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Recommended Quick Reads for Teens

Looking for a book you can read in a day? These titles clock in at around 200 pages, so hurry up!

Cryer's Cross by Lisa McMann

Seventeen-year-old Kendall, who suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder, lives with her parents on a potato farm in a tiny community in Montana, where two teenagers go missing within months of each other, with no explanation.

Get well soon by 1975- Julie Halpern

When her parents confine her to a mental hospital, an overweight teenaged girl, who suffers from panic attacks, describes her experiences in a series of letters to a friend.

The house at 758 by Kathryn Berla

After her mother's death, sixteen-year-old Krista resents her father's new girlfriend and spends most of her time watching a mysterious house.

How I live now by Meg Rosoff

To get away from her pregnant stepmother in New York City, fifteen-year-old Daisy goes to England to stay with her aunt and cousins, with whom she instantly bonds, but soon war breaks out and rips apart the family while devastating the land.

If I stay : a novel by Gayle Forman

While in a coma following an automobile accident that killed her parents and younger brother, seventeen-year-old Mia, a gifted cellist, weighs whether to live with her grief or join her family in death.

When jobs typically done by humans are replaced with alien technology, Adam's parents have no money for food, clean water, or medicine, forcing Adam and his girlfriend Chloe to get creative.

Living dead girl by Elizabeth Scott

Alice, a fifteen-year-old girl who was abducted by Ray when she was ten, lives in fear of what he is going to do to her and hopes death will save her from the nightmare. 

Thirteen-year-old Conor awakens one night to find a monster outside his bedroom window, but not the one from the recurring nightmare that began when his mother became ill--an ancient, wild creature that wants him to face truth and loss.

It all starts when Nick asks Norah to be his girlfriend for five minutes. He only needs five minutes to avoid his ex-girlfriend, who’s just walked in to his band’s show. With a new guy. And then, with one kiss, Nick and Norah are off on an adventure set against the backdrop of New York City—and smack in the middle of all the joy, anxiety, confusion, and excitement of a first date.

Prom and prejudice by Elizabeth Eulberg

For Lizzie Bennett, a music scholarship student at Connecticut's exclusive, girls-only Longbourn Academy, the furor over prom is senseless, but even more puzzling is her attraction to the pompous Will Darcy, best friend of her roommate's boyfriend.

Rucker Park setup by Paul Volponi

While playing in a crucial basketball game on the very court where his best friend was murdered, Mackey tries to come to terms with his own part in that murder and decide whether to maintain his silence or tell the police what really happened.

Running loose by Chris Crutcher

Louie, a high school senior in a small Idaho town, learns about sportsmanship, love, and death as he matures into manhood.

Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli

At first the students at Arizona's Mica High School are captivated by Stargirl Caraway's unusual, carefree behavior; however, she is soon shunned for everything that makes her unique in this story that pits individuality against conformity.

When she is caught in the backseat of a car with her older brother's best friend--Deanna Lambert's teenage life is changed forever. Struggling to overcome the lasting repercussions and the stifling role of "school slut," she longs to escape a life defined by her past. With subtle grace, complicated wisdom and striking emotion, Story of a Girl reminds us of our human capacity for resilience, epiphany and redemption.

Tears of a tiger by Sharon M. Draper

Three boys struggle to come to terms with the death of a friend in a drunk-driving auto accident in which all four were involved, in a story told through newspaper stories, diary entries, school announcements, telephone conversations, and classroom assignments.