With Valentine’s Day approaching, here are eight books featuring love, recommended for high-school readers — whether you’re looking for realistic or fantastical, happy or not-so-happy love stories, or even tales about self-love. See also our Five Questions interview with Jason Reynolds about Twenty-Four Seconds from Now…: A Love Story and the Emotions--Love tag in the Guide/Reviews Database.

Our Shouts Echo
by Jade Adia
High School    Hyperion    416 pp.
8/24    9781368090117    $18.99

For her capstone project on the last day of school, Niarah, who is “walking around life with a full plate of anxiety plus a side of depression and a scoop of OCD for dessert,” must present an object that represents where she will be in ten years. But she does not have much hope for the future, so she pulls out a bottle of iodine from her survival kit and explains how it will save her in what she sees as “the inevitable doomsday scenario.” Her presentation gains her the name Doomsday Girl and a trip to the guidance counselor’s office, where she learns that she is in danger of failing sophomore year if she does not complete her capstone project and PE hours. As an alternative to summer school, Niarah joins a hiking club led by the very handsome Mac Torres. Despite herself, Niarah opens up to Mac, who offers to help her build her fallout shelter and count it toward her hours. Through Niarah’s prickly, often darkly humorous, and eventually more vulnerable voice in her survival guide entries, text messages, and interactions with others, readers see a well-realized example of how it feels to be a teenager navigating the world with depression and suicidal thoughts. Mental health and related resources are appended. NICHOLL DENICE MONTGOMERY

Guava and Grudges
by Alexis Castellanos
High School    Bloomsbury    336 pp.
9/24    9781547613717    $19.99
e-book ed.  9781547613724    $13.99

The Ybarras and the Moraleses, who own Cuban bakeries across the street from each other in fictional Port Murphy, Washington, have a bitter, decades-old rivalry. Ana Maria Ybarra (who also goes by Amy because no one in her mostly white town can pronounce her name correctly) usually honors the family feud. Until Miguel, a boy with whom she shared a steamy kiss in L.A. months ago, moves to town and reveals that he’s a Morales nephew. Try as she might, she can’t stay away (“He’s technically a Fuentes,” she justifies), especially when she learns he’s a photography whiz. She’s desperate for someone to fix her recipe videos so she can win a scholarship to culinary school. The two create a plan to film cooking videos in secret — which, of course, devolves into clandestine making out. Ana Maria’s family can’t find out about either. Castellanos’s (Isla to Island, rev. 3/22) first ­novel-with-words is a sweet and satisfying rom-com with a relatively low-stakes star-crossed storyline. Ana Maria learns to stand up for her dreams for her future, her love life, and even the name she wants to be called, and Miguel is supportive as she figures it all out. Delicious descriptions of traditional Cuban foods and Ana Maria’s updated creations abound. A recipe for guava cream cheese thumbprint cookies is appended. MONICA DE LOS REYES

With Love, Miss Americanah
by Jane Igharo
High School    Feiwel    320 pp.
6/24    9781250873378    $20.99
e-book ed.  9781250873385    $11.99

A teenager newly arrived in the United States from Nigeria uses movies such as Sixteen Candles, Mean Girls, and Heathers to prepare for attending an American high school. Enore Adesuwa’s family immigrates just two months after the death of her father. Her younger sister appears to adjust more easily to life in a small town in New York’s Hudson Valley than Enore, who spends most of her time at home watching DVDs. These movies influence Enore to set ten rules about surviving in a U.S. high school; e.g., steer clear of the popular kids, “no crushes,” and avoid the spotlight, rules she breaks when her audition for the school musical goes viral. And rules or no rules, sparks fly during a chance encounter with cute Brazilian American boy Davi Santiago. Their friendship leads to an eventual romance, which helps Enore to deal with her grief. Davi also helps the protagonist handle her fear of disappointing her mother, who is pressuring her to follow in her footsteps and become a doctor. Igharo deftly handles the excitement, intensity, and confusion surrounding young love as well as the mountain of emotions one goes through when mourning a loved one, through characters who are relatable and genuine. A highly entertaining and heartwarming story with a couple to root for. MARVA ANNE HINTON

Leap
by Simina Popescu; illus. by the author
High School    Roaring Brook    304 pp.
11/24    9781250838292    $24.99
Paper ed.  9781250838308    $17.99
e-book ed.  9781250408471    $11.99

This coming-of-age graphic novel follows Ana and Sara, roommates and students at an elite high school for dance in Bucharest, Romania. Ana is secretly dating Carina, a passionate but selfish ballerina; as Ana’s devotion to Carina intensifies, she jeopardizes her future at the school. But does she even still love dancing? Meanwhile, Sara gradually realizes that her feelings of admiration and gratitude toward her empathetic (and much older) female instructor, Marlena, are actually a crush. As Sara grapples with her sexual identity, she wonders if she should tell Marlena how she feels. Throughout their personal challenges, Ana and Sara support and encourage each other, and although the semester ends in heartbreak for both, it also brings a deeper bond and a sense of possibility. The graphic format is a good match for its visual subject matter: a sense of movement is pervasive throughout, and panels with close-ups of the girls’ faces effectively convey their emotions. Most of the digital illustrations are drawn in black against backgrounds of dusky, balletic pink or bluish-gray (to differentiate flashbacks); as a result, the very occasional full-color pages, often depicting dance sequences, have maximum impact. Set against a vivid boarding-school backdrop, this is an emotionally charged story of self-expression, self-discovery, and friendship. RACHEL L. KERNS

