YA contemporary. Hani and Ishu are Bengali-Irish teens living in Dublin. They are among the only desi girls in their school, are very different people, and are not friends. But when Hani is trying to figure out how to stop her white Irish friends from their quite aggressive refusal to accept her identification as bi, …
YA contemporary. A young woman at the end of high school has spent every spare moment over the last few years making a podcast called *Artists in Love* with her boyfriend, with whom she is in one of those ‘perfect couple’ high school relationships. Except he breaks up with her and announces he’s leaving town …
YA contemporary. Traces the experiences of two young women (and their respective best friends) at a massive music festival, and their trajectory from strangers to much more. Sweet and funny, and it certainly provides the kind of emotional journey that one reads this sort of book to have, so I’m sure it will have many …
YA contemporary. Canadian. Two teen cousins who live on opposite coasts are brought together in Ontario by the death of their grandfather. After the funeral, they find themselves together at the family cottage that neither has been to since they were kids. Both are queer and Toronto Pride weekend is fast approaching, and they (plus …
YA contemporary with a sprinkling of the fantastical. Follows a teenage girl – Mexican-American, queer, a high school student, works in her family’s pastry shop and has a knack for knowing the perfect baked good to meet the needs or fulfill the desires of anyone who comes in. At a party at the home of …
YA contemporary. Queer Black girl in a mostly white, mostly well-off town in the midwestern US doesn’t get the big scholarship she’ll need to attend the university program of her dreams, so she decides to go after an alternative source of scholarship dollars by entering the superintense prom king/queen competition for which her school is …
YA contemporary. The book’s protagonist – who is Black, queer, and trans – is navigating all the stress and drama of adolescence at an arts-focused high school in Manhattan that his dad can hardly afford when an anonymous someone plasters pre-transition images hacked from his phone (accompanied by his deadname) all over the foyer of …
YA contemporary at heart, though it dabbles a bit in fantasy, mystery, and fairy tale. A tiny island off the east coast of a continent that is implied but not stated to be North America, an island known only for a rare bird that nests there in the summer and that draws a small but …
YA contemporary. Co-written by two fairly well known authors in the genre. A white Jewish boy and South Asian Muslim girl, both US American and both seventeen, fall for each other while volunteering on the campaign of a progressive candidate for state senate in a special election (which is what they call by-elections down there, …
Young adult contemporary. Read it because I read a middle-grade book by the same author earlier in the year and really liked it. Focused on a teen girl and her relationship with her traumatized, addicted, and likely mentally ill mother. It captures something real and overwhelming and painful about that experience, and captures it well. …