You can only watch your favorite rom-com so many times…okay, that’s a lie. You can watch it an unlimited amount of times and probably never get tired of it. We get it. But it’s perfectly normal to want to expand your rom-com palate, and if you want to do that by reading a book that has the same vibe as your favorite rom-com, we’ve got some great YA recommendations for you.
Whether your favorite rom-com takes place in a high school with an angry boy and angrier girl, or in a crazy time-loop alternate universe, or on a wild night out in NYC, there’s a book on here for you. Happy reading!
Book Recs Based on Your Favorite Rom Com Movies
AS YOU WISH
10 Things I Hate About You
📚 Read Counting Down With You by Tashie Bhuiyan
If bad boys with hearts of gold and quiet girls who are filled with rage are your thing, you’ll swoon for Counting Down With You. While Karina Ahmed may not be as outwardly angry as Kat Stratford, she’s just as misunderstood and unhappy with living life by her parents’ rules. And Ace Clyde is just as charming as Patrick Verona, with the similar problem of being labeled bad by everyone else before anyone got to know him. Also like in 10 Things I Hate About You, there’s a fake-dating scheme, but this time, both parties are in on it.
In this sparkling and romantic YA debut, a reserved Bangladeshi-American teenager has twenty-eight days to make the biggest decision of her life after agreeing to fake date her school’s resident bad boy.
How do you make one month last a lifetime?
Karina Ahmed has a plan. Keep her head down, get through high school without a fuss, and follow her parents’ rules—even if it means sacrificing her dreams. When her parents go abroad to Bangladesh for four weeks, Karina expects some peace and quiet. Instead, one simple lie unravels everything.
Karina is my girlfriend.
Tutoring the school’s resident bad boy was already crossing a line. Pretending to date him? Out of the question. But Ace Clyde does everything right—he brings her coffee in the mornings, impresses her friends without trying, and even promises to buy her a dozen books (a week) if she goes along with his fake-dating facade. Though Karina agrees, she can’t help but start counting down the days until her parents come back.
T-minus twenty-eight days until everything returns to normal—but what if Karina no longer wants it to?
Crazy Rich Asians
📚 Read Loveboat, Taipei by Abigail Hing-Wen
If you loved the glitz, glamour and the “fish out of water” trope in Crazy Rich Asians, you’ll be happy to find all the similarities in Loveboat, Taipei. Aspiring dancer Ever Wong gets sent to a strict academic program for the summer in Taiwan when her parents are upset she isn’t focusing on her future as a doctor. But what they don’t know is that the program they’ve sent her to is actually a place where the teens run the show, traipsing around the city and getting tangled in steamy, ill-advised romances. But it’s not all fun and games: there are rivalries brewing and secrets bubbling up under the surface that expose the realities behind everyone’s shiny facades.
“Our cousins have done this program,” Sophie whispers. “Best kept secret. Zero supervision.”
And just like that, Ever Wong’s summer takes an unexpected turn. Gone is Chien Tan, the strict educational program in Taiwan that Ever was expecting. In its place, she finds Loveboat: a summer-long free-for-all where hookups abound, adults turn a blind eye, snake-blood sake flows abundantly, and the nightlife runs nonstop.
But not every student is quite what they seem:
Ever is working toward becoming a doctor but nurses a secret passion for dance.
Rick Woo is the Yale-bound child prodigy bane of Ever’s existence whose perfection hides a secret.
Boy-crazy, fashion-obsessed Sophie Ha turns out to have more to her than meets the eye.
And under sexy Xavier Yeh’s shell is buried a shameful truth he’ll never admit.
When these students’ lives collide, it’s guaranteed to be a summer Ever will never forget.
When Harry Met Sally
📚 Read Reggie & Delilah’s Year of Falling by Elise Bryant
If chance meetings on holidays is the kind of romantic kismet you live for, then you’ll adore Reggie and Delilah’s Year of Falling. While When Harry Met Sally ends with a New Year’s party, Reggie and Delilah’s Year of Falling starts with a New Year’s party, where Delilah is performing with her band and Reggie is instantly captured by her confidence. But that confidence is a facade, and one that Reggie finds himself borrowing to feel more comfortable around Delilah. Meanwhile, Delilah is more impressed at how true to himself Reggie is, and his faux-confidence gives her some real inspiration. The pair run into each other on multiple holidays and as they get to know each other, they start to let some of their walls down and find the strength in themselves that had been hiding away, until they’re no longer faking the confidence anymore.
