Young Adult Romances
Some blasts from the past, plus one recent
I haven’t been a young adult in a while, and wouldn’t have considered myself as a romance reader back in the day, but interestingly enough, two of my favorite books as a YA (the first two on this list) are YA romance! Hindsight is funny. Anyways, just in time for back to school season I wanted to rec three amazing romances to recommend to younger readers who want to explore the genre but aren’t ready for adult or open door steamy scenes quite yet.
Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins (2010). Anna is furious at her Nicholas-Sparks-stand-in father for ripping her from her hometown of Atlanta to attend her senior year of high school in Paris at a fancy boarding school for American children of other rich people. That is, until she meets the dreamy Étienne St. Clair, who’s got his own daddy issues to tackle. Along with their other friends, far away from home, they both grapple with their identities, their raging hormones, and their futures.
I recently reread this for the first time in probably a decade, and it largely holds up! However, there’s some 2010 aspects worth mentioning, like light fatphobia, calling AAVE “gangsta talk” with some clumsy white teenager jokes (brief and not mentioned after it’s first brought up), and some clumsy if well-meaning support for queer people.
Rating: 4.5/5
My Most Excellent Year by Steve Kluger (2008). Our first triple POV that doesn’t end in polyamory! Which makes sense because, you know, it’s YA. I loved this author so much as a teenager that I wrote about his books constantly on my blog, and at one point sent him fanmail which he responded to! Read that exchange here. I also used this book as a part of my critical essay for my college thesis. Even though I could recap this book from memory, I decided to reread this one too and was crying literally by the second paragraph. Something about Steve Kluger just makes me absolutely inconsolable and that hasn’t changed in 15+ years. I cried recently just THINKING about one of his other books and trying to explain the plot to my husband! Sorcery!
The premise of this PARTICULAR book in question, though, is this: three high school juniors (TC, Alé, and Augie) reflect in a class essay to their “most excellent year,” their freshman year, and are aided in this task by diaries they were assigned to keep at the time, as well as documents like school counselor transcripts, emails, IM transcripts, and more. All three of these students found themselves at a crossroads freshman year, and only by leaning on each other (and lying their way into the Tony Awards, adopting a deaf little brother, organizing a talent show, appreciating joy over sense, and much much more) do they find their ways through. This epistolary masterpiece truly has something for everyone.
Rating: 5/5
Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute by Talia Hibbert (2023). The most recent YA I read that inspired this whole roundup! It’s a Talia Hibbert, so of course it’s great, but it’s also her first YA adventure. And an adventure it is.
Bradley, a bi football star with OCD, seemingly has everything figured out except his ex best friend Celine, a conspiracy theorist TikToker. So when they find themselves thrust together first by an accidental broken arm and then a wilderness academic program to secure a scholarship to a university of their choice. As with YA, these two hormonal disasters are struggling to find their place as individuals in a world that still largely sees them as extensions of their families, but together they make it through if they can only stop long enough to actually listen to one another rather than rushing to conclusions.
Rating: 4.5/5
Next week, I’ll be recommending books with spies and spycraft at the center!
What should I be reading next? Let me know in the comments!
Someone else who loves My Most Excellent Year as much as I do! It's one of my favorite books, period.