Featured Booklist

Figuring out your favorite trope? Romance your way through these books!

A Secret Princess by  Margaret Stohl & Melissa de la Cruz.

Best friends Mary Lennox, Sara Crewe, and Cedric Erroll flee their repressive boarding school, intending to start over in the theaters of Paris, but they instead find themselves at Cedric's estate in Yorkshire, where a hidden garden helps them realize their destiny.

Alex, Approximately by  Jenn Bennett

Seventeen-year-old Bailey moves to California to live with her father and, perhaps, finally meet an online friend and fellow film buff, but soon finds herself attracted to an annoying co-worker.

Anna and the French Kiss by  Stephanie Perkins

Anna is happy in Atlanta. She has a loyal best friend and a crush on her coworker at the movie theater who is just starting to return her affection. So she's less than thrilled when her father decides to send her to a boarding school in Paris for her senior year. But despite not speaking a word of French and feeling like an outcast, Anna meets some interesting new people and begins to be charmed by Paris, including the handsome Étienne St. Clair, who quickly becomes her best friend, even if she might want more. Unfortunately he's taken -- and Anna might be, too. Will a year of romantic near misses end with the French kiss she's been waiting for?

Borrow My Heart by Kasie West

When Wren overhears a guy getting verbally destroyed by his friends for being catfished, she jumps in to save the day--and pretends to be his online crush.

Crumbs by  Danie Stirling

In a very special town, there's an even more unusual bakery with a selection of baked treats hand-crafted to help your dreams come true. For Ray, a quiet young woman with special powers of her own, the order is always the same: a hot tea with a delicious side of romance. When Ray meets Laurie, the kind barista who aspires to be a professional musician, she gets a real taste of love for the first time. But even with a spark of magic, romance isn't so simple. Both Ray and Laurie are chasing their own dreams and even when Ray starts to see the future, she can't predict her fate with Laurie.

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

Cath struggles to survive on her own in her first year of college while avoiding a surly roommate, bonding with a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words, and worrying about her fragile father.

Heartstopper 1 by  Alice Oseman

Boy meets boy. Boys become friends. Boys fall in love. Shy and softhearted Charlie Spring sits next to rugby player Nick Nelson in class one morning. A warm and intimate friendship follows, and that soon develops into something more for Charlie, who doesn't think he has a chance. But Nick is struggling with feelings of his own, and as the two grow closer and take on the ups and downs of high school, they come to understand the surprising and delightful ways in which love works.

Series - Heartstopper

Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can't remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club. America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father--despite his hard-won citizenship--Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day.

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Printz Award Winners

Asian American Lives

Love & Gelato by Jenna Evans Welch

Lina is spending the summer in Tuscany, but she isn't in the mood for Italy's famous sunshine and fairy-tale landscape. She's only there because it was her mother's dying wish that she get to know her father. But what kind of father isn't around for sixteen years? All Lina wants to do is get back home. But then Lina is given a journal that her mom had kept when she lived in Italy. Suddenly Lina's uncovering a magical world of secret romances, art, and hidden bakeries. A world that inspires Lina, along with the ever-so-charming Ren, to follow in her mother's footsteps and unearth a secret that has been kept for far too long. It's a secret that will change everything Lina knew about her mother, her father -- and even herself. People come to Italy for love and gelato, someone tells her, but sometimes they discover much more.

My Happy Marriage by  Akumi Agitogi

Considered nigh worthless for having failed to inherit the superhuman powers of the bloodlines into which she was born, Miyo Saimori lives her days unwanted and unloved. Her stepmother and her very own father have little time or affection for her, and Miyo must suffer being treated as a servant by her half sister who, unlike Miyo, is blessed with the unusual powers of their blood. Ultimately seen as nothing more than a nuisance and a drain on the family wealth, Miyo is packed off to the Kudo house as a bridal candidate for its heir, Kiyoka Kudo. Whispers abound about the Kudo clan, the most powerful in all the land, but will the allegedly cold and cruel house into which Miyo aims to marry prove much warmer than the family she left behind?

Series -

My Happy Marriage

Salt and Sugar by  Rebecca Carvalho

To save her family's bakery, Salt, which as been at war with the Molinas' bakery, Sugar, across the street, Lari Ramires does the unthinkable by teaming up with Pedro Molinas to save both their bakeries, falling in love in the process.

Serious Moonlight by  Jenn Bennett

Mystery-book aficionado Birdie Lindberg has an overactive imagination. Homeschooled by strict grandparents, she's cultivated a fantasy life in which she plays the heroic detective and every stranger is a suspect. She works the graveyard shift at a historic Seattle hotel, where Daniel Aoki is the van driver. He also patronizes the waterfront Moonlight Diner where she waits for the early morning ferry after work. They stumble upon a real-life mystery: a famous reclusive writer might be secretly meeting someone at the hotel.

