10 YA Stories about Friendship for First Chapter Friday

“I was fifteen. I was bored. I was miserable.”

So goes our first introduction to Aristotle, whom we come to know as Ari, as he begins yet another summer in El Paso, Texas, in the 1980s. His brother is in prison, his father is a veteran with emotional scars that make it hard for Ari to connect with him, and Ari is uncomfortable in his own skin, uncomfortable with the boys around him who are nothing but jerks.

But then he meets Dante, who talks funny, cries when birds die, actually likes his parents, and insists on teaching Ari how to swim. The boys are inseparable until an accident leaves Ari feeling confused by their relationship, a confusion that creates distance between them when Dante moves to Chicago for the school year.

The novel is a slow and beautiful unfolding of the boys’ friendship, which persists despite the distance and ends up being life-changing for both of them. Beautifully written (and beautifully narrated by Lin-Manuel Miranda if you listen to the audiobook), the novel explores themes of identity, as the boys navigate not only the universal experience of growing into your own person but also additional challenges relating to race and sexuality. We loved seeing friendship portrayed as something beautiful but messy, something that requires hard work and pain but that can also make you the best version of yourself.

This is probably our favorite of Lord’s YA novels (we’ve shared reviews of Tweet Cute and You Have a Match on previous lists), and it’s largely because of the friend group the novel centers on.

Riley Larson’s graduation cap is covered in her ten rejection letters (turns out colleges aren’t super interested in you when you’ve got a suspension on your permanent record), but on the inside of the cap, she’s attached “the Getaway List,” a list of adventures she never got to go on with her best friend Tom when he moved to Manhattan the summer before high school started. 

She’s got no idea what she’s going to do with her life beyond work at her mom’s coffee shop over the summer. And really, she doesn’t even know who she is anymore: she used to be fun, mischievous, and brave, but when she got suspended, her mom enrolled her in so many extracurriculars and jobs to keep her out of trouble that now she barely has time to think.

When Tom texts Riley during her graduation ceremony, it gets her thinking about all she’s lost, and she decides to take the bus down to Manhattan to visit him. When she finds out that her mom has intentionally been keeping her and Tom apart, however, she decides she’s staying in Manhattan for the summer.

As Tom and Riley reconnect, they embark on a summer of adventures, trying to cross items off their Getaway List and building a group of friends—Luca, who, like Riley, longs to be a writer; Jed, Riley’s ex-boyfriend who moved to Manhattan with his band; and Mariella, Tom’s only friend in Manhattan.

The novel perfectly captures the sense of freedom following high school: you’re an adult, your entire future is ahead of you, and you’ve got a solid group of friends who are rooting you on. Add in some romance, some family conflict, and the universal experience of trying to figure out just who you are and who you want to be, and this is escapist fun with beautiful friendships at its heart.

Note: There is some profanity in the novel, making it more appropriate for high school audiences.

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are our own.

Fonda, Drew, and Ruthie are so excited for seventh grade. They have so much to look forward to, but best of all, these “nesties” (next door neighbors who are also best friends) are finally all attending the same school.

Fonda has spent her entire life as the baby to her older sisters, but this year? The Avas (the most popular girls at school) are finally going to notice her (especially since she’ll have her own friend group), she’s going to set the campus style trends with her perfectly mixed patterns, and she’s finally going to get her period.

But things don’t quite work out according to Fonda’s plans. For starters, Drew has her first crush, on a boy she met at family camp. He seemed so into her the day she finally worked up the courage to talk to him, but when she sees him on campus, he acts like he barely remembers her. And Ruthie is placed in the Talented and Gifted program, which means all her classes are in a different part of campus, she has a different lunch, and she has to attend weekend activities without her best friends.

Will the three nesties survive seventh grade?

We enjoyed this light read that captures the drama and awkwardness of seventh grade, when you feel you’re so much more grown up than you really are, and it’s perfect for middle school readers, a 21st century update of our beloved Baby-Sitters Club books.

VanSickle’s delightful novel in verse (and the gorgeous illustrations by Laura K. Watson) brought Steph right back to her Girl Scout camp days.

After suffering a broken heart, 17-year-old Nora Nichols cannot bring herself to stay at home for the summer, so she signs up to be a counselor at Camp Cradle Rock. Even though she’s new, the more experienced counselors welcome her, and as the girls prepare for a summer with campers, they form friendships that will grow over the weeks to come.

When the campers arrive, Nora faces the added challenge of trying to connect with the 13-year-old girls assigned to her cabin. With some, it’s easy, but with some, it’s much harder. As the summer progresses, however, Nora is surprised to find herself loved and supported, especially when she receives surprising news from home.

