Young Adult Realistic/Contemporary Fiction
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Looking For Alaska by John Green – YA F GRE
Miles “Pudge” Halter is done with his safe life at home. He heads off to the sometimes crazy and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young. Then…nothing is ever the same. |
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Birthday by Meredith Russo – YA F RUS
Two kids, Morgan and Eric, are bonded for life after being born on the same day at the same time. We meet them once a year on their shared birthday as they grow and change: as Eric figures out who he is and how he fits into the world, and as Morgan makes the difficult choice to live as her true self. |
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Me (Moth) by Amber McBride – YA F MCB
Moth has lost her family in an accident. Though she lives with her aunt, she feels alone and uprooted. Until she meets Sani, a boy also searching for his roots. If Moth can help him feel grounded, then perhaps she too will discover the history she carries in her bones. |
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Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson – YA F AND
From the first moment of her freshman year at Merryweather High, Melinda knows this is a big fat lie, part of the nonsense of high school. She is friendless, outcast because she busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops, so now nobody will talk to her. As time passes, she becomes increasingly isolated and practically stops talking altogether. Only her art class offers any solace, and through her work on an art project, she is finally able to face what really happened at that terrible party. |
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American Panda by Gloria Chao – YA F CHA
At seventeen, Mei should be in high school, but skipping fourth grade was part of her parents’ master plan. Now a freshman at MIT, she is on track to fulfill the rest of this predetermined future: become a doctor, marry a preapproved Taiwanese Ivy Leaguer, produce a litter of babies. With everything her parents have sacrificed to make her cushy life a reality, Mei can’t bring herself to tell them the truth: that she doesn’t want any of that. |
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Like Other Girls by Britta Lundin – YA F LUN
After getting kicked off the basketball team for a fight that was not her fault (okay, maybe a little her fault), Mara is dying to find a new sport to play to prove to her coach that she can be a team player. But joining the football team sets off a chain of events in her small Oregon town and within her family that she could never have predicted. |
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You’d Be Home Now by Kathleen Glassgow – YA F GLA
For all of Emory’s life, she’s been told who she is. In town, she’s the rich one. At school, she’s hot Maddie Ward’s younger sister. And at home, she’s the good one. Everything was turned on its head, though, when she and her older brother Joey were in the car accident that killed Candy MontClaire. The car accident that revealed just how bad Joey’s drug habit was. |
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Eliza and Her Monsters by Fransesca Zappia – YA F ZAP
Eliza Mirk is shy, weird, and friendless in the real world. Online, she’s LadyConstellation, the anonymous creator of the wildly popular webcomic Monstrous Sea. Eliza can’t imagine enjoying the real world as much as she loves the online one, and she has no desire to try. Then Wallace Warland, Monstrous Sea’s most prominent fanfiction writer, transfers to her school. |
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Up All Night by Laura Silverman – YA F UP
Stay up all night with these thirteen short stories from bestselling and award-winning YA authors like Karen McManus, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nina LaCour, and Brandy Colbert, as they take readers deep into these rarely seen, magical hours. |
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Fresh by Margot Wood – YA F WOO
Some students enter their freshman year of college knowing exactly what they want to do with their lives. Elliot McHugh is not one of those people. But picking a major is the last thing on Elliot’s mind when she’s too busy experiencing all that college has to offer, but she may not be ready for the fallout when reality hits. |
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Monster by Walter Dean Myers – YA F MEY
Sometimes I feel like I have walked into the middle of a movie. Maybe I can make my own movie. The film will be the story of my life. No, not my life, but of this experience. I’ll call it what the lady who is the prosecutor called me. Monster. |
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In the Wild Light by Jeff Zentner – YA F ZEN
Life in a small Appalachian town is not easy. Cash lost his mother to opioid addiction, and his Papaw is dying slowly from emphysema. He’s been spending his summer mowing lawns while his best friend, Delaney, works at Dairy Queen. But when Delaney manages to secure both of them full rides to an elite prep school in Connecticut, Cash will have to grapple with his need to protect and love Delaney and his love for the grandparents who saved him and the town he would have to leave behind. |
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All American Boys by Jason Reynolds – YA F REY
A lady tripping over Rashad at the store, making him drop a bag of chips, was what started it all. Because it didn’t matter what Rashad said next—that it was an accident, that he wasn’t stealing—the cop just kept punching him. So then Rashad, an ROTC kid with mad art skills, was stuck in a hospital room. Why? Because it looked like he was stealing. And that’s what Quinn, a white kid, saw. He saw his best friend’s older brother beating the daylights out of a classmate. |
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The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart – YA F LOC
Frankie Landau-Banks, no longer the kind of girl to take “no” for an answer. Especially when “no” means she’s excluded from her boyfriend’s all-male secret society. Not when her ex-boyfriend shows up in the strangest of places. Not when she knows she’s smarter than any of them. Not when she knows Matthew’s lying to her. And when there are so many, many pranks to be done. |