Most Read YA Books

A dystopian survival story: Katniss Everdeen volunteers for a televised fight to the death to save her sister, then has to out-think both the arena and the Capitol's cameras to stay alive.

• survival
• reluctant hero
• love triangle
• sacrifice

When seventeen-year-old Isabella "Bella" Swan leaves sunny Phoenix to live with her father in the perpetually rain-soaked town of Forks, Washington, she expects little more than a dull, gray exile. Instead she becomes fascinated by Edward Cullen, a strikingly beautiful and aloof classmate who seems to alternate between saving her life and warning her away from him. As Bella pieces together the truth about Edward and his family, she realizes he is a vampire — one who has chosen to resist human blood, but whose very nature makes loving her dangerous. Their bond deepens into an intense, all-consuming romance, even as Bella learns that not every vampire shares the Cullens' restraint, and that being close to Edward may cost her everything. The first book in Stephenie Meyer's blockbuster Twilight Saga, this is a moody, atmospheric teen romance about desire, danger, and the pull between what we want and what is safe. Told in Bella's earnest first-person voice, it launched a global phenomenon and defined a generation of paranormal romance.

• forbidden love

Stephen Chbosky's 1999 debut has become a touchstone of young-adult literature, an epistolary coming-of-age novel narrated entirely through letters that a shy freshman named Charlie writes to an anonymous "friend." Each begins "Dear friend" and ends "Love always, Charlie," giving the book the intimacy of a diary kept by someone still learning how to be a person among others. Set in a Pittsburgh suburb in the early 1990s, the novel follows Charlie through his first year of high school as he is taken under the wing of two seniors, stepsiblings Sam and Patrick, who pull him into a world of friendship, first love, mixtapes, and midnight drives. Charlie is a watchful, tender narrator, but his letters slowly reveal the grief and trauma he carries — the recent suicide of a friend and buried memories that surface as the year goes on. Frank about depression, abuse, sexuality, and the strange exhilaration of belonging, The Perks of Being a Wallflower has been both widely beloved and frequently challenged. It remains a defining portrait of adolescence for readers who have ever felt like a wallflower watching life from the edge of the room.

• epistolary
• coming of age

Pip Fitz-Amobi swore she was done with detective work. The case that made her a local celebrity nearly cost her everything, and she has promised herself, her family, and Ravi Singh that she will not go looking for trouble again. But when Jamie Reynolds, the older brother of her friend Connor, disappears the night of the town's memorial for the Bell and Singh case, the police treat him as an adult who simply walked away, and no one else will look for him. So Pip does. This time she brings her audience with her, documenting the search in real time on her true-crime podcast as the episodes climb the charts. Following Jamie's last movements pulls her into a tangle of secret online relationships, a controversial figure from the town's past, and a stalker whose obsession may have turned deadly. The larger her platform grows, the more the investigation escapes her control, and the more she has to weigh how much of other people's pain she is willing to broadcast. The second book in Holly Jackson's bestselling trilogy deepens Pip's story with darker stakes and sharper questions about the ethics of true crime. It is a fast, twisting mystery that sets up the series' devastating finale while standing as a gripping disappearance case in its own right.

In a mid-1960s Oklahoma town, fourteen-year-old Ponyboy Curtis belongs to the greasers, the working-class kids from the wrong side of the tracks, locked in an ongoing feud with the wealthy Socs. Orphaned and raised by his two older brothers, Ponyboy loves books and sunsets more than fighting, but loyalty to his friends keeps pulling him back into a conflict that is about to turn deadly. When a late-night confrontation ends with his friend Johnny killing a Soc named Bob, the two boys run and hide out in an abandoned church. The choices that follow test everything Ponyboy believes about class, courage, and who gets to be considered tough or good. Narrated in his own voice, the story moves from gang rivalry to genuine tragedy and hard-won understanding. Written by S. E. Hinton while she was still in high school and published in 1967, The Outsiders became a landmark of young adult fiction — an enduring, deeply felt story about belonging, loss, and the bonds that hold a chosen family together.