Delilah always keeps her messy, gooey insides hidden behind a wall of shrugs and yeah, whatevers. She goes with the flow—which is how she ends up singing in her friends’ punk band as a favor, even though she’d prefer to hide at the merch table.
Reggie is a D&D Dungeon Master and self-declared Blerd. He spends his free time leading quests and writing essays critiquing the game under a pseudonym, keeping it all under wraps from his disapproving family.
These two, who have practically nothing in common, meet for the first time on New Year’s Eve. And then again on Valentine’s Day. And then again on St. Patrick’s Day. It’s almost like the universe is pushing them together for a reason.
Delilah wishes she were more like Reggie—open about what she likes and who she is, even if it’s not cool. Except . . . it’s all a front. Reggie is just role-playing someone confident. The kind of guy who could be with a girl like Delilah.
As their holiday meetings continue, the two begin to fall for each other. But what happens once they realize they’ve each fallen for a version of the other that doesn’t really exist?
She’s All That
📚 Read The Upside of Falling by Alex Light
So, obviously the whole “make a bet to makeover the nerdy girl” plotline of this movie was problematic, but the fake dating to real love pipeline between the quiet girl and popular boy was 90s romcom gold. And if that’s your catnip, then you’ll love The Upside of Falling. Becca doesn’t really believe in love, even if she’s a sucker for a good romance novel. And Brett is under pressure from everyone to be perfect, including pressure to be in a relationship. When Becca lies about having a boyfriend and Brett overhears, he decides pretending to date would solve both of their problems. And when Becca and Brett learn that there’s more to each other than they expected, they find it hard to ignore the very real feelings brewing.
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’re forced to answer the question: Is this fake romance the realest thing in either of their lives?
13 Going on 30
📚 Read Seven Percent of Ro Devereux by Ellen O’Clover
If Jenna and Matty’s second chance romance slash best friends to lovers journey in 13 Going on 30 hooked you, you’ll love getting to know Ro and Miller in Seven Percent of Ro Devereux. Another trope the book has in common with 13 Going on 30? The beloved “clueless girl who doesn’t see best friend is in love with her even though it’s totally obvious.” Not to mention, in both stories, the best friends reconnect when the former bestie/current love interest offers to help their former bestie/current crush with a project at their dream job. Sorry to say that Seven Percent of Ro Devereux doesn’t feature a “Thriller” dance scene, though.
Ro Devereux can predict your future. Or, at least, the app she built for her senior project can.
Working with her neighbor, a retired behavioral scientist, Ro created an app called MASH, designed around the classic game Mansion Apartment Shack House, that can predict a person’s future with 93% accuracy. The app will even match users with their soulmates. Though it was only supposed to be a class project, MASH quickly takes off and gains the attention of tech investors.
Ro’s dream is to work in Silicon Valley, and she’ll do anything to prove to her new backing company—and the world—that the app works. So it’s a huge shock when the app says her soulmate is Miller, her childhood best friend with whom she had a friendship-destroying fight three years ago.
Now thrust into a fake dating scenario, Ro and Miller must address the years of pain between them if either of them will have any chance of achieving their dreams. And as the app takes on a life of its own, Ro sees that it’s affecting people in ways she never expected—and if she can’t regain control, it might take her and everything she believes in down with it.
You’ve Got Mail
📚 Read Julieta and the Romeos by Maria E. Andreu
Epistolary romances are unmatched, and the rom-com classic You’ve Got Mail is a perfect example of the fact that it’s even more exciting when the person you’re writing to is anonymous. Julieta and the Romeos follows a similar formula that’s just as enticing.
Julieta isn’t looking for her Romeo—but she is writing about love. When her summer writing teacher encourages the class to publish their work online, the last thing she’s expecting is to get a notification that her rom-com has a mysterious new contributor, Happily Ever Drafter. Julieta knows that happily ever afters aren’t real. (Case in point: her parents’ imploding marriage.) But then again, could this be her very own meet-cute?
As things start to heat up in her fiction, Julieta can’t help but notice three boys in her real life: her best friend’s brother (aka her nemesis), the boy next door (well, to her abuela), and her oldest friend (who is suddenly looking . . . hot?). Could one of them be her mysterious collaborator? But even if Julieta finds her Romeo, she’ll have to remember that life is full of plot twists. . . .
How to Lose A Guy in 10 Days
📚 Read Flip the Script by Lyla Lee
There’s something irresistible about a rom-com featuring two people falling for each other when they’re just supposed to be pretending. It’s this trope that makes the hilarity and tenderness of How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days work so well, and it also works in Lyla Lee’s YA novel Flip the Script.
