YA Recommendations
4 stories
My Life in Letters by EMMcNulty
EMMcNulty
  • WpView
    Reads 2,549
  • WpVote
    Votes 561
  • WpPart
    Parts 82
Cover by the amazing @LNRoberts1 It's 1983 and high school sophomore, Anne Kelly's home life is coming apart at the seams. What's more, her friends are hanging with the popular crowd, and Anne doesn't feel she fits in. She gradually becomes fixated with a shy junior on the swim team named Gavin Maloney, but her friends think he's a total loser. However, Anne only becomes more interested in Gavin, and she decides to take a prank her friends played on him a step further. She begins writing him letters, not the stupid anonymous notes her friends put in his locker to taunt him, but real letters. Gavin has lost his mom to cancer and his father has gone missing. He now lives with his grandfather who is in a deteriorating state of Alzheimer's disease. It's a secret that Gavin must keep. Nobody can know or they will separate Gavin from his grandfather and put them both in state run homes. Gavin's plan is to stay invisible. Once he turns 18, he'll be a legal adult and nobody will be able to separate him from his grandfather. He just has to hold out one more year. But it isn't easy. Everyone needs friends, and now this Anne girl has singled him out. Part of him aches for human contact, and he's not immune to her quirky sense of humor, but she might be totally insane. She's practically stalking him, and if he befriends her, she might find out about his grandfather and ruin his plan. But what if he just wrote her back?
Where or When by EMMcNulty
EMMcNulty
  • WpView
    Reads 9,090
  • WpVote
    Votes 1,198
  • WpPart
    Parts 44
Featured on @Romance, @Ambassadors, and @humor, @ChickLit Cover art by the fabulous @LNRoberts1. It's 2019 and university student, Olivia O'Shea, doesn't possess the luck of the Irish as her name might suggest. Instead, she's feeling like she might just be the unluckiest girl on the planet. Her high school sweetheart, Daniel Burns, whom she continued to date in college, was found with his fingers, and a few other more salacious body parts in someone else's cookie jar. Now it's summer vacation and Olivia is back in her hometown licking her wounds and trying to forget it all. At their old high school's international food festival, Olivia runs into Daniel with his new girlfriend, and a storm is definitely brewing. But this storm is a real one with thunder, lightning and rain, and Olivia, caught out in the open, is suddenly struck by lightning. She wakes up in the high school infirmary only to find that she's been transported back to high school with the chance to do it all over again. Olivia is determined to ditch Daniel, in spite of his stubborn advances, and instead tries to rekindle an old flame with the shy introverted Jack Garcia, with whom she'd shared one very spectacular kiss back in high school. As Olivia attempts to pursue Jack, Daniel keeps getting in the way and frustrating her plans. Can she really change her future for the better, or is history only meant to repeat itself? If you liked the iconic 1980s rom-com Peggy Sue Got Married, then you'll love this modern retelling of the classic, time-travel, do-over, second chance at love.
Fate of our Hearts : a 1990s YA Romance  by LNRoberts1
LNRoberts1
  • WpView
    Reads 15,492
  • WpVote
    Votes 2,204
  • WpPart
    Parts 49
♡I was shocked to see whose still bewitching eyes had just accidentally met with mine. Giovanni! A boy, a crush, and one fantastic kiss. I thought I'd never see him again. ♡Dual POV ♡ It's the mid-90s on the West Coast: grunge music, mix tapes, pagers, skateboarding and baggy clothes. Lauren, an ordinarily shy 8th-grade girl, risks the first move to approach her long-time elusive crush, Gio, a gorgeous and mysterious outsider who has a secret crush of his own. The night of the school dance, they get exactly what they dreamed of: a first dance, a first kiss...but the timing isn't on their side, and the budding relationship slips through their fingers. Fast-forward to her junior year-the worst year of her life so far-and Lauren feels anything but confident. Gio reemerges at school after a three-year absence, and the unexpected encounter sends tremors through both of their lives. But their attraction to each other is as intense as ever, and interactions between them heat up quickly. However, Gio's school life is a disaster, and he harbors a secret he won't share, but it's the truth that Lauren keeps from him that really threatens to tear their young romance apart. "This is a great teen romance with angst, humor, and two incredible main characters. Ren is the friend I would have loved to have growing up, and Gio . . . well, he is just teen crush perfection! Also, it's set in the late nineteen nineties, which was my own teenage era, so I love revisiting the nostalgia of that time! " -Polly Ford. "This is a heartwarming and nostalgic read that will take you back to the late nineties, where we follow Ren, who is so relatable, as she comes of age on her journey with the swoon-worthy Giovanni, who will make your heart melt several times! Their journey is emotional, passionate, and both heart-wrenching and heart-warming-such a beautiful book! " - Heidi Carroll.
When We Were Wildflowers by AuthorMarieMcKoy
AuthorMarieMcKoy
  • WpView
    Reads 2,803
  • WpVote
    Votes 218
  • WpPart
    Parts 51
[Teen Fiction Winner, 2025 Triple Moon Awards - 2025 The Amby's Round 3 Qualifier] 🌻🎸Inspired by the Dolly Parton song 'Wildflowers', WHEN WE WERE WILDFLOWERS is a coming-of-age novel with country roots about fierce friendship, budding romance, soul-crushing betrayal, and resilience of the wild feminine spirit.🎸🌻 When 13-year-old good girl Violet Wilson moves to a new housing development in a small Texas town, she finds an unlikely friend in wild child Poppy Cooper. They're instant besties, but there's one problem: Violet's high-class mom forbids the friendship. Poppy's troubled family and reckless behavior are dealbreakers. After a dramatic turn of events brings Violet's picture-perfect family crumbling down, she leans on her older brother Teddy and Poppy for support. Everything is changing, including where Violet and Teddy will call home. The girls enlist Teddy's help to squeeze an epic bucket list of teen milestones into a few short weeks before the Wilsons move away. It's all fun and games setting up a first kiss with Violet's crush, driving lessons, first job, and prom dates... until Violet discovers Poppy is keeping a devastating secret. Her betrayal threatens to destroy their friendship--and Violet's family--forever. Can these wildflowers weather the storm? Or was Violet's mom right about Poppy all along? RATED PG-13: a little foul language, teenage subject matter, kissing, underage drinking at a party TRIGGER WARNING: divorce, infidelity, incarcerated parent, dysfunctional family, car accident