7 Realistic Contemporary YA Love Stories

I’ll Meet You There, by Heather Demetrios
Skylar’s number-one goal in life is to get out of Creek View, and there’s only one summer left to get through until she can leave her hometown behind her for good. But just as she’s living out the last few months before she leaves, Josh Mitchell returns from Afghanistan, minus a leg and plus some serious post-traumatic stress disorder. Together, they work through their issues and toward the future. This is one of my favorite reads of 2015 so far, and though I haven’t dipped into Demetrios’s fantasy offerings just yet, Something Real and I’ll Meet You There have definitely cemented her contemporaries on my autobuy list.

Keeping You a Secret, by Julie Anne Peters
Holland is a star student with a boyfriend and a bright future, but when she meets Cece, it throws everything in her ordered world out of whack. She falls hard and fast for the new girl, but not everyone’s as thrilled about her newfound love as she is, and she faces not only bullying from fellow classmates, but ostracizing from her mother. As Holland navigates her emerging sexuality, first real romance, and all the difficulties of her new family situation, it’s impossible not to feel for her, and root for the fact that she has a strong partner in Cece through it all. When Peters published this book over a decade ago, it was one of YA’s only girl-girl contemporary romance novels. And now…it still is.

Jellicoe Road, by Melina Marchetta
Full disclosure: Taylor Markham and Jonah Griggs are the couple against which I measure all other YA couples. Between the two of them, there is so much angst and hardship and oh, the history, and by the time they realize they’re as crazy about each other as the reader is about them, their love somehow feels like the hardest won in the history of the category. Marchetta’s Printz winner about a girl struggling to piece together her own past and a boy desperate to forget his finding each other amid a school rivalry will shred your heart into pieces, but it’s so, so worth it for how beautifully she puts them all back together.

Something Like Normal, by Trish Doller
Travis is home on leave from Afghanistan and mentally falling apart in the wake of his best friend’s death. His ex-girlfriend is dating his brother, he’s drowning in nightmares, and he’s having trouble relating to everyone around him. The only one who can break through his shell is Harper, a girl with whom he’s had a rocky past for years. The two form a slow, real connection that forms as they get to truly know each other, while Travis gets to know himself in the aftermath of all he’s been through. By the end, you just want to hug them both for finding each other and sticking it out.

Going Too Far, by Jennifer Echols
Meg doesn’t recognize the young cop who arrests her, a guy who was just ahead of her in school. Responsible, determined, professional John After seems considerably older than his nineteen years, especially when compared to her wild, impulsive, troublemaking self and the crowd she hangs out with. But over the course of the week they’re forced to spend together as punishment for Meg’s latest stunt, they each learn there’s far more depth and darkness to the other than they originally knew, and that will both bring them together and tear them apart. Also, can I say this has one of YA’s sexiest scenes ever? Because it has one of YA’s sexiest scenes ever.

OCD Love Story, by Corey Ann Haydu
Group therapy gets a bonus perk for Bea when she meets Beck, a guy who shares her obsessive-compulsive disorder. But cute as that may sound or the cover may look, Haydu doesn’t remotely gloss over the all-consuming reality of their mental health issues, and this forever remains one of the most physically taxing books I’ve ever read. Bea and Beck both have deep-seated issues, tied to past traumas, but the honesty with which they work through them and the effort they put into therapy are admirable and awesome. Haydu is absolutely one of my favorite authors writing contemporary YA right now, and if books with earned and honest romance are your thing, hers will always be solid choices.

What’s Broken Between Us, by Alexis Bass
Sixteen months ago, Amanda and Henry shared one perfect evening, unaware that that very same night, tragedy was hitting terrifyingly close to home, and tearing their siblings’ lives apart. They’ve been divided ever since. But when Amanda’s brother, Jonathan, is released from prison, and Henry fears the repercussions for his own family as a result, they’re thrown back together and quickly learn the sparks between them have never really gone away…and neither have the tumultuous feelings of guilt, frustration, and sadness. For Amanda to find happiness, she’ll need to pull herself out from beneath Jonathan’s dark shadow, no matter how many people would rather hold her under.