The Art Thieves
by Andrea L. Rogers
High School    Levine/Levine Querido    400 pp.
10/24    9781646143788    $19.99

This compelling Cherokee-centered speculative novel by Cherokee writer Rogers (Man Made Monsters, rev. 11/22) is set in the near future: the 2050s. Stevie’s world at first looks not much different from ours, though events have progressed: climate change has worsened, genetically modified food and space settlement have developed, and tribal sovereignty has strengthened. The problems young people deal with, from food allergies to unsupportive parents to racism, are especially familiar. Stevie has just graduated from high school and works at a Texas art museum; she lives with her parents and her little brother, who is diagnosed with a likely fatal cancer. Through her interspersed emails, we have a sense of time slippage and a coming apocalypse, which is borne out as the book goes on. The aptly named Adam (or Adawi in the Cherokee language of Tsalagi), a mysterious, handsome young artist, turns out to be a time traveler sent from further in the future in advance of catastrophic events. Stevie’s relationship with him is a tender romance shadowed by the threat of loss. Although some events portrayed may be upsetting, the book’s messages are ultimately about hope for the future, love despite despair, communal work toward positive change, and the redemptive power of art. As Adam says, “Human capacity for creation matters…even the act of saving it is Ceremony.” LARA K. AASE

Break to You
by Neal Shusterman, Debra Young, and Michelle Knowlden
High School    Quill Tree/HarperCollins    432 pp.
7/24    9780062875761    $19.99
e-book ed.  9780062875785    $10.99

Adriana Zarahn was in the wrong place at the wrong time, helping the wrong friend, and now she’s at Compass, a juvenile detention facility, for seven months. The facility is separated into a girls’ and a boys’ side, with each side using the cafeteria and library at different times. Adriana pours her thoughts and feelings into her journal but then accidentally leaves it behind in the library. When she finds it later, shelved in the Zs, somebody else has written notes in it. Thus begins her correspondence with Jon from the boys’ side. Unlike Adriana, Jon has been at Compass for a while; the exact nature of his crime is a mystery that drives the plot. The story is told in a third-person, present-tense voice that follows Adriana and Jon in alternating sections. They may not be able to trust their peers or the adults in the system, but they form a bond that deepens over the course of the novel and blooms into love. If only they could find a way to meet. While the story stretches credulity in spots, the coauthors have crafted an immersive reading experience with elements of romance and intrigue even as it provokes readers to consider the inherent flaws in our juvenile justice system. JONATHAN HUNT

Heir
by Sabaa Tahir
High School    Putnam    512 pp.
10/24    9780593616949    $21.99
e-book ed.  9780593616956    $10.99

This epic-length fantasy novel (the start of a new duology set in the world of An Ember in the Ashes and sequels) follows three disparate characters: Aiz, who fails to assassinate her oppressor and is taken to prison along with fellow religious devotees of Mother Div; Quil, heir to the throne, whose empire is falling to invaders and who has been sent to fetch a secret weapon; and Sirsha, a magical tracker who takes a job to find a killer. Sirsha and Quil’s paths intersect first; they flee a besieged city together, and a blood oath that binds them magically to each other becomes the only thing protecting Sirsha from execution. Meanwhile, Aiz (whom Quil loved in the past but now believes to be dead) has a connection with Mother Div that drives the rest of the story in ways the author judiciously pieces out. The sweep of the narrative is vast and sustains its tension well even over multiple shifts in point of view, greatly aided by the luscious sexual tension between Quil and Sirsha. Aiz’s journey from scrappy underdog hero to portentously tyrannical antihero will take readers on quite a ride. This impressively constructed novel ends with its characters in a predicament, setting up a challenge for a sequel to resolve. ANITA L. BURKAM

Night Owls
by A. R. Vishny
High School    Harper/HarperCollins    368 pp.
9/24    9780063327306    $19.99
e-book ed.  9780063327320    $10.99

Clara and Molly are posing as young women who run the Grand Dame in New York City’s East Village, a movie house that started life as a Yiddish theater. In fact, the sisters are two undead Estries, feeding off the blood of the living. Clara’s rules: No romance. Only feed on Jews. The latter is to protect the Jewish community from blood libel (the false accusation that Jews use the blood of Christians for ritual purposes), the former to protect themselves from entanglements that would lead to their discovery and eradication. But Molly has a secret girlfriend who has become possessed by some sort of entity, and Clara…well, her relationship with their scapegrace ticket seller Boaz, who can see ghosts, is fraught. In a story that begins with small stakes and grows through successive iterations of drama to a showdown against Ashmodai, Prince of Demons, the details of the legacy of Jewish theater are engaging, and the strongly drawn romantic embroilments even more compelling. Film history weaves through the characters’ interests and becomes inseparable from the enchantments that drive the action. Subplots, flashbacks, and bits of Jewish folkloric backstory strengthen the narrative drive, making this complex but accessible queer-Jewish-vampire rom-com thriller a hit on all fronts. An author’s note provides historical background. ANITA L. BURKAM

From the January 2025 issue of Notes from the Horn Book.