Top Ten Favourite Contemporary Books (from my pre-blogging days)

Whilst my main love has always been paranormal fiction, I did read a lot more contemporary YA books as a teenager than I do now. With that in mind, I decided to create a list of my 'old school' favourite contemporary books, with the aim being to compile a list at the end of the month featuring my top ten faves since I started blogging. So without further ado, here is my list....

(All titles link to Goodreads)

1 .Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta

One of my all-time favourite books! About a girl whose mother is struggling with depression, and Francesca’s attempts to deal with this, her own life and her social/school situation.Very beautiful writing and a wonderful, colourful cast of characters.

2. Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan

A funny and very, very cute account of a relationship between two boys in a very unconventional town/high school where the star quarterback is also the homecoming queen.

3. Denial by David Belbin

Girl called Caitlin reinvents herself for her new school, only to have her life torn asunder by accusations that her teacher father has molested one of his students.

4. Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin

Very emotional story of a girl who dies tragically and ends up in Elsewhere; the afterlife where you age backwards before being sent back to Earth as a new born. She tries to come to terms with her own death to appreciate her afterlife. 

5. Georgia Nicholson series by Louise Rennison

Adventures of a teen girl and her bunch of misfit friends. Lots of hilarity and bizarre word creation.I think EVERYONE has heard of/read these? Never failed to make me laugh.

6.Finding Cassie Crazy by Jaclyn Moriarty 
The second Aussie title on my list (they write such fab contemp), and the wonderful 2nd book in the Ashbury/Brookfield series, Cassie, Lydia, Emily and the rest of their class from the exclusively private Ashbury school do a penpal exchange with the 'rough' comprehensive Ashbury. Very funny, a little dark with a great mystery, the entire book is told through the letters of the students. 

7.All American Girl (and sequel) by Meg Cabot

Hilarious, very feminist, so much realistic sex discussion plus it’s pretty cute. Follows Sam, a non-conformist in a high school of stereotypes who saves the Presidentof the United States from a shooting. Perk: The Preisden's Son. Anti-Perk: Now no one will ever leave her alone.

8. P.S Longer Letter Later and Snail Mail No More by PauaDanzinger and Ann Martin

Dude, these books are OLD. From the late 90s, and I think I read them around that time (though I was only about 10). They’re a series of letter (and later email) exchanges between two very different best friends when one moves away.  I can still remember parts of them, even though I haven’t read them for at least a decade, which shows just how memorable they were.  

9.Pretty Things by Sarra Manning

An impulse buy in Waterstones when I was about 15. Follows a group of teens over one summer theatre production of A Streetcar Named Desire. I liked how different the characters were,how complication their relationships were and the strong LGBT themes of the book, described as 'girl-loves-boy-loves-boy-loves-girl'. 

10.The Boyfriend List (subtitled 15 Boys, 11 Shrink Appointments, 4 Ceramic Frogs and Me, Ruby Oliver) by E.Lockhart

Ruby (Roo) writes a ‘boyfriend list’ on the advice of her therapist, with every boy that’s ever featured in her life, ever which totally backfires and ruins like, everything.I recently re-bought this for my kindle!

And there we have it! As you can see, none of these books were actually published past 2006, which is the year I finished high school and the time I moved almost exclusively to paranormal/urban fantasy books (with some crime fiction thrown in)

Have you read and enjoyed any of these? Will you check any of them out having seen my list? What would feature on your own list?

Be sure to head over to Liz's blog where she is posting her list of top 10 Contemporary YA today, and don't forget to visit yesterday's post to nominate your favourite Contemps and enter our giveaways!