The most recommended books about teenage boys

Who picked these books? Meet our 77 experts.

77 authors created a book list connected to teenage boys, and here are their favorite teenage boy books.
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Book cover of At Swim, Two Boys

Jeffrey Richards Author Of We Are Only Ghosts

From my list on LGBT+ novels that haunt me (in a good way).

Why am I passionate about this?

I came of age in Oklahoma as a gay youth in the late 1970s and early 1980s, keeping myself hidden out of safety and shame. Once I was old enough to leave my small-minded town and be myself, I crashed headlong into the oncoming AIDS epidemic. It set me on a path to understanding the world and my place in it as a homosexual. I turned to reading about the lives and histories of those who came before me, to learn about their deaths and survivals in what could be an ugly, brutal world. These works continue to draw me, haunt me, and inspire me to share my story through my writing. 

Jeffrey's book list on LGBT+ novels that haunt me (in a good way)

Jeffrey Richards Why did Jeffrey love this book?

This is my favorite novel of all time, bar none.

The sweeping saga of two seemingly socially disparate boys caught up in the volatile world of early 1900s Ireland from which springs forth the Easter Uprising. As a writer and a reader, I am amazed at the historical details and language that are completely immersive, as well as by the structure and control O’Neill wields over the book. Yet he never overwhelms with the “history,” nor does he ever lose sight of the true story, the true heart of his stunning novel.

The love story between the boys is timeless and beautiful and, of course, tragic, as is so often the case with gay love stories from our history. It has haunted me since I first read the novel some twenty-two years ago. It is yet another book I often come back to reread, and I am astounded all over…

By Jamie O'Neill,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked At Swim, Two Boys as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Praised as “a work of wild, vaulting ambition and achievement” by Entertainment Weekly, Jamie O’Neill’s first novel invites comparison to such literary greats as James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and Charles Dickens.

Jim Mack is a naïve young scholar and the son of a foolish, aspiring shopkeeper. Doyler Doyle is the rough-diamond son—revolutionary and blasphemous—of Mr. Mack’s old army pal. Out at the Forty Foot, that great jut of rock where gentlemen bathe in the nude, the two boys make a pact: Doyler will teach Jim to swim, and in a year, on Easter of 1916, they will swim to the…


Book cover of So Long, See You Tomorrow

David Samuel Hudson Author Of M

From David's 3 favorite reads in 2024.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author

David's 3 favorite reads in 2024

David Samuel Hudson Why did David love this book?

So Long, See You Tomorrow is another autofiction, recounting the life of its writer back when he befriended a young classmate when he was a schoolboy. Tragedy ensues and the writer never encounters the classmate again despite sharing a meaningful moment of connection when they were young. This meaningful moment is so memorable to the writer (and audience) that it transforms into the book's thematic understanding of connection.

This book is beautifully human. Again, it's not largeness of plot that brings out the life of these characters. The way they connect and speak about one another, the way they react to one another is so incredibly vivid. I got to know these people, I fell in love with these people. What's especially interesting about this novel is that it knows its own conceit very well: it is using fiction to supplant a faulty memory or to make sense of a…

By William Maxwell,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked So Long, See You Tomorrow as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A novel which charts the lives of two former friends until the father of one was responsible for the murder of the father of the other. They do not speak following the tragedy, but the victims son realises fifty years later that he has failed in a fundamental act of friendship.


Book cover of Pryor Rendering

Zev Good Author Of All About The Benjamins

From my list on books to come out to...at any age.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been gay for as long as I can remember. I even told my mother, when I was five years old, that I was going to marry Hoss Cartwright (from the TV show Bonanza). But even knowing yourself that well doesn’t make it easy to actually be yourself, so I still had to come out to friends and family over a span of five or six years in my late teens and early twenties. And coming out is never easy, although it feels like a million bucks once you’ve done it. Also, it’s different for everyone, and having books like these I’ve recommended may not make it easier, but they show us that it can be done and that we’re not alone. 

Zev's book list on books to come out to...at any age

Zev Good Why did Zev love this book?

Having grown up gay in a small town in the South, this resonated with me as an out gay man in a big city in my twenties, because it got everything about being gay in a small Southern town right: the tone, the emotion, the terror, and most of all, it got how there are more of us in those small Southern towns than we realize at the time, and how leaving for bigger, “better” places isn’t always the answer. 

