Love Is in the Air: 13 Young Adult Romance Novels

Darcy loves rom coms, so when her bus breaks down on the way home from the Silverspun Music Festival (the “Coachella of Nevada”) and she meets a handsome stranger in the bus station, it seems like the meet-cute she’s always dreamed of. She and Russell wander the streets of Jesse, Nevada, in search of a phone charger, food, and something to keep them occupied. It couldn’t possibly be a more perfect first date.

But as Darcy discovers, life is not, in fact, a rom-com, and when the real world breaks into their perfect date, she’s humiliated and deeply disappointed. Of course, the story’s not over, but no spoilers from us.

But as Darcy discovers, life is not, in fact, a rom-com, and when the real world breaks into their perfect date, she’s humiliated and deeply disappointed. Of course, the story’s not over, but no spoilers from us.

Hat tip to Morgan Matson (whose books we’ve read a lot of over the years): we almost DNFed (“Did Not Finish”) this one because the beginning of the book was so clichéd. But Matson knew what she was doing, cleverly illustrating for us and for Darcy that life is not a rom-com, and from the moment Darcy’s bubble bursts, the book gets really good. We see what you did there, Ms. Matson!

Darcy and Russell are in that exceptionally free (but also somewhat unnerving) summer between senior year of high school and freshman year of college, and it turns out they have a lot to work through when it comes to accepting the families and the futures they’ve been dealt, but watching them get there is rewarding.

The novel does have profanity and some mature content that probably makes it more appropriate for high school students.

Thank you NetGalley and Simon and Schuster Children’s Publishing for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are our own.

Emma left her family and friends to attend a private arts-focused boarding school for her last two years of high school, and it’s been an adjustment. An adjustment during which she’s grown apart from her high school boyfriend, Hunter, an outcome she was desperate to avoid.

Emma breaks up with Hunter when she returns home for Winter Break, and when they both find themselves at a party that evening, Emma gets uncomfortable and, in a moment of panic, suggests everyone at the party go skinny dipping. In a freak accident, Hunter dives into the shallow end and winds up paralyzed. Emma knows it’s all her fault: she broke up with him that day, and he only dived into the pool at her suggestion.

From there, the novel goes in two directions: backward, to show us the unraveling of Emma and Hunter’s relationship and forward, to show us Emma’s struggle to deal with her guilt, which manifests in an obsession with painting Hunter’s legs and feet.

As time goes on, Emma begins to heal, reconciling her past and present in a way she hasn’t been able to since she left for school and embracing her new life, aided by the support of Kevin, whom she meets in her painting class.

We love romance novels that have some depth to them: sure, they tell a good love story, but there’s also more to it than love, and Woodburn’s novel delivers. It’s a novel about finding yourself, healing, letting go of the past, and embracing change, and we think it will appeal to many young romantics.

The novel does include profanity, teen drinking, and a brief but not particularly descriptive sex scene. We wouldn’t feel uncomfortable recommending it in the classroom, but we’d probably save it for juniors and seniors.

Thank you NetGalley and Owl Hollow Press for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are our own.

Fitz is an absolute delight. We loved spending the summer with her, and we think your students will, too.

Fitz and her girlfriend Dani are in New York for the summer: Fitz to attend an eight-week program with her role model at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) and Dani for an internship at the Public Theater. Fitz has risen to influencer status with her Instagram account If the Shoe Fitz, posting her upcycled and transformed thrift finds for her thousands of followers, and she’s eager to take her passion for fashion a step further. 

But the summer has barely begun when Dani breaks up with Fitz, accusing her of being too obsessed with her social media account, and the dream turns sour when a heartbroken Fitz has to figure out how to not only live with her ex (they’re summer roommates, after all) but also win her back.

She decides to go on hiatus from her Instagram account to prove to Dani that she cares about much more than social media, and after a chance encounter on the subway with her childhood best friend Levi, she suggests the pair engage in a fake dating scheme designed to win them back both their exes.

It’s no surprise that Fitz and Levi develop feelings for one another (and that miscommunication awaits), but the novel is about so much more. Fitz’s personal drama leads to a massive creative block, threatening to derail her fashion program, and as a perfectionist, this is not okay. Fitz has to learn how to do things for herself rather than always for other people (including her three older sisters who play a central role in Fitz’s story) and to accept that life is usually quite a bit messier than she’d prefer. As recovering perfectionists ourselves, we could relate!

There is some profanity in the novel and the age of the characters will probably appeal more to older students, but we’d feel comfortable recommending it in our high school classroom.

Thank you NetGalley and Simon and Schuster Children’s Publishing for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are our own.

We all know the horror of having our secret thoughts blasted out to the world, whether we suffered vicarious embarrassment when Lara Jean’s love letters reached her crushes or our own embarrassment when we’ve texted (or even sent screenshots to) the wrong person.

