I Read Banned Books

YA novels are made up of books for a wide age range (12-18 years old) and includes a variety of different topics and interests. Not all titles will be appropriate for all readers*

Showing 1 - 20 of 20  There are a total of 55 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "All American boys"
Star rating for All American boys
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
When sixteen-year-old Rashad is mistakenly accused of stealing, classmate Quinn witnesses his brutal beating at the hands of a police officer who happens to be the older brother of his best friend. Told through Rashad and Quinn's alternating viewpoints.

2. Ash

Book cover for "Ash"
Star rating for Ash
Author:
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
In this variation on the Cinderella story, Ash grows up believing in the fairy realm that the king and his philosophers have sought to suppress, until one day she must choose between a handsome fairy cursed to love her and the King's Huntress whom she loves.

3. Crank

Book cover for "Crank"
Star rating for Crank
Series:
Crank trilogy volume 1.
Average Rating:
4.9 stars
Description:
Kristina Snow is the perfect daughter, but she meets a boy who introduces her to drugs and becomes a very different person, struggling to control her life and her mind. Kristina Georgia Snow is the perfect daughter, gifted high school junior, quiet, never any trouble. But on a trip to visit her absentee father, Kristina disappears and Bree takes her place. Bree is the exact opposite of Kristina. Through a boy, Bree meets the monster: crank. And what...
Book cover for "Darius the Great is not okay"
Star rating for Darius the Great is not okay
Series:
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
Clinically-depressed Darius Kellner, a high school sophomore, travels to Iran to meet his grandparents, but it is their next-door neighbor, Sohrab, who changes his life.
Book cover for "The downstairs girl"
Star rating for The downstairs girl
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
1890, Atlanta. By day, seventeen-year-old Jo Kuan works as a lady's maid for the cruel Caroline Payne, the daughter of one of the wealthiest men in Atlanta. But by night, Jo moonlights as the pseudonymous author of a newspaper advice column for 'the genteel Southern lady'.
Book cover for "Felix ever after"
Star rating for Felix ever after
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
Felix Love, a transgender seventeen-year-old, attempts to get revenge by catfishing his anonymous bully, but lands in a quasi-love triangle with his former enemy and his best friend.
Book cover for "Gabi, a girl in pieces"
Star rating for Gabi, a girl in pieces
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
Sixteen-year-old Gabi Hernandez chronicles her senior year in high school as she copes with her friend Cindy's pregnancy, friend Sebastian's coming out, father's meth habit, cravings for food and cute boys, and especially, the poetry that helps forge her identity.
Book cover for "Grasshopper jungle"
Star rating for Grasshopper jungle
Description:
Austin Szerba narrates the end of humanity as he and his best friend Robby accidentally unleash an army of giant, unstoppable bugs and uncover the secrets of a decades-old experiment gone terribly wrong.
Book cover for "If you could be mine"
Star rating for If you could be mine
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
In Iran, where homosexuality is punishable by death, seventeen-year-olds Sahar and Nasrin love each other in secret until Nasrin's parents announce their daughter's arranged marriage and Sahar proposes a drastic solution.
Book cover for "Like a love story"
Star rating for Like a love story
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Description:
The acclaimed author of "The Authentics" pens a big-hearted, epic love letter to the LGBTQ community about three friends falling in love and finding their voices as activists during the height of the AIDS crisis.

11. Pet

Book cover for "Pet"
Star rating for Pet
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
In a near-future society that claims to have gotten rid of all monstrous people, a creature emerges from a painting seventeen-year-old Jam's mother created, a hunter from another world seeking a real-life monster.
Book cover for "The poet X"
Star rating for The poet X
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking. But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers--especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, who her family can never...

13. Reverie

Book cover for "Reverie"
Star rating for Reverie
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
While recovering from an attack that leaves him without his memory, gay teenager Kane Montgomery stumbles into a world where dreams known as reveries take on a life of their own, and it is up to Kane and a few unlikely allies to stop them before they spillover into the waking world.

14. Sold

Book cover for "Sold"
Star rating for Sold
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
Written in spare and evocative vignettes, this is the story of 13 year-old Lakshmi, whose life with her family in Nepal is peaceful until Himalayan monsoons was away her family's crops and she is sold into prostitution in the city. Thirteen-year-old Lakshmi leaves her poor mountain home in Nepal thinking that she is to work in the city as a maid only to find that she has been sold into the sex slave trade in India and that there is no hope of escape....
Book cover for "The stars and the blackness between them"
Star rating for The stars and the blackness between them
Description:
Told in two voices, sixteen-year-old Audre and Mabel, both young women of color from different backgrounds, fall in love and figure out how to care for each other as one of them faces a fatal illness.

16. Tricks

Book cover for "Tricks"
Star rating for Tricks
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
Five troubled teenagers fall into prostitution as they search for freedom, safety, community, family, and love.
Book cover for "Two boys kissing"
Star rating for Two boys kissing
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
A chorus of men who died of AIDS observes and yearns to help a cross-section of today's gay teens who navigate new love, long-term relationships, coming out, self-acceptance, and more in a society that has changed in many ways.
Book cover for "We are okay"
Star rating for We are okay
Author:
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
After leaving her life behind to go to college in New York, Marin must face the truth about the tragedy that happened in the final weeks of summer when her friend Mabel comes to visit.
Book cover for "Will Grayson, Will Grayson"
Star rating for Will Grayson, Will Grayson
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
When two teens, one gay and one straight, meet accidentally and discover that they share the same name, their lives become intertwined as one begins dating the other's best friend, who produces a play revealing his relationship with them both.
Book cover for "Yaqui Delgado wants to kick your ass"
Star rating for Yaqui Delgado wants to kick your ass
Author:
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
Informed that a bully she does not know is determined to beat her up Latin American teen Piddy Sanchez struggles to learn more about the father she has never met, until the bully's gang forces her to confront more difficult challenges.