If you’ve got Spring Fever, take advantage of the longer and warmer days and add these rivalry-filled books to your TBR list! Because nothing says spring like getting your heart pumping with a little foe action!
10 Best Rivalries in YA Books
1. These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong
This debut takes an imaginative twist on Romeo and Juliet, retelling this classic in a 1920s Shanghai setting, complete with rival gangs and a monster lurking in the Huangpu River. As the deaths stack up, the lovers must set their feud aside and work together, because if they can’t stop the mayhem, there might not be a city to battle for after all.
2. Today Tonight Tomorrow by Rachel Lynn Solomon
In this unforgettable romantic comedy, two overachieving teens must set aside their rivalry in order to win Howl, the senior class scavenger hunt. As tensions rise and fall over the course of 24 hours, these enemies-to-lovers realize that love might just be within reach.
3. Scythe by Neal Shusterman
A world with no hunger, no disease, no war, no misery: humanity has conquered all those things, and has even conquered death. Two teens must learn the “art of killing” for population control. As they train to compete to the death, in order to become the next Scythe, they’ll discover that a perfect world comes only with a heavy price.
4. Wings of Shadow by Nicki Pau Preto
Veronyka must face her most devastating enemy yet: her own sister. In this heart-stopping finale to the Crown of Feathers trilogy, darkness is up against light in this sisterly show down. The world might have began with Ashfire queens, but they just might be its destruction too.
5. A Pho Love Story by Loan Le
When two Vietnamese-American teens fall in love, they must navigate their newfound relationship amid their families’ age old feud about their competing, neighboring restaurants. Can Linh and Bao save their relationship even with rival restaurants and feuding pho?
6. The Infinity Courts by Akemi Dawn Bowman
This dizzyingly smart sci-fi takes up the classic humans vs robots rivalry as it follows a teen girl navigating the afterlife ruled by an AI entity who is intent on destroying humanity. Forced to reckon with time and grapple with what it is that truly makes us human, here comes a tale that explores big questions about technology, grief, love, and humanity.
7. Recommended for You by Laura Silverman
In this charming rom-com, two teen booksellers’ rivalry is taken to the next level as they compete for the top bookseller bonus. As the competition intensifies, Jake and Shoshanna grow closer and realize they might be more on the same page than either expects.
8. Tithe by Holly Black
In the dark and seductive realm of faerie, one girl must save herself from the sinister magic of the fey courts and protect her heart in the process when she finds herself the pawn in an ancient and powerful struggle between two rival faerie kingdoms.
9. Daughters of Ruin by K. D. Castner
This royal thriller follows four fierce princesses of enemy kingdoms as their worlds collide in the throes of war. Their futures and any hope of restoring peace depends on the princesses’ loyalties: do they lie with their nations or with each other?
10. Made in Korea by Sarah Suk
While running competing Korean beauty businesses at their high school, two entrepreneurial Korean-American teens butt heads and steal each other’s hearts. From hiring spies to all-or-nothing bets, the competition is much more than either of them bargained for. Is all fair in love and war?