Realistic Fiction For Teens

Sydney Wells should have died. She was supposed to die. She never expected, after years of waiting, to receive a heart transplant. Now, seventeen-year-old Sydney doesn’t know what to do with her life. Her daily routine consisted of staying indoors, eating heart-healthy foods, and posting about her transplant list experiences on TheWaitingList with her long-distance BFF (and heart failure buddy) Chloe. Now, Sydney latches onto the one thing that gives her meaning: learning as much as she can about the person whose heart she inherited.

“Just do this one thing for me.” Drew's mother says it more often than good morning. Heidi Hill has been juggling shady side hustles for all of Drew’s seventeen years, and Drew knows that “one thing” really means all the tedious and necessary things her mother thinks are boring, including taking care of her fifteen-year-old sister and eight-year-old brother. In fact, Drew is the closest thing to a responsible adult they’ve ever known.

Nikki Beckett could only watch as her boyfriend, Jack, sacrificed himself to save her, taking her place in the Tunnels of the Everneath for eternity - a debt that should've been hers. Now she is living a borrowed life, and she doesn't know what to do with the guilt. And every night, Jack appears in her dreams, lost and confused and wasting away. No matter how she tries to reach for his hand, she can never find it.

Before: One year ago, best friends Nora and Julia were starting their senior year of high school, with plans to apply to the same university so they wouldn't be separated. When Dillan Fletcher comes back to town, life as Nora knows it begins to unravel. And then, the unthinkable happens. After: Months after surviving the accident that killed her best friend, Nora Radford is stagnating. Dillan has remained by her side, but he and other friends are starting university, while Nora is still trying to unravel the lies that Julia told, lies disguised as friendship.

Over the past five years, Mitra Esfahani has known two constants: her best friend Bea Ortega and The Book—a dogeared moleskin she and Bea have been filling with the stanzas of an epic, never-ending poem since they were 13. For introverted Mitra, The Book is one of the few places she can open herself completely and where she gets to see all sides of brilliant and ebullient Bea. There, they can share everything—Mitra’s complicated feelings about her absent mother, Bea’s heartache over her most recent breakup—nothing too messy or complicated for The Book.

Leo can’t remember what happened the night of the accident. All she knows is that she left the party with her older sister, Nina, and Nina’s boyfriend, East. And now Nina is dead, killed by a drunk driver and leaving Leo with a hole inside her that’s impossible to fill. East, who loved Nina almost as much as Leo did, is the person who seems to most understand how she feels, and the two form a friendship based on their shared grief. But as she struggles to remember what happened, Leo discovers that East remembers every detail of the accident—and he won’t tell her anything about it.

Chiaroscuro (kyar-uh-scoor-oh): The art of blending light and shadow. DEVOTION - DEPRESSION - DETERMINATION Stom Carpenter is a quiet presence—a giant in the high school halls who slips between worlds, seen but never truly understood. He longs for the freedom and clarity of adulthood, yet the more he seeks it, the more trapped he becomes in his own mind. THE BLENDING OF LIGHT AND SHADOW WAS FAR EASIER ON PAPER THAN IN LIFE. Just last month he was a football player, but Stom traded in his helmet for a sketchbook, hoping to escape the chaos of the world around him. Instead of finding solace...

This wasn't the way it was supposed to go. You're just a typical 15-year-old sophomore, an average guy named Kyle Chase. This can't be happening to you. But then, how do you explain all the blood? How do you explain how you got here in the first place? There had to have been signs, had to have been some clues it was coming. Did you miss them, or ignore them? Maybe if you can figure out where it all went wrong, you can still make it right. Or is it already too late? Think fast, Kyle....

16-year-old, Irish-born Niamh has just arrived in London for the summer, and quickly discovers that girls who look frighteningly like her are being attacked. Determined to make it through her Drama Course, Niamh is placed at the Victorian Museum to put her drama skills to the test, and there she meets Tommy: he’s kind, fun, attentive, and really hot! Nonetheless, there's something eerie about the museum... As present-day serial attacker and sinister Victorian history start to collide, Niamh realizes that things are not as they seem. Will she be next?