• coming of age
• found family

In a faction-divided future Chicago, sixteen-year-old Tris Prior learns she is Divergent — a dangerous anomaly in a society that demands you belong to one virtue alone. Joining the fearless Dauntless, she endures a brutal initiation, falls for a guarded instructor called Four, and uncovers a conspiracy that threatens everyone. Veronica Roth's blockbuster YA dystopia.

• chosen one
• coming of age

Bella Swan is left devastated when the Cullens leave Forks, and slowly finds comfort in a deepening friendship with Jacob Black — who carries supernatural secrets of his own. As she's drawn back into a dangerous hidden world, Bella faces an ancient vampire authority. The second book in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga.

• love triangle
• forbidden love

The Sinclairs are a beautiful, privileged New England family who summer on their own private island off Cape Cod. Every year the extended clan gathers on Beechwood, presided over by a wealthy, image-obsessed patriarch, and every year Cadence Sinclair Eastman falls back in with the Liars, the tight group made up of her cousins Johnny and Mirren and their friend Gat, the boy she loves. Their summers are golden, until they aren't. During the summer she is fifteen, something happens to Cadence, an accident she cannot remember, leaving her with debilitating migraines and gaping holes in her memory. Two years later she returns to the island determined to piece together what really occurred, even as her family closes ranks around a truth no one will name. As she reconstructs that lost summer, the polished surface of Sinclair perfection begins to crack. E. Lockhart's We Were Liars is a spare, lyrical young-adult suspense novel about wealth, privilege, first love, and the stories families tell to protect themselves. Built on an unreliable narrator and a closely guarded secret, it became a word-of-mouth phenomenon known for an ending readers rarely see coming.

• unreliable narrator

Humanity has conquered death, and the world is governed by a benevolent AI called the Thunderhead. The only deaths that remain are carried out by scythes, who keep the population in balance through an act called gleaning. When teenagers Citra and Rowan are chosen to apprentice under the principled Scythe Faraday, they must learn the art of taking a life—knowing only one of them will earn the ring. As a rift opens within the scythedom between solemn duty and outright bloodlust, both are forced to confront what it means to kill with conscience. The opening novel of the Arc of a Scythe trilogy.

• coming of age
• mentor figure
• morally grey
• forbidden love

Lara Jean Song Covey keeps her most intense feelings locked away — literally. Whenever a crush becomes too much to bear, she writes the boy a letter pouring out everything she feels, seals it, addresses it, and hides it in a hatbox she inherited from her late mother. The letters are never meant to be sent; writing them is how she lets a crush go. Then, without warning, all five letters are mailed. Suddenly the boys Lara Jean has loved — including her older sister's ex-boyfriend and the impossibly popular Peter Kavinsky — know exactly how she once felt. To dodge the fallout with the boy next door, Lara Jean strikes a bargain with Peter to fake a relationship, each of them using the other for their own reasons. But pretending starts to feel a lot like the real thing. The first book in Jenny Han's beloved trilogy is a warm, funny coming-of-age romance about family, first love, and the terror and thrill of being truly seen.

• fake dating
• coming of age

Clay Jensen receives a box of cassette tapes recorded by Hannah Baker, a classmate who recently died by suicide. On them, Hannah names thirteen people and reasons behind her despair — and Clay is one of them. Jay Asher's landmark YA novel about bullying, isolation, and the consequences of how we treat each other.

• dual timeline

Christopher Boone is fifteen and sees the world differently from most people. He knows every prime number up to 7,057, cannot bear to be touched, and reads faces and social situations only with great effort. When he discovers his neighbour's dog, Wellington, killed with a garden fork, he decides to investigate the crime and to write a murder-mystery novel about it — modelled on the Sherlock Holmes stories he loves. Christopher's methodical inquiry, though, keeps leading him past the dog and into the far more bewildering territory of his own family. As he uncovers things his father would rather he never knew, his careful, ordered world is upended, and he is forced onto a terrifying journey that takes far more courage than any maths problem. Narrated entirely in Christopher's precise, literal, and often very funny voice, Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a crossover phenomenon and a modern classic. It is a mystery, a coming-of-age story, and a compassionate portrait of a mind that works by its own uncompromising logic.

