5 Geektastic YA Books About Overachievers in Love

I Believe in a Thing Called Love, by Maurene Goo
Student body president, soccer star, and Stanford-bound high school senior Desi Lee has never met a course she couldn’t ace or a challenge she couldn’t face. The only area of life she has trouble with is romance, as her two best friends, Fiona and Wes, can attest to. In fact, she’s infamous for her epic “flailures” (failing at flirting). All that changes when Luca, an artist, transfers to Desi’s school, and she decides to use her superior planning skills to win him over. Her secret? She’ll study the cheesily wonderful K-Dramas her widowed father has long adored, and use what she learns from the Korean soap operas to “guide” Luca into falling for her. A hilarious, surprising, and heartfelt rom-com with fully formed characters who will make you cringe and swoon.

Populazzi, by Elise Allen
Having moved to a new school, Cara decides to reinvent herself from scratch in the hopes of becoming popular. Co-created by her best friend since kindergarten, Cara’s plan is called The Ladder, and entails beguiling (aka “gently using”) ever-more popular boys to increase her dating appeal and lift her to the upper echelons of school society. But when she genuinely falls for a boy, Archer, at the start of her journey, she has to decide whether to continue up the ladder (and reap the benefits of doing so) or to appreciate what she’s already got in her potential perfect match.

My Soon-to-be-Sex Life, by Judith Tewes
Charlotte Webb—that’s Charlie to her friends, and yes, it bugs her that she was named for a literary spider—is a sarcastic, aspiring screenwriter who has concocted A Plan to Lose Her Virginity. She also has (you guessed it!) a list of possible guys who may be willing to help her fulfill this task. But three weeks into her hapless scheme and fresh out of luck, she’s forced to move in with an elderly relative because of family issues. There, she meets a boy named Eric who helps her realize the best things in life may not always go according to plan.

Good Girls, by Laura Ruby
Fans of Ruby’s Bone Gap (a National Book Award finalist) will need no convincing to pick up one of her earlier works, an achingly honest look at slut-shaming, religion, and double standards, all surrounding a shockingly tender-hearted romance. When gallant jock Luke (so beautiful “it’s like a punch to the throat”) takes an interest in Audrey (“Miss Skip-a-Grade, 9.45 GPA, off-to-the-Ivy-League prodigy”), she’s overwhelmed with glorious, addictive new feelings. When a classmate cruelly distributes a photo of Luke and Audrey hooking up at a party, and Audrey seems to be the only one suffering as a result, she’ll have to use her advanced research skills to figure out the truth: Luke may be hurting as much as she is, and her friends may have had their own painful reasons for trying to make her believe he’s not.

Kissing Ted Callahan (And Other Guys), by Amy Spalding
“We, the undersigned, agree to document our journeys in search of true love. No detail is too small, too humiliating, too stupid.” So declare bandmates and platonic friends Riley and Reid, who’ve just learned that their other bandmates are in love. Determined to have their own romantic misadventures, the duo commit to jotting down and sharing their experiences so they can help each other understand, and vibe with, the opposite sex. Relatable and funny, it’s a story you’ll read through tears of laughter, even as you root for Riley and Reid to win their respective crushes’ hearts.