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Best Young Adult Romance Books 2026

Teen romance readers want one specific ache from a love story, so the best young adult romance books here are sorted by the ache, not by author or by year. Some people read the genre for two hundred pages of arguing and a kiss on the last one. Other people want to be flattened, or want to watch somebody finally get looked at properly.

Better Than the Movies is the one to buy if you read romance for the banter, since Liz and Wes spend the whole book arguing instead of confessing. Readers who would rather be flattened than charmed should start with If He Had Been with Me, which withholds its worst news until the last pages.

The real difference between these ten is how much damage you are willing to take. A few end warm and stay warm, three hand you a grief you can see coming from a hundred pages away, and two put the couple inside a world with rules of its own. None of them require prior reading, and the longest runs a little over four hundred pages.

1.Better Than the Movies - by Lynn Painter

Better Than the Movies
Plenty of ya romance books run on argument rather than on longing, with two people who claim to dislike each other inventing reasons to stay in the same room. Both of these land where you expect and are better for it. Liz Buxbaum has built her entire romantic education out of rom-coms, which is why she recruits the neighbor she cannot stand to help her land the boy she has wanted since childhood. Lynn Painter lets Better Than the Movies run that scheme exactly as anyone raised on those films would predict, and never pretends otherwise. It is the lightest thing on this page, and the one to hand somebody who wants to close a book happy by Sunday night.
$9.99$12.99-23%
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2.To All the Boys I've Loved Before - by Jenny Han

To All the Boys I've Loved Before
Five letters written to be read by nobody get posted, and Lara Jean has to face every boy she ever quietly wanted. To All the Boys I've Loved Before turns that wreckage into a fake relationship neither party will admit is doing real work. Almost no conflict in it would trouble a sixteen-year-old, so it is the gentlest first step for somebody still testing whether they like romance at all.
$10.99$13.99-21%
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3.If He Had Been with Me - by Laura Nowlin

If He Had Been with Me
First love and grief turn up together in this group, and each book tells you early that it intends to charge you for the pleasure. Save them for an evening when being undone is the point. Autumn and Finn grow up in adjoining backyards and then spend four years of school in separate orbits, dating other people and insisting that is fine. Those near-misses are written in a flat, unshowy voice, so the last fifty pages of If He Had Been with Me arrive with no warning music at all. This is the book that ruins people, and anyone who enjoys being ruined should read it now rather than save it.
$8.99$10.99-18%
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4.The Fault in Our Stars - by John Green

The Fault in Our Stars
Where If He Had Been with Me hides what is coming, John Green states the terms in his first chapter: a support group, a girl with an oxygen tank, and a boy who speaks like he has rehearsed. The jokes in The Fault in Our Stars carry the weight, because they are what stops the sentiment curdling. The crying arrives attached to an argument about how to live, which is what lifts it above a straightforward tragedy.
$11.99$14.99-20%
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5.Five Feet Apart - by Rachael Lippincott

Five Feet Apart
Cystic fibrosis rules keep two hospital patients six feet apart, so Stella and Will steal one foot back and conduct the entire relationship across the gap that is left. Rachael Lippincott makes the measured distance itself the engine of the book. Restraint does all the work here, so it lands hardest on people who find withheld feelings more interesting than declared ones.
$10.99
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6.The Sun Is Also a Star - by Nicola Yoon

The Sun Is Also a Star
Each of these is really about being recognized by one person after a long run of not being, and the kissing is almost secondary. They are the young adult love stories to reach for when intimacy matters more than heat. Twelve hours before her family is deported, Natasha meets a boy who decides their collision means something and sets out to prove it before the flight. Short histories of strangers who brush past the pair keep interrupting that day, which sets the romance of The Sun Is Also a Star inside a much bigger accident. The result is a love story that argues with itself about fate the whole way through, which is the reason to read it.
$10.99$12.99-15%
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7.Eleanor & Park - by Rainbow Rowell

Eleanor & Park
A half-empty seat on a school bus in 1986 puts a new girl in secondhand clothes next to a boy reading comics, and neither speaks for weeks. Rainbow Rowell builds the courtship out of shared mixtapes and hands moving closer, then draws the house Eleanor goes home to with no comfort in it. Unlike the single day of The Sun Is Also a Star, this covers a school year, and that slow accumulation makes it the sadder of the two.
$11.99$15.00-20%
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8.Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda - by Becky Albertalli

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda
An anonymous email thread with a classmate who signs himself Blue is the best thing in Simon Spier's life, until a screenshot lands in the wrong hands. Becky Albertalli keeps the tone light while staying precise about what it costs to be outed on somebody else's schedule. For most of its length it reads as a comedy, and that lightness makes it the least daunting book in this group.
$11.99
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9.Twilight - by Stephenie Meyer

Twilight
Sometimes the appeal is that the stakes run past whether two people speak at the dance. These two build a full set of rules around the couple, then let the couple break them. Forks, Washington, is overcast almost every day of the year, which is the only reason a family of vampires can live there and the only reason Bella Swan ever meets Edward Cullen. Desire in Twilight is written as restraint, with hundreds of pages given over to two people deciding not to touch. Widely considered the novel that made paranormal romance a category of its own, it still works on anybody who likes longing stretched to breaking point.
$12.99$16.99-24%
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10.The Selection - by Kiera Cass

The Selection
Thirty-five girls are drawn by lottery to compete for a prince on national television, and America Singer arrives at the palace already in love with somebody at home. Kiera Cass runs the palace of The Selection as a caste system with better dresses, so the romance and the politics keep interrupting each other. Where Twilight narrows to two people in a rainy town, this opens into a televised contest, and the spectacle around the couple is half the appeal.
$12.99$15.99-19%
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Pick the ache you want and start there

Work out whether you want to close the book smiling or in pieces, and the right title picks itself from there. Plenty more of the genre is waiting once one of these turns out to be your particular ache.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which of these young adult romance books works best for someone who mostly reads fantasy?
The Selection is the easiest crossover, because the caste system, the palace protocol and the rebel raids give a fantasy reader the scaffolding they expect while the romance drives the plot. Twilight is the other one to try, since its vampire rules are consistent enough to reward somebody who likes learning a system. Leave the contemporary picks until later, because they run on dialogue rather than on setting.
What should I give a thirteen-year-old who is just getting into romance?
To All the Boys I've Loved Before is the safest starting point, since the worst thing that happens to anyone is embarrassment and the physical content stops at kissing. Better Than the Movies suits the same reader and is funnier. Five Feet Apart is written for that age too, but it is set in a hospital and does not end kindly, so judge it on the reader rather than on the birthday.
Are any of these actually funny, or is the whole genre sad?
Better Than the Movies is a comedy first and a romance second, and its narrator is self-aware enough to mock the tropes she is living inside. Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda comes close, with most of its humor coming from a friend group who talk over one another constantly. The Fault in Our Stars is funny as well, though the jokes exist to make the sad parts survivable.
Which of these is still worth reading if I have already seen the film?
The Sun Is Also a Star changes most on the page, because Nicola Yoon interleaves the strangers' histories that a ninety-minute film has no room for. Eleanor & Park has never been filmed, so nothing about it can be spoiled. Five Feet Apart tracks its adaptation closely, so read that one for Stella's narration rather than for the plot.
Do any of these commit me to a whole series?
If He Had Been with Me, The Fault in Our Stars and Eleanor & Park are complete in one volume, so they are what to choose when a single book is all you have room for. Twilight and The Selection both open long runs and end on notes that assume you will keep going. To All the Boys I've Loved Before resolves its own story but is the first of three.

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