Here are 100 books that We Got the Beat fans have personally recommended if you like
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Growing up as a fat kid, I hardly ever saw myself reflected in the media I consumed. If I did, it was by someone relegated to the side character status as the funny fat friend or the cautionary tale. Now, it’s my great joy to spread the word about books that put fat people in the spotlight—living our best lives, falling in love, and just having our much-deserved Main Character Moments.
You didn’t think I could make this list without including the queen of fat-positive YA, did you? Puddin’ is my absolute favorite Julie Murphy book, and it’s down to how much I adore the main character, Millie Michalchuk. She’s unapologetically dorky and genuine with her kitty sweatshirts and news anchor aspirations, and she reminds me very much of Teen Me.
Her story touches on fat trauma (a diet culture mom, a history at fat camps) but focuses on fat joy, which hit home because girl, same. And her friendship with POV-sharing Callie Reyes is a delight. This is the one I come back to when I need a hug in book shape.
The irresistible companion to the #1 New York Times bestseller Dumplin', now a Netflix feature film starring Danielle Macdonald and Jennifer Aniston, and a soundtrack by Dolly Parton!
Millie Michalchuk has gone to fat camp every year since she was a little girl. Not this year. This year she has new plans to chase her secret dream of being a newscaster-and to kiss the boy she's crushing on.
Callie Reyes is the pretty girl who is next in line for dance team captain and has the popular boyfriend. But when it comes to other girls, she's more frenemy than friend.…
Twelve-year-old identical twins Ellie and Kat accidentally trigger their physicist mom’s unfinished time machine, launching themselves into a high-stakes adventure in 1970 Chicago. If they learn how to join forces and keep time travel out of the wrong hands, they might be able find a way home. Ellie’s gymnastics and…
Growing up as a fat kid, I hardly ever saw myself reflected in the media I consumed. If I did, it was by someone relegated to the side character status as the funny fat friend or the cautionary tale. Now, it’s my great joy to spread the word about books that put fat people in the spotlight—living our best lives, falling in love, and just having our much-deserved Main Character Moments.
I love this book because, in true Crystal Maldonado fashion, it’s funny and heartfelt and full of immaculate vibes AND tackles big topics like fatphobia and living with chronic illness in frank, relatable ways.
Whit leaps off the page and felt instantly recognizable to me as a fat person who has been there. And then there’s the absolutely swoony romance—I was hooked right away!
Could you plan the Fall Formal with your (hot) nemesis? Whit Rivera is about to find out.
Frenemies Whit and Zay have been at odds for years (ever since he broke up with her in, like, the most embarrassing way imaginable), so when they’re forced to organize the fall formal together, it's a literal disaster. Sparks fly as Whitney—type-A, passionate, a perfectionist, and a certified sweater-weather fanatic—butts heads with Zay, a dry, relaxed skater boy who takes everything in stride. But not all of those sparks are bad. . . .
Has their feud been a big misunderstanding all along?…
Growing up as a fat kid, I hardly ever saw myself reflected in the media I consumed. If I did, it was by someone relegated to the side character status as the funny fat friend or the cautionary tale. Now, it’s my great joy to spread the word about books that put fat people in the spotlight—living our best lives, falling in love, and just having our much-deserved Main Character Moments.
I’m an author by day, but by night, I’m a library worker, and as a library worker, I absolutely love a good anthology. They’re the perfect place to try a lot of authors on for size and find your next fave, and Every Body Shine has some gems on offer. I found two of my new favorite fat authors, Sheena Boekweg and Kelly deVos, thanks to this anthology.
I love how easy this book is to pick up and put down—nice little one-sitting packages of fat girls (and folks of all genders!) being fantastic for any genre or mood craving I have.
An intersectional, feminist YA anthology from some of today's most exciting voices across a span of genres, all celebrating body diversity and fat acceptance through short stories.
A Junior Library Guild Selection
Fat girls and boys and nonbinary teens are: friends who lift each other up, heroes who rescue themselves, big bodies in space, intellects taking up space, and bodies looking and feeling beautiful. They express themselves through fashion, sports and other physical pursuits, through food, and music, and art. They are flirting and falling in love. They are loving to themselves and one another. With stories that feature fat…
Twelve-year-old identical twins Ellie and Kat accidentally trigger their physicist mom’s unfinished time machine, launching themselves into a high-stakes adventure in 1970 Chicago. If they learn how to join forces and keep time travel out of the wrong hands, they might be able find a way home. Ellie’s gymnastics and…
Growing up as a fat kid, I hardly ever saw myself reflected in the media I consumed. If I did, it was by someone relegated to the side character status as the funny fat friend or the cautionary tale. Now, it’s my great joy to spread the word about books that put fat people in the spotlight—living our best lives, falling in love, and just having our much-deserved Main Character Moments.
