18 Books by Latinx Authors Coming Out in 2023 You Need to Read
We’ve loved seeing Latinx authors making their mark on the publishing industry and thankfully, this year is no different! In all genres, there is a need for Latinx stories, especially from Afro-Latinx and Indigenous Latinx writers, and plenty of authors are filling the gap this year
Photos: Page Street Kids; Ecco; Levine Querido
We’ve loved seeing Latinx authors making their mark on the publishing industry and thankfully, this year is no different! In all genres, there is a need for Latinx stories, especially from Afro-Latinx and Indigenous Latinx writers, and plenty of authors are filling the gap this year. It continues to be important that Latinx readers of all ages see characters and writers like them, and stories that resonate with their experience on the shelves. Given that the landscape continues to prioritize white voices, it’s our responsibility to support the many diverse voices of our community, especially at indie and locally-owned bookstores.
This is by no means an exhaustive list but is a good starting place as you curate your TBR lists for the year. We’re rounded up books in a variety of genres including young adult, poetry, memoir, and adult fiction, so there’s a little something for everyone. Read on to learn more about 18 books by Latinx authors that we’re excited to read in 2023.
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Sincerely Sicily by Tamika Burgess
Release Date: January 3, 2023
Sincerely Sicily is Tamika Burgess’s debut novel about Sicily Jordan, a young Black Panamanian girl who is forced to face all her worst fears: starting a new school as a sixth grader, leaving behind her friends, and wearing a uniform that goes against every one of her fashion rules. Things only get worse when she does a class presentation and confronts her classmates’ prejudice and ignorance about her Black Panamanian identity, not to mention from her own abuela. Desperate to be seen, she decides to pick up her pen and write in her journal for the first time in years, revealing a world of love, longing, and self-acceptance.
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Breakup from Hell by Ann Dávila Cardinal
Release Date: January 3, 2023
Puerto Rican author Ann Dávila Cardinal just released her latest YA book, Breakup from Hell, a rom-com and supernatural story that’s not one to miss. It follows Miguela Angeles, a young teen tired of her family, her friends, and her small town in Vermont, and who takes solace in her beloved horror novels. When she runs into Sam, a tourist in town on vacation, she quicky becomes enamored with him to the point that she gains physical strength, fighting skills, and a habit of lying, not to mention visions of the end of the world. Once she realizes she’s in a literal horror novel and wants to break-up, it may be too late—for herself, her loved ones, and her world.
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Promises of Gold / Promesas de Oro by José Olivarez
Release Date: February 14, 2023
Promises of Gold is José Olivarez’s latest collection of poetry, this centering on different types of love―self, brotherly, romantic, familial, cultural―and how forces like gender, capitalism, religion, and the American Dream complicate, misrepresent, and limit such expressions. He also touches on ever-relevant topics of migration, colonization, legacy, community, and identity with tenderness and vulnerability. The collection features the original English and the Spanish translation, making it accessible to readers of both languages.
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Lucha of the Night Forest by Tehlor Kay Mejia
Release Date: March 21, 2023
Lucha of the Night Forest by Tehlor Kay Mejia is a YA fantasy novel following Lucha, a young girl who is desperate to protect the sister she loves and at the same time, fully embrace her magic powers and attain the freedom she’s always dreamt about—even if means playing with dark, dangerous forces. Mejia, who wrote the fantasy feminist duology We Set the Dark on Fire and We Unleash the Merciless Storm, once again writes a beautiful depiction of sisterhood, empowerment, adventure, coming-of-age, and queer romance, this is not a story to be missed.
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Last Sunrise in Eterna by Amparo Ortiz
Release Date: March 28, 2023
Fantasy lovers this one is for you! Last Sunrise in Eterna by Amparo Ortiz is the story of Sevim Burgos, a 17-year-old goth girl who sells elf corpses to a university professor for money to help support her family. During one of her hunts, she captures the elf prince, Aro, at a Burger King, and becomes a revenge target for the elves, quickly discovering that her mother is missing. When Aro escapes, he leaves behind a ring that he promises will save her mother’s life, forcing Sevim to follow, enter the magical elf island, and fulfill her destiny in an unexpected way.
