Young Adult Genres: Realistic Fiction
New month, new book list series! This month I’m diving into young adult titles! Over the past few months, I’ve shared picture books, chapter books, and middle grade stories, and I don’t want to leave out the teenagers, so here we go! Young adult novels are geared toward kids from ages 12 – 18. Most often, the protagonists of YA novels are on the older end of the age range and experiences. It’s important to remember that while some younger teenagers will be mature enough to handle many YA books, they won’t be appropriate for all younger readers!
Realistic fiction young adult books can be intense because teenage life is intense. There will always be fun, light-hearted reads, but realistically a lot of realistic fiction for teens is quite heavy as it tackles mental health, romance, friendship drama, and coming of age. I’ve read that realistic fiction for middle grade readers is written for characters to learn about the world around them. Realistic fiction for teens is written for characters to learn about themselves and where they fit into the wider world. This can be seen in each of the titles below as characters come of age in realistic settings of home and family life, school, and with friends and partners.
While teens will gravitate to what they want to read (right now it seems like romantasy is what’s in!), realistic fiction is an important aspect of the teen literature field. Kids (and teens!) can earn about life around them, see how situations play out, and gain empathy for friends and school mates in situations they might not have come across in real life yet. Realistic fiction can offer valuable opportunities for teens to better understand where they themselves see themselves in the world around them.
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Young Adult Genres: Realistic Fiction
All the Tomorrows After by Joanne Yi
Each night, Winter Moon counts her earnings dreaming of escape. Once she’s saved enough, she and her grandmother can finally take flight and disappear. But when her spiteful mother steals her money and blows through it all in one day, Winter is forced to turn to her estranged father, who recently reappeared in her life after being absent for more than a decade. They agree upon a simple contract: she spends time with him in exchange for payment.
It’s not easy reconciling the past and the present, though, and when she’s struck with a sudden loss, Winter flounders in grief and rage. The only person offering a hand is Joon, the new boy at school who sees Winter when no one else does.
When Winter discovers a secret her father has been keeping from her, things get even more complicated. As she navigates grief, first love, and forgiveness, Winter begins to forge connections, new and old, that make her question everything: her future, her conviction to disappear, and what it really means to be family. Winter knows that broken things can never be fixed, but can they come back together in a different way?
Anger Is Only a Shadow by Elizabeth Acevedo
Lil is anything but small. She’s rebellious, she’s loyal; she’s figuring out what kind of good person she wants to be, or if she wants to be a good person at all. But more than anything? Lil wants to be free.
When her instinct for freedom leads to another stay in D.C. juvenile detention, Lil knows she’s lucky to just be on probation. But judgment, guilt, and an ankle monitor weigh heavily on her, and she can’t shake that pinned-down feeling.
The only person who might understand is her big brother, Aldwin. Except he’s more distant now than just the hundred miles where he’s away at college. Something’s been off with him for a couple of months, but only Lil seems to realize how important it is to get to him.
As her court hearing ticks closer, a question looms over Lil as the missed phone calls and strange texts from her brother pile up: will she follow the rules until her sentencing, or put her future freedom on the line?
Everything New Again by Renée Watson
Bliss knows there’s more to life than what she’s experienced in her small town. She’s ready to be the girl who isn’t just waiting anymore, who can make something happen. Working in her family’s funeral home, she can’t help but ponder what it means to truly live and what it takes to leave a lasting legacy. Her existential questions have labeled her the weird “funeral home girl” to most of her peers, except for her best friend, Alex, and the new boy visiting from Portland for winter break.
Solomon isn’t put off by Bliss’s musings. He has questions of his own, like why his mother abandoned him and if she ever did–or ever will–love him. He has come to visit for answers, and to work at his mom’s flower shop, where he meets Bliss on a delivery to the funeral home.
Their chance meeting changes everything. As they open up to each other, share their hearts and experience something real, something new, they find that even if a relationship has an end, love can last forever.
It’s Not Over Yet by Salma Hussain
Fifteen-year-old Wali Khan, affectionately called “Vali the Vomiter” by his older twin sisters, has always chalked up his throwing up to a delicate stomach. And the headaches in ninth grade? Worrying about grades. But waking up in the hospital in the second week of tenth grade, he is shocked to hear the cause: acoustic neuroma, a golf-ball-sized tumor pressing on his ear canal.
The good news: it’s most likely benign. The bad news: surgery in four months, with probable hearing loss as a result.
Starting a new year in high school with a looming life-altering surgery date forces Wali, a passionate film buff, to look inward, at his family, friends and even himself. Why is this happening to him?
His Muslim father and Christian mother are supportive, yet sometimes a bit clueless when it comes to their children. His twin sisters are a mix of loving and teasing, and he bounces between spying on them and keeping their secrets. As for the new girl, Ruby Lai-Mirza, he’s just not sure he has time for a new friend.
