New Adult is a genre that didn’t officially exist until about a decade ago—but it’s quickly made a name for itself. Sitting between young adult and adult fiction, this genre is basically YA’s older, slightly more chaotic sibling. It’s for readers who want the emotional intensity of YA but with more freedom, more mess, and a lot more steam!
While the young adult genre often centers around coming-of-age themes in a high school setting, new adult books usually follow characters in their late teens or twenties.
There’s college drama, first jobs, first apartments, career disasters, and identity crises, all rolled into fast-paced, addictive stories that don’t shy away from real-life struggles or spicy romance. Add a fantasy element, and the books become much more interesting!
New Adult books focus on characters stepping into adulthood while still figuring out who they are and what they want to do with their life.
And let’s talk tropes because new adult delivers. Enemies-to-lovers? Everywhere. Forced proximity? A classic. The bad boy with a tragic past? Practically a requirement. These books are dramatic, emotional, and sometimes a little toxic—but in the best, most bingeable way.
You’ll find campus romances, dystopian rebellions, messy breakups, and high-stakes emotional growth all in one place.
Whether you’re new to the genre or already hooked, these are the new adult books that deserve a spot on your shelf!
Best New Adult Books to Read in 2025
1. Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover
When Tate Collins meets airline pilot Miles Archer, she knows it isn’t love at first sight. They wouldn’t even go so far as to consider themselves friends.
The only thing Tate and Miles have in common is an undeniable mutual attraction. Once their desires are out in the open, they realize they have the perfect set-up. He doesn’t want love, and she doesn’t have time for love, so that just leaves the sex.
Their arrangement could be surprisingly seamless, as long as Tate can stick to the only two rules Miles has for her—never ask about the past, and don’t expect a future. They think they can handle it but realize almost immediately they can’t handle it at all!
Related: All Colleen Hoover Books in Order
2. A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
When nineteen-year-old huntress Feyre kills a wolf in the woods, a terrifying creature arrives to demand retribution. Dragged to a treacherous magical land she knows about only from legends, Feyre discovers that her captor is not truly a beast, but one of the lethal, immortal faeries who once ruled her world.
At least he’s not a beast all the time!
As she adapts to her new home, her feelings for the faerie, Tamlin, transform from icy hostility into a fiery passion that burns through every lie she’s been told about the beautiful, dangerous world of the Fae.
But something is not right in the faerie lands. An ancient, wicked shadow is growing, and Feyre must find a way to stop it or doom Tamlin—and his world—forever.
Related: ACOTAR Books in Order
3. Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire
Abby Abernathy is a good girl. She doesn’t drink or swear and has the appropriate number of cardigans in her wardrobe.
Abby believes she has enough distance from the darkness of her past, but when she arrives at college with her best friend, her path to a new beginning is quickly challenged by Eastern University’s Walking One-Night Stand.
Travis Maddox, lean, cut, and covered in tattoos, is exactly what Abby needs—and wants—to avoid. He spends his nights winning money in a floating fight ring and his days as the ultimate college campus charmer. Intrigued by Abby’s resistance to his appeal, Travis tricks her into his daily life with a simple bet.
If he loses, he must remain abstinent for a month. If Abby loses, she must live in Travis’s apartment for the same amount of time. Either way, Travis has no idea that he has met his match!
4. The Deal by Elle Kennedy
Hannah Wells has finally found someone who turns her on. But while she might be confident in every other area of her life, she’s got no clue when it comes to sex and seduction. If she wants to get her crush’s attention, she’ll have to step out of her comfort zone and make him take notice… even if it means tutoring the annoying, childish, cocky captain of the hockey team in exchange for a pretend date!
All Garrett Graham has ever wanted is to play professional hockey after graduation, but his plummeting GPA threatens everything he’s worked so hard for. If helping a sarcastic brunette make another guy jealous will help him secure his position on the team, he’s all for it.
But when one unexpected kiss leads to the wildest sex of both their lives, it doesn’t take long for Garrett to realize that pretending isn’t going to cut it. Now, he must convince Hannah that the man she wants looks a lot like him.
5. The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood
As a third-year Ph.D. candidate, Olive Smith doesn’t believe in lasting romantic relationships—but her best friend does, which got her into this situation.