In this simmering, joyous novel, I’ll Be the One author Lyla Lee delivers a tender romance set between two brave teens who decide that when the script isn’t working, it’s time to rewrite it themselves.
The first rule of watching K-dramas: Never fall in love with the second lead.
As an avid watcher of K-dramas, Hana knows all the tropes to avoid when she finally lands a starring role in a buzzy new drama. And she can totally handle her fake co-star boyfriend, heartthrob Bryan Yoon, who might be falling in love with her. After all, she promised the TV producers a contract romance, and that’s all they’re going to get from her.
But when showrunners bring on a new lead actress to challenge Hana’s role as main love interest—and worse, it’s someone Hana knows all too well—can Hana fight for her position on the show, while falling for her on-screen rival in real life?
Notting Hill
📚 Read XOXO by Axie Oh
Sharing an intimate moment with an international superstar on your home turf unknowingly? Check. Press and outside forces making it hard for a relationship to bloom? Check. Defying the odds and starting a love story together anyway? Check.
Jenny didn’t get to be an award-winning, classically trained cellist without choosing practice over fun. That is, until the night she meets Jaewoo. Mysterious, handsome, and just a little bit tormented, Jaewoo is exactly the kind of distraction Jenny would normally avoid. And yet, she finds herself pulled into spending an unforgettable evening wandering Los Angeles with him on the night before his flight home to South Korea.
With Jaewoo an ocean away, there’s no use in dreaming of what could have been. But when Jenny and her mother move to Seoul to take care of her ailing grandmother, who does she meet at the elite arts academy she’s just been accepted to? Jaewoo.
Finding the dreamy stranger who swept you off your feet in your homeroom is one thing, but Jaewoo isn’t just any student. Turns out, Jaewoo is a member of one of the biggest K-pop bands in the world. And like most K-pop idols, Jaewoo is strictly forbidden from dating anyone.
When a relationship means not only jeopardizing her place at her dream music school but also endangering everything Jaewoo’s worked for, Jenny has to decide once and for all just how much she’s willing to risk for love. XOXO is a new romance that proves chasing your dreams doesn’t have to mean sacrificing your heart, from acclaimed author Axie Oh.
Palm Springs
📚 Read See You Yesterday by Rachel Lynn Solomon
If you were a fan of the quirky time-loop rom-com that is Palm Springs, you’d love Rachel Lynn Solomon’s See You Yesterday, a YA time-loop rom-com. In See You Yesterday, Barrett Bloom is forced to relive her disastrous first day of college over and over. She opens up about her experience to Miles, the guy in her Physics class who keeps picking on her, and learns that he’s in the time loop too. And just like Nyles in Palm Springs, Miles has been trapped for months, actually. Miles and Barrett find themselves going on wild adventures, living out random fantasies: some as simple as speaking their mind without consequences and some larger-than-life and romantic. But when the time loop comes to an end, will they still want to spend all their time together?
Barrett Bloom is hoping college will be a fresh start after a messy high school experience. But when school begins on September 21st, everything goes wrong. She’s humiliated by the know-it-all in her physics class, she botches her interview for the college paper, and at a party that night, she accidentally sets a frat on fire. She panics and flees, and when she realizes her roommate locked her out of their dorm, she falls asleep in the common room.
The next morning, Barrett’s perplexed to find herself back in her dorm room bed, no longer smelling of ashes and crushed dreams. It’s September 21st. Again. And after a confrontation with Miles, the guy from Physics 101, she learns she’s not alone—he’s been trapped for months.
When her attempts to fix her timeline fail, she agrees to work with Miles to find a way out. Soon they’re exploring the mysterious underbelly of the university and going on wild, romantic adventures. As they start falling for each other, they face the universe’s biggest unanswered question yet: what happens to their relationship if they finally make it to tomorrow?
Love, Simon
📚 Read Imogen, Obviously by Becky Albertalli
Maybe an obvious one, since Love, Simon was based on a Becky Albertalli book, but Imogen, Obviously is a great read for those who loved all the big feelings of Simon. Spoiler: there’s no blackmail in this one. If you loved or related to Simon’s struggle to be confident in his identity and share it with everyone on his own terms, you’ll appreciate Imogen’s perspective.
Imogen Scott may be hopelessly heterosexual, but she’s got the World’s Greatest Ally title locked down.
