Since starting college, I’ve read a lot of contemporary books since starting college, so I decided to share a few of my favorites. I inserted the Goodreads Synopsis of the books so that you can get an idea of the plot before I give my review so that you’ll have an idea of what the books are about. I hope you enjoy.
Disclosure – This post contains affiliate links
1//The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
Goodreads Synopsis
Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend, Khalil, at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.
Soon afterward, Khalil’s death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Starr’s best friend at school suggests he may have had it coming. When it becomes clear the police have little interest in investigating the incident, protesters take to the streets and Starr’s neighborhood becomes a war zone. What everyone wants to know is: What really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.
But what Starr does—or does not—say could destroy her community. It could also endanger her life.
My Thoughts On The Book
This book made me so angry. I would have to close the book in the middle of reading it because it made me so furious. That’s how good it is. If you don’t understand the black lives matter movement, I can’t recommend it enough. I don’t think I really got it until I read this book.
The character development is amazing and it explains the setting in a way that isn’t all exposition. We all preach diversity in America, but we don’t really understand other people’s situations no matter how much we hear about them. I learned a lot from this book and was able to relate to the characters, which I think is the most important part of any contemporary book.
If you can’t connect with the characters, you can’t connect with the issues the book is trying to bring to light.
I give this book five stars. I couldn’t put it down.
2.//Simon Vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
Goodreads Synopsis
Sixteen-year-old and not-so-openly gay Simon Spier prefers to save his drama for the school musical. But when an email falls into the wrong hands, his secret is at risk of being thrust into the spotlight. Now Simon is actually being blackmailed: if he doesn’t play wingman for class clown Martin, his sexual identity will become everyone’s business. Worse, the privacy of Blue, the pen name of the boy he’s been emailing, will be compromised.
With some messy dynamics emerging in his once tight-knit group of friends, and his email correspondence with Blue growing more flirtatious every day, Simon’s junior year has suddenly gotten all kinds of complicated. Now, change-averse Simon has to find a way to step out of his comfort zone before he’s pushed out—without alienating his friends, compromising himself, or fumbling a shot at happiness with the most confusing, adorable guy he’s never met.
My Thoughts On The Book
This book is friggin adorable. I first read it in high school and reread it again in college. The movie based on it Love, Simon came out over the weekend, but read the book first (because that’s nerd rule #1)
I liked that the book wasn’t super dramatic. The story unfolds very naturally and even when Simon does come out (due to a spoiler I cannot divulge here), the reaction of his family and friends isn’t super theatrical. They’re reactions and advice make sense and Simon isn’t as secluded after coming out as he is in the movie. I liked it. It’s cute.
3.//Ramona Blue by Julie Murphy
Goodreads Synopsis
Ramona was only five years old when Hurricane Katrina changed her life forever.
Since then, it’s been Ramona and her family against the world. Standing over six feet tall with unmistakable blue hair, Ramona is sure of three things: she likes girls, she’s fiercely devoted to her family, and she knows she’s destined for something bigger than the trailer she calls home in Eulogy, Mississippi. But juggling multiple jobs, her flaky mom, and her well-meaning but ineffectual dad forces her to be the adult of the family. Now, with her sister, Hattie, pregnant, responsibility weighs more heavily than ever.
The return of her childhood friend Freddie brings a welcome distraction. Ramona’s friendship with the former competitive swimmer picks up exactly where it left off, and soon he’s talked her into joining him for laps at the pool. But as Ramona falls in love with swimming, her feelings for Freddie begin to shift too, which is the last thing she expected. With her growing affection for Freddie making her question her sexual identity, Ramona begins to wonder if perhaps she likes girls and guys or if this new attraction is just a fluke. Either way, Ramona will discover that, for her, life and love are more fluid than they seem.
My Thoughts On The Book
I love this book. I read it earlier this year and I’ve never connected to a character the same way I’ve connected with Ramona. We have very different backgrounds, but her responsibility to her family and how accepting she was of it struck a chord with me. She was so overwhelmed but kept it together.
I also liked how this book portrayed the confusion of her sexuality. Most coming out books surround the plot around being gay and no one knowing, but this book was about a girl who has been an out lesbian for years, who starts having feelings for a boy. Ramona struggles with this a lot and doesn’t want people to think that such a huge part of her identity was a phase. She also struggles to label herself as bisexual or pansexual because of how those sexualities are considered”fake” by some people.
That wasn’t the main plot point of the book, which I liked. It revolved more around her responsibility to her family and her relationship with her friend. I like the book’s pacing because everything doesn’t happen too fast. All the chapters are sectioned off by month, letting the reader know the passage of time.
Definitely five stars for this one. I couldn’t put it down.
4.//When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon
Goodreads Synopsis
A laugh-out-loud, heartfelt YA romantic comedy, told in alternating perspectives, about two Indian-American teens whose parents have arranged for them to be married.
Dimple Shah has it all figured out. With graduation behind her, she’s more than ready for a break from her family, from Mamma’s inexplicable obsession with her finding the “Ideal Indian Husband.” Ugh. Dimple knows they must respect her principles on some level, though. If they truly believed she needed a husband right now, they wouldn’t have paid for her to attend a summer program for aspiring web developers…right?