Convincing Anh that she is dating and well on her way to a happily ever after was always going to be difficult because scientists require proof. So, like any self-respecting biologist, Olive panics and kisses the first man she sees.
That man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor—and well-known ass, which is why Olive is confused when he agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake boyfriend. But when a big science conference goes haywire, putting Olive’s career on the line, Adam surprises her again with his unyielding support and even more unyielding… six-pack abs.
Related: All Ali Hazelwood Books in Order
6. Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell
Cath is the biggest Simon Snow fan. She and her twin, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it’s what got them through their mother leaving.
Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fanfiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere. Cath’s sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can’t let go. She doesn’t want to.
Now that they’re going to college, Wren has told Cath she doesn’t want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone.
She’s got a surly roommate, a fiction-writing professor who thinks fanfiction is the end of the civilized world, and a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words, and she can’t stop worrying about her dad, who’s loving and fragile and has never really been alone.
For Cath, the question is: Can she do this? Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? And does she even want to move on if it means leaving Simon Snow behind?
7. The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren
Olive has always been unlucky, but her identical twin sister, Ami, on the other hand, is probably the luckiest person in the world. Her meet-cute with her fiancé is something out of a romantic comedy, and she’s managed to finance her entire wedding by winning a series of Internet contests.
Worst of all, she’s forcing Olive to spend the day with her sworn enemy, Ethan, who just happens to be the best man.
Olive braces herself to get through the wedding, but when the entire wedding party gets food poisoning, the only people who aren’t affected are Olive and Ethan. And now there’s an all-expenses-paid honeymoon in Hawaii up for grabs.
Putting their mutual hatred aside for a free vacation, Olive and Ethan head for paradise, determined to avoid each other at all costs. But when Olive runs into her future boss, the little white lie she tells him is suddenly at risk of becoming much bigger!
8. Wolfsong by T.J. Klune
Oxnard Matheson was twelve when his father taught him that Ox wasn’t worth anything and people would never understand him. Then his father left.
Ox was sixteen when the energetic Bennett family moved in next door, harboring a secret that would change him forever. The Bennetts are shapeshifters. They can transform into wolves at will!
Drawn to their magic, loyalty, and enduring friendships, Ox feels a gulf between this extraordinary new world and the quiet life he’s known, but he finds an ally in Joe, the youngest Bennett boy.
Ox was twenty-three when murder came to town and tore a hole in his heart. Violence flared, tragedy split the pack, and Joe left town, leaving Ox behind. Three years later, the boy is back. Except now he’s a man—charming, handsome, but haunted—and Ox can no longer ignore the song that howls between them.
9. Icebreaker by Hannah Grace
Anastasia Allen has worked her entire life for a shot at Team USA. She manages to get a full scholarship to the University of California, Maple Hills, and lands a place on their competitive figure skating team.
Nothing will stand in her way, not even the hockey team’s captain, Nate Hawkins.
As team captain, Nate focuses on keeping his team on the ice. Which is tricky when a facility’s mishap means they are forced to share a rink with the figure skating team—including Anastasia, who clearly can’t stand him.
But when Anastasia’s skating partner faces an uncertain future, she may have to look to Nate to take her shot. Sparks fly, but Anastasia isn’t worried… because she could never like a hockey player, right?
10. Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
Alex Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse.
By age twenty, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most elite universities. But what’s the catch, and why her?
Still searching for answers to this herself, Alex arrives in New Haven, tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies.
These eight windowless “tombs” are well-known haunts of the future rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street and Hollywood’s biggest players. But their occult activities are revealed to be more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive.
Related: Leigh Bardugo Books in Order
11. Easy by Tammara Webber
When Jacqueline follows her longtime boyfriend to the college of his choice, the last thing she expects is a sophomore-year breakup!
After two weeks in shock, she wakes up to her new reality: she’s single, attending a state university instead of a music conservatory, ignored by her former circle of friends, and failing a class for the first time.
Grief becomes a nightmare when her ex’s frat brother assaults Jacqueline. Rescued by a stranger who seems to be in the right place at the right time, she wants nothing more than to forget the attack and that night.
But her attacker turns stalker, and Jacqueline has a choice to make: crumple in defeat or fight back. Suddenly appearances are everything, and knowing who to tell and who to trust is anything but easy.
