The best YA books with unlikely love stories

While the connection between Ponyboy Curtis and Cherry Valance never goes beyond a simple crush on Ponyboy’s part, I would argue that their connection is memorable, unlikely, and life-changing. The fact that they even find each other and are able to talk as honestly as they do is surprising and heartwarming. In the end, they show each other that their social groups aren’t as different as the others might think—they all have problems and redeeming qualities. Cherry tells Ponyboy that not all Socs are like the ones who beat up Johnny. S.E. Hinton takes the romantic notion one step further and adds to the impossibility and heartbreak of it all when Cherry confesses to Ponyboy that, if things were different, she could fall in love with Dally, one of Ponyboy’s friends who is a fellow greaser. In the end, this is a life-changing book for me because it, along with Hinton’s That Was Then, This Is Now, made me want to be a writer. 

Who thinks they are going to meet the love of their life at a cancer support group? Probably not too many people, and yet one of the greatest love stories of all time began there, as unlikely as it was. It is where Hazel Grace and Augustus, both battling cancer at different stages, first meet. How many times have I thought, I wish I had thought of that first? And yet, I always remind myself that I’m glad I didn’t because there could be no better version than this one. The moment that always sticks with me is when Hazel’s mom, instead of telling her to wait until she’s older to express her love to Augustus, encourages her to now because it is possible there won’t be a later for her. 

I had to pick this book because it is air travel that brings Hadley and Oliver together. In this case, they are on a flight together to London where Hadley’s father is getting married after a difficult divorce from her mother. Hadley believes she is dealing with the worst possible thing, but she later learns what brings Oliver to London which is something far more difficult. It is the time on the plane when everything else fades away that draws me to this book. If they hadn’t ended up on the same flight, they never would have met.

I am including this book because it is one of my absolute favorite books of all time and thinking of it brings me back to one of my favorite family memories: reading it out loud together. I can still remember carrying it around the house, always ready to read if we had a few minutes or longer. It tells the unlikely love story of a farm boy and a princess. My family still quotes regularly from the book (“as you wish”) and (“inconceivable”) and, of course, (“have fun storming the castle!”). We loved it so much, we named our amazing Great Dane mix after the main character, Princess Buttercup.

This is one of the great love stories in young adult literature. Eleanor and Park are each dealing with their own issues, as teenagers do. They are completely different from each other, and yet, after an incident on the school bus brings them together one day, everything changes. Similar to so many of the characters in these other books, their paths might never have crossed, or, if they did, the wall would never be broken down so that they could actually see each other and yet they did and it was, which to me is what sets up the best stories of all.