YOUNG ADULT FICTION / Romance / Contemporary
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Lou with the Band
Price: $19.99
Pub Date: August 5, 2025
Format: Hardcover
From the acclaimed author of the delicious Idol Gossip comes a new music-themed novel with an irresistible backbeat and a thoughtful read on friendship and identity.
When Lou enlists her best friend, Molly, to shave her head, it’s partly so she doesn’t have to deal with washing her hair all the time while on tour—and partly because she’s ready to be a new person. No stranger to reinventing herself, restless Lou is a Cuban-American girl who’s never left Texas, let alone the country. But the “New Lou” has deferred her first semester at Texas State to work for a celebrity musician on tour. She’s bound for China, Japan, half of Europe, and everywhere in between, though it means getting intimately acquainted with the band’s dirty laundry. Even with her road crew uncle on alert, it will be the summer of a lifetime, full of underground parties, disco spas, and gelato. When Lou falls for a tattooed guitar prodigy who makes her feel achingly alive, it doesn’t cross her mind to doubt him or—as life on the road tightens its hold—her course. Will Molly know her when she returns, if she returns? Who is the “New Lou” really? Pulsing with energy and authentic detail, this story of self-discovery ushers readers backstage on a sensational world tour.
Everything I Thought I Knew
Price: $14.99
Pub Date: October 10, 2023
Format: Paperback
“A thoughtful balance of self-discovery, humor, and realistic relationships. . . . Readers looking for a good, cathartic cry will love Chloe’s journey.” —School Library Journal
Seventeen-year-old Chloe had a plan: work hard, get good grades, and attend a top-tier college. But after she collapses during cross-country practice and is told that she needs a new heart, all her careful preparations are laid to waste. Eight months after her transplant, everything is different. Stuck in summer school with the underachievers, all she wants to do now is grab her surfboard and hit the waves—which is strange, because she wasn’t interested in surfing before her transplant. (It doesn’t hurt that her instructor, Kai, is seriously good-looking.) There’s also the vivid recurring nightmare about crashing a motorcycle in a tunnel, and memories of people and places she doesn’t recognize. Is there now something wrong with her head, or is there another explanation? As Chloe searches for answers, and as her attraction to Kai intensifies, what she learns will lead her to question everything she thought she knew—about life, death, love, identity, and the true nature of reality.
Making Friends with Alice Dyson
Pub Date: September 15, 2020
Format: Hardcover
A sweet and soulful romantic debut about rumors, friendship, and discovering who you really are
Alice Dyson knows exactly how she’ll be spending her final year of high school—with her head down, quietly concentrating on her textbooks and homework. She is focused on the future, and nothing and no one is going to get in her way. That is, until a bizarre encounter with Teddy Taualai, the school’s most notorious troublemaker, goes viral, derailing her plans and pushing her into the spotlight. Suddenly Alice’s under-the-radar life is one enormous, messy complication. And the worst part? Teddy Taualai is everywhere she turns. In author Poppy Nwosu’s pitch-perfect debut novel, an unlikely pair of outsiders take the daunting, delicate first steps toward becoming friends and maybe, just maybe, something more. Briskly paced with a complex and appealing cast of characters, this contemporary romance explores the ever-tricky dance of staying true to yourself while opening your heart.
Hearts Unbroken
Price: $8.99
Pub Date: April 14, 2020
Format: Paperback
Winner of an American Indian Youth Literature Award
“Blending teen romance with complex questions of identity, equality, and censorship, this is an excellent choice for most collections.” — School Library Journal (starred review)
When Louise Wolfe’s first real boyfriend mocks and disrespects Native people in front of her, she breaks things off and dumps him over e-mail. It’s her senior year, anyway, and she’d rather spend her time with her family and friends and working on the school newspaper. The editors pair her up with Joey Kairouz, the ambitious new photojournalist, and in no time the paper’s staff find themselves with a major story to cover: the school musical director’s inclusive approach to casting The Wizard of Oz has been provoking backlash in their mostly white, middle-class Kansas town. From the newly formed Parents Against Revisionist Theater to anonymous threats, long-held prejudices are being laid bare and hostilities are spreading against teachers, parents, and students — especially the cast members at the center of the controversy, including Lou’s little brother. As tensions mount at school, so does a romance between Lou and Joey — but as she’s learned, “dating while Native” can be difficult. In trying to protect her own heart, will Lou break Joey’s?