The novel perfectly captures the feeling of summer camp friends: whether or not the relationship lasts beyond the summer, the camp environment draws you together in unexpected ways, and these brief summer friendships have a unique closeness. Nora finds confidence and perspective during her time at camp, and her list of “what she’s gained” at the end of the summer feels well-earned.

The Lightning Circle is a beautiful story of young women supporting each other, and we think it will appeal to a wide range of readers (though do be aware of a couple mature references in the girls’ late-night conversations).

Thank you NetGalley, Penguin Random House Canada, and Tundra Books for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are our own.

Best friends since the age of seven, Jia Lee, Ariel Kim, and Everett Hoang are usually inseparable, but this summer, they’re all going in different directions.

Jia is staying home in Queens: she has to help her parents run the family’s Chinatown restaurant and care for her grandmother, who has Parkinson’s disease. She feels trapped in the destiny her parents have chosen for her—attending community college and then taking over the restaurant—and now her friends won’t be around. When she meets Everett’s handsome new neighbor Akil, things get even more complicated.

Ariel has been struggling ever since her sister Bea died: despite her best friends’ efforts to support her, she’s been keeping to herself, graduating from high school a year early and earning a scholarship to Briston College in California. She’s headed there early for an eight-week summer program. A spur-of-the-moment decision, however, forces a change of plans and long-avoided family conversations.

And Everett is headed to a prestigious musical theater institute in Ohio. She’s initially excited to audition for a role in Thoroughly Modern Millie, but when she’s cast in the role of a stereotypical Asian character and the director shows no interest in updating the role to be less offensive, she’s forced to spend the summer caught between participating in the musical theater experience she’s so looked forward to and speaking up about the casual racism she encounters.

Through it all, the girls have each other, exchanging emails and texts, and the summer turns out to be a growing experience for each of them as they learn more about themselves, who they want to be, and how to take the first brave steps, even when they’re not sure how others will react.

Rahim’s best friend Kasia is super smart: her parents are homeschooling her, and she’s constantly inventing things, like X-ray glasses or a customized cell phone, that she gifts to Rahim. But things don’t always go according to plan with Kasia’s inventions, and the cell phone is no exception. Kasia has connected the phone to government satellites, and when Rahim (whose biggest concerns are his future rap career and school bully Man Man) enters a location on his new phone, he’s instantly transported there.

When the phone transports Rahim back to 1997, he finds himself face-to-face with his dad, Omar—when Omar was about his age. Rahim’s desperate to get home, and while Kasia’s doing her best to dodge mysterious government agents and bring him back, he’s stuck hanging out with Omar and his parents (Rahim’s grandparents). Omar’s got bully problems of his own, and Rahim learns that his super-strict dad used to be a lot more fun (and shared his love of rap group Four the Hard Way).

But we all know the rules of time travel, and the more Rahim interacts with the past (despite Kasia’s warnings), the more it starts to impact the present, and Kasia and Rahim are running out of time before something really bad happens.

We enjoyed this time travel adventure, perfect for middle school students, and while Kasia and Rahim make for great friends, we especially enjoyed the connections they make with their own families (though we’d probably take a much less permissive approach to Kasia’s experiments than her parents do!).

Rhea and her two best friends—Zeke and Malachi—have grown up in South Central Los Angeles, but as gentrification takes over—replacing all the mom-and-pop shops with yoga studios, trendy restaurants, Whole Foods markets, and expensive apartments—the neighborhood looks nothing like it used to. Worse? Zeke’s landlord is selling his building, which means Zeke and his family are getting kicked out, and the high rents mean Zeke might have to move and the trio will be down to two.

Rhea comes up with a plan to save Zeke: they’ll create a fake gang, use social media (and some light tagging) to convince the white hipsters that it’s not a safe neighborhood, Zeke’s landlord will no longer be able to sell the building, and Zeke can stay. The plan goes well at first, but when Zeke’s landlord turns up dead and the fake gang gets blamed, things get complicated and dangerous . . . fast.

And amidst all of it, the friend group is threatened anyway. Malachi has new, not-quite-friendlike feelings for Rhea, and Zeke has fallen for a new boy named Lou, which means Lou and his twin sister Marley are around all the time. So despite Rhea’s best efforts to save Zeke’s building and avoid getting blamed for a murder, their group may fall apart anyway.

We loved how much these friends love each other and how real they felt: they talk like the teenagers who fill our classrooms. And they’re a little nerdier than all the “cool,” self-assured kids who often fill the pages of YA literature. As Southern California natives, we loved reading about areas we know (and gentrification that we’ve watched happen).

