Queer YA Romance Reads Teens Will Love
by Meghan McCullough
Spring has sprung, and if that doesn’t get you in the mood to read a sweet romance read with all the feels, I don’t know what will! I have loved seeing the rise of inclusive YA love stories featuring love stories between teens of all sexual orientations and gender identities. The following are recently released or soon-to-be-released YA romance reads with representation across the LGBTQ spectrum.
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The Last Bookstore on Earth
Buy from:Ever since a cataclysmic storm decimated most of civilization, seventeen-year-old Liz Flannery has been living in the abandoned bookstore where she used to work. Then one night, Maeve breaks into the bookstore looking for shelter and Liz reluctantly agrees to let her stay. When news of another storm reaches them, it brings these girls closer together and they find themselves fighting for their lives as the world around them crumbles. Jennifer Dugan, the author of Some Girls Do calls The Last Bookstore on Earth, “hopeful, thrilling, and twisty … the snarky sapphic dystopian of our dreams.”
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They Hate Each Other
Buy from:In a debut that Publishers Weekly calls “raucous,” bisexual high school seniors and longtime rivals Jonah Collins and Dylan Ramírez engage in a fake-dating scheme to appease their respective friend groups. What starts as a drawn-out game of playing pretend turns into something more when the fake couple begins to learn things about each other that they never expected.
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Just Another Epic Love Poem
Buy from:Parisa Akhbari’s debut novel is a joyous, moving ode to queer love and friendship. “The Book” is a journal that best friends Mitra Estefani and Bea Ortega have been filling with a never-ending poem. It’s where they can be their most authentic selves, completely safe and open. But Mitra has one secret she hasn’t put in The Book: she’s in love with Bea.
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Get Real, Chloe Torres
Buy from:Chloe and her two best friends, Sienna and Ramona, have been estranged all through their senior year of high school. As Chloe gets ready to go to college — and celebrate her eighteenth birthday — she is determined to get everyone talking again, so she plans an epic cross-country road trip to see their favorite boy band. Now she just needs to convince them to go!
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Last Night at the Telegraph Club
Buy from:Get swept into a story of forbidden romance and peril set in 1950s San Francisco. When Lily and Kathleen fall in love at a lesbian bar in Chinatown, they put themselves and their families in jeopardy. With Lily’s father in danger of being deported, the girls will risk everything for their love. Winner of the National Book Award and a New York Times bestseller, this queer romance is a must-read.
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Fake Dates and Mooncakes
Buy from:In a “frothy debut [that] skillfully utilizes beloved rom-com tropes” (Publishers Weekly), seventeen-year-old Kevin Tang is trying to help his family’s Singaporean Chinese restaurant stay above water and avoid eviction. He thinks they’ll be in the clear if he can win an annual mooncake-making contest. But suddenly, wealthy customer Theo Somers is everywhere, and he made a donation to the restaurant! Determined to thank him, Kevin gets ferried into Theo’s wealthy, foreign world and somehow finds he can be himself with Theo more than ever.
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Cursed Boys and Broken Hearts
Buy from:Grant Rossi is cursed. Ever since he made a wish on his family’s iconic Wishing Rose, all of his romantic relationships have been fated to end. After (another) boy dumps him, Grant sinks into a depression. His parents suggest that he spend the summer helping his aunt and uncle refurbish their B&B and vineyard — and the home of the Wishing Rose. Hoping to find a way to break the curse, Grant agrees but is shocked to find that the person his relatives hired to help is his former childhood crush …
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The Rules of Us
Buy from:Henry and Jillian have been together forever — until they come out to each other as gay during a heart-to-heart at the junior prom. They do everything together — they even applied for the same competitive scholarship so they could go to college together — but summer brings new experiences that push both Henry and Jillian out of the comfort zones they’d carefully constructed for themselves.
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Hearts Still Beating
Buy from:The Last of Us meets a love story about two girls dealing with the aftermath of of a zombie apocalypse. Mara and Rory haven't seen each other since their first kiss two years ago — right before Mara was infected by the (mostly) deadly virus that swept the globe. But now a treatment has been found. Reunited, the girls struggle with their pasts and the people they've become since they first fell for each other.
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Time After Time
Buy from:Libby has always been drawn to the old Victorian house in her hometown. So when she sees a For Sale sign go up, she jumps at the chance to own it, determined to fix it up herself. Tish is a broke student who uses her skills fixing things to help pay for college. She too is drawn to the Victorian house and is compelled to knock on the door. Libby offers her a room in exchange for her help repairing the old house. After moving in, Libby finds a journal written by a young woman who lived in the house a century earlier and was in love with her personal maid. As Libby reads through the diary she notices uncanny similarities between that young couple and Tish and herself. Could they have lived this life before? Told in alternating histories, Publishers Weekly calls this book, “a sapphic romance for the ages.”
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Playing for Keeps
Buy from:Ivy and June’s romance is built on commonalities. They’re each navigating grief, pressure from parents, and athletic aspirations (Ivy wants to be a referee for the NFL; June intends to become a baseball pitcher). But Ivy is refereeing June’s games, and it’s against the rules for players and refs to date. When their love clashes with their dreams, the two have a difficult choice to make.
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in 2024 and updated in 2025.