If some of my favorite tropes—forced proximity, grump/sunshine, and academic rivals—got together and took a doomed survival trek in the woods, it would be this book. This romance is full of swoon and laugh-out-loud moments, but also rich emotional depth and OCD representation.
I came for the witty banter and stayed for the absolutely charming warm fuzzies. (As a bonus, Talia Hibbert has wonderful fat-focused adult romances, too. Double win!)
From the bestselling author of the Brown Sisters trilogy, comes a laugh-out-loud YA novel about a quirky content creator and a clean-cut athlete testing their abilities to survive the great outdoors - and each other.
RIVALRY OR ROMANCE? These archenemies can't decide!
BRADLEY GRAEME is pretty much perfect: he's a star football player, manages his OCD well (enough) and comes out on top in all his classes . . . except the ones he shares with his ex-best friend, Celine.
CELINE BANGURA is conspiracy-theory-obsessed. Social media followers eat up her takes on everything from UFOs to…
My newest YA novel, Home Field Advantage, is your typical cliché sports romance between a high school quarterback and aspiring cheer captain…except that they’re both girls. Sports is such a fascinating setting for queer YA to me, because it adds a whole extra social dynamic of being teammates and how that can work for or against you, depending on the culture and who you are. It’s also a great venue for subversion of gender norms, which is always welcome to me! And in general, I really just love protagonists who are really passionate about what they do. If they happen to be queer as well, that’s just a nice bonus!
She Drives Me Crazy does a fantastic job mashing up two of the greatest tropes—enemies-to-lovers and fake dating—and combining them with a spin on the classic sports romance genre by having both basketball player Scottie and cheerleader Irene be girls. It’s not all fun and games—Scottie is nursing a breakup in a painfully relatable fashion—but it is a lot of fun and games, and Quindlen definitely knows how to write romance, too.
“A little sweet, a little sharp.” —Booklist, starred review
High school nemeses fall in love in Kelly Quindlen's She Drives Me Crazy, a queer YA rom com perfect for fans of Becky Albertalli and Casey McQuiston.
After an embarrassing loss to her ex-girlfriend in their first basketball game of the season, seventeen-year-old Scottie Zajac gets into a fender bender with the worst possible person: her nemesis, Irene Abraham, head cheerleader for the Fighting Reindeer.
Irene is as mean as she is beautiful, so Scottie makes a point to keep her distance. When the accident sends Irene’s car to the shop…
I love writing stories for young people in that “in-between” age: age 12, 13, and 14, when kids are figuring out who they are and who they want to become. For many young people, crushes are a huge part of this coming-of-age process—I know they were for me! When I was this age, there weren’t many books that explored crushes and the first romance for LGBTQ+ kids. I’m thrilled to be part of a wave of authors writing these stories now. And I’m so excited for a future where we have a wealth of books about the joy, heartbreak, and humor of all kinds of young love.
I absolutely love this fast-paced, adorable novel-in-verse, which is about two very different girls, Kate and Tam, who fall in “like,” learning a lot about themselves in the process. I really enjoyed watching Kate, who comes off as a stereotypical cheerleader, and Tam, a tall jock, learn to test their assumptions about each other and themselves.
It’s a heartwarming story with a lot of depth, and it’s told in quick poems that pack a real emotional punch. This verse novel holds a special place in my heart, and I recommend it to everyone who will listen!
2020 Odyssey Honor Award
2020 Rainbow Booklist Title
NCTE 2020 Notable Poetry Book
ALSC Notable Children's Recordings
Kate and Tam meet, and both of their worlds tip sideways. At first, Tam figures Kate is your stereotypical cheerleader; Kate sees Tam as another tall jock. And the more they keep running into each other, the more they surprise each other. Beneath Kate's sleek ponytail and perfect facade, Tam sees a goofy, sensitive, lonely girl. And Tam's so much more than a volleyball player, Kate realizes: She's everything Kate wishes she could be. It's complicated. Except it's not. When Kate and Tam…
I’ve long been intrigued by what makes a woman a hero in her own life. My three novels feature characters who are not obvious heroes—they are trying to shed a difficult past, they may run towards risky second chances, and they eventually stand up to their history and heal it and themselves. A lot of my inspiration for my stories comes from my mother, who was a pilot in World War II. I grew up with the legacy of women as heroic; it fostered an intense curiosity about female ambition and morality, women who would risk personal freedom and safety to find something greater than they expected.
After some challenges with reading the dialect, I became so intrigued by this heart-wrenching story of two teenage girls, one Trinidadian and one African-American, who come together unexpectedly in cold Minneapolis. I loved learning about their cultures, and I loved how they grew close despite their differences and supported each other through the crises of lost family and childhood cancer.
The language and pace beguiled me as a reader. The girls' viewpoints of their past and present worlds were engaging. I felt the heroism in each of them, one facing death, one trying to reunite with her family.
