APA Citation Style has rules for formatting titles of sources when you refer to them in the body of your essay, and these rules differ from the formatting of titles in the References list citations.

APA 7 rules for formatting titles of sources in the body of your essay

• When mentioning titles of stand-alone sources (such as books, journals, videos, etc.) in the body of your essay, you should italicize, write in title case, and not use quotation marks:
• In the book The Handmaid's Tale, the main character...
• When mentioning titles of sources that are part of a greater whole (such as articles, chapters, encyclopedia entries, etc.) in the body of your essay, you should use quotation marks, write in title case, and not italicize:
• In the article "The Effects of Stress on New Mothers"...