Many Voices, One Story: YAs Told Through Multiple Narrators

How It Went Down, by Kekla Magoon
When 16-year-old Tariq Johnson is shot by white gang member Jack Franklin, Tariq’s community is thrown into an uproar. And, as with any tragedy, there are multiple, conflicting points of view—in this case, 17 people each have a different take on what happened. As Tariq’s death gets investigated and the media steps in, we glimpse the characters’ clashing observations, rationalizations, and suspicions. Was Jack shooting in self-defense? Was Tariq in a gang, too? Was this just senseless violence? The only person who can tell the truth, Tariq, has already been silenced.

Wonder, by R.J. Palacio
The universe is not kind to August Pullman, having afflicted him with the kind of facial deformity that makes little kids scream in terror when they see him. But Auggie is unfailingly kind back to the universe, and to people who would judge him by his face, especially as he begins the terrifying process of navigating his first year in school with other people—which also happens to be that fraught year of fifth grade. But while Auggie verges on the saintly, we need to get a more complete sense of this story, and that’s where the other perspectives come in: his sister, Via; her best friend, Miranda; her boyfriend, Justin; and Jack and Summer, Auggie’s new friends.

The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone, by Adele Griffin
Like a documentary in book form, Griffin’s oral history–style novel uses interviews, clips, and artwork to piece together what ended the life of brilliant young artist Addison Stone. We never meet Addison, but we get a portrait of her—not unlike her critically lauded work—through her friends and family, her fans and detractors. The book is framed as a mystery, dropping clues about the dark side of Addison’s seemingly charmed life: drug use, the pressure to keep up with the genius persona with which the media has branded her, and her own internal struggles.

Carry On, by Rainbow Rowell
In the Harry Potter series, we mostly get just Harry’s point of view, in the third-person; we’re seeing Hogwarts through his eyes, but there’s still some distance. In Rowell’s take on the Chosen One narrative, not only do we hear from Simon Snow in the first-person—including his self-loathing about his out of control magic, and not knowing if he’ll live until graduation—but we get to take a turn inside many other characters’ heads. By briefly transforming ourselves into his plucky and brilliant best friend, Penelope; his insecure girlfriend, Agatha; his tormented roommate/nemesis, Baz; the ghosts haunting the Watford School of Magicks; and the conflicted, mysterious Mage, we get a grander sense of Simon’s world and his place in it.

The Truth About Alice, by Jennier Mathieu
Everyone knows Alice Franklin is a slut after she slept with two guys at a party. But when she sexted one of the guys, causing his car accident—now that’s even juicier. Don’t know the gory details? Ask the girl who had the party, the guy who crashed the car, the ex–best friend who threw Alice under the bus, and the boy next door who might be Alice’s only ally. But you don’t need to ask Alice; no one cares about the truth, only what they think they know about her. Mathieu’s debut is astonishing not only in how well it grapples with the culture of slut-shaming, but in its depiction of how the most important voices get lost in the fray.