Book Recommendations: Young Adult Contemporary | Part I

Hi guys! It’s time for a few more book recommendations and the theme for today is Young Adult Contemporary Novels. I love contemporary so much that when I was preparing this list I had 15 books to recommend. Because of that I decided to split this in 3 different posts that are going to be uploaded in the next few weeks. If you are used to read contemporary you know that there is this side of contemporary that deals with some difficult themes like mental illness, abuse and others. Because I think that these books are so powerful I wanted to share with you some of my favorite novels that feature one or more of these themes.  So let’s start these recommendations.

Hopeless by Colleen Hoover

Goodreads Blurb:

Sometimes discovering the truth can leave you more hopeless than believing the lies…
That’s what seventeen-year-old Sky realizes after she meets Dean Holder. A guy with a reputation that rivals her own and an uncanny ability to invoke feelings in her she’s never had before. He terrifies her and captivates her all in the span of just one encounter, and something about the way he makes her feel sparks buried memories from a past that she wishes could just stay buried.
Sky struggles to keep him at a distance knowing he’s nothing but trouble, but Holder insists on learning everything about her. After finally caving to his unwavering pursuit, Sky soon finds that Holder isn’t at all who he’s been claiming to be. When the secrets he’s been keeping are finally revealed, every single facet of Sky’s life will change forever.

This book looks like a fluffy contemporary right? Well, it’s not a fluffy contemporary. While at the beginning of the story it looks like the “good girl meets bad boy” kind of plot there’s a lot of things that happen. I can’t tell you what it is because I don’t want to spoil anyone but if you read this book you know what I’m talking about. For me this is the best Colleen Hoover book and it’s pretty good.

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Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

Goodreads Blurb:

Two misfits.
One extraordinary love.

Eleanor… Red hair, wrong clothes. Standing behind him until he turns his head. Lying beside him until he wakes up. Making everyone else seem drabber and flatter and never good enough…Eleanor.

Park… He knows she’ll love a song before he plays it for her. He laughs at her jokes before she ever gets to the punch line. There’s a place on his chest, just below his throat, that makes her want to keep promises…Park.

Set over the course of one school year, this is the story of two star-crossed sixteen-year-olds—smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try.

Let me just start by saying something. What the hell are you doing if you haven’t read this book yet? It’s beautiful, it’s heartbreaking, it’s amazingly well written and the main characters are not the typical hot girl/guy. So yeah, go read it 😀 .

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I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson

Goodreads Blurb:

A brilliant, luminous story of first love, family, loss, and betrayal for fans of John Green, David Levithan, and Rainbow Rowell

Jude and her twin brother, Noah, are incredibly close. At thirteen, isolated Noah draws constantly and is falling in love with the charismatic boy next door, while daredevil Jude cliff-dives and wears red-red lipstick and does the talking for both of them. But three years later, Jude and Noah are barely speaking. Something has happened to wreck the twins in different and dramatic ways . . . until Jude meets a cocky, broken, beautiful boy, as well as someone else—an even more unpredictable new force in her life. The early years are Noah’s story to tell. The later years are Jude’s. What the twins don’t realize is that they each have only half the story, and if they could just find their way back to one another, they’d have a chance to remake their world.

This radiant novel from the acclaimed, award-winning author of The Sky Is Everywhere will leave you breathless and teary and laughing—often all at once.

I absolutely loved this book and this is another heartbreaking story. This is another one that is extremely well written and full of feels. It’s a really beautiful story and I loved how the different POV’s (from the twins) are in different years and how we learn what happened in the past while reading the present too.

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All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

Goodreads Blurb:

The Fault in Our Stars meets Eleanor and Park in this exhilarating and heart-wrenching love story about a girl who learns to live from a boy who intends to die.
Theodore Finch is fascinated by death, and he constantly thinks of ways he might kill himself. But each time, something good, no matter how small, stops him.
Violet Markey lives for the future, counting the days until graduation, when she can escape her Indiana town and her aching grief in the wake of her sister’s recent death.
When Finch and Violet meet on the ledge of the bell tower at school, it’s unclear who saves whom. And when they pair up on a project to discover the “natural wonders” of their state, both Finch and Violet make more important discoveries: It’s only with Violet that Finch can be himself—a weird, funny, live-out-loud guy who’s not such a freak after all. And it’s only with Finch that Violet can forget to count away the days and start living them. But as Violet’s world grows, Finch’s begins to shrink.
This is an intense, gripping novel perfect for fans of Jay Asher, Rainbow Rowell, John Green, Gayle Forman, and Jenny Downham from a talented new voice in YA, Jennifer Niven.

Are you already tired of heartbreaking books? No? Great because it’s not going to stop. All the Bright Places starts when two teenagers met bell tower at school. Both have suicidal thoughts and after this they become really close and start helping each other. This is a story that really makes you think and it’s just delightful to read.

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Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma

Goodreads Blurb:

Seventeen-year-old Lochan and sixteen-year-old Maya have always felt more like friends than siblings. Together they have stepped in for their alcoholic, wayward mother to take care of their three younger siblings. As defacto parents to the little ones, Lochan and Maya have had to grow up fast. And the stress of their lives–and the way they understand each other so completely–has also brought them closer than two siblings would ordinarily be. So close, in fact, that they have fallen in love. Their clandestine romance quickly blooms into deep, desperate love. They know their relationship is wrong and cannot possibly continue. And yet, they cannot stop what feels so incredibly right. As the novel careens toward an explosive and shocking finale, only one thing is certain: a love this devastating has no happy ending.

This novel has a really controversial and difficult theme that I know that will not please everyone. If you read the blurb you already know that is about two siblings who fall in love for each other. This was a really difficult book to read and it’s the book that really made me heartbroken. The way the story goes and the connection that the siblings have is just wonderful but it really makes you think about all these challenging theme and how you feel about it. If you have no problems about reading a book that deals with incest you should definitely read this one. But I can promise you one thing, you’ll be a mess by the end and it’s not going to be pretty to see.

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So these are a few books that I want to recommend. Have you read any of these books or would you read any? Tell me in the comments 🙂 .