Relative Strangers
Price: $17.99
Pub Date: April 10, 2018
Format: Hardcover
Why is there a gap in Jules’s baby album? A wry and poignant coming-of-age novel about finding the truth in lies, salvaging hope in heartbreak, and making peace with missing pieces.
Eighteen-year-old Jules has always wished for a close-knit family. She never knew her father, and her ex-addict mother has always seemed more interested in artistic endeavors than in bonding with her only daughter. Jules’s life and future look as flat and unchanging as her small Illinois town. Then a simple quest to find a baby picture for the senior yearbook leads to an earth-shattering discovery: for most of the first two years of her life, Jules lived in foster care. Reeling from feelings of betrayal and with only the flimsiest of clues, Jules sets out to learn the truth about her past. What she finds is a wonderful family who loved her as their own and hoped to adopt her — including a now-adult foster brother who is overjoyed to see his sister again. But as her feelings for him spiral into a devastating, catastrophic crush — and the divide between Jules and her mother widens — Jules finds herself on the brink of losing everything.
Of Jenny and the Aliens
Price: $17.99
Pub Date: August 1, 2017
Format: Hardcover
When boy meets girl meets alien, the angst of first love gets an extraterrestrial intervention in a tale both outrageously funny and full of heart.
Ten years after Earth sent messages out into deep space, there has been an answer. Music from a distant planet has reached our radios. Are aliens about to invade? No one knows, and almost-eighteen-year-old Derek doesn’t really care, because at a wild end-of-the-world party, Jennifer Novak invites him to play beer pong. And things . . . progress from there. Derek is in love. Deeply, hopelessly in love. He wants it all—marriage, kids, growing old on a beach in Costa Rica. Jenny is The One.
But Jenny has other plans, and they may or may not include Derek. He’ll try anything to win her—even soliciting advice from the alien who shows up in his hometown. This alien might just be the answer to Derek’s problem. But is Derek willing to risk starting an interstellar war just to get the girl? And just how far will he travel to discover the mysteries of the universe—and love?
Haunt Me
Price: $17.99
Pub Date: July 11, 2017
Format: Hardcover
Haunting and intensely romantic, Liz Kessler’s novel features a teen girl for whom falling in love could mean losing her heart — and maybe her life.
When her family moves after a rough year, Erin feels instantly at home in her new bedroom — even after she realizes that she’s not the only one occupying it. As Erin becomes accustomed to Joe, the spirit of the teenage boy who lived in the room before her, she starts to sense an inexplicable connection between them. Meanwhile, Joe’s brother, Olly, is trying to find a new normal since his brother passed away. Before Joe died, Olly was king of the school — and it’s not until Olly meets a new girl that he realizes just how many ways he’s changed . . . including the type of girl he could fall for. And when Erin finds herself caught between two brothers, and two choices, will her decision destroy her completely, or can she save herself before she’s lost forever? From Liz Kessler, the best-selling author of Read Me Like a Book, comes a young adult novel about how love can overcome the ultimate divide.
One or Two Things I Learned About Love
Price: $8.99
Pub Date: December 10, 2013
Format: E-Book
If this first love is true love, why can’t Hildy hang out with her friends without feeling guilty? Dyan Sheldon takes on the possessive side of summer romance with humor and insight.