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli

Sixteen-year-old, not-so-openly-gay Simon Spier is blackmailed into playing wingman for his classmate or else his sexual identity--and that of his pen pal--will be revealed.

The Davenports by  Krystal Marquis

The Davenports are one of the few Black families of immense wealth and status in 1910 Chicago, and the two daughters, Olivia and Helen, are finding their way and finding love--even where they are not supposed to.

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Sixteen-year-old Hazel, a stage IV thyroid cancer patient, has accepted her terminal diagnosis until a chance meeting with a boy at cancer support group forces her to reexamine her perspective on love, loss, and life.

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Gateway Award Winners

Gateway Award Nominees 2014-2015

The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot

Fourteen-year-old Mia, who is trying to lead a normal life as a teenage girl in New York City, is shocked to learn that her father is the Prince of Genovia, a small European principality, and that she is a princess and the heir to the throne.

Series - Princess Diaries

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashears

Four best girlfriends spend the biggest summer of their lives enchanted by a magical pair of pants.

Series -

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer Smith

Hadley and Oliver fall in love on the flight from New York to London, but after a cinematic kiss they lose track of each other at the airport until fate brings them back together on a very momentous day.

The Upside of Falling by  Alex Light

It's been years since seventeen-year-old Becca Hart believed in true love. But when her former best friend teases her for not having had a boyfriend, Becca impulsively pretends she's been secretly seeing someone. Brett Wells has it all. As captain of the football team and one of the most popular guys in his school, he should have no problem finding someone to date, but he's always been more focused on his future than who to bring to prom. When he overhears Becca's lie, Brett decides to step in and be the mystery guy. It's the perfect solution: he gets people off his back for not having a meaningful relationship and she can keep up the ruse that she's got a boyfriend. Acting like the perfect couple isn't easy though, especially when you barely know the other person. But with Becca still picking up the pieces from when her world was blown apart years ago and Brett just barely holding his together now, they begin to realize they have more in common than they ever could have imagined. When the line between what is pretend and what is real begins to blur, they are forced to answer the question: Is this fake romance the realest thing in either of their lives?

Tilly in Technicolor by  Mazey Eddings

Tilly Twomley white-knuckled her way through high school with flawed executive functioning has left her burnt out and ready to start fresh. Working as an intern for her perfect older sister's start-up requires her to travel around Europe, offering a much-needed change of scenery as she plans for her future. Oliver Clark's autism often makes it hard for him to form relationships, but his love of color theory and design allows him to feel deeply connected to the world around him. He's earned placement into a prestigious design program, and a summer internship to build his resume. But now he's being forced to spend the summer with a girl that couldn't be more his opposite-- and feeling things for her he can't quite name. As their neurodiverse connection grows, they learn that some of the best parts of life can't be planned.

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To All the Boys I've Loved Before by Jenny Han

Lara Jean writes love letters to all the boys she has loved and then hides them in a hatbox until one day those letters are accidentally sent.

Tweet Cute by  Emma Lord

Meet Pepper, swim team captain, chronic overachiever, and all-around perfectionist. Her family may be falling apart, but their massive fast-food chain is booming - mainly thanks to Pepper, who is barely managing to juggle real life while secretly running Big League Burger's massive Twitter account. Enter Jack, class clown and constant thorn in Pepper's side. When he isn't trying to duck out of his obscenely popular twin's shadow, he's busy working in his family's deli. His relationship with the business that holds his future might be love/hate, but when Big League Burger steals his grandma's iconic grilled cheese recipe, he'll do whatever it takes to take them down, one tweet at a time. All's fair in love and cheese - that is, until Pepper and Jack's spat turns into a viral Twitter war. Little do they know, while they're publicly duking it out with snarky memes and retweet battles, they're also falling for each other in real life - on an anonymous chat app Jack built. As their relationship deepens and their online shenanigans escalate - people on the internet are shipping them?? - their battle gets more and more personal, until even these two rivals can't ignore they were destined for the most unexpected, awkward, all-the-feels romance that neither of them expected.

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Gateway Award Nominees 2022-2023

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

When seventeen-year-old Bella leaves Phoenix to live with her father in Forks, Washington, she meets an exquisitely handsome boy at school for whom she feels an overwhelming attraction and who she comes to realize is not wholly human.

Series -

Twilight - Stephenie Meyer

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Gateway Award Winners