YA Contemporaries That Will Give You Butterflies
You know that feeling when your crush walks into the room? Or when you’re about to do a big class presentation, but you know you’re going to kill it, because you’ve been practicing all week? Or when you accidently make eye contact with the cute check-out person for a bit too long and your hands *lightly skim* when they pass you your bag?
EEEEE!!! It’s called BUTTERFLIES people! I LIVE FOR THIS FEELING, and if I could bottle and sell it, I’d be a bazillionaire. Unfortunately, I am not a mad emotional scientist, but reading the books on this list creates a butterfly sensation that’s PRETTY DANG CLOSE. You’ll get so many butterflies you may just float away.
I know it’s hard out there, friends. Growing up is hard. Relationships are hard. The modern world is HARD! But I promise you this: a lifetime of butterflies is ahead of you. And you deserve them ALL!!!! Happy reading!
Audre & Bash Are Just Friends
by Tia Williams
OMG. This book gave me ALL THE FEELINGS, you guys. Don’t mind me, I’ll just be sitting here waiting for my own Bash Henry to show up and take me on a rollercoaster romance. THANK YOU TIA WILLIAMS. Mark your calendars for May 6th, everyone. This message is approved by the Hopeless Romantics SocietyÔ. That is all.
MEET AUDRE. Junior class president. Debate team captain. Unofficial student therapist. Desperately in need of a good time.
MEET BASH. Mysterious new senior. Everybody’s crush. Tall, floppy, great taste in jewelry. King of having a good time.
It’s the last day of school at Cheshire Prep, Brooklyn’s elite academy—and Audre Mercy-Moore’s life is a mess. Her dad cancelled her annual summer visit to his Malibu beach house. Now? She’s stuck in a claustrophobic apartment with her mom, stepdad, and one-year-old sister (aka the Goblin Baby).
Under these conditions, she’ll never finish writing her self-help book—ie, the key to winning over Stanford’s admissions board.
Cut to Bash Henry! Audre hires him to be her “fun consultant.” His job? To help her complete the Experience Challenge—her list of five wild dares designed to give her juicy book material. She’ll get inspo; he’ll get paid. Everybody wins.
He isn’t boyfriend material. And she’s not looking for one. Can they stay professional despite their obvious connection?
Fun fact: Audre Mercy-Moore first appeared in the New York Times bestseller Seven Days in June and now stars in her own story!
Emmett
by L. C. Rosen
Not only will this book give you butterflies, but your sides will also hurt from laughing. I absolutely FLEW through this hilarious and heart-felt book! GIVE ME MOREEE!!!!
Emmett Woodhouse, handsome, clever and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence and had lived nearly eighteen years in the world with very little to distress or vex him.
Emmett knows he’s blessed. And because of that, he tries to give back: from charity work to letting the often irritating Georgia sit at his table at lunch, he knows it’s important to be nice. And recently, he’s found a new way of giving back: matchmaking. He set up his best friend Taylor with her new boyfriend and it’s gone perfectly. So when his occasional friend-with-benefits Harrison starts saying he wants a boyfriend (something Emmett definitely does NOT want to be), he decides to try and find Harrison the perfect man at Highbury Academy.
Emmett’s childhood friend, Miles, thinks finding a boyfriend for a guy you sleep with is a bad idea. But Miles is straight, and Emmett says this is gay life – your friends, your lovers, your boyfriends – they all come from the same very small pool. That’s why Emmett doesn’t date – to keep things clean. He knows the human brain isn’t done developing until twenty-five, so any relationship he enters into before then would inevitably end in a breakup, in loss. And he’s seen what loss can do. His mother died four years ago and his Dad hasn’t been the same since.
But the lines Emmett tries to draw are more porous than he thinks, and as he tries to find Harrison the perfect match, he learns that gifted as he may be, maybe he has no idea what he’s doing when it comes to love.
Modern and very gay, with a charmingly conceited lead who is convinced he knows it all, and the occasional reference to the classic movie Clueless, Emmett brings you lush romance all while exploring the complexities of queer culture—where your lovers and friends are sometimes the same person, but the person you fall in love with might be a total surprise.
Dropping Beats
You name a variety of butterfly, and this book provides it. Performance anxiety butterflies, first love flutters, embarrassment, redemption, victory, and just… pure sweetness. It all kicks off with a livestream gone TERRIBLY (but hilariously) awry… EEEEE! This is one of my favorite books of 2025! GROWLS FOREVER!
Thirteen-year-old Growls (aka Shaun) is an aspiring (awful) rapper who hopes to enter this year’s Raptology competition with his best friend, Shanks (aka Zachariah). After all, what better way to land his crush (Tanisha) and get the respect he finally deserves than winning the contest and going viral?
But when a livestream practice goes epically wrong, the two friends do go viral– and not in the way they’d hoped.
Now the laughingstock of the school, Growls is sure he’ll never have another chance to date Tanisha. Even worse, Shanks has gone MIA, leaving him terribly alone.
But when Growls meets the new girl on the block (Siobhan), things don’t seem so terrible after all. And with some patience, a little luck, and a whole lot of practice, he just might win the Raptology competition and be a hero to both Siobhan and Shanks.
Either way, he’s ready for this. He’s steady for this. It’s comeback season and they call him comeback king for a reason.
6 Times We Almost Kissed (And One Time We Did)
by Tess Sharpe
Slow burn, enemies-to-lovers… 6 ALMOST kisses?!?! Can you imagine?!!? The TORTURE! The YEARNING!!! The will they, won’t they?!!? How can a book make you feel like you’re plunging into ice-cold water, FULLY AWAKE, yet cozy and comfortable at the same time??? Tess Sharpe is a sorceress.
