Most read YA books

Harry Potter, a scrawny boy with glasses and a lightning-bolt scar, has no idea he's a wizard — until a letter arrives. Dragged from his mundane life, he's whisked away to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where he discovers a world of magic, ancient secrets, and a mysterious stone that someone is trying to steal. Alongside his new friends Ron and Hermione, Harry must navigate the perils of the school and the mystery surrounding the Philosopher's Stone before it's too late.

• coming of age
• mentor figure
• quest

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

Harry Potter's third year at Hogwarts begins under a shadow. Sirius Black, convicted of betraying Harry's parents to Lord Voldemort and of killing thirteen people with a single curse, has escaped from Azkaban — the first person ever to do so. The Ministry of Magic believes Black is coming for Harry. The school is placed under the guard of the dementors, soul-draining prison wardens whose effect on Harry is more severe than on anyone else, plunging him into traumatic flashbacks every time they appear. Amid this, Harry finds an unexpected mentor in the new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor Lupin, whose calm competence and personal connection to Harry's past make him the most significant adult figure Harry has encountered since Hagrid. A stolen Marauder's Map, a time-turner, and a truth that contradicts everything Harry has been told about his parents' deaths combine to make this the most structurally inventive instalment in the series. Widely regarded as the moment the Harry Potter novels found their full emotional and thematic range, Prisoner of Azkaban marks the shift from middle-grade adventure to something darker, more morally complex, and more deeply concerned with justice, loyalty, and the way the past refuses to stay buried.

• time loop
• mentor figure

The fourth Harry Potter novel marks the series' decisive shift into darker, more complex territory. The Triwizard Tournament — a prestigious competition between three European wizarding schools, last held a century ago and abandoned due to its high casualty rate — has been unexpectedly revived. Hogwarts, Durmstrang, and Beauxbatons will each put forward a champion, selected by the impartial Goblet of Fire. Then a fourth name emerges from the Goblet: Harry Potter's, despite his being too young to enter and having submitted no application. Bound by magical obligation to compete, Harry faces three increasingly dangerous tasks while the real threat — Lord Voldemort's desperate attempt to restore himself to full power — assembles in the background. The tournament brings new students, new rivals, the Yule Ball, and the first glimpse of the wider Wizarding World beyond Britain. It also ends with a death that marks the point of no return for the series, transforming what began as a children's adventure story into something altogether more consequential. The first Harry Potter book published simultaneously in the UK and US, and at the time of publication the fastest-selling book in history, Goblet of Fire is also the longest and most structurally ambitious entry to that point — the book in which Rowling reveals the full scope of what she was building.

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

Aelin Galathynius — formerly known as Celaena Sardothien, the truth of her identity now acknowledged — travels to Wendlyn on a mission that is, on the surface, an assassination job. What the king doesn't know is that Wendlyn is also where Rowan Whitethorn lives, an ancient Fae warrior who serves the Fae queen Maeve, and who has been tasked with training Aelin in the raw, barely controlled magic she has spent years suppressing. Their training is brutal, their early relationship a sustained antagonism, but through it Aelin begins to claim the fire and power she was born with. Back in Adarlan, Chaol Westfall risks everything to support a rebel movement, and Dorian Havilliard struggles to hide his growing magic from his murderous father. Heir of Fire is the point at which the Throne of Glass series transforms from a court-centred story into an epic fantasy — expanding the cast, the geography, and the scale of the war to come.

• enemies to lovers

A brilliant young scientist obsessed with the secrets of life assembles a creature from scavenged body parts — an act that sets him on a path of escalating guilt. Abandoned by its creator, the sentient being he brings to life wanders into the world and confronts it with eloquence and fury, forcing Victor to confront the moral consequences of his ambition.

• epistolary
• revenge

Aelin Galathynius returns to Rifthold — the capital of the empire that enslaved her — with a list of scores to settle. Arobynn Ahamar, who sold her and Sam to their fates, is at the top of it. So is the Valg prince possessing the body of her former friend and ally. So is breaking Dorian Havilliard free from the demon that has taken him. Aelin moves through the city with Rowan at her side, building alliances, collecting debts, and playing multiple political angles simultaneously — her old court savvy now combined with the full force of her claimed power. Meanwhile, Manon Blackbeak's arc takes a decisive turn as the truth about the witches' history and the cost of their alliance with Adarlan comes into focus. Longer and more structurally complex than its predecessors, Queen of Shadows is the instalment where Aelin fully inhabits her role as a player rather than a pawn — and begins to build the coalition that will carry the war's final stage.

• revenge
• court intrigue

With the Valg threat mounting and her kingdom of Terrasen weakened by years of Adarlan's occupation, Aelin Galathynius moves across the continent gathering allies and securing the resources she needs for the war ahead. Her crew — Rowan, Aedion, Lysandra, Elide, and Lorcan — navigates treacherous coastlines, pirate politics, and a Fae queen whose agenda crosses Aelin's own. Meanwhile, Manon Blackbeak confronts the full horror of what the Ironteeth covens have been used to do, and begins to make choices that will pull her from the orbit of her obedience. Empire of Storms is the largest in scope of any Throne of Glass book prior to Kingdom of Ash, sprawling across geography and character arcs while steadily closing off the narrative space available before the war. Its ending is one of the series's most devastating sequences — a full-scale assault on characters the reader has spent five books learning to love, culminating in a sacrifice whose weight will carry through the final book.

• found family
• court intrigue
• quest

Charlie, a shy and introverted freshman, navigates the complexities of high school life, friendship, and first love. Through a series of letters, he shares his observations and experiences as he tries to find his place in the world, grappling with past traumas and the challenges of growing up. This story explores themes of mental health, identity, and the importance of connection.

• 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 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

In Civil War-era New England, the four March sisters — practical Meg, headstrong Jo, gentle Beth, and artistic Amy — grow up in genteel poverty while their father serves as a chaplain at the front and their mother, Marmee, holds the household together. Louisa May Alcott follows the sisters through a year of amateur theatricals, neighborly friendship with the wealthy boy next door, Laurie, small sacrifices, and larger heartbreaks, as each girl wrestles with her own besetting fault and finds her own way toward maturity. Rather than a single dramatic plot, the novel is built from the accumulated texture of domestic life: Meg's longing for a life she cannot quite afford, Jo's fierce ambition to write and her discomfort with the constraints placed on women, Beth's quiet retreat from a world that frightens her, and Amy's determination to rise in society through art and manners. Loosely based on Alcott's own family, the book treats its characters' flaws and growth with warmth rather than moralizing. Little Women became an immediate sensation on publication and has remained one of the most enduring American novels about sisterhood, ambition, and the passage from girlhood to womanhood.

• coming of age
• family saga

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

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.

• morally grey
• coming of age
• mentor figure
• rivals

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

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
• mystery box
• coming of age
• forbidden love

Lara Jean Song Covey writes a love letter to every boy she's ever loved — then hides it away, never to be sent. When all five letters are mailed without her knowledge, she strikes a fake-dating bargain with Peter Kavinsky to survive the fallout. Book one of Jenny Han's To All the Boys trilogy.

• fake dating
• coming of age

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

In the trilogy's conclusion, Tris and Four leave the ruined faction system behind and cross beyond the wall — only to discover a truth that overturns everything they believed about their world. Told in alternating voices, Allegiant drives Veronica Roth's bestselling dystopia to a bold, divisive ending about freedom and sacrifice.

• multiple povs
• sacrifice

Following clues in his late grandfather's stories, teenage Jacob finds a time-looped home on a Welsh island where children with strange gifts shelter from the monsters that hunt them. An atmospheric YA fantasy built around eerie vintage photographs; first in the series.

• found family
• time loop

This novel explores the lives of a group of teenagers navigating the challenges of adolescence, social divisions, and loyalty. It delves into themes of friendship, class conflict, and the search for identity in a turbulent world.

• coming of age
• found family

The third book in Jennifer Lynn Barnes's Inheritance Games trilogy brings Avery Grambs's high-stakes puzzle to its conclusion. Avery has almost made it: she is weeks away from officially inheriting Tobias Hawthorne's billions, if she can simply survive to the finish line. But holding a fortune this large paints a target on her back, and the closer she gets, the more dangerous the game becomes. Living in Hawthorne House with the four brothers who once treated her as a puzzle to be solved, Avery is now something else entirely — an ally, a friend, and, to one of them, far more. When a ruthless new player arrives making impossible demands, Avery and the Hawthornes must outthink an adversary who knows their weaknesses and is willing to threaten everything, and everyone, they love. Twisty and satisfying, The Final Gambit delivers the last clues, the biggest reveals, and the payoff to the trilogy's central mystery and romance.

• mystery box

Cinder and Thorne are on the run, but their fight against Queen Levana is far from over. They need the help of Cress, a brilliant hacker trapped on a satellite, who is tasked with their capture. When a rescue mission goes awry, the group is scattered, and Cress must navigate her newfound freedom and its consequences. With the Queen set on an arranged marriage, these rebels may be humanity's only hope.

• enemies to lovers
• quest
• found family
• forced proximity

Nick and Charlie have said "I love you" — but as Nick's final year at Truham draws to a close, university offers force them to face a future that could pull them apart. Charlie wants to be supportive, but he's terrified of losing the closeness they've built, and still working through recovery from an eating disorder, he wrestles with taking their relationship further. The fifth volume of Alice Oseman's bestselling LGBTQ+ graphic novel series follows Nick and Charlie — and their friends Tao, Elle, Tara, Darcy and Isaac — through distance, intimacy and growing up together.

• coming of age
• found family

Escaping the Maze was only the beginning. WICKED throws Thomas and the Gladers into the Scorch — a sun-scorched wasteland crawling with the infected — with the promise of a cure if they can cross it in time. Book two of the Maze Runner trilogy.

• survival

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. She must make an impossible choice that will change her life and her society forever.

• coming of age

Belly's summers have always been defined by the beach house and the two brothers who feel like family. But this year, everything changes. As Belly navigates first crushes and first heartbreaks, she realizes that growing up means facing new feelings and leaving some childhood comforts behind.

• love triangle
• second chance
• coming of age

Sadie Wen is the picture of a perfect senior: top of her class, endlessly helpful, universally liked. Her secret is a private outlet. She pours her real, unfiltered feelings into draft emails she never intends to send, venting about classmates, teachers, and above all her infuriating academic rival, Julius Gong. Then the drafts go out. Every one of them, to the entire school. Overnight Sadie's spotless reputation detonates, and the only person willing (or forced) to help her contain the fallout and track down whoever hit send is Julius himself, the boy she has spent years competing against. Ann Liang's young-adult rom-com is a sharp, funny enemies-to-lovers story about the masks high achievers wear, and what happens when the mask slips.

• enemies to lovers
• rivals
• slow burn
• coming of age

Autumn and Finny were born a week apart and grew up next door, inseparable — until one kiss at the end of eighth grade left them barely speaking. Four years of high school later, on a rainy night in August, Finny is in a car with his girlfriend and Autumn is not with him. Laura Nowlin's debut is the story of everything that kept them apart, told by the girl who should have been there.

• friends to lovers
• coming of age
• slow burn