Told in two distinct and irresistible voices, Junauda Petrus's bold and lyrical debut is the story of two black girls from very different backgrounds finding love and happiness in a world that seems determined to deny them both.
Port of Spain, Trinidad. Sixteen-year-old Audre is despondent, having just found out she's going to be sent to live in America with her father because her strictly religious mother caught her with her secret girlfriend, the pastor's daughter. Audre's grandmother Queenie (a former dancer who drives a white convertible Cadillac and who has a few secrets…
While The Hills of Estrella Roja is my YA debut, I’ve been a big fan of YA graphic novels for years. I think YA is such fertile ground for great storytelling, because of how intense things can feel at that age, you’re on the cusp of adulthood, figuring out what type of person you are/want to be and where you fit in the world. Then throw in queerness, which adds a whole other layer to the experience. As a queer cartoonist creating work for young people (and everyone, really!) during this distressing era of book bans, creating and supporting authentic and diverse queer stories feels more important than ever.
Elle’s had a crush on her elusive classmate Madeline for ages, and when she runs into her at the party she and her bestie crash, she’s ecstatic to finally get the chance to chat Madeline up. Unfortunately, she drinks too much and ends up back at her apartment the next morning with a bad hangover and a bag full of stolen expensive trinkets.
Somehow this accidental theft ends up bringing her and Madeline, who has quite a few secrets of her own, closer together. Reverse heist hijinks, going to too many parties, smooching, and self-discovery ensue.
Lucie Bryon’s art is expressive and lively, and the characters feel like real teens—big crushes, bad decisions, and all.
1
author picked
Thieves
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
This book is for kids age
16, and
17.
What is this book about?
What happened last night? Ella can't seem to remember a single thing from the party the night before at a mysterious stranger's mansion, and she sure as heck doesn't know why she's woken up in her bed surrounded by a magpie's nest of objects that aren't her own. And she can't stop thinking about her huge crush on Madeleine, who she definitely can't tell about her sudden penchant for kleptomania. But does Maddy have secrets of her own? Can they piece together that night between them and fix the mess of their chaotic personal lives in time to form a…
I’m passionate about young adult sapphic romance books because this is something I wished I would have read in high school. If I had novels similar to these when I was growing up I might have realized that I identify as queer sooner and it could have helped me understand more about myself. Because of this, I’ve been an avid reader, and writer, of sapphic young adult romances. If it’s sapphic, send it my way. I hope you enjoy these sapphic novels as much as I have!
She Gets the Girl was such a cute sapphic romance, the kind of romance I wished I had experienced when I was younger.
I enjoyed that it was set freshman year of college, rather than high school like most young adult books, and the very distinct personalities of both main characters. It was a really fun read and I honestly wish it didn’t have to end. I also can totally see this being made into a movie.
Read the instant New York Times bestseller and TikTok sensation -- THE new swoon-worthy hate-to-love rom com from #1 New York Times bestselling co-author of Five Feet Apart Rachael Lippincott and debut writer Alyson Derrick. The perfect summer read for fans of Adam Silvera, Casey McQuiston, Becky Albertalli and Alice Oseman's HEARTSTOPPER series!
Alex and Molly are two girls who don't belong on the same planet, let alone the same college campus . . .
Alex Blackwood is a little bit headstrong, with a dash of chaos and a whole lot of flirt. She knows how to get the girl.…
I love reading about queer history: It’s the story of a diverse, courageous, and creative community, and it’s filled with inspiring actions and fascinating people. It’s also a history I had to seek out for myself because it was never taught at school—and although there has been progress since I came out as queer three decades ago, this is still true for most teens today. Over the last few years, I have written LGBTQIA+ books for all ages, and spoken to thousands of students. The books on this list explore queer history in ways that I think many teens will find highly enjoyable as well as informative.
This historical novel also explores the lives of lesbians in the 1950s, but in a very different way: it is told in dual narratives, from the point of view of two teen girls growing up and coming out six decades apart. In 1955, eighteen-year-old Janet finds a series of books about women who love other women: lesbian pulp novels. Sixty-two years later, Abby is studying classic 1950s lesbian pulp fiction. It’s a cleverly constructed story and I love how the two stories are woven together.
From a queer history perspective, the book is well-researched and illuminates the danger and fear faced by so many queer people during the Lavender Scare, and the important role played by lesbian pulp novels in a time when young queer girls rarely saw others like themselves.
1
author picked
Pulp
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
This book is for kids age
13,
14,
15, and
16.
What is this book about?
From the award-winning author Robin Talley comes an inspiring new novel about the power of love to fight prejudice and hate.
Two women connected across generations through the power of words.
In 1955 eighteen-year-old Janet Jones must keep the love she shares with her best friend a secret. As in the age of McCarthyism to be gay is to sin. But when Janet discovers a series of books about women falling in love with other women, it awakens something in her. As she juggles a romance she must keep hidden and a new-found ambition to write and publish her own…