By Gary Reed,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Pryor Rendering as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A lonely eighteen-year-old boy growing up in the working-class town of Pryor, Oklahoma, Charlie Hope struggles to cope with his passionately religious mother, the death of his hard-drinking grandfather, his enigmatic late father, and his own confusion over sexual orientation. A first novel.


Book cover of The Car Thief

Jack Gantos Author Of Hole in My Life

From my list on what drives us to survive and keeps souls alive.

Why am I passionate about this?

I read a lot of first-person books because I write a lot of 1st person books. I was a creative writing teacher for twenty years and I wanted my students to ‘own’ their material—to write about what they saw and felt and empathized with and loved and feared. These book recommendations below are only a handful of immensely brilliant books that have strong character/narrator voices that put you inside the skin of the narrator. These are the books that are recklessly beautiful and ruthlessly genuine-- and by example teach you how to write honestly and how to capture your own readers.

Jack's book list on what drives us to survive and keeps souls alive

Jack Gantos Why did Jack love this book?

I knew Ted Weesner. We taught creative writing at Emerson College. This is Ted’s first book which still gives me chills because of how filmic the prose is—as in stepping into a film—only it is not only visual, it is visceral. You feel every part of this book and feel it deeply, sympathetically, and even though the main character is making mistakes his mistakes are your mistakes, his disappointments are your disappointments, his hopes are your hopes and thus his tragedy is yours to keep.

By Theodore Weesner,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Car Thief as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Hailed by The Boston Globe as "so poignant and beautifully written, so true and painful, that one can't read it without feeling the knife's cruel blade in the heart," The Car Thief was first published to enormous popularity, and sold over half a million copies. Alex Housman is a kid who at the age of sixteen has had fourteen cars, harbors many hurts, and seems to fade into his environment while raging inside. His father is an alcoholic, losing his grip on life even as he wants the best for his son. The Car Thief explores the love Alex and…


Book cover of The Gold-Son

J.M. Hackman Author Of Spark

From my list on portal fantasy by small/independent presses.

Why am I passionate about this?

Indie authors and presses are sometimes dismissed as “lesser-than” and not carried by bookstores. The stories are labeled as “amateurish” or “boring.” (Some are, but so are some books coming from big publishers!) Size doesn’t really matter in the world of publishing. Being published with a small press showed me a realm beyond the huge, traditional publishing houses—it’s populated with fantastic books written by gifted authors who often write, not for fame or money, but because they love writing. I’ve found many hours of enjoyment in indie books (and lost hours of sleep, as well!) I hope, with this list, you find the same.

J.M.'s book list on portal fantasy by small/independent presses

J.M. Hackman Why did J.M. love this book?

The Gold-Son is about a teen boy, Tommin, cursed with the need to steal. When the leprechaun, Lorcan Reilly arrives, he tricks Tommin and takes him to the realm of the Leprechauns. The thing I marveled over the most was the description of Tommin’s urge to steal—it was so well written. The author’s writing is lyrical and beautifully atmospheric, and she melds the legends and folklore of leprechauns to craft a tale of a terrible curse, a young love that lasts, and second chances.

By Carrie Anne Noble,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Gold-Son as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"The story is, simply, beautiful." -Fictionist Magazine

All sixteen-year-old Tommin wants is to make beautiful shoes and care for his beloved grandmother, but his insatiable need to steal threatens to destroy everything. Driven by a curse that demands more and more gold, he's sure to get caught eventually.

When mysterious Lorcan Reilly arrives in town with his "niece," Eve, Tommin believes the fellow wants to help him. Instead, Lorcan whisks him off to the underground realm of the Leprechauns, where, alongside Eve, he's forced to prepare to become one of them.

As Lorcan's plans for his "gold-children" are slowly revealed,…


Book cover of Fair Coin

Sung J. Woo Author Of Lines

From my list on what-if “Sliding Doors” narratives.

Why am I passionate about this?

Ever since watching Sliding Doors back in the late 90s, I’ve been fascinated by forking narratives. I don’t know if I’ve yet to meet anyone who doesn’t love that “what-if” spark–what if I chose this job over that one? Who would I have met? Who would I have married? Who would I be? That last question, I believe, is the kicker–we all only get to live this one life, so our choices are our choices. Only in the realm of fiction can we really be in someone else’s head, and writing my fifth novel, Lines, and its twinned/entwined plots was doubling the fun.