Hildy has only had two-and-a-half dates in her whole life, and she isn’t counting the half. It’s starting to look as if she’s never going to have a third date, or be kissed, or know a boy who is more than just a friend. Then, on an ordinary day, she meets Connor of the melt-that-ice-cap smile — and a summer that was going to be ordinary as toast turns into Hildy’s summer of love. But love for Hildy is a little more complicated than the songs and movies have led her to believe. It’s not so much girl-meets-boy-and loses-her-heart as boy-meets-girl-and-loses-his-mind. Part cautionary tale and part romantic comedy, Dyan Sheldon’s wry, diary-style novel weighs in on all ends of the relationship scale in a story of first love.
Paradise
Price: $16.99
Pub Date: October 9, 2012
Format: Hardcover
A move to a small seaside town gives Billie a chance at a new life and new love — until the undertow the past pulls her toward a shocking secret.
When sixteen-year-old Billie Paradise unexpectedly inherits her grandmother’s house, it couldn’t come at a better time. With her stepdad abroad and her mom starting to lose it, moving from their cramped London apartment to an old house by the sea seems serendipitous. Maybe Billie, as she navigates the small-town social scene and falls for a certain intriguing older boy, can even find the father she never met. But her mom’s remote childhood home, which she left in haste before Billie was born, harbors hints of suspicious long-ago deaths and family secrets. As Billie’s story unfolds, flowing back and forth in time and through alternate points of view, it becomes clear that while people may die, the past lives forever.
Guyaholic
Price: $7.99
Pub Date: April 28, 2009
Format: Paperback
"Mackler’s unsentimental feel for how kids think and talk, and how they go about entering the grown-up world, makes V’s journey engrossing." — The New York Times Books Review
Ever since V’s mom dumped her with her grandparents, she’s bounced from guy to guy. That is, until a fateful hockey puck lands her in the lap of Sam Almond, who is different from the start. But V makes an irreversible mistake at her graduation party and risks losing Sam forever, spurring her on a crosscountry road trip to visit her mom in hopes of putting two thousand miles between herself, Sam, and the wreckage of that night. With humor and compassion, Carolyn Mackler takes readers on an unforgettable ride of missed exits, misadventures, and the kind of epiphanies that come only when you’re on a route you’ve never taken before.

Lou with the Band
Price: $19.99
Pub Date: August 5, 2025
Format: Hardcover
From the acclaimed author of the delicious Idol Gossip comes a new music-themed novel with an irresistible backbeat and a thoughtful read on friendship and identity.
When Lou enlists her best friend, Molly, to shave her head, it’s partly so she doesn’t have to deal with washing her hair all the time while on tour—and partly because she’s ready to be a new person. No stranger to reinventing herself, restless Lou is a Cuban-American girl who’s never left Texas, let alone the country. But the “New Lou” has deferred her first semester at Texas State to work for a celebrity musician on tour. She’s bound for China, Japan, half of Europe, and everywhere in between, though it means getting intimately acquainted with the band’s dirty laundry. Even with her road crew uncle on alert, it will be the summer of a lifetime, full of underground parties, disco spas, and gelato. When Lou falls for a tattooed guitar prodigy who makes her feel achingly alive, it doesn’t cross her mind to doubt him or—as life on the road tightens its hold—her course. Will Molly know her when she returns, if she returns? Who is the “New Lou” really? Pulsing with energy and authentic detail, this story of self-discovery ushers readers backstage on a sensational world tour.
Everything I Thought I Knew
Price: $14.99
Pub Date: October 10, 2023
Format: Paperback
“A thoughtful balance of self-discovery, humor, and realistic relationships. . . . Readers looking for a good, cathartic cry will love Chloe’s journey.” —School Library Journal
Seventeen-year-old Chloe had a plan: work hard, get good grades, and attend a top-tier college. But after she collapses during cross-country practice and is told that she needs a new heart, all her careful preparations are laid to waste. Eight months after her transplant, everything is different. Stuck in summer school with the underachievers, all she wants to do now is grab her surfboard and hit the waves—which is strange, because she wasn’t interested in surfing before her transplant. (It doesn’t hurt that her instructor, Kai, is seriously good-looking.) There’s also the vivid recurring nightmare about crashing a motorcycle in a tunnel, and memories of people and places she doesn’t recognize. Is there now something wrong with her head, or is there another explanation? As Chloe searches for answers, and as her attraction to Kai intensifies, what she learns will lead her to question everything she thought she knew—about life, death, love, identity, and the true nature of reality.