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Saints of the Household by Ari Tison
Release Date: March 28, 2023
Saints of the Household is the debut YA novel of Indigenous Costa Rican-American writer Ari Tison told in multiple points of view through vignettes and poems. It follows Max and Jay, two Bribri American brothers forced to rely on each other for survival and protection from their physically abusive father. When they break up a fight in the woods, even beating up their high school’s most popular student and star soccer player in the process, their entire belief system, dreams for the future, brotherhood, and worlds are shattered. The only thing that will save him and help them move forward? Their Bribri roots.
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Into the Light by Mark Oshiro
Release Date: March 28, 2023
Into the Light by Mark Oshiro is the story of two young men, Manny―who’s been disowned by his family for over a year and living alone in the wild Southwest―and Eli―who tries to obey his family’s rules but can’t form memories of his own past. When a dead body is found in the Idyllwild hills with no identifiable features, everything that the boys have built, their certainty of the future, and their hopes of finding themselves are dashed. Featuring high stakes, high emotions, and a startling twist, this thriller is guaranteed to keep you reading until the very end.
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Ander & Santi Were Here by Jonny Garza Villa
Release Date: April 4, 2023
Ander and Santi Were Here is the queer romance we’ve been waiting for! It follows Ander Lopez, a nonbinary Mexican American teen who leaves their family’s taquería as they prepare to trade their home, family, and town for art school to become a muralist. To replace them, the family hires Santiago Garcia, a shy, hot new waiter, and immediately captures Ander’s attention and heart. But when ICE agents come after Santi, their relationship to each other, to home, and to the U.S. becomes that much more complicated, leaving them unsure of where to turn.
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Ana María and the Fox by Liana De la Rosa
Release Date: April 4, 2023
Ana María and the Fox by Liana de la Rosa is the perfect blend of historical fiction and romance. Ana María Luna Valdés is the beloved heiress of her powerful Mexican family, a high-achiever who only desires their approval. Gideon Fox is a man of the streets turned member of Parliament, who hopes to abolish the Atlantic slave trade, especially as the descendant of former slaves. When Ana María is sent to London to evade French occupation of her home country and meets Fox, their destinies intertwine in the most unexpected of ways, though it may come at the cost of their own lives.
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The Making of Yolanda La Bruja by Lorraine Avila
Release Date: April 11, 2023
The Making of Yolanda La Bruja by Lorraine Avila follows Yolanda Alvarez, a high school student in the Bronx whose life finally feels all figured out. With a loyal best friend, a crush on the rise, and her upcoming initiation into her family’s bruja tradition―the Brujas Diosas―she’s having the best year ever. When a new student comes to Julia De Burgos High, a white boy and the son of a politician, she can’t help but feel a sense of unease and fear, not when he’s causing her to see visions of violence and threats. But with no one around her who wants to listen or believe, she turns to her ancestors and guides for help and to ensure the survival of everyone she loves, no matter the cost.
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The Haunting of Alejandra by V. Castro
Release Date: April 18, 2023
The Haunting of Alejandra by V. Castro is an adult literary horror novel following Alejandra, a woman who is becoming consumed by her own darkness and visions of La Llorona, a crying woman in white, to the point that her identities as a mother and wife feel meaningless. When she starts attending therapy, she seeks to find the truth about her family’s background and generations of trauma and brutality, especially the pain that the women before her have faced. Until she does, she will continue being haunted by La Llorona, forever changing the course of her family’s legacy, name, and story.