Sung's book list on what-if “Sliding Doors” narratives

Sung J. Woo Why did Sung love this book?

This book is categorized as a young adult novel, but I read it as a fully grown adult and was able to snap right into my angsty teenage years. 

This book gives the protagonist, Ephraim, a good amount of agency, as it’s the flip of a coin that fulfills his desires–basically, it’s a wishing well. But the different versions of his life that spring forth are what makes this story intriguing and often quite moving.

By E. C. Myers,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Fair Coin as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The coin changed Ephraim's life. But how can he change it back?

Sixteen-year-old Ephraim Scott is horrified when he comes home from school and finds his mother unconscious at the kitchen table, clutching a bottle of pills. The reason for her suicide attempt is even more dis­turbing: she thought she'd identified Ephraim's body at the hospital that day.

Among his dead double's belongings, Ephraim finds a strange coin--a coin that grants wishes when he flips it. With a flick of his thumb, he can turn his alcoholic mother into a model parent and catch the eye of the girl he's…


Book cover of The Frozen Rabbi

Mary Glickman Author Of An Undisturbed Peace

From my list on southern themes you’ve never heard of (maybe).

Why am I passionate about this?

My heart has been Southern for 35 years although I was raised in Boston and never knew the South until well into my adulthood. I loved it as soon as I saw it but I needed to learn it before I could call it home. These books and others helped shape me as a Southerner and as an author of historical Southern Jewish novels. Cormac McCarthy doesn’t describe 19th-century North Carolina so much as immerse his voice and his reader in it. Dara Horn captures her era seamlessly. Steve Stern is so wedded to place he elevates it to mythic. I don’t know if these five are much read anymore but they should be.

Mary's book list on southern themes you’ve never heard of (maybe)

Mary Glickman Why did Mary love this book?

For my money, Stern is the South’s premiere literary comic writer. In this one, he is a Southern Philip Roth with an I.B. Singer twist. A teenage boy discovers a frozen rabbi in the Kelvinator inside his parent’s Memphis basement. The rabbi’s been frozen for one hundred years. Bernie thaws him and what ensues covers a universe of incident: teenage hope and angst, Talmudic wisdom, kabbalistic film-flammery, the seduction of all of Memphis, from lowlifes to elite, by a rabbi (who can fly) selling himself as the font of all magic and knowledge. Stern obviously loves his Memphis and his Jews. At the same time he skewers them with the sleekest wit. Even Israel gets a gratuitous knock. It was the only thing I did not like in the book but it was fleeting, so I got over it. Such is the power of genius.

By Steve Stern,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Frozen Rabbi as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Award-winning novelist Steve Stern's exhilarating epic recounts the story of how a nineteenth-century rabbi from a small Polish town ends up in a basement freezer in a suburban Memphis home at the end of the twentieth century. What happens when an impressionable teenage boy inadvertently thaws out the ancient man and brings him back to life is nothing short of miraculous.


Book cover of Death In Spring

Vajra Chandrasekera Author Of The Saint of Bright Doors

From my list on feeling lost and obsessed by a haunted world.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m Vajra Chandrasekera, from Colombo, Sri Lanka. I’m a writer, and more importantly, a reader. My favourite kind of book is bigger on the inside, the kind that drops you into a world too big and too weird to really get a handle on, a world that’s strange in ways you feel you recognize, like how sometimes you wake up from a dream and think, I’ve dreamed about that place and those people before, but you can’t tell if you have, or whether you dreamed the memory, too. You read the book and look at the world and you ask yourself: Did I dream those people, that place? Or is this the dream?

Vajra's book list on feeling lost and obsessed by a haunted world

Vajra Chandrasekera Why did Vajra love this book?

Death in Spring is a tiny book containing a bigger, more intricate world than many a doorstopper, for all that the whole story set in a small, nameless hamlet.

Life there too is made of strange, violent rituals, only not the ones we know. We follow a boy growing up and learning them, and being scarred by these mysteries—what do they fill the mouths of the dead with, before they are killed and put into a tree forever? (It’s cement.)