Making Friends with Alice Dyson
Pub Date: September 15, 2020
Format: Hardcover
A sweet and soulful romantic debut about rumors, friendship, and discovering who you really are
Alice Dyson knows exactly how she’ll be spending her final year of high school—with her head down, quietly concentrating on her textbooks and homework. She is focused on the future, and nothing and no one is going to get in her way. That is, until a bizarre encounter with Teddy Taualai, the school’s most notorious troublemaker, goes viral, derailing her plans and pushing her into the spotlight. Suddenly Alice’s under-the-radar life is one enormous, messy complication. And the worst part? Teddy Taualai is everywhere she turns. In author Poppy Nwosu’s pitch-perfect debut novel, an unlikely pair of outsiders take the daunting, delicate first steps toward becoming friends and maybe, just maybe, something more. Briskly paced with a complex and appealing cast of characters, this contemporary romance explores the ever-tricky dance of staying true to yourself while opening your heart.
Hearts Unbroken
Price: $8.99
Pub Date: April 14, 2020
Format: Paperback
Winner of an American Indian Youth Literature Award
“Blending teen romance with complex questions of identity, equality, and censorship, this is an excellent choice for most collections.” — School Library Journal (starred review)
When Louise Wolfe’s first real boyfriend mocks and disrespects Native people in front of her, she breaks things off and dumps him over e-mail. It’s her senior year, anyway, and she’d rather spend her time with her family and friends and working on the school newspaper. The editors pair her up with Joey Kairouz, the ambitious new photojournalist, and in no time the paper’s staff find themselves with a major story to cover: the school musical director’s inclusive approach to casting The Wizard of Oz has been provoking backlash in their mostly white, middle-class Kansas town. From the newly formed Parents Against Revisionist Theater to anonymous threats, long-held prejudices are being laid bare and hostilities are spreading against teachers, parents, and students — especially the cast members at the center of the controversy, including Lou’s little brother. As tensions mount at school, so does a romance between Lou and Joey — but as she’s learned, “dating while Native” can be difficult. In trying to protect her own heart, will Lou break Joey’s?
Relative Strangers
Price: $17.99
Pub Date: April 10, 2018
Format: Hardcover
Why is there a gap in Jules’s baby album? A wry and poignant coming-of-age novel about finding the truth in lies, salvaging hope in heartbreak, and making peace with missing pieces.
Eighteen-year-old Jules has always wished for a close-knit family. She never knew her father, and her ex-addict mother has always seemed more interested in artistic endeavors than in bonding with her only daughter. Jules’s life and future look as flat and unchanging as her small Illinois town. Then a simple quest to find a baby picture for the senior yearbook leads to an earth-shattering discovery: for most of the first two years of her life, Jules lived in foster care. Reeling from feelings of betrayal and with only the flimsiest of clues, Jules sets out to learn the truth about her past. What she finds is a wonderful family who loved her as their own and hoped to adopt her — including a now-adult foster brother who is overjoyed to see his sister again. But as her feelings for him spiral into a devastating, catastrophic crush — and the divide between Jules and her mother widens — Jules finds herself on the brink of losing everything.
Of Jenny and the Aliens
Price: $17.99
Pub Date: August 1, 2017
Format: Hardcover
When boy meets girl meets alien, the angst of first love gets an extraterrestrial intervention in a tale both outrageously funny and full of heart.
Ten years after Earth sent messages out into deep space, there has been an answer. Music from a distant planet has reached our radios. Are aliens about to invade? No one knows, and almost-eighteen-year-old Derek doesn’t really care, because at a wild end-of-the-world party, Jennifer Novak invites him to play beer pong. And things . . . progress from there. Derek is in love. Deeply, hopelessly in love. He wants it all—marriage, kids, growing old on a beach in Costa Rica. Jenny is The One.