12. Twisted Love by Ana Huang
Alex Volkov is a devil blessed with the face of an angel and cursed with a past he can’t escape. Driven by a tragedy that has haunted him for most of his life, his ruthless pursuits for success and vengeance leave little room for matters of the heart.
But when he’s forced to look after his best friend’s sister, he starts to feel something in his chest!
Ava Chen is a free spirit trapped by nightmares of a childhood she can’t remember. But despite her broken past, she’s never stopped seeing the beauty in the world, including the heart beneath the icy exterior of a man she shouldn’t want.
Theirs is a love that was never supposed to happen, but when it does, it unleashes secrets that could destroy them both and everything they hold dear.
13. The Spanish Love Deception by Elena Armas
Catalina Martín desperately needs a date to her sister’s wedding. Especially since her little white lie about her American boyfriend has spiralled out of control. Now everyone she knows—including her ex and his fiancée—will be there and eager to meet him.
She only has four weeks to find someone willing to cross the Atlantic and aid in her deception. New York to Spain is no short flight, and her raucous family won’t be easy to fool.
Enter Aaron Blackford—her tall, handsome, condescending colleague—who surprisingly offers to step in. She’d rather refuse; never has there been a more aggravating, blood-boiling, and insufferable man.
But Catalina is desperate, and Aaron looks like her best option as the wedding draws nearer. And she begins to realize he might not be as terrible in the real world as he is at the office.
14. Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
First Son Alex Claremont-Diaz is the closest thing to a prince on this side of the Atlantic. With his intrepid sister and the Veep’s genius granddaughter, they’re the White House Trio, a beautiful millennial marketing strategy for his mother, President Ellen Claremont.
International socialite duties have downsides, such as photos of a confrontation with his longtime nemesis Prince Henry at a royal wedding leaking to the tabloids and threatening American/British relations. The plan for damage control: staging a fake friendship between the First Son and the Prince.
As President Claremont kicks off her reelection bid, Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret relationship with Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations!
15. Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. But her mother, also the commanding general, has ordered her to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders.
But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away… because dragons don’t bond to “fragile” humans. They incinerate them!
With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother’s daughter, so she’ll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise.
Yet, with every day that passes, the war outside grows more deadly, the kingdom’s protective wards are failing, and the death toll continues to rise. Even worse, Violet begins to suspect the leadership is hiding a terrible secret.
Related: Fourth Wing Books in Order
16. Tangled by Emma Chase
Drew Evans is handsome and arrogant; he makes multimillion-dollar business deals and seduces New York’s most beautiful women with just a smile. So why has he been shuttered in his apartment for seven days, miserable and depressed?
He’ll tell you he has the flu. But we all know that’s not really true!
Katherine Brooks is brilliant, beautiful, and ambitious. She refuses to let anything – or anyone – derail her path to success. When Kate is hired as the new associate at Drew’s father’s investment banking firm, every aspect of the dashing playboy’s life is thrown into a tailspin.
The professional competition she brings is unnerving, his attraction to her is distracting, and his failure to entice her into his bed is exasperating. Then, just when Drew is on the cusp of having everything he wants, his overblown confidence threatens to ruin it all!
17. The Hating Game by Sally Thorne
Lucy Hutton and Joshua Templeman HATE each other. And they have no problem displaying their feelings through passive-aggressive maneuvers as they sit across from each other, executive assistants to co-CEOs of a publishing company.
Lucy can’t understand Joshua’s joyless, uptight, meticulous approach to his job, and Joshua is baffled by Lucy’s overly bright clothes, quirkiness, and Pollyanna attitude.
Now up for the same promotion, their battle of wills has come to a head, and Lucy refuses to back down when their latest game could cost her her dream job. But the tension between Lucy and Joshua has also reached its boiling point, and Lucy is discovering that maybe she doesn’t hate Joshua. And maybe he doesn’t hate her either. Or perhaps this is just another game.
18. Addicted to You by Krista & Becca Ritchie
No one would suspect shy Lily Calloway’s biggest secret. While everyone is dancing at college bars, Lily stays in the bathroom. To get laid. Her compulsion leads her to one-night stands, steamy hookups, and events she shamefully regrets. The only person who knows her secret happens to have one of his own.