Rishi Patel is a hopeless romantic. So when his parents tell him that his future wife will be attending the same summer program as him—wherein he’ll have to woo her—he’s totally on board. Because as silly as it sounds to most people in his life, Rishi wants to be arranged, believes in the power of tradition, stability, and being a part of something much bigger than himself.
The Shahs and Patels didn’t mean to start turning the wheels on this “suggested arrangement” so early in their children’s lives, but when they noticed them both gravitate toward the same summer program, they figured, Why not?
Dimple and Rishi may think they have each other figured out. But when opposites clash, love works hard to prove itself in the most unexpected ways.
My Thoughts On The Book
This book is pretty much a Bollywood movie set in America.
I read this book before it came out because my friend runs a book blog and got ahold of the advanced reader’s copy. (That also happened with The Hate U Give and The Sun Is Also A Star). I finished this book in one day. I couldn’t put it down.
There is a very poor view of arranged marriage in America. People still think that two very young people meet on their wedding day with no prior introductions. That’s not entirely the case. This book kind of shows how the process works without letting it overpower the plot. I loved Dimple and Rishi and how the book used their two distinct points of views on arranged marriage to tell the story instead of letting them have the same reluctance towards it.
There’s only so much I can tell you without giving it away, but if you like quirky, unconventional, and diverse romances, I recommend it.
5.//The Sun Is Also A Star by Nicola Yoon
Goodreads Synopsis
Natasha: I’m a girl who believes in science and facts. Not fate. Not destiny. Or dreams that will never come true. I’m definitely not the kind of girl who meets a cute boy on a crowded New York City street and falls in love with him. Not when my family is twelve hours away from being deported to Jamaica. Falling in love with him won’t be my story.
Daniel: I’ve always been the good son, the good student, living up to my parents’ high expectations. Never the poet. Or the dreamer. But when I see her, I forget about all that. Something about Natasha makes me think that fate has something much more extraordinary in store—for both of us.
The Universe: Every moment in our lives has brought us to this single moment. A million futures lie before us. Which one will come true?
My Thoughts On The Book
The Sun Is Also A Star will appeal to both the cynic and the romantic when it comes to love. Daniel, a Korean-American, meets Natasha, a Jamaican immigrant, on her last day in America. He’s supposed to go to a college interview for Yale and she is meeting an immigration lawyer to try to stay in the U.S. at the end of the day.
Daniel bets Natasha that they will fall in love with each other before their appointments based on a scientific study after Natasha claims that love and marriage are institutions created to benefit the human population and nothing more.
You can see where this is going, right?
What resonated with me most is how the author illustrated the lives of immigrants and first-generation Americans. Nicola Yoon described their experiences so perfectly and showed the tensions of being in an interracial relationship, even though the book only took place over the span of one day.
It’s amazing. It beats Everything Everything (her other book) by miles in my book.
6.//Love, Hate, And Other Filters by Samira Ahmed
Goodreads Synopsis
A searing #OwnVoices coming-of-age debut in which an Indian-American Muslim teen confronts Islamophobia and a reality she can neither explain nor escape–perfect for fans of Angie Thomas, Jacqueline Woodson, and Adam Silvera.
American-born seventeen-year-old Maya Aziz is torn between worlds. There’s the proper one her parents expect for their good Indian daughter: attending a college close to their suburban Chicago home, and being paired off with an older Muslim boy her mom deems “suitable.” And then there is the world of her dreams: going to film school and living in New York City—and maybe (just maybe) pursuing a boy she’s known from afar since grade school, a boy who’s finally falling into her orbit at school.
There’s also the real world, beyond Maya’s control. In the aftermath of a horrific crime perpetrated hundreds of miles away, her life is turned upside down. The community she’s known since birth becomes unrecognizable; neighbors and classmates alike are consumed with fear, bigotry, and hatred. Ultimately, Maya must find the strength within to determine where she truly belongs.
My Thoughts On The Book
I have mixed feelings about this book. I found it very predictable because I’ve been through what Maya goes through (seriously though, my parents and her parents have said the same things word for word), but I think it brings a lot of issues to light.
I liked that the terrorist attack happened later on in the book because I got to see how Maya’s life plays out on a normal day. It shows her struggle with her parents and their different points of view because they’re immigrants and she was born in America. I got to see her fighting for her independence and going against cultural norms.
Everything after the terrorist attack seemed very predictable (other than one huge twist about the attack). I could guess what was going to happen next without thinking about it, which kind of ruined the book for me. This probably won’t happen with other people, but if you’re South Asian, you’ll likely have the same experience.
My friend Shounima didn’t like that Maya wasn’t religious, but I think that adds to the plot. Anne Frank wasn’t super religious (from what I’ve learned in history and literature classes based on her diary) and she was still sent to a concentration camp. The book wasn’t about Maya’s dedication to Allah. It was about discrimination based on what you look like and what your name is; not your beliefs.
This probably wasn’t the best review, but I recommend it. This book has been a long-time coming and there should be more books like it.
Well, that’s it for now. I’ve never written a post like this before and probably won’t again for a while. I just wanted to get a few diverse book recommendations out there because there aren’t enough of them.
Have you read any of these books? Which one is your favorite? If you haven’t, which one do you want to read?