But Jenny has other plans, and they may or may not include Derek. He’ll try anything to win her—even soliciting advice from the alien who shows up in his hometown. This alien might just be the answer to Derek’s problem. But is Derek willing to risk starting an interstellar war just to get the girl? And just how far will he travel to discover the mysteries of the universe—and love?
Haunt Me
Price: $17.99
Pub Date: July 11, 2017
Format: Hardcover
Haunting and intensely romantic, Liz Kessler’s novel features a teen girl for whom falling in love could mean losing her heart — and maybe her life.
When her family moves after a rough year, Erin feels instantly at home in her new bedroom — even after she realizes that she’s not the only one occupying it. As Erin becomes accustomed to Joe, the spirit of the teenage boy who lived in the room before her, she starts to sense an inexplicable connection between them. Meanwhile, Joe’s brother, Olly, is trying to find a new normal since his brother passed away. Before Joe died, Olly was king of the school — and it’s not until Olly meets a new girl that he realizes just how many ways he’s changed . . . including the type of girl he could fall for. And when Erin finds herself caught between two brothers, and two choices, will her decision destroy her completely, or can she save herself before she’s lost forever? From Liz Kessler, the best-selling author of Read Me Like a Book, comes a young adult novel about how love can overcome the ultimate divide.
One or Two Things I Learned About Love
Price: $8.99
Pub Date: December 10, 2013
Format: E-Book
If this first love is true love, why can’t Hildy hang out with her friends without feeling guilty? Dyan Sheldon takes on the possessive side of summer romance with humor and insight.
Hildy has only had two-and-a-half dates in her whole life, and she isn’t counting the half. It’s starting to look as if she’s never going to have a third date, or be kissed, or know a boy who is more than just a friend. Then, on an ordinary day, she meets Connor of the melt-that-ice-cap smile — and a summer that was going to be ordinary as toast turns into Hildy’s summer of love. But love for Hildy is a little more complicated than the songs and movies have led her to believe. It’s not so much girl-meets-boy-and loses-her-heart as boy-meets-girl-and-loses-his-mind. Part cautionary tale and part romantic comedy, Dyan Sheldon’s wry, diary-style novel weighs in on all ends of the relationship scale in a story of first love.
Paradise
Price: $16.99
Pub Date: October 9, 2012
Format: Hardcover
A move to a small seaside town gives Billie a chance at a new life and new love — until the undertow the past pulls her toward a shocking secret.
When sixteen-year-old Billie Paradise unexpectedly inherits her grandmother’s house, it couldn’t come at a better time. With her stepdad abroad and her mom starting to lose it, moving from their cramped London apartment to an old house by the sea seems serendipitous. Maybe Billie, as she navigates the small-town social scene and falls for a certain intriguing older boy, can even find the father she never met. But her mom’s remote childhood home, which she left in haste before Billie was born, harbors hints of suspicious long-ago deaths and family secrets. As Billie’s story unfolds, flowing back and forth in time and through alternate points of view, it becomes clear that while people may die, the past lives forever.
Guyaholic
Price: $7.99
Pub Date: April 28, 2009
Format: Paperback
"Mackler’s unsentimental feel for how kids think and talk, and how they go about entering the grown-up world, makes V’s journey engrossing." — The New York Times Books Review
Ever since V’s mom dumped her with her grandparents, she’s bounced from guy to guy. That is, until a fateful hockey puck lands her in the lap of Sam Almond, who is different from the start. But V makes an irreversible mistake at her graduation party and risks losing Sam forever, spurring her on a crosscountry road trip to visit her mom in hopes of putting two thousand miles between herself, Sam, and the wreckage of that night. With humor and compassion, Carolyn Mackler takes readers on an unforgettable ride of missed exits, misadventures, and the kind of epiphanies that come only when you’re on a route you’ve never taken before.