Songlight wins the YA Book Prize 2025

Songlight by Moira Buffini has won the YA Book Prize 2025. Set in a post-apocalyptic future where an advanced form of telepathy known as songlight has emerged, the story follows two young women, Lark and Nightingale, who must hide their power of songlight from their oppressive society. 

Read the first chapter of Songlight

The YA Book Prize launched in 2014 by The Bookseller magazine, to celebrate fiction for teenagers and young adults and aims to get more young people reading and buying books. The award is run in partnership with Edinburgh International Book Festival. 

The shortlist is chosen by The Bookseller and the winner is selected by a panel of expert and teenage judges, who are asked to pick the book they believe is the best written and that they would be most likely to share with young adults.

Judges' comments:  Author David Almond said Songlight is "a wonderful book by a wonderful writer. It's gripping, emotionally moving, philosophical, political, strange, action-packed. Set in the distant future, it has deep connections to the world as it is today." Rachel Fox, children and schools programme director at Edinburgh International Book Festival, added, "Packed with mystery, intricate politics, heartbreak, and betrayal, Songlight is an unforgettable journey that will keep you hooked until the very last word!"

The YA Book Prize 2025 Shortlist in full

Glasgow Boys by Margaret McDonald (Faber Books)

Songlight by Moira Buffini (Faber Books)

Apocalypse Cow by OR Sorrel (Guppy Books)

Lover Birds by Leon Egan (HarperFire)

Where the Heart Should Be by Sarah Crossan (Bloomsbury YA)

Four Eids and a Funeral by Adiba Jaigirdar (Usborne)

If My Words Had Wings by Danielle Jawando (Simon & Schuster)

The Dagger and the Flame by Catherine Doyle (Simon & Schuster)

The End Crowns All by Bea Fitzgerald

The Reappearance of Rachel Price by Holly Jackson