Do be aware, there is a lot of profanity, which definitely makes this novel more appropriate for older students (and means you’ll want to preview the first chapter before reading aloud).

Callie and Talia live in their North Carolina beach town year round, but summer means Cleo will be visiting her grandparents, making their trio complete. The girls have been best friends for years, and in addition to working at the local skating rink, they always tackle a summer project.

Things are a little different this year, however. Cleo brings a friend, Polly, with her, and Callie can’t quite figure the new girl out. And Cleo’s already got a project in mind: she’s been watching Internet videos of girls who have learned to make themselves invisible, and she’s determined that the four of them will master the skill.

The plan sounds ridiculous to Callie, and she’s convinced it won’t work but is willing to go along with it for her friends’ sakes: Cleo is really committed, and Polly and Talia have their own reasons to be intrigued. When it works, Callie is shocked, and the girls spend their summer turning themselves invisible, enjoying the freedom of not being held captive by their bodies, of being able to roam the world freely without the constant gaze of others (particularly men).

But the more the girls turn themselves invisible, the more consequences they start to experience, and the harder it is to stop. Will Callie be able to convince her friends to stop before it’s too late?

This book caught us by surprise: we couldn’t stop thinking about it, and it had a depth and seriousness we weren’t expecting.

The girls’ close friendship made us long for carefree beach summers with people you love, but the novel also tackled issues of abuse, body image, sexuality, and making the big choices that come with the transition to adulthood. We think many students will relate to these issues and feel drawn to the four girls, but do be aware of the profanity and mature content.

Thank you NetGalley, Random House Children’s, and Delacorte Press for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are our own.

Harris’s novel opens in the bowling alley parking lot: Naomi is sitting in the back of an ambulance, recovering from smoke inhalation, as she awaits word on her best friend Kylie and the others who were inside during the explosion. Within a few minutes, however, the police have taken Naomi in for questioning.

The story is told in chapters that alternate between Naomi’s present in the police station and the six weeks leading up to the explosion. Because Naomi’s mom worked for the wealthy Brooks family, Naomi grew up best friends with Kylie and crushing on Kylie’s twin brother, Connor. Kylie and Naomi are on the cheer team together, and Kylie has their future at NYU planned out . . . even though Naomi is starting to wonder if, perhaps, she’d rather go to a Historically Black College or University (HBCU).

When a video of Kylie calling the police on two young Black men in the Target parking lot goes viral, Naomi gets thrown into the aftermath that rocks their community. Kylie expects Naomi to jump to her defense (and even star in an apology video with her), but Naomi isn’t entirely comfortable with what Kylie did. The Black students at their high school see Naomi as a traitor for her long-time association with the Brooks family, but Naomi is reluctant to give up on people who have been a part of her life for years.

As we get closer and closer to the explosion at the bowling alley, Naomi’s relationship with the Brooks family grows increasingly complicated, and she begins making friends with other Black students at school as well as a group of activists at the nearby HBCU, Hampton University.

We loved the unfolding mystery, the shades of gray in the conflicts that envelop Naomi’s community, and the exploration of what happens when you start to grow into your own, which sometimes means outgrowing childhood friendships.

The novel felt relevant and modern, and while some profanity and mature content make the novel more appropriate for high school students, we think it’s one many students will find engaging and thought-provoking.

Berlin, Cameron, and Jessie work together at their small-town pizza restaurant, where they can escape from the messiness of their personal lives. Berlin, is a perfectionist grieving the sudden and explicable loss of her friendship with Quinta. Cameron dropped out of school to take care of his family, and he’s grieving the loss of his cousin Kiki (though his way of grieving is cracking jokes). Kiki disappeared a few months ago, a fate all too common for young indigenous women. Jessie is a childhood cancer survivor whose parents constantly see her as a disappointment and who do not approve of their daughter working at the local pizza spot.

Over the course of one weekend, the three, none of whom are particularly close, get drawn together into a chain of complicated events when Berlin thinks she sees the missing Kiki get into a car and they learn that the owner of the pizza restaurant is planning to sell (to Jessie’s wealthy developer father). As they try to see what they can learn about Kiki and save their beloved restaurant, they start to find support and solace in one another, which gives them the strength to keep working through their personal struggles.

Ferguson’s author note captures so much of what we love about the book: it tackles so many issues—treatment of Indigenous women, anti-Blackness in Indigenous communities, depression, abuse, poverty, family conflict, friendship breakups, community, underdog local businesses overrun by developers—that are significant in our world and our students’ lives, but all through the lens of these teens who are looking out for one another the best they can. This is definitely a book for older readers—profanity and mature content abound—but it tackles important issues that will resonate with so many of our students.