We love a good rom-com but sometimes we find ourselves in the mood for chest-pinching, eye-watering, heart-wrenching romantic moments. So if you’re like us and just want to really feel the heart-ache in your next romance read, we have a few suggestions for you.
Robbie Couch explores all the different ways love can live on after tragedy in this speculative novel for fans of They Both Die at the End and You've Reached Sam. It's been one year since River's best friend died in a car accident. Now, he finds himself navigating grief among his best friend's former girlfriend, Mavis, and a bubbling new romance with a charming quarterback. As his journey leads him to a bombshell discover, River will have to decide just how far he's willing to go for another chance at first love.
Emergency Contact is the perfect combination of funny, awkward, and heartbreaking. Penny and Sam swap numbers when Penny finds Sam in the midst of a panic attack on the side of the street. Soon the two of them become digitally inseparable as they share their deepest anxieties and secret dreams to each other with the humiliating awkwardness of being face-to-face.
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe is a beautiful and powerful book (and now a major motion picture!) of self discovery that follows two boys, Ari and Dante, with seemingly nothing in common, after they meet one summer and slowly begin to form a special friendship. As they learn more about themselves and each other that friendship begins to grow into something more. Once you finish this book, don't miss the sequel Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World!
If you've seen the movie of Five Feet Apart you know that this book will have you sobbing. Stella and Will both have cystic fibrosis, a genetic disorder that causes damage to the lungs and other organs, which means they can't be within six feet of one another without risking their lives. But as Will and Stella fall in love, they decide to steal back just a little bit of the space their broken lungs have stolen from them. Would five feet apart really be so dangerous if it stops their hearts from breaking too? Now available in paperback!
For fans of You’ve Reached Sam and A Heart in a Body in the World, this searing and heartrending teen novel follows an ex-couple as they struggle to reunite in the wake of a devastating earthquake. This read will have to feeling ALL the feels from start to finish.
Kelly Loy Gilbert's writing is so beautiful that this book will leave you a little emotionally raw by the time you finish it. In When We Were Infinite you'll experience the messiness of relationships through the eyes of Beth as she tries to find the balance of how much of herself she'll give up to help her friends.
Belly measures her life in summers. Winters are simply a time to count the weeks until the next summer, a place away from the beach house, away from Susannah, and most importantly, away from Jeremiah and Conrad. But one summer, one wonderful and terrible summer, the more everything changes, the more it all ends up just the way it should have been all along. Once you've read The Summer I Turned Pretty, don't miss the second and third books in the trilogy: It's Not Summer Without You and We'll Always Have Summer, and be sure to catch the TV series inspired by the books, now streaming!