The Bookish Mindset

If you’ve been around for a while, you’ll know that romance is my genre. I’m a hopeless romantic and love a happy ending (behave – it’s YA here so let’s keep it clean). It’s my comfort genre, it’s a genre I’ll always come back and I just love it. Just as perfect as it’s adult counterparts, young adult romance is absolutely beautiful.

It’s not a genre I’ve always loved growing up as fantasy was more my bag, but since my late teen years it’s been a genre I haven’t left alone. Reading YA romances now feels like a lovely way of connecting with my younger self that probably did love romance as a genre but was so stubborn being a tomboy.. more on that another time!

So let me introduce to you a list of YA romances that I’m sure you’ll love too. In no particular order:

The Black Flamingo – Dean Atta. LGBTQIA+ rep. Novel in prose about finding out who you are. Truly beautiful, just read it.

Four Weddings and an Eid – Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé & Adiba Jaigirdar. Can best friends turned sworn enemies come together to co-parent a cat and save their local Islamic centre?

Afterlove – Tanya Bryne. LGBTQIA+ rep. Perfect for spooky season, this novel centres the afterlife and how souls move to the afterlife.

Felix Ever After – Kacen Callender. LGBTQIA+ rep. Another one where our MC is struggling to understand themselves and centres identity.

Brielle and Bear – Salomey Doku. Graphic Novel. First in the series and just adorable, I can’t wait to keep reading more.

Cheer Up! Love and Pompoms – Crystal Fraiser. Graphic Novel. LGBTQIA+ rep. Not your average American teen book/show about cheerleaders, this one is much cooler.

Excuse Me While I Ugly Cry – Joya Goffney. It does what it says on the tin, I need to read more of her work!

The Henna Wars – Adiba Jaigirdar. LGBTQIA+ rep. Rival business teams in a school contest and talk of appropriation? We love to see it.

Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute – Talia Hibbert. Our queen of romance takes on YA and it’s a big win for me. OCD rep too!

A Pho Love Story – Loan Le. This is for the food lovers – rival restaurants owners kids – a classic!

A Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School – Sonora Reyes. LGBTQIA+ rep. A brilliant coming out story, a must read!

An Echo in The City – K. X. Song. A romance set at the time of the riots in Hong Kong. Incredibly moving.

Chaos Theory – Nic Stone. So much great mental health rep in this one, it blew me away earlier in the year.

Pride – Ibi Zoboi. A brilliant retelling of the classic Pride and Prejudice, set in Brooklyn and has great themes of gentrification too.

Let me know if you’ve read and loved any, or if there’s some I need to add to this list!

You can find all these recs and more great romance reads in my Bookshop.org store here.

If you like what you’ve read and would like to access more content, I’d love if you could take a look at my patreon and consider supporting my content on there too.

Last updated 18/10/2024