Parallel Universes in YA
Books are like portals into another world. Therefore, if you like books, you like parallel universes. Therefore, this post is for each and every one of you, my lovely NOVLers.
Isn’t it fun to wonder what if?! What IF I had bought stock in Stanley cups last year. What IF I wasn’t so scared of needles and could get pierced UP. What IF I hadn’t given up on the oboe. Maybe in an alternate reality, I am a world-class oboe player with an eyebrow piercing, absolutely ROLLING in Stanley cup money. AH, to wonder! To dream! To delusion! The possibilities are endless, dolls.
So come along with me as we journey through the NOVL-verse!
Right Here, Right Now
This Sliding Doors-type story structure makes this book a quintessential parallel universe read. It’s also a guaranteed tearjerker—a swoon-worthy romance that is BOUND to end up with a special place in your heart. #BookTok, rejoice!
Two teens process grief, loss, and life across multiple universes in this story of love, friendship, and possibility perfect for fans of You’ve Reached Sam.
Worlds turn. Particles spin. Love endures.
There are infinite universes in which Elise never dies. Her best friend, Anna, never has to mourn her or choose between the weight of her grief and the weight of her ambition. Her cousin, Liam, never has to lose another loved one or fight to find purpose in a life that already doesn’t feel like his own.
But Liam and Anna do not get to choose the universe in which they live. Across multiple worlds, their paths collide as they wrestle with what it takes to save someone else and how to face love and loss on a quantum scale.
This moving, lyrical novel introduces two teens on the cusp of finding out who they are while finding each other again and again.
The Chosen One
by Echo Brown
The Chosen One is an unforgettable and genre-pushing novel. Portals, magical realism, and Star Wars references make this a read unlike any other!
This memoir filled with “overwhelming emotions and power” (The Mary Sue) testifies to the disappointments and triumphs of a Black first-generation college student in a predominantly white institution.
There are many watchers and they are always white. That’s the first thing Echo notices as she settles into Dartmouth College. Despite graduating high school in Cleveland as valedictorian, Echo immediately struggles to keep up in demanding classes. Dartmouth made many promises it couldn’t keep. The campus is not a rainbow-colored utopia where education lifts every voice. Nor is it a paradise of ideas, an incubator of inclusivity, or even an exciting dating scene. But it might be a portal to different dimensions of time and space—only accessible if Echo accepts her calling as a Chosen One and takes charge of her future by healing her past. This remarkable challenge demands vulnerability, humility, and the conviction to ask for help without sacrificing self-worth. In mesmerizing personal narrative and magical realism, Echo Brown confronts mental illness, grief, racism, love, friendship, ambition, self-worth, and belonging as they steer the fates of first-generation college students at Dartmouth. The Chosen One is an unforgettable coming-of-age story that bravely unpacks the double-edged college transition—as both catalyst for old wounds and a fresh start.
The Girl in the Castle
by James Patterson and Emily Raymond
This book is Outlander meets Girl, Interrupted and I’m living for it. Half of the book is contemporary- following our main girl Hannah in a mental hospital. The other half is historical- including a medieval village and a new young king who takes an interest in Hannah. Stuck between two worlds, Hannah is left to confront the truth about where she belongs.
Beloved #1 bestselling author James Patterson delivers a thrilling novel about a teen caught between two worlds and the truths that could set her free—or trap her forever.
My name is Hannah Dory and I need you to believe me.
NOW: Hannah Doe is brought to Belman Psych, kicking and screaming, told she is suffering from hallucinations and delusions.
1347: Hannah Dory and her village are starving to death in a brutal winter. Hannah seeks out food and salvation in the baron’s castle. If she is caught stealing, she will surely hang.
NOW: Hannah knows the truth: she is Hannah Doe and Hannah Dory, and she must return to the past before it’s too late to save her sister. Can Jordan, the Abnormal-Psych student who seems to truly care, be the one to finally help her?
Jordan isn’t sure what to believe, and Hannah has even bigger problems: if she doesn’t make it back, her sister will die, but if she keeps going back, she might never escape.
Halfway There
This graphic novel doesn’t depict a parallel universe in a traditional sci-fi way… but Christine is trying to find her identity and keeps thinking what-if? What if she had grown up in Japan instead of the US? How would her life be different? Who would she be? This sweet graphic novel is an exploration of self-discovery that feels like coming home!
