Sarah Mlynowski (E Lockhart) Books in Order

The Sarah Mlynowski and E. Lockhart collaborations sit at the intersection of two different traditions in young adult fiction: fizzy, joke filled capers and psychologically aware coming of age stories. When Mlynowski's flair for comic timing meets Lockhart's interest in how girls experience power and pressure, you get books that are easy to read and hard to shake off.

Again, How to Be Bad is the clearest example. Co written with Lauren Myracle as well, it follows Jesse, Vicks, and Mel as they escape their Florida town in a beat up station wagon, aiming for Miami and some kind of emotional reset. Each author voices a different girl, so the story moves like a conversation, full of barbed jokes, midnight confessions, and impulsive detours.

Mlynowski's influence shows up in the book's relentless forward motion and its comfort with slapstick moments, like wrestling an alligator or getting lost at a tourist trap. Lockhart's fingerprints are visible any time the narrative slows down to question who has money, who gets forgiven, or what faith looks like when life is unfair. That balance keeps the book grounded even when the plot gets wild.

The collaboration proves that a story can be loud, funny, and full of hijinks while still taking teen girls' inner lives seriously.

Beyond that single novel, this page also points you toward other places where their careers brush up against each other, such as the Upside Down Magic series that Mlynowski and Lauren Myracle write with Emily Jenkins. Those middle grade fantasies about kids whose magic misbehaves share a core concern with misfit identities and found families that will feel familiar to fans of Lockhart's standalones.

If you like stories where big feelings ride alongside big jokes, and where best friends can fight hard and still end up on the same side, the Sarah Mlynowski and E. Lockhart collaborations are a natural next step. They are especially good choices between darker reads like We Were Liars, when you want something quicker and warmer without losing emotional depth.