Loren Hale’s best friend is his bottle of bourbon. Lily comes in at a close second. For three years, they’ve pretended to be in a real relationship, hiding their addictions from their families. They’ve mastered the art of concealing flasks and random guys that filter in and out of their apartment.
But as they sink beneath the weight of their addictions, they cling harder to their destructive relationship and wonder if a life together, for real, is better than a lie. Strangers and family begin to infiltrate their guarded lives, and with new challenges, they realize they may not just be addicted to alcohol and sex.
19. The Hook Up by Kristen Callihan
Anna Jones wants to finish college and figure out her life. Falling for star quarterback Drew Baylor is definitely not on her to-do list. Confident and charming, he lives in the limelight and is way too gorgeous for his own good.
Too bad he’s committed to breaking all of the rules!
Football has been good to Drew. It’s given him recognition, two National Championships, and the Heisman. But what he really craves is sexy yet prickly Anna Jones. Her cutting humour and blatant disregard for his fame turn him on like nothing else.
Then, a chance encounter leads to the hottest sex of their lives, along with the possibility of something great. Unfortunately, Anna wants it to remain a hookup. Now it’s up to Drew to tempt her with more sex, more satisfaction, and more time with him!
20. Wicked by Jennifer L. Armentrout
Twenty-two year old Ivy Morgan isn’t your average college student. She and others like her know humans aren’t the only ones trolling the French Quarter for fun… and for food. Her duty to the Order is her life. After all, four years ago, she had lost everything at the hands of the creatures she’d sworn to hunt, tearing her world and her heart apart.
Ren Owens is the last person Ivy expected to enter her rigidly controlled life. With forest-green eyes and a smile that’s surely left a stream of broken hearts in its wake, he has an uncanny, almost unnatural ability to make her yearn for everything he has to offer.
But letting him in is as dangerous as hunting the cold-blooded killers stalking the streets. Losing the boy she loved once before nearly destroyed her, but the sparking tension between them becomes impossible for Ivy to deny.
But as Ivy grows closer to Ren, she realizes she’s not the only one carrying secrets that could shatter the frail bond between them. There’s something he’s not telling her!
21. The Sea of Tranquility by Katja Millay
Former piano prodigy Nastya Kashnikov wants two things: to get through high school without anyone learning about her past and to make the boy who took everything from her—her identity, her spirit, her will to live—pay.
Josh Bennett’s story is no secret: every person he loves has been taken from his life until, at seventeen years old, there is no one left. Now all he wants is be left alone, and people allow it because when your name is synonymous with death, everyone tends to give you your space.
Everyone except Nastya, the mysterious new girl at school who starts showing up and won’t go away until she’s insinuated herself into every aspect of his life.
But the more he gets to know her, the more of an enigma she becomes. As their relationship intensifies and the unanswered questions begin to pile up, he starts to wonder if he will ever learn the secrets she’s been hiding—or if he even wants to.
22. The Bridge Kingdom by Danielle L. Jensen
A warrior princess trained in isolation, Lara is driven by two certainties. The first is that King Aren of the Bridge Kingdom is her enemy. And the second is that she’ll be the one to bring him to his knees.
The only route through a storm-ravaged world, the Bridge Kingdom enriches itself and deprives its rivals, including Lara’s homeland. So when she’s sent as a bride under the guise of peace, Lara is prepared to do whatever it takes to fracture its impenetrable defenses. And the defenses of its king!
Yet, as she infiltrates her new home and gains a deeper understanding of the war to possess the bridge, Lara begins to question whether she’s the hero or the villain. And as her feelings for Aren transform from frosty hostility to fierce passion, Lara must choose which kingdom she’ll save… and which kingdom she’ll destroy.
23. Sweet Filthy Boy by Christina Lauren
One-night stands should be with someone convenient, wickedly persuasive, or regrettable. They aren’t supposed to be with someone like him.
But after a crazy Vegas weekend celebrating her college graduation—and terrified of the future path she knows is a cop-out—Mia Holland makes the wildest decision of her life: follow Ansel Guillaume—her sweet, filthy fling—to France for the summer and just… play.
When feelings begin to develop behind the provocative roles they take on and their temporary masquerade adventures begin to feel real, Mia will have to decide if she belongs in the life she left because it was all wrong or in the strange new one that seems worlds away.
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