• coming of age

Bayview High thought the worst was behind it. Then an anonymous number starts texting students a new challenge: Truth or Dare, always take the dare. At first it feels like a prank. But as the dares grow more invasive and the truths more damaging, it becomes clear someone is using the game to settle old scores. Told through the eyes of three new narrators — Maeve Rojas, still shadowed by her own history with the school; Knox Myers, the overlooked youngest in his family; and Phoebe Lawton, unapologetically herself and newly caught in the game's crosshairs — the novel widens the world introduced in One of Us Is Lying while building its own mystery about who is really behind the messages, and why. A fast-moving YA thriller about the long half-life of a small town's secrets, and how easily a game can turn into something much more dangerous.

• multiple povs

Oraya is the only human in a world ruled by vampires — and she has survived this long only because the fearsome vampire king Vincent adopted her as his daughter and taught her to fight. But being the king's ward makes her a target as much as it protects her, and Oraya is tired of being prey. When the goddess of death announces the Kejari, a legendary and lethal tournament held once a century, Oraya sees her chance: win, and she can beg a single wish from a god. To have any hope of surviving a contest designed to kill, Oraya reluctantly allies with Raihn, a rival competitor whose easy charm hides his own dangerous agenda. As the trials grow bloodier and the politics between the vampire houses turn to open treachery, the line between ally and enemy blurs — and so does the one between hatred and desire. The first book in Carissa Broadbent's Crowns of Nyaxia series and its opening Nightborn Duet, The Serpent and the Wings of Night is a dark, romantic fantasy of gods, monsters, and forbidden attraction. Blending a deadly competition, court intrigue, and a slow-burning enemies-to-lovers romance, it's blood-soaked romantasy for readers who like their fairy tales fanged.

• enemies to lovers
• slow burn
• forced proximity
• morally grey

Lara Jean and Peter's fake relationship is real now — and far more complicated. A leaked video, Peter's ex, and the return of an old crush, John Ambrose McClaren, leave Lara Jean torn between two loves. The tender, bittersweet second book in the To All the Boys trilogy.

• love triangle

Rose Hathaway is a Dhampir, a half-human tasked with protecting Moroi vampires. Her best friend Lissa is a princess, and they've been hiding from dangerous vampires. Now, they're forced back to St. Vladimir's Academy, a place of magic and training, but also where their greatest threats lurk. Between forbidden romance and deadly rituals, Rose must keep Lissa safe from those who would turn her into an immortal monster.

• forbidden love
• academy
• mentor figure
• coming of age

Avery Grambs is weeks from officially inheriting Tobias Hawthorne's fortune — if she can survive that long. As a ruthless new player arrives with impossible demands, Avery and the four Hawthorne brothers must outwit an adversary who knows all their weaknesses. The twisty, satisfying conclusion to Jennifer Lynn Barnes's Inheritance Games trilogy, delivering the last clues, the biggest reveals, and the payoff to its central romance.

• mystery box

On the day her family is to be deported, science-minded Natasha meets Daniel, a hopeful poet who's convinced he can make her fall in love before the clock runs out. Over one extraordinary day in New York City, the two strangers test whether love is fate or chance. A warm, bittersweet YA romance about destiny, borders, and belonging.

• multiple povs

In a future where sixteen is the age everyone dreams of, Tally is eager for the operation that will make her beautiful and part of a perfect world. But when her best friend chooses a different path, Tally is forced to confront the dark reality behind the dazzling facade.

• coming of age

The world has been devastated by four waves of alien attacks, leaving only darkness and the rule of 'trust no one.' Now, Cassie Sullivan is on the run, trying to survive the fifth wave and find her younger brother. She encounters a mysterious young man named Evan Walker who might be her only hope, but can she trust him when everyone else is an enemy?

• survival
• found family
• morally grey

Ed Kennedy is a nineteen-year-old cab driver going nowhere — until he accidentally stops a bank robbery and a playing card arrives in the mail, scrawled with three addresses. Chosen as a messenger, Ed must deliver help, protection, or a reckoning to strangers, and become far more than he ever thought he could be. A warm, funny, quietly profound novel from the author of The Book Thief.

• coming of age
• reluctant hero