatal condition she suffers from. When she pricks her finger on a spinning wheel displayed at her party, she is suddenly transported into an alternate fairytale world and crosses paths with a princess reminiscent of Sleeping Beauty who’s also destined for a grim fate.

Full of ferocity, bravery, and heart, Zinnia sets out to save the princess in an effort to hopefully rewrite their destinies before it’s too late. This queer and feminist retelling of the classic fairy tale gives readers a new generation of unapologetic heroines to root for as they assert their autonomy by redefining what “happily ever after” truly means for themselves.

This June, Zinnia is back in A Mirror Mended (coming 6.14.22), Book Two in the Fractured Fables novella series. Our favorite spirited heroine finds herself tangled up in a poisonous request from the gorgeous Evil Queen in an all-new Sapphic retelling of Snow White. There’s absolutely no better time to get sucked into Harrow’s multiverse of fairy tales!

Isa Caban, Senior Marketing Manager

The Princess Will Save You by Sarah Henning
Do you love The Princess Bride but wish Buttercup did more of the saving and swordfighting? Check out Sarah Henning’s smash-hit Kingdoms of Sand and Sky trilogy! The first book, The Princess Will Save You, details the quest of Princess Amarande to save her kidnapped true love, handsome stable boy Luca. Her political enemies hope to leverage their hostage to coerce a favorable political union by marriage, but fail to account for the fact that Princess Amarande has her own accounting to do. Her preferred instrument? Her sword. While her enemies were abducting soft-spoken stable boys, Amarande studied the blade. AND watch out for when the final volume, The King Will Kill You when it releases on August 2, 2022.