After Kiran Noorani’s mom died, Kiran vowed to keep her dad and sister, Amira, close—to keep her family together. But when Amira announces that she’s dating someone, Kiran’s world is turned upside down. Deen Malik is thrilled that his brother, Faisal, has found a great girlfriend. Maybe a new love will give Faisal a new lease on life, and Deen can stop feeling guilty for the reason that Faisal needs a do-over in the first place.

Evelyn Peters is desperate. Desperate for a way out of McNair Falls, the dying Southern town that's held her captive since the day she was born. Desperate to protect her little sister from her mother's terrifying and abusive boyfriend. And desperate to connect with anyone, even fallen golden boy Ashton Harper, longtime boyfriend of the girl Evelyn can never stop thinking about - beautiful, volatile, tragically dead Reid Brewer. Until a single night sends Evelyn and Ashton on a collision course that starts something neither of them can stop.

Two boys are starting over at a new high school. Jules is still figuring out what it means to be gay...and just how out he wants to be. Jack is reeling from a fall-out with his best friend...and isn’t ready to let anyone else in just yet.

In this genre-defying story from Lygia Day Peñaflor, four teens befriend their favorite YA novelist, only to find their deepest, darkest secrets in the pages of her next book - with devastating consequences. Miri Tan loved the book Undertow like it was a living being. So when she and her friends went to a book signing to hear the author, Fatima Ro, they concocted a plan to get close to her. Told as a series of interviews, journal entries, and segments from the book within the book - this gripping story of a fictional scandal will keep you on the edge of your seat.

It’s eighteen-year-old Gita Desai’s first year at Stanford, and the fact that she’s here and not already married off by her traditional Gujarati parents is a miracle. She’s determined to death-grip her good-girl, model student rep all the way to med school. Should be easy: If there’s one thing she’s learned from her family, it’s how to chup-re—to “shut up,” fade into the background. But when childhood memories of her aunt’s desertion and her then-uncle’s best friend resurface, Gita ends up ditching the books night after night in favor of partying and hooking up with strangers.

Josh's father has gone missing without a trace, and Gran's ready to call social services. If Josh wants to keep himself and and his little brother, Twig, out of the system, he'll have to take to the streets and track down his dad. But when Josh digs too deep, his dad's old accomplices catch up to Josh and plunge him into a dangerous underground where putting his trust in the wrong person could number Josh in a growing pile of bodies.

Will Daughtry is a late bloomer - at least, that's what everyone tells him. On his 16th birthday, Will is just shy of five feet, and he is bitterly resigned to being tiny forever. His only comforts are his best friend and stepbrother, Drew (six-foot-three), and their pal Monica (five-foot-10), the girl Will's been quietly pining for since fifth grade. Everyone else literally overlooks him. But with them, he feels whole. That is, until things take an unexpected turn, and he realizes he's really and truly on his own. That's when he starts to grow. And grow fast. Astonishingly fast.

Gerald Faust knows exactly when he started feeling angry: the day his mother invited a reality television crew into his five-year-old life. Twelve years later, he’s still haunted by his rage-filled youth—which the entire world got to watch from every imaginable angle—and his anger issues have resulted in violent outbursts, zero friends, and clueless adults dumping him in the special education room at school. Nothing is ever going to change. No one cares that he’s tried to learn to control himself, and the girl he likes has no idea who he really is.

Spring break...heartache? For coder extraordinaire Ashley, high school is all about prepping for college. Her love life? Virtually nonexistent. She's never been on a date. Never been kissed. Never been in love. When her plans veer off course, Ashley realizes she might be missing out on her high school experience. Now that spring break is finally here, Ashley vows to have fun...and, for the first time, follow her heart.

Set in a futuristic New York City after a catastrophic flood called the Wash Out, The Ward is the story of 16-year-old Renata Dane, a daredevil champion racer who will risk everything she has to take care of her sick foster sister, Aven. Ren's sister is suffering from the Blight, an incurable, deadly illness thought to be caused by years of pollution. The disease is ripping through the Ward - formerly known as downtown Manhattan - and since the region is home to the poor and the vagrant, little is being done to help the sick.

Candace used to be the one to take the easy way—but after three seasons working at a crazy amusement park, challenge seems to be her middle name. Then why does the idea of leaving her hometown to attend college on the other side of the country scare her so much? It doesn’t help that her boyfriend, Kurt, and her friend Tamara are both encouraging her to attend the local college and just relax. Or that the more she dreams about her future, the less she sees Kurt being a part of it.