So we’re ready to cringe alongside Sadie when, somehow, all the angry email drafts she composes but doesn’t dare send not only get sent out to the people she wrote them to but to her entire school. This certainly doesn’t fit the perfect persona Sadie’s been crafting: top student, people pleaser, always kind and friendly.

While a few emails are crafted to a variety of classmates (like Rosie, who stole her science fair project) and teachers (like Ms. Johnson, who refused to round her 89.5% to an A), most of them are written to her bitterest rival, Julius Gong.

She and Julius have been in fierce competition to be the best at everything ever since he targeted her in a game of dodgeball the first day of school. For nine years, she’s been taking out her rage against him in a collection of unsent emails—how dare he take her gold sticker, was he named after a Roman dictator, sometimes she thinks about throttling him—and now he, and their classmates, have seen them all.

As Sadie deals with the aftermath of the chaos, however, she finds herself spending more and more time with Julius, and she starts to realize that, perhaps, there’s more to him than she realized and that, maybe, expressing your feelings instead of bottling them up inside isn’t an entirely bad thing.

Liang’s novel, like her fake dating rom-com, This Time It’s Real, is a frothy delight where both characters fall in love and discover a better version of themselves along the way.

There is a scene of teenage drinking, but otherwise, the novel is appropriate for a wide range of students.

Thank you NetGalley and Scholastic for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are our own.

Imogen and Natalie are the best of friends, even though Imogen’s on track for a life of Ivies and excellence and Natalie definitely isn’t. They spend two weeks every summer together at Estes Park, embracing their love of horror movies with visits to the Harlow Hotel, famous for its rumored ghosts and supernatural connections.

But one summer, Imogen just . . . dies, suffering from a sudden cardiac arrest in her sleep.

Natalie has to figure out how to move on without her best friend, and a year later, she believes she has. She’s even headed back to the Harlow Hotel for a ten day summer internship where she’ll complete her senior project: a videotaped audition for Ghost Hunters.

But Natalie’s in for a lot of surprises. Not only is the snarky new kid, Leander Hall, also completing his senior project at the Harlow Hotel, but she’s starting to question her long-held belief that ghosts aren’t real. After all, she keeps seeing glimpses of Imogen, and the hotel’s resident medium keeps saying things that she couldn’t have figured out on her own, could she?

Turk’s novel is a love story, a friendship story, a ghost story, and a mystery, all in one, and it portrays grief and the long process of healing from it in a way that will resonate with many readers.

There is some profanity and teen partying, so it’s probably most suited for high school students.

Thank you NetGalley and Little, Brown Books for Young Readers for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are our own.

Markum’s enemies-to-lovers romance is exactly what many of us are looking for in a romance novel: it’s funny, two people fall in love (with plenty of miscommunication along the way), and they both work through their insecurities as they grow into themselves. The setting also captures the first-year-of-college experience, with all its ups and downs, that isn’t too far away for most of our students.

Wyn (short for Eowyn, and yes, she is named after the character in Lord of the Rings) and Three (the “third” in a wealthy family) could not possibly hate each other more. They started out friendly, but as soon as a staff position opened up on the school paper where they both worked as grunts, they became bitter rivals, sabotaging one another’s every move in an effort to get the best stories and earn the staff position, both of which will help their application to the school of journalism.

When she’s not fighting with Three in the newsroom, however, Wyn is struggling to find her footing at college. She struggles with low self-esteem (in part because of her weight, which she’s both fine with and insecure about), and as a result, she has a hard time making friends and feels really lonely.

In a moment of intense loneliness, Wyn joins Buckonnect, an anonymous campus dating app, where she meets the mysterious Hayes who’s smart, funny, kind, and gets her in the way she’s always longed for. But she’s afraid to meet him in person, fearing that when he sees her, he’ll be disappointed.

All these threads in Wyn’s life build to a head as her freshman year goes on, and while you can probably guess where things wind up, it’s a fun read that we think many students will enjoy.

The novel does include profanity (and a few sexual references), underage drinking and drug use, and some steamy makeout sessions, so it’s probably most appropriate for high school students; however, it’s a good classroom recommendation for students who are fans of the much steamier adult romances that we wouldn’t feel comfortable recommending from the front of the classroom.

Thank you NetGalley, Simon and Schuster Children’s Publishing, and Margaret K. McElderry Books for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are our own.

Claire is a piano student at the Greenwood School for the Performing Arts, and she and her classmates start the school year fascinated by their new piano teacher, Dr. Li, a concert pianist herself. Dr. Li is different from the other teachers at the school: she refuses to attend the Annual Faculty-Student Assembly, she places extraordinarily high demands on her students, and her personal life is a complete mystery.

