Leila Sales Shares Her Top 10 Contemporary YA Novels

Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac, by Gabrielle Zevin
This book begins with its protagonist waking up in the hospital and realizing she has lost all memories of the past five years of her life. It asks questions like: if you had it all to do over again, your identity to craft from scratch, would you do it better this time? Or would you just make the same mistakes? I especially love how the romance is handled in here: on face it seems like the main character is choosing among three different guys, but the way it plays out winds up being much more complex and empowering than that.

Everybody Knows Your Name, by Andrea Seigel and Brent Bradshaw
A story narrated in dual perspectives, about a guy and a girl competing on a reality TV singing competition—think American Idol meets The Jersey Shore. Their romance is swoon-worthy, but what really gets me here are the voice and the characters. Just the way these people are, the way they see the world and express their thoughts to the reader, is unique and completely hilarious.

Accomplice, by Eirann Corrigan
After having it drilled into them how hard it is to get into a good college these days, two best friends come up with a surefire plan: one of them will disappear, seemingly kidnapped. The other will “miraculously” find her two weeks later. They will both be heroines. They think they’ve accounted for every contingency—but as their community is torn apart over the supposedly missing girl, they find they’re in way over their heads, and it’s too late to come clean. I was on the edge of my seat for this whole novel!

Why We Broke Up, by Daniel Handler
A dry-witted, alternative girl recounts her relationship with the school jock through a collection of otherwise meaningless items that mark their time together. The book starts with them broken up; the book is even called “Why We Broke Up”; you know they don’t really fit together—and yet you root for them to work it out the whole way through. This book perfectly captures how intense and life-changing first love can be. And near the end the main character goes on this four-page diatribe that’s maybe my favorite thing in YA literature. If I could ever write four pages that I loved as much as I love those, I would be satisfied.

Heist Society, by Ally Carter
Like Ocean’s Eleven starring teens, and the leader of the con artists is a kickass teenage girl. This book is gripping and fun the whole way through. I can’t imagine how much work goes into a story that reads so completely effortlessly. Ally Carter is my plot idol.

The Secret Year, by Jennifer R. Hubbard
Some of the best fiction starts with a simple “what-if?” question. The question driving The Secret Year is: what if you had a secret romance with someone, and she died, and still you could not reveal your connection to her? What if her family and friends were all able to mourn her publicly, while you couldn’t even admit that you knew her? What if she died without your ever knowing how she really felt about you—and now you’ll never know?

Famous in Love, by Rebecca Serle
What on Earth would it be like to be Kristen Stewart in 2008? Imagine: you weren’t that famous, but now you’re starring in a major motion picture adaptation of the world’s biggest book series, and suddenly everyone is obsessed with you. You start dating your costar and practically the entire world loses its collective mind because you are clearly the embodiment of the epic romance of Bella and Edward. You lose control over your identity, certainly over your love life: you’re more a character in everyone else’s fantasy than you are a real person. Well, that is basically the premise of Famous in Love. It will change how you look at celebrity forever.

The Wrong Side of Right, by Jenn Marie Thompson
This is another “what-if?” book. This one goes: what if you’d never known who your father was…and then it turns out he’s the Republican candidate for president of the United States? There’s so much I love about this book: the protagonist, who’s refreshingly stronger than we get from stereotypical YA girls; the romance between her and the current President’s son (Andy Lawrence is my new book boyfriend so HANDS OFF everyone else); the peek behind the political campaign machine; and the substantive discussion of actual relevant policy issues.

Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You, by Peter Cameron
I’m a sucker for unique characters with unusual ways of viewing the world, and that’s exactly how I’d describe the star of this story. He’s a wealthy, troubled New York City loner, trying to make sense of his life in the summer after his high school graduation. This one doesn’t have one of those “what-if?” hooks; it’s just brilliant writing that’s funny and affecting and puts you inside of a remarkable mind.

Cherry Money Baby, by John Cusick
As you can tell, I read a lot of YA novels, so it’s hard for them to surprise me, but this one did. It’s about a lower-class American girl who winds up becoming friends with a carefree British starlet while a film is shot in her small town. There are many predictable directions a story could go from that premise, but Cherry Money Baby steers clear of all of them, instead giving an insightful, original exploration into issues of socioeconomic class, motherhood, our expectations of young women, and what “ambition” really means.