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Wings in the Wild by Margarita Engle
Release Date: April 18, 2023
Wings in the World is the latest novel from famed Cuban American author Margarita Engle. Told in verse, the book follows Soleida, a girl living in Cuba with her parents to protest their government’s criminalization of art through sculpture. When the piece is discovered and deemed illegal, her parents are arrested and she seeks refuge in Costa Rica, where thousands are also seeking asylum. There, she also meets Dariel, a Cuban American boy who ignites Soleida’s passion to protect the environment and fight for the human rights of wrongfully imprisoned artists on her island. To do so, they will need each other, perhaps even more than they think.
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The Wind Knows My Name by Isabel Allende
Release Date: June 6, 2023
The Wind Knows My Name is the latest novel from Isabel Allende, the iconic Chilean writer known for her groundbreaking novel, The House of the Spirits. In this new book, Samuel Adler is a six-year-old boy in 1938 who escapes Nazi-occupied Austria to the United States alone and with nothing but clothes and a violin. In 2019 Arizona, Anita Diaz is a blind seven-year-old girl who, along with her mother, escapes El Salvador to seek refuge in the U.S., only to become separated at a camp in Nogales. Throughout the novel, we see these two lives come together in unexpected ways, exploring themes of war, immigration, time, dreams, and the resilience of the human spirit.
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Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Release Date: July 18, 2023
Silvia Moreno-Garcia, the author of beloved books The Daughter of Doctor Moreau and Mexican Gothic, returns with yet another thriller, Silver Nitrate. Taking place in the ’90s, the novel follows Montserrat, a sound editor employed by Mexico City’s film industry, who’s overlooked even by her best friend Tristán, a struggling soap opera star she’s been in love with for years. When he finds out film director Abel Urueta is his new neighbor, the pair are drawn into a mysterious world of ghosts, sorcerers, cult horror, Nazi occultism, and a cursed film that may just cost them more than they bargained for.
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The Sun and the Void by Gabriela Romero Lacruz
Release Date: July 2025, 2023
The Sun and the Void by Gabriela Romero Lacruz is an epic fantasy novel following Reina and Eva Kesare. Reina is the granddaughter of a dark sorceress who begins to rely on her grandmother’s magic for life and Eva is an illegitimate child of mixed heritage who tries to resist her calls to magic to protect her family’s image. As they both search for belonging, family, and love, the two young women will be drawn into a world they never imagined, one influenced by colonization, ancient magic, and real-life South American lore.
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Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo
Release Date: August 1, 2023
Family Lore is Elizabeth Acevedo‘s first adult fiction novel, known for her YA books including the novel-in-verse The Poet X and Clap When You Land. In this debut, we follow Flor Marte, the daughter of a Dominican American family who has the gift of predicting the day when someone will die. When she invites the family for a living wake to celebrate her life, no one, not even her sisters, knows what it means. Over the course of the three days before the wake, secrets are revealed, pasts remembered, and histories relived of all the lives of the Marte women spanning decades, generations, cities, and borders. This is a stunning, unforgettable portrait of a family across two countries.
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Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas
Release Date: August 29, 2023
If you liked Isabel Cañas’s The Hacienda, you’ll love her newest supernatural Western novel, Vampires of El Norte. The story follows Nena, a curandera and the daughter of a rancher in 1840s Mexico whose home becomes a battlefield between vampires and vaqueros. When the U.S. attacks Mexico, the manmade war abruptly brings together Nena and Néstor, her childhood sweetheart that thought died in a vampire attack nine years prior. But they will have to put aside the anger, confusion, and grief stewing between them if they hope to protect their country from two kinds of monsters.
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Where There Was Fire by John Manuel Arias
Release Date: September 19, 2023
Where There Was Fire is John Manuel Arias’s debut novel following a Costa Rican family who, in 1968, are forever changed when a fire destroys one of the American Fruit Company’s banana plantations and the evidence of a company cover-up. Almost three decades later, Teresa and her daughter Lyra are haunted by the events of the night and the family members that died or went missing, unable to forgive each other or understand where everything went wrong. Exploring the power of spirits, omens, ancestors, and nature, this is a moving family story that is not to be missed.