Wali may fear the end, but he’s still got a lot of living to do. It’s not over yet.
It’s Only Dancing by Jasmine Guillory
It’s the summer before her senior year of high school and Kat (Kitty to her family) planned to spend it reading good books, working on her college applications, and enjoying her independence. Instead, she’s stuck for an entire month with her family at a camp in the desert in Southern California.
When she stumbles across a staff party on the first night, she’s jealous of their joyful, uninhibited dancing. She hasn’t danced like that since two years ago, when she was forced to quit ballet, which she once loved more than anything. She’s determined to leave dance where it belongs — the past.
But Jordan, the handsome and magnetic hip-hop dance instructor, keeps dragging it into her present. As Kat begins sneaking around and lying to her parents to spend time with Jordan, she’ll have to ask herself — what is she willing to risk to finally feel free? And is it possible her feelings for Jordan could reignite her love for dance?
Medicine Wheels by Byron Graves
When Bryce’s mom walks out on her abusive boyfriend and back into jail for breaking her probation, he’s left facing the summer of his junior year with no parents, no phone, and only the clothes on his back.
With nowhere to call home, Bryce crashes at his grandparents’ house on Wolf Creek reservation. Wolf Creek is full of memories and old friends—including Robbie and Mikayla, who hang out at the local skate park.
Skateboarding reminds Bryce of his late dad: carefree, riding like he could fly. If Bryce could learn to ride like that, he’d take his crew to the top of the skateboarding championship at the end of the summer, and finally prove he’s not a loser, especially to the online-famous, captivating Mikayla. Summer is looking up, even as he’s falling on his face.
But when a fresh loss takes Bryce down, he’ll need to learn to lean on his Ojibwe community to get back on the board. Only then can he discover his father’s real legacy—and the true meaning of unconditional love.
The Perfect Family by Khadijah VanBrakle
“Lonely Leena” is close with her young single mother. Still, she’s always secretly dreamed of more (and, when she was a kid, asked Santa for it). A huge family to cheer her on at graduation. A gaggle of smiling faces at the holidays. But one call from the hospital, and her mother’s hidden past comes to light: Her grandfather is in the ER, and her aunt is with him in recovery. Sorry—her WHO?
But with family comes family secrets—Leena’s mom’s, and as Leena grows close with her new family behind her mother’s back, her own. Leena’s mom warns that Leena’s grandfather Tariq’s financial generosity doesn’t come without strings attached… like Leena converting to Islam, fighting for a spot at a top university, and adhering to the restrictive rules that she ran from all those years ago. Leena isn’t sure who to trust, yet she’s certain that she adores Tariq and her mom—and that she’s the only one who could heal old hurts. After so many years, is it even possible? And if she can’t, will she have to choose between them?
A big family was the dream, but all this drama isn’t.
Tom Burne Has Left the Chat by Seán Farrelly
A tragic death. A chance at a new life. Could one phone hold all the answers?
This wasn’t my phone. This was real. Tom had died today, literally died, and here I was, picking through the digital carrion like some sort of virtual vulture.
When micro-influencer Tom Burne takes his own life, he leaves behind his phone, its password, and a cryptic message that needs decoding.
Seventeen-year-old Jamie doesn’t intend to take the phone, but once he does, he knows it was meant for him. Fuelled by his own sense of isolation and the recent passing of his father, Jamie loses himself in uncovering the truth. The more he investigates the digital fragments contained within the phone, the deeper into Tom’s dark world he falls.
As his own grief resurfaces and with his mother pushing for them to move to a different country for a fresh start, Jamie has very little time to find out the harsh reality that led to Tom’s tragic end.
Can he clear Tom’s name before it is too late?
You, Me, and Infinity by Deb Caletti
When Margaret sees Mars for the first time, it doesn’t feel like love at first sight so much as future at first sight—she just knows right away that he will loom large in her life.
When her job delivering pizzas brings Margaret right to Mars’s doorstep, she can’t deny their connection, even as the anxious voice in her head warns her about everything that could go wrong. Soon they’re giving in to fate as their romance deepens over stargazing and moments under the endless night sky, where Mars shares his passionate interest in the Voyager’s Golden Record—a time capsule of humanity preserved indefinitely in space. Together, they are absorbed by the unknowable questions we all face: How will we be remembered? What will we leave behind? And can anything truly be infinite?
But even for someone who can’t help but anticipate the worst, when the worst actually happens, Margaret is shattered. How can she move forward from tragedy when it feels like the world has stopped spinning? Somehow, she has to let go of the gravity of grief pulling her down and find her way back to the stars. But only if she can let the whole of the universe in—all the beauty and all the pain.
