Books like Cemetery Boys

A contemporary YA narrated by a Black trans teen navigating identity and first love — emotionally resonant and hopeful in register.

A tender continuation following Ari and Dante through senior year as first love deepens against the weight of sudden loss.

A warm, funny, and quietly emotional university-set coming-of-age about discovering asexuality and aromanticism — the romance-plot machinery is repurposed into a friendship-and-sel

A lyrical, intimate journey through girlhood told in interconnected vignettes — each moment crystalline and small, but accumulated into a portrait of resilience and yearning.

A tender, self-deprecating first-person coming-of-age set against a first trip to Iran, where a new friendship gently cracks open questions of identity, depression, and belonging.

A multi-thread ensemble adventure that scatters its crew across a widening rescue plot, braiding a shy hacker's first taste of freedom with a looming royal wedding and rebellion.

A wish-fulfillment boarding-school romance set in Paris, built on a year of romantic near-misses and the slow ache of a crush that can't quite land.

The darkest and most emotionally layered of the early series, trading pure adventure for a mystery about betrayal, memory, and identity — propulsive plotting builds to a time-twist

A quick, tender YA romance told through diary snippets, texts, charts, and doodles that make a claustrophobic premise feel airy and playful.

A brisk desert-chase adventure in Narnia's southern reaches, told in Lewis's warm, plain-spoken narrator voice — a runaway boy and a proud talking horse racing to warn of invasion.