Claire is determined to impress Dr. Li, earn an invitation to the super-exclusive and mysterious Asian Student Society, and, perhaps, win the heart of her classmate Rocky Wong along the way. But it’s not long before Claire starts receiving mysterious notes, questioning whether Dr. Li truly has her best interests at heart and whether her allegiance to her teacher is truly worth it. Meanwhile, Rocky, one of the best pianists at the school, is crumbling under the pressure of Dr. Li’s demands, schoolwork, and his part-time job to help his struggling single mother.

This is a hard book to classify: yes, there’s a love story, but it’s also a story about the hard work of pursuing a career in the arts, a story about students’ fascination and relationship with their teachers (something the author discusses in her author’s note), and a story about mental health and community. The inside look into the world of elite arts education is probably the novel’s largest draw, whether it’s for students fascinated by a world they don’t know or students who can relate to the intense pressures to succeed.

The novel includes mild profanity, some teen drinking, and references to suicide.

Thank you NetGalley, Random House Children’s Books, and Crown Books for Young Readers for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are our own.

Samson Montaña is the star quarterback on Weslaco North High School’s football team, known for the long gorgeous hair he somehow manages to stuff inside his football helmet. Domingo Paloma plays French horn in the marching band at Weslaco South High. Between their school rivalry and wildly different passions, they make for an unlikely couple, something Domingo’s brother, who plays football for Weslaco South, never lets Domingo forget.

Samson and Domingo love each other, but as tensions between their schools heat up, we’re left wondering if their relationship can survive.

Samson and Domingo is a quick, light novel-in-verse that plays cleverly with both Romeo and Juliet and the biblical story of Samson and Delilah. It’s a sweet love story from a refreshingly different perspective that feels very true to high school (minus the magic hair).

Thank you NetGalley, Rosen Publishing Group, and West 44 Books for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are our own.

Micah’s whole life has changed: once a star football player for his elite private school, now he’s stuck in a wheelchair with a mysterious illness that his former teammates and dismissive doctor think is all in his head, perhaps a reaction to his dad’s recent death.

As Micah struggles to cope with this illness, his grief, the loss of his friends, and the loss of the ability to do what he loved most, he meets Evie, another student at his school in a wheelchair, who, along with a few other friends, helps him to see possibilities for his life beyond loss and disappointment.

The love story is cute but not particularly remarkable (though students will probably enjoy it more than we did as adult readers), but what makes the novel worth recommending to your students is the exploration of what it’s like to struggle with an invisible illness. Micah ends up being diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis, better known as chronic fatigue syndrome, and his experience with doctors who refuse to believe the condition is real is, unfortunately, not uncommon. Students with a similar experience have an opportunity to feel seen, one of our favorite reasons to recommend novels. There’s also an interesting exploration of CTE in high school athletes, a topic we should probably be talking more about.

The novel does include some profanity, teen partying, and sexual references (though they aren’t particularly descriptive).

Thank you NetGalley and Victory Editing NetGalley Co-op for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are our own.

We love a good literary adaptation, and She’s the Man is one of our favorite Shakespeare retellings, so we were thrilled to discover another retelling of his comedy Twelfth Night, full of mistaken identities and awkward love triangles.

Jack “Duke” Orsino is the son and younger brother of football legends, destined for an athletic scholarship to Illyria . . . until his knee is destroyed in a game, benching him for the rest of the season and throwing his entire future into uncertainty. Viola “Vi” Reyes is a gamer, and the misogynistic treatment she’s received within that world has shaped her into a tough, critical young woman who doesn’t suffer fools. Too bad she’s ASB vice-president to Jack’s president, a role that frequently tests her patience.

One of Jack’s friends recommends he try out the online role-playing game Twelfth Knight while he’s recovering from knee surgery, and Jack is immediately sucked in, the quests allowing him to enjoy the strategy and competition he misses from the football field. While playing, he meets and befriends Cesario, but he doesn’t know Cesario is the male avatar Vi uses when she plays the game to avoid dealing with misogynistic comments. Unwilling to reveal herself (even though she immediately recognizes Jack’s username), Vi tells Jack she is her twin brother Sebastian, and over the months to come, Jack and Vi fight constantly over ASB duties while Jack and Cesario become good friends.

Complicated enough for you? Well, hold on, because we’ve also got Jack’s girlfriend Olivia, who’s being super strange and requesting a break but refusing to give Jack a good reason for it. In desperation, he enlists Vi’s help figuring out what’s wrong with Olivia in exchange for taking the lead on planning their school’s homecoming dance.

There’s a lot going on, but if you’re familiar with Twelfth Night or the enemies-to-lovers romance trope, you know Jack and Vi are headed toward some disastrous miscommunications and, ultimately, love. But the road getting there is a lot of fun, there are plenty of allusions to the original play to look out for, and the “nerd culture” setting feels fresh (and recognizable to many students). There are also some more serious storylines as Vi and Jack figure out who they are, who they want to be, and how best to relate to the people in their lives.