After years of bickering, Penny and Tate have called a truce: they’ll play nice. They have to. Their mothers (life-long best friends) need them to be perfect, drama-free daughters when Penny’s mother becomes a living liver donor to Tate’s mom. Forced to live together as their moms recover, the girls’ truce is essential in keeping everything—their jobs, the house, the finances, the Moms’ healing—running smoothly. They’ve got to let this thing between them go.
There’s one little hitch: Penny and Tate keep almost kissing.
It’s just this confusing thing that keeps happening. You know, from time to time. For basically their entire teenaged existence.
They’ve never talked about it. They’ve always ignored it in the aftermath. But now they’re living across the hall from each other.
And some things—like their kisses—can’t be almosts forever.
Told through the two girls’ present, and six moments from their past, this dynamic love story shows that sometimes the person you need the most has been there for you all along.
Heartbreak Symphony
Sharing your favorite songs with your crush… is there any better way to get butterflies?? It’s a huge moment of truth. Queue up your most romantic playlist, grab a cozy blanket and tissues, and buckle UP. Mia and Aarón are about to serenade you, Adele-style.
Aarón Medrano has been haunted by the onstage persona of his favorite DJ ever since his mother passed away. He seems to know all of Aarón’s deepest fears, like how his brain doesn’t work the way it should and that’s why his brother and father seem to be pushing him away. He thinks his ticket out is a scholarship to the prestigious Acadia School of Music. That is, if he can avoid blowing his audition.
Mia Villanueva has a haunting of her own and it’s the only family heirloom her parents left her: doubt. It’s the reason she can’t overcome her stage fright or believe that her music is worth making. Even though her trumpet teacher tells her she has a gift, she’s not sure if she’ll ever figure out how to use it or if she’s even deserving of it in the first place.
When Aarón and Mia cross paths, Aarón sees a chance to get close to the girl he’s had a crush on for years and to finally feel connected to someone since losing his mother. Mia sees a chance to hold herself accountable by making them both face their fears, and hopefully make their dreams come true. But soon they’ll realize there’s something much scarier than getting up on stage—falling in love with a broken heart.
The Singular Life of Aria Patel
by Samira Ahmed
As the eldest daughter, I see a LOT of myself in Aria Patel. She likes order. Comfortability. A bit of an over-achiever. No time to get bogged down in romance, for Pete’s sake. But alas, love always seems to find a way, people… even if it must go to multiverse proportions!
Aria Patel likes stability, certainty, predictability. It’s why she’s so into science. It’s why she dumped her boyfriend before they went to different colleges because the odds were that something would go wrong, eventually. In a life that’s already so chaotic, why obsess over complicated relationships and shadowy unknowns when the scientific method gives you direction and a straight path to avoid all the drama.
But there’s no avoiding anything when Aria finds herself suddenly falling through parallel universes and there’s no formula that can save her. She can’t explain why she’s been waking up in a new reality almost every day, or why Rohan, and a poem from her English class, seem to be following her through every new life.
As Aria desperately attempts to find a way home, she eventually ends up stuck in a parallel world very similar to her own. She cherishes this new version of her family, and she finds herself unable to deny the yearning she has for Rohan…but it’s not her life or her Rohan. It belongs to another Aria, another girl, and unless Aria can get back home, she’ll have taken this happiness away from someone else forever. And she may never find her own.
This whirlwind novel from New York Times bestselling author Samira Ahmed will whisk you through worlds unknown, all while putting a multiverse spin on one of BookTok’s favorite tropes: second chance romance.
Love Times Infinity
by Lane Clarke
Butterflies are a feeling of hope. Of excitement for the future. Sometimes, when you’ve been through a lot in your life, you may think that you won’t ever feel that again. You might think you aren’t worthy of that. But you 1000% are!! That’s why this book is one of my all-time favorites. A heavy, real, and lovely read.
High school junior Michie is struggling to define who she is for her scholarship essays, her big shot at making it into Brown as a first-generation college student. The prompts would be hard for anyone, but Michie’s been estranged from her mother since she was seven and her concept of family has long felt murky.
Enter new kid and basketball superstar Derek de la Rosa. He is very cute, very talented, and very much has his eye on Michie, no matter how invisible she believes herself to be.
When Michie’s mother unexpectedly reaches out to make amends, and with her scholarship deadlines looming, Michie must choose whether to reopen old wounds or close the door on her past. And as she spends more time with Derek, she’ll have to decide how much of her heart she is willing to share. Because while Michie may not know who she is, she’s starting to realize who she wants to become, if only she can take a chance on Derek, on herself, and on her future.
Lovesick Falls
by Julia Drake
I’m going to leave you with this book, publishing in June 2025—add to your Goodreads NOW! I was absolutely SWOONING through its entirety. Queer hearts, rejoice. AHHHH! I LOVE LOVE, OKAY. There, I said it. ARE YOU HAPPY NOW!!!
Celia Gilbert is the perfect friend—loyal, trustworthy, and committed to mending her best friends’ broken hearts.
She’s the reason the trio is spending the summer in Lovesick Falls, the idyllic little town where Touchstone’s sort-of-uncle’s cabin was waiting to be house-sat by three unsupervised (but totally responsible) teenagers.
After all, Celia, Ros, and Touchstone have been best friends since childhood. Sure, Celia is in love with Ros, and Touchstone was once in love with Celia — but that’s the beauty of a place like Lovesick Falls. If you fell in love, you could fall out.
Unless you can change the other person’s mind.
They started the summer closer than ever. Will living together tear them apart?