Top 10 Books to Read If You Liked To All the Boys I've Loved Before

If one of the reasons you loved “To All the Boys I've Loved Before” was the welcome modernity of having an Asian-American main character, then we’d highly recommend checking out one of Maurene Goo’s books. “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” shares something else with Jenny Han’s novel: the main characters in both are teenage girls who turn to fiction for inspiration on how to deal with their real life crushes. The highly-competent yet romantically-awkward Desi Lee decides to learn from Korean TV dramas how to confidently interact with the hot boy object of her desire. Of course though, sometimes reality is stranger than fiction.

Was one of your favorite things about TATBILB seeing a character fall super-hard for their crush? Yeah, us too. So we can say that this modern YA romance might just be perfect for you to enjoy as well. This LGBTQ love story is set in, yes, LA and focuses on Abby Ives, a teen fashionista with a plus-size style blog who just so happens to fall for the girl, Jordi, she is interning with at a boutique. They’re both competing for the same dream job, so she struggles with reconciling her romantic feelings with her drive for success. (not to mention her drive to track down the most excellent hamburgers in town).

If the theme of lost letters bringing people together is what intrigued you about “To All the Boys”, this pick by the author of “The Disenchantments” could be your next perfect read. “Everything Leads to You” is also ann LGBTQ love story, and it’s also set in Los Angeles. Talk about coincidences! Emi Price is working in Hollywood in set design even though she’s still only 18 years old. At an estate sale, she discovers a letter from an old film star and decides to learn more about the story behind it. On her way, she meets a younh woman, Ava, who changes everything for her.

If what you crave is a classic romantic comedy novel (and who doesn’t?) then look no further than Stephanie Perkins’s debut, “Anna and the French Kiss,” which spawned several sequels. The titular high schooler Anna Oliphant is forced to go to boarding school in Paris by her father, but she desperately doesn’t want to leave her life in Atlanta behind. But when she meets a serious cutie named Étienne St. Clair, who lives in her dorm, she starts to question whether Paris might not be so bad after all. Just like TATBILB, this one features misinterpreted signals and romantic confusion before the main couple can work things out.

You’ve very likely heard about the movie “Love, Simon”, but did you know it was based on a beloved teen novel? Becky Albertalli’s story shares some similarities with “To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before” not just because both became YA sensations, but because it revolves around love letters going public that were always meant to remain private. In this novel, lead character Simon Spier is gay, and is under threat to be outed by a classmate after his romantic online conversations with an anonymous crush fall into the wrong hands. But don’t worry, it all ends well!

The theme of letter-writing definitely carries through in Maureen Johnson’s novel, “13 Little Blue Envelopes”. Ginny Blackstone’s mysteriously cool aunt, known as Runaway Aunt Peg, has recently passed away, and left over a dozen instructions-stuffed envelopes for Ginny to open sequentially on an international scavenger hunt of sorts across Europe. Ginny has to follow the directives left for her in the notes, which include strict limitations on how she can travel, which take her faaaar out of her comfort zone to new adventures. There’s a pretty adorable love story here as well, so you certainly won’t be missing that YA romance.

Has any YA romance received more positive press in recent years than this one? “Eleanor & Park”, set in Nebraska during the ‘80s, carries a heavier tone overall than TATBILB, but similarly brings together two people, who initially seemingly aren’t at all meant to be together. Eleanor is a smart and eccentric teenager coping with an abusive household while Park is a half-Korean teen who is worried about living up to his father’s macho expectations of him. Both are social outcasts, and the relationship they build together is nuanced and very real.

Perhaps the hottest YA release of 2018 has been compared to “To All the Boys I've Loved Before” and for good reason. “Emergency Contact” is a distinctly modern and topical romantic story about two characters, Penny (who, like Park in our previous entry is half-Korean) and Sam, who communicate by text because they’re more comfortable doing that than dealing with the awkwardness of real-life in=person interactions. Your heart will be racing alongside theirs as you get swept along on this whirlwind romance that is deeply rooted in the tech-saturated reality that young people inhabit today.

This may seem somewhat obvious, but not everyone realizes that “To All the Boys I've Loved Before” actually has two sequels! So if you’re desperate to find out what happened between Peter Kavinsky and Lara Jean Song Covey after the “happily ever after” at the end of the movie, there’s plenty more story for you to enjoy! Netflix hasn’t officially ordered a movie sequel yet (but you know they will), so you can know what happens long before it airs! Not only that, Jenny Han also has a lot of other great YA books like “The Summer I Turned Pretty” trilogy.