Do be aware that the novel includes quite a bit of profanity when making your recommendations.

Thank you NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are our own.

Engle’s beautiful novel-in-verse tells the story of Leandro, Ana, and Cielo the singing dog. Leandro, now 17, came to America from Cuba on a raft when he was seven, and he has struggled with anxiety ever since, believing it is his fault that his family had to leave Cuba and that his father died, rescuing Leandro when he fell off the raft. Cielo is his constant companion, soothing the fears that plague him.

Ana and her mother are struggling to make ends meet: at the beginning of the story, they are unhoused, living in a car. Ana’s father abandoned them years ago and is now wanted by the FBI for his terrorist actions.

Leandro and Ana both love the beauty of northern California that surrounds them, and they become increasingly interested in rewilding efforts, especially when they become aware of a puma roaming far too close to their neighborhood. As they start a rewilding club at their school, they are drawn closer and closer to one another, falling in love as they research wildlife crossings to reconnect the pumas native to their area that have been separated by freeways.

Engle’s poetry is gorgeous, and her work is infused with her own life experiences as a Cuban-American (as was the case with her memoir-in-verse Enchanted Air). She was inspired by the Wallis Annenberg Crossing near Los Angeles, which broke ground on Earth Day 2022 and will be the world’s largest wildlife crossing. Her novel-in-verse depicts young love, the immigrant experience, the blessings and challenges of family, and a deep concern for the natural world we live in.

Thank you NetGalley, Simon and Schuster Children’s Publishing, and Atheneum Books for Young Readers for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are our own.

Charlotte Wu is nearing the end of her senior year of high school, determined to finish working her way through the bucket list she wrote for herself when she was 13. Her only problem? J.T. Renner.

Renner has been Charlotte’s nemesis ever since freshman year when he asked her to homecoming and then blew her off minutes before the dance. According to Charlotte’s friend Kassie, it was for another girl. Renner is also the reason there are two items on Charlotte’s bucket list she won’t be able to cross off, and she’s determined not to let him ruin the last item: magical senior prom.

As they’re decorating the gym one morning (for the terrible Under the Sea theme Renner picked), Charlotte falls off a ladder, landing right on top of Renner on the gym floor. When she wakes up, however, she’s no longer in the school gym but in a gorgeous grown-up home that she seems to share with . . . Renner?!?!? Somehow, she and Renner have woken up in their adult lives, where they’re both teaching at the same high school they attended, they’re (horror!) getting married in a week, and Charlotte’s no longer best friends with Kassie.

As they work to figure out how they got there and, more importantly, how to get back to the end of the senior year, they realize that maybe, just maybe, they don’t hate each other nearly as much as they thought they did.

We absolutely adored this 13 Going on 30-esque rom-com, and we’re confident students will, too. It feels fresh and modern, the writing is funny, and the romance is swoonworthy, albeit (adorably) predictable. It’s pretty much everything we’re looking for in a young adult romance novel, and it’s refreshingly teenage, at a time when many of our romance-lovers are reading Colleen Hoover, ACOTAR, and other steamy adult picks.

While refreshingly teenage, some mild profanity and sexual references do make the novel more appropriate for high school students.

It’s bad enough getting hit by a car and dying at age 16. But it’s much, much worse to discover that heaven looks like a run-down motel in New Jersey, complete with a broken-down mini-golf course and dead-insect-filled swimming pool.

Obviously, Tegan believes a mistake has been made: the angel who greets her, Zelda, tells her that heaven is carefully designed to recreate her happiest moment, and this is not Tegan’s happiest moment.

When she files a complaint, Zelda’s manager, Barb, agrees that something isn’t right but can’t decide if Zelda made the mistake or if Tegan was mistakenly fast-tracked to heaven when she should have gone to purgatory first. She decides to give Zelda one month to convince Tegan this is, in fact, her happiest moment; if Zelda isn’t successful, Tegan will spend a few thousand years in purgatory, having her soul cleaned up enough to appreciate the joy heaven has to offer, and Zelda will face consequences for her mistake.

As Zelda takes Tegan on excursions back to her old life, hoping to convince her that the time she spent in the Marybelle Motor Lodge truly was her happiest moment, Tegan must work through a lifetime of abandonments that have convinced her she’s never going to be enough for someone to love. Zelda is determined, however, to help Tegan see how wrong she is.

While technically a love story (though the “we’re-in-love” epiphanies come out of the blue), the novel’s strengths are its quirky premise (reminiscent of The Good Place), Tegan’s healing journey, and the novel’s exploration about what truly constitutes happiness.

Do be aware that there is quite a bit of profanity throughout the novel.

Thank you NetGalley, Holiday House, Peachtree, and Pixel+Ink for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are our own.