She’s never missed a Pride Alliance meeting. She knows more about queer media discourse than her very queer little sister. She even has two queer best friends. There’s Gretchen, a fellow high school senior, who helps keep Imogen’s biases in check. And then there’s Lili—newly out and newly thriving with a cool new squad of queer college friends.
Imogen’s thrilled for Lili. Any ally would be. And now that she’s finally visiting Lili on campus, she’s bringing her ally A game. Any support Lili needs, Imogen’s all in.
Even if that means bending the truth, just a little.
Like when Lili drops a tiny queer bombshell: she’s told all her college friends that Imogen and Lili used to date. And none of them know that Imogen is a raging hetero—not even Lili’s best friend, Tessa.
Of course, the more time Imogen spends with chaotic, freckle-faced Tessa, the more she starts to wonder if her truth was ever all that straight to begin with. . .
Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist
📚 Read That Wasn’t In The Script by Sarah Ainslee
If you fell for the crazy night out in New York City vibe of Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, you’ll love the similar vibe in That Wasn’t In The Script.
Just like in Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, the romance that unfolds in That Wasn’t In The Script is a whirlwind, taking place over 24 hours in New York City where Josie and teen heartthrob Rowan Adler get into misadventures while they get to know each other and unlock different sides of themselves they’d been hiding away. Josie’s night takes an unexpected turn when she finds a boy asleep at her job at a fast-food restaurant. It gets even weirder when that boy turns out to be the star of the biggest teen drama series. The events that follow on a Halloween night in NYC are the kinds of things that would only happen in the greatest city in the world.
Josie Bradford feels stuck.
After being moved against her will to New York City and losing her father in the span of a year, the aspiring screenwriter dreams of escaping back to small-town Ohio where she can attend college and go back to some version of normal-if only she could afford it.
Enter Hollywood teen heartthrob Rowan Adler, an overnight celebrity thanks to the viral streaming sensation in which he stars. Ever-reckless Rowan is bored, sheltered, and desperate to escape the limelight.
The lives of the two teenagers collide one fateful autumn night when Josie finds an escaped Rowan asleep in the middle of the greasy burger shack where she works, leading her to wonder: How much would this exclusive sell for?
What follows is an absurd, heartfelt, romantic twenty-four-hour descent into chaos. The unlikely pair slowly learn what it means to embrace the plot twists life throws their way and how sometimes, getting lost is the only way to find out what you really want.
The Half of It
📚 Read Frankly In Love by David Yoon
Just like in The Half of It, where the fake love letters Ellie Chu writes for her friend Paul to send to his crush, Aster, result in real feelings that Ellie can’t ignore. And when Aster discovers who she’s really been speaking to this whole time, she can’t deny her feelings, either.
High school senior Frank Li is a Limbo—his term for Korean-American kids who find themselves caught between their parents’ traditional expectations and their own Southern California upbringing.
His parents have one rule when it comes to romance—“Date Korean”—which proves complicated when Frank falls for Brit Means, who is smart, beautiful—and white. Fellow Limbo Joy Song is in a similar predicament, and so they make a pact: they’ll pretend to date each other in order to gain their freedom.
Frank thinks it’s the perfect plan, but in the end, Frank and Joy’s fake-dating maneuver leaves him wondering if he ever really understood love—or himself—at all.
Never Been Kissed
📚 Read Clique Bait by Ann Valett
If you’re in the mood for a story where a former wallflower goes undercover at a high school and molds themself to fit in with the popular girls, Clique Bait is the read for you. Like in Never Been Kissed, there’s a forbidden romance that threatens to reveal the undercover character’s real identity, except in this book, it’s with a student, not a teacher (thank God).
Pretty Little Liars meets Burn for Burn in this thrilling debut from Wattpad star Ann Valett.
Chloe Whittaker is out for revenge.
Last year her best friend Monica’s life was unceremoniously ruined by the most popular students at their high school, so this year Chloe plans to take each and every one of them down. She’s traded in her jeans and T-shirts for the latest designer clothes, erased anything on social media that would tie her to Monica (and blow her cover), and carefully figured out how she will befriend the members of the clique, find out their deepest and darkest secrets, and reveal them to the world.
Chloe has the perfect plan . . . but there’s one thing she didn’t prepare for. And that’s falling for someone she’s determined to destroy. The closer she gets to uncovering the secrets the in-crowd is determined to cover up, the more she realizes that she is going to have to choose between betraying her oldest friend or the boy who’s captured her heart