Seven top YAs featuring PoC teens in love

Sona Charaipotra is a New York City-based writer and editor with more than a decade’s worth of experience in print and online media. At the BN Teen blog she tagged seven "YA must-reads that celebrate a PoC teen (or two!) falling in love," including:

That Thing We Call A Heart, by Sheba Karim

Karim’s sophomore YA novel serves up piping hot pie, Urdu poetry, Radiohead, and a quirky summer of first love. Growing up Pakistani American in the heart of New Jersey, Shabnam Qureshi is used to not quite fitting in. Her hardcore feminist BFF has started wearing a hijab. She’s telling lies about a star-crossed Partition romance to strangers. And body hair is ever an issue. (As it was in Karim’s debut, Skunk Girl.) But when she meets charming Jamie, who hangs with her at her pie-shop gig all summer, she feels like things might be changing. But for better, or for worse?

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue