Romance: Teen Core Collection

As The Beatles once sang: "All you need is love." From the simmering rivalry of enemies to lovers to the culmination of fake dating, this romance collection has a bit of everything. Handpicked by DPL staff (and avid romance readers) this list captures an array of loving experiences for any mood. Go ahead and take a browse, just promise you won’t fall in love.

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Adler, Dahlia

Told in alternating timelines, Jewish seventeen-year-old Natalya spends one summer in New York with her dad, trying to muster the courage to talk to her girl crush, and the other in Los Angeles with her estranged mom, going for a guy she never saw coming.

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Albertalli, Becky

Sixteen-year-old, not-so-openly-gay Simon Spier is blackmailed into playing wingman for his classmate or else his sexual identity--and that of his pen pal--will be revealed.

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Bryant, Elise

Sixteen-year-old Tessa Johnson has never felt like the protagonist in her own life. She's rarely seen herself reflected in the pages of the romance novels she loves. The only place she's a true leading lady is in her own writing--in the swoony love stories she shares only with Caroline, her best friend and #1 devoted reader. When Tessa is accepted into the creative writing program of a prestigious art school, she's excited to finally let her stories shine. 

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Callender, Kacen

Felix Love, a transgender seventeen-year-old, attempts to get revenge by catfishing his anonymous bully, but lands in a quasi-love triangle with his former enemy and his best friend.

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Clayton, Dhonielle, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Angie Thomas, Ashley Woodfolk, and Nicola Yoon

Six critically acclaimed, bestselling, and award-winning authors bring the glowing warmth and electricity of Black teen love to this interlinked novel of charming, hilarious, and heartwarming stories that shine a bright light through the dark.

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Deaver, Mason

After coming out as nonbinary, Ben must leave home and goes to live with a sister and her husband to finish the last year of high school.

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Giles, Lamar

High school junior Del Rainey unwittingly joins a Purity Pledge class at church, hoping to get closer to his long-term crush, Kiera.

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Goffney, Joya

Quinn keeps lists of everything--from the days she's ugly cried, to 'Things That I Would Never Admit Out Loud' and all the boys she'd like to kiss. Her lists keep her sane. By writing her fears on paper, she never has to face them in real life. That is, until her journal goes missing . . . Then an anonymous account posts one of her lists on Instagram for the whole school to see and blackmails her into facing seven of her greatest fears, or else her entire journal will go public. Quinn doesn't know who to trust. Desperate, she teams up with Carter Bennett--the last known person to have her journal--in a race against time to track down the blackmailer. Together, they journey through everything Quinn's been too afraid to face, and along the way, Quinn finds the courage to be honest, to live in the moment, and to fall in love.

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Gonzales, Sophie

Will Tavares is the dream summer fling, and Ollie thinks he's found his happily ever after. Then Will stops texting him back, and a family emergency has Ollie uprooted and enrolled at a new school in North Carolina. Turns out Collinswood High is where Will goes to school-- but here he is a class clown, closeted-- and a bit of a jerk. When Will starts popping up in every area of his life, Ollie would be an idiot to trust him again. Right?

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Green, John

Sixteen-year-old Hazel, a stage IV thyroid cancer patient, has accepted her terminal diagnosis until a chance meeting with a boy at cancer support group forces her to reexamine her perspective on love, loss, and life.

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Han, Jenny

Lara Jean writes love letters to all the boys she has loved and then hides them in a hatbox until one day those letters are accidentally sent.

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Ireland, Meredith

When Korean American Jasmine Yap's long-time boyfriend, Paul, is caught cheating on her, her giant, overprotective family secretly arranges to use her graduation party to introduce her to Orlando's most eligible men.

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Johnson, Leah

Liz Lighty has always done her best to avoid the spotlight in her small, wealthy, and prom-obsessed midwestern high school, after all, her family is black and rather poor, especially since her mother died; instead she has concentrated on her grades and her musical ability in the hopes that it will win her a scholarship to elite Pennington College and their famous orchestra where she plans to study medicine--but when that scholarship falls through she is forced to turn to her school's scholarship for prom king and queen, which plunges her into the gauntlet of social media which she hates and leads her to discoveries about her own identity and the value of true friendships.

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Lee, Mackenzi

Henry "Monty" Montague was bred to be a gentleman. His passions for gambling halls, late nights spent with a bottle of spirits, or waking up in the arms of women or men, have earned the disapproval of his father. His quest for pleasures and vices have led to one last hedonistic hurrah as Monty, his best friend and crush Percy, and Monty's sister Felicity begin a Grand Tour of Europe. When a reckless decision turns their trip abroad into a harrowing manhunt, it calls into question everything Monty knows, including his relationship with the boy he adores.

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Lo, Malinda

Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can't remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club. America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father--despite his hard-won citizenship--Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day.

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Maldonado, Crystal

Overweight sixteen-year-old Charlie yearned for her first kiss while her perfect best friend, Amelia, fell in love, so when she finally starts dating and learns the boy asked Amelia out first, she is devastated.

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Marie, Racquel

Seventeen-year-old Ophelia Rojas, well known for her rose garden and her dramatic crushes on every boy in sight, begins to question her sexuality and sense of self when she starts to fall for cute, quiet Talia Sanchez in the weeks leading up to their high school prom and graduation.

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Masood, Syed M.

When self-proclaimed 'not very bright' nineteen-year-old Danyal Jilani is chosen for a prestigious academic contest, he hopes to impress a potential arranged marriage match, only to begin falling for the girl helping him study instead.

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Menon, Sandhya

When Dimple Shah and Rishi Patel meet at a Stanford University summer program, Dimple is avoiding her parents' obsession with "marriage prospects" but Rishi hopes to woo her into accepting arranged marriage with him.

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Meyer, Marissa

As plague ravages the overcrowded Earth, observed by a ruthless lunar people, Cinder, a gifted mechanic and cyborg, becomes involved with handsome Prince Kai and must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect the world in this futuristic take on the Cinderella story.

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Oseman, Alice

Boy meets boy. Boys become friends. Boys fall in love. Shy and softhearted Charlie Spring sits next to rugby player Nick Nelson in class one morning. A warm and intimate friendship follows, and that soon develops into something more for Charlie, who doesn't think he has a chance. But Nick is struggling with feelings of his own, and as the two grow closer and take on the ups and downs of high school, they come to understand the surprising and delightful ways in which love works.

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Painter, Lynn

Michael, to whom Liz Buxbaum gave her heart long ago, has returned but to get his attention and, perhaps, a prom date she must scheme with her nemesis Wes, her next-door neighbor.

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Rajurkar, Anuradha D.

Eighteen-year-old Rani, a budding photographer, grapples with first love, family boundaries, and the complications of a cross-cultural relationship.

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Reyes, Sonora

Sixteen-year-old Mexican American Yami Flores starts Catholic school, determined to keep her brother out of trouble and keep herself closeted, but her priorities shift when Yami discovers that her openly gay classmate Bo is also annoyingly cute.

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Sáenz, Benjamin Alire

Fifteen-year-old Ari Mendoza is an angry loner with a brother in prison, but when he meets Dante and they become friends, Ari starts to ask questions about himself, his parents, and his family that he has never asked before.

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Sortino, Anna

Seventeen-year-old Lilah, who wears hearing aids, returns to a summer camp for the Deaf and Blind as a counselor, eager to improve her ASL and find her place in the community, but she did not expect to also find romance along the way.

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Vasquez Gilliland, Raquel

When seventeen-year-old Star Fuentez reaches social media stardom, her polar-opposite twin, Moon, becomes "merch girl" on a tour bus full of beautiful influencers and the grumpy but attractive Santiago Philips.

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Winters, Julian

The summer before he leaves for college, eighteen-year-old Isaac Martin makes big plans with his best friend Diego that only the reappearance of an old crush can derail.

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Yoon, David

High school senior Frank Li is caught between his parents' traditional expectations and his own Southern California upbringing. His parents have one rule when it comes to romance: 'Date Korean. But Frank falls for Brit Means, who is smart, beautiful-- and white. Joy Song is in a similar predicament, and they make a pact: they'll pretend to date each other in order to gain their freedom. It seems like the perfect plan, until their fake-dating maneuver leaves Frank wondering if he ever really understood love- or himself- at all.

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Yoon, Nicola

Natasha is a girl who believes in science and facts. Daniel has always been a good son and good student. But when he sees Natasha he forgets all that and believes there is something extraordinary in store for both of them.

Summaries provided by DPL's catalog unless otherwise noted. Click on each title to view more information.