90 books like Courtesy of Cupid

I’ve always loved books, movies, and shows that feature swoony, satisfying romances. As a middle school teacher and upper middle-grade author, I know it can be tricky to find novels with romance for the middle-grade set. But I also know firsthand that there are many kids who crave these kinds of stories–and that there are major benefits to giving kids a chance to read and hopefully talk about crushes and relationships in all their complexity. I’m always on the lookout for realistic stories with just the right amount of romance to delight middle-grade readers, and these five are some of my favorites.

I’ve always loved books, movies, and shows that feature swoony, satisfying romances. As a middle school teacher and upper middle-grade author, I know it can be tricky to find novels with romance for the middle-grade set. But I also know firsthand that there are many kids who crave these kinds of stories–and that there are major benefits to giving kids a chance to read and hopefully talk about crushes and relationships in all their complexity. I’m always on the lookout for realistic stories with just the right amount of romance to delight middle-grade readers, and these five are some of my favorites.

I’ve always loved books, movies, and shows that feature swoony, satisfying romances. As a middle school teacher and upper middle-grade author, I know it can be tricky to find novels with romance for the middle-grade set. But I also know firsthand that there are many kids who crave these kinds of stories–and that there are major benefits to giving kids a chance to read and hopefully talk about crushes and relationships in all their complexity. I’m always on the lookout for realistic stories with just the right amount of romance to delight middle-grade readers, and these five are some of my favorites.

I’ve always loved books, movies, and shows that feature swoony, satisfying romances. As a middle school teacher and upper middle-grade author, I know it can be tricky to find novels with romance for the middle-grade set. But I also know firsthand that there are many kids who crave these kinds of stories–and that there are major benefits to giving kids a chance to read and hopefully talk about crushes and relationships in all their complexity. I’m always on the lookout for realistic stories with just the right amount of romance to delight middle-grade readers, and these five are some of my favorites.

Have you noticed the scarcity of YA novels told solely from a guy’s point of view? If you aren’t a boy, the parent of one, or maybe a savvy librarian, you probably haven’t. I’m two out of three. I have two awesome sons. They’re avid readers and burned through the YA section and into adult fantasy and sci-fi long before I was ready for them to. Boys read! There’s a need for protagonists who identify as male. No surprise, my YA novels often feature ordinary boys doing heroic things. Thanks to years of spying on my sons and their friends, I have plenty of fodder to feed my muse.

Growing up, I've always been attracted to the fantasy genre; I've been obsessed ever since my teacher introduced me to it in the first grade. What started as innocent fairy books evolved to dark, spicy fantasy romance/romantasy. Now, in addition to staying up way past my bedtime reading, I'm a teenage author of my own YA fantasy romance book, Masks of Faded Dreams. This genre has truly changed my life. As cliche as that sounds, it's true; it's both my form of escapism and an eye-opening experience into worlds I'd never known existed. 

Masks have been fascinating to me for a long time, in both the literal and metaphorical sense. Whether by choice or not, the masks we wear say a lot about us. It’s also interesting to me how they can represent freedom or captivity, depending on context. At a masquerade, that anonymity provides a sense of freedom, a chance to act like someone you’re not, or the courage to act braver. But when forced into a role or status that comes with certain masks, you can be trapped, forced to act a certain way. The range gives us so much to work with. 

I spent 16 years teaching in NYC public schools, six of them on Rikers Island the world's biggest jail where I helped incarcerated teens improve their reading and writing skills. That experience helped to launch me on my own writing career. The job of the author? To hold up a mirror to society and reflect upon the page what the reader may not have experienced yet or missed seeing in the world outside the borders of a book.

As a stage combat choreographer myself, fight sequences are always important to me: they have to be believable but exciting, they have to keep up the pace so the reader is experiencing the action at the same speed as the characters—but most importantly, they have to tell a story. Action just for the sake of action always feels empty, but great fight scenes that are both exhilarating and bound to the forward momentum of the plot and emotion will stay with me for a long time. Here’s some that I still remember long after I finished the book.

I was born and raised in Mumbai, India, and as a kid I loved to read. But I never saw myself—an Indian girl like me—represented in children’s books before. I didn’t realize how much it affected me until I began writing my first novel at age 23. When I did, I wrote the entire first draft with white characters and set it in a western country. I believed my Indian culture and my experience as an Indian kid was not worth writing about. I was so wrong! Now, with the novels I write, I’m passionate about representation, especially South Asian representation because all kids deserve to see themselves and their cultures in the books they read.