Rodoreda wrote in Catalan, and Tennent’s translation is fluid and beautiful.

Perfection is a rare thing; if you want to see what that looks like, here you go.   

By Merce Rodoreda, Martha Tennent (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Death In Spring as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Considered by many to be the grand achievement of her later period, Death in Spring is one of Mercè Rodoreda's most complex and beautifully constructed works. The novel tells the story of the bizarre and destructive customs of a nameless town—burying the dead in trees after filling their mouths with cement to prevent their soul from escaping, or sending a man to swim in the river that courses underneath the town to discover if they will be washed away by a flood—through the eyes of a fourteen-year-old boy who must come to terms with the rhyme and reason of this…


Book cover of The Go-Between

Anna Bliss Author Of Bonfire Night

From Anna's 3 favorite reads in 2023.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Novelist Reader Baseball mom Wall climber

Anna's 3 favorite reads in 2023

Anna Bliss Why did Anna love this book?

This book is set in the scorching hot summer of 1900, often noted by young people of the time as a moment of hope, peace, and infinite possibility. They didn’t know what was coming for them. Neither does Hartley’s narrator, a fatherless 12-year-old boy spending his summer holiday with the wealthy family of a school friend.

I loved the imagery in the book: a stolen afternoon of coed swimming in a sky-blue river; a village cricket game that exposes both class tension and a forbidden romance; a green summer suit with smoked-pearl buttons that makes a boy suddenly conscious of how he is seen in the world.

When the boy becomes an unknowing accomplice in the affair between his friend’s debutante older sister and a tenant farmer, the course of his life is permanently distorted. Fans of Atonement and Lady Chatterley’s Lover will adore this book.

By L. P. Hartley,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Go-Between as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

L.P. Hartley's moving exploration of a young boy's loss of innocence The Go-Between is edited with an introduction and notes by Douglas Brooks-Davies in Penguin Modern Classics.

'The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there'

When one long, hot summer, young Leo is staying with a school-friend at Brandham Hall, he begins to act as a messenger between Ted, the farmer, and Marian, the beautiful young woman up at the hall. He becomes drawn deeper and deeper into their dangerous game of deceit and desire, until his role brings him to a shocking and premature revelation. The…


Book cover of Never Say Die

Aly Kay Tibbitts Author Of Operation Latensification: HADES

From my list on young adult for spy lovers.

Why am I passionate about this?

One fateful day in 4th grade, after finishing the Chronicles of Narnia, I picked up a YA spy novel off my teacher’s bookshelf. I never went back. I was immediately drawn to the depth of the characters, the nuance of how their public persona didn’t always match their internal thoughts, and their ability to succeed when no one thought they could. Eventually, what I read became what I wrote. Now, whenever I get overwhelmed, I love to turn to the genre that helped me through High School. Whether I reread old favorites, revisit my own stories, or find new friends, these characters remind me I can do anything.

Aly's book list on young adult for spy lovers

Aly Kay Tibbitts Why did Aly love this book?

Alex Rider is the series that first introduced me to YA spy novels. They are a defining part of my childhood and adolescence… I don’t have a favorite

After thinking the series was over, Never Say Die was the unexpected sequel I needed. I didn’t need to reread the books to be re-immersed in Alex Rider’s world—it was almost as if I’d never left.

But why choose this one? For a character that could be defined as a reluctant spy, I enjoyed seeing him use the skills that had been forced upon him for something he wanted to do for once. It taught me that we might not always have control over what skills and talents we acquire, but we do have a choice in how we use them.

By Anthony Horowitz,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Never Say Die as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 10, 11, 12, and 13.

What is this book about?

Alex Rider is now an IMDb TV/Amazon Original Series!

The world’s greatest teen spy is back in action in a thrilling new mission: destroy once and for all the terrorist organization SCORPIA. Americans may have purchased more than 6 million copies of Alex's adventures, but now, more than ever, we all need his heroics.

Following the events of Scorpia Rising, Alex relocates to San Francisco as he slowly recovers from the tragic death of his best friend and caregiver, Jack Starbright, at the hands of terrorists working for SCORPIA. With Jack gone, Alex feels lost and alone, but then, out…


Book cover of At Swim, Two Boys
Book cover of So Long, See You Tomorrow
Book cover of Pryor Rendering

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