A poignant young adult graphic memoir that follows one teen’s year abroad in Japan, as she seeks to reconcile both sides of her biracial identity.
Christine has always felt she is just half: Half American, half Japanese. As a biracial Japanese American who was born in Tokyo but raised in the US, she knows all too well what it’s like to be a part of two different worlds but never feeling as though you belong to either.
Now on the brink of adulthood, Christine decides it’s time to return to the place she once called home. So she sets forth on a year abroad in Tokyo, believing that this is where she truly belongs. After years of feeling like an outsider, now she will finally be complete.
Except…Tokyo isn’t the answer she thought it would be. Instead of fitting in, Christine finds herself a fish out of water, as being half of two cultures isolates her in ways she’d never imagined. All she can do is try to stay afloat for the rest of the year—still figuring out who she is, what she wants in life, and whether she’ll ever truly be more than halfway there.
Author-illustrator Christine Mari explores what it means to lose and find yourself in this moving narrative of belonging and home.
Mirror Girls
Another book that is not “traditional” parallel universe. But I LOVE this book. It follows twin sisters Charlie and Magnolia, who were separated at birth. Charlie is a young Black organizer in Harlem, and white-passing Magnolia is an heiress in rural Georgia. If I was them, I couldn’t help but think: in a parallel universe, that might have been me!
A thrilling gothic horror novel about biracial twin sisters separated at birth, perfect for fans of Lovecraft Country and The Vanishing Half – now in paperback!
As infants, twin sisters Charlie Yates and Magnolia Heathwood were secretly separated after the brutal lynching of their parents, who died for loving across the color line. Now, at the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement, Charlie is a young Black organizer in Harlem, while white-passing Magnolia is the heiress to a cotton plantation in rural Georgia.
Magnolia knows nothing of her racial heritage, but secrets are hard to keep in a town haunted by the ghosts of its slave-holding past. When Magnolia finally learns the truth, her reflection mysteriously disappears from mirrors—the sign of a terrible curse. Meanwhile, in Harlem, Charlie’s beloved grandmother falls ill. Her final wish is to be buried back home in Georgia—and, unbeknownst to Charlie, to see her long-lost granddaughter, Magnolia Heathwood, one last time. So Charlie travels into the Deep South, confronting the land of her worst nightmares—and Jim Crow segregation.
The sisters reunite as teenagers in the deeply haunted town of Eureka, Georgia, where ghosts linger centuries after their time and dangers lurk behind every mirror. They couldn’t be more different, but they will need each other to put the hauntings of the past to rest, to break the mirrors’ deadly curse—and to discover the meaning of sisterhood in a racially divided land.
Dear Evan Hansen
by Val Emmich with Steven Levenson, Benj Pasek & Justin Paul
Last but not least, I had to include Dear Evan Hansen! Evan COMPLETELY opens a parallel universe when a lie he never meant to tell gets waaaay out of hand. In this universe, he and Connor Murphy were best friends. In reality, Connor sort of… bullied Evan. This heartwarming story based on the hit Broadway show still makes me cry to this day!
From the show’s creators comes the groundbreaking, bestselling novel inspired by the hit Broadway show Dear Evan Hansen and soon to be a major motion picture!
Dear Evan Hansen,
Today’s going to be an amazing day and here’s why…
When a letter that was never meant to be seen by anyone draws high school senior Evan Hansen into a family’s griefover the loss of their son, he is given the chance of a lifetime: to belong. He just has to stick to a lie he never meant to tell, that the notoriously troubled Connor Murphy was his secret best friend.
Suddenly, Evan isn’t invisible anymore– even to the girl of his dreams. And Connor Murphy’s parents, with their beautiful home on the other side of town, have taken him in like he was their own, desperate to know more about their enigmatic son from his closest friend. As Evan gets pulled deeper into their swirl of anger, regret, and confusion, he knows that what he’s doing can’t be right, but if he’s helping people, how wrong can it be?
No longer tangled in his once-incapacitating anxiety, this new Evan has a purpose. And a website. He’s confident. He’s a viral phenomenon. Every day is amazing. Until everything is in danger of unraveling and he comes face to face with his greatest obstacle: himself.
A simple lie leads to complicated truths in this big-hearted coming-of-age story of grief, authenticity and the struggle to belong in an age of instant connectivity and profound isolation.