Aromantic
2024 curated booklist
Tarnished Are the Stars
Rosiee Thor
A secret beats inside Anna Thatcher’s chest: an illegal clockwork heart. Anna works cog by cog — donning the moniker Technician — to supply black market medical technology to the sick and injured, against the Commissioner’s tyrannical laws. Nathaniel Fremont, the Commissioner’s son, has never had to fear the law. Determined to earn his father’s respect, Nathaniel sets out to capture the Technician. But the more he learns about the outlaw, the more he questions whether his father’s elusive affection is worth chasing at all. Their game of cat and mouse takes an abrupt turn when Eliza, a skilled assassin and spy, arrives. Her mission is to learn the Commissioner’s secrets at any cost — even if it means betraying her own heart.
When these uneasy allies discover the most dangerous secret of all, they must work together despite their differences and put an end to a deadly epidemic — before the Commissioner ends them first.
Category: Young Adult, Science Fiction
Representation: Asexual, aromantic, bisexual, lesbian
Content Warnings: Character death, abuse, violence, ableism, sexual activity
ISBN: 9781338312270
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Clariel
Garth Nix
Clariel is the daughter of one of the most notable families in the Old Kingdom, with blood relations to the Abhorsen, and to the King. When her family moves to the city of Belisaere, Clariel finds herself at the centre of sorcery and intrigue: a plot is brewing against the old and withdrawn King Orrikan; her parents want to marry her off to a killer; and a dangerous Free Magic creature is loose in the city.
When Clariel is drawn into the efforts to find and capture the creature, she finds hidden sorcery within herself, yet it is magic that carries great dangers. Can she rise above the temptation of power, escape the unwanted marriage and save the King?
Category: Young Adult, Fantasy, Series
Representation: Asexual, aromantic, bisexual, lesbian
Content Warnings: Character death, abuse, violence, gore
ISBN: 9781760291518
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The Grimrose Girls
Laura Pohl
Four troubled friends,
One murdered girl…
and a dark fate that may leave them all doomed.
The Descendants meets Pretty Little Liars in this story of four reimagined fairytale heroines who must uncover connections to their ancient curses and forge their own paths…before it’s too late.
After the mysterious death of their best friend, Ella, Yuki, and Rory are the talk of their elite school, Grimrose Académie. The police ruled Ariane’s death as a suicide, but the trio are determined to find out what really happened.
When Nani Eszes arrives as their newest roommate, it sets into motion a series of events that no one could have predicted. As the girls retrace their friend’s final days, they discover a dark secret about Grimrose ― Ariane wasn’t the first dead girl.
They soon learn that all the past murders are connected to ancient fairytale curses…and that their own fates are tied to the stories, dooming the girls to brutal and gruesome endings unless they can break the cycle for good.
Category: Young Adult, Mystery, Fantasy, Series
Representation: Asexual, aromantic, pansexual, lesbian
Content Warnings: Character death, abuse, suicide, transphobia, mental illness, violence, racism
ISBN: 9781728228877
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Loveless
Alice Oseman
Georgia has never been in love, never kissed anyone, never even had a crush – but as a fanfic-obsessed romantic she’s sure she’ll find her person one day.
As she starts university with her best friends, Pip and Jason, in a whole new town far from home, Georgia’s ready to find romance, and with her outgoing roommate on her side and a place in the Shakespeare Society, her ‘teenage dream’ is in sight.
But when her romance plan wreaks havoc amongst her friends, Georgia ends up in her own comedy of errors, and she starts to question why love seems so easy for other people but not for her. With new terms thrown at her – asexual, aromantic – Georgia is more uncertain about her feelings than ever.
Category: Young Adult
Representation: Asexual, aromantic, pansexual, lesbian, non-binary, diverse gender identities, diverse sexualities
Content Warnings: Discrimination, substance use/abuse
ISBN: 9780008244125
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Elatsoe
Darcie Little Badger
Elatsoe—Ellie for short—lives in an alternate contemporary America shaped by the ancestral magics and knowledge of its Indigenous and immigrant groups. She can raise the spirits of dead animals—most importantly, her ghost dog Kirby. When her beloved cousin dies, all signs point to a car crash, but his ghost tells her otherwise: He was murdered.
Category: Young Adult, Fantasy, Science Fiction
Representation: Asexual, aromantic, indigiqueer
Content Warnings: Racism, homophobia, violence, character death, abuse
ISBN: 9781646140053
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The Black Veins
Ashia Monet
In a world where magic thrives in secret city corners, a group of magicians embark on a road trip—and it’s the “no-love-interest”, found family adventure you’ve been searching for.
Sixteen-year-old Blythe is one of seven Guardians: magicians powerful enough to cause worldwide panic with a snap of their fingers. But Blythe spends her days pouring latte art at her family’s coffee shop, so why should she care about having apocalyptic abilities?
She’s given a reason when magician anarchists crash into said coffee shop and kidnap her family.
Heartbroken but determined, Blythe knows she can’t save them alone. A war is brewing between two magician governments and tensions are too high. So, she packs up her family’s bright yellow Volkswagen, puts on a playlist, and embarks on a road trip across the United States to enlist the help of six strangers whose abilities are unparalleled—the other Guardians.
Category: Young Adult, Fantasy
Representation: Aromantic, non-binary, transgender
Content Warnings: Violence, character death, transphobia, mental illness
ISBN: 9781733245814
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Immoral Code
Lillian Clark
For Nari, aka Narioka Diane, aka hacker digital alter ego “d0l0s,” it’s college and then a career at “one of the big ones,” like Google or Apple. Keagan, her sweet, sensitive boyfriend, is happy to follow her wherever she may lead. Reese is an ace/aro visual artist with plans to travel the world. Santiago is off to Stanford on a diving scholarship, with very real Olympic hopes. And Bellamy? Physics genius Bellamy is admitted to MIT—but the student loan she’d been counting on is denied when it turns out her estranged father—one Robert Foster—is loaded.
Nari isn’t about to let her friend’s dreams be squashed by a deadbeat billionaire, so she hatches a plan to steal just enough from Foster to allow Bellamy to achieve her goals.
Category: Young Adult
Representation: Asexual, aromantic
Content Warnings: Discrimination
ISBN: 9781646140053
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The Bone People
Keri Hulme
In a tower on the New Zealand sea lives Kerewin Holmes, part Maori, part European, an artist estranged from her art, a woman in exile from her family. One night her solitude is disrupted by a visitor—a speechless, mercurial boy named Simon, who tries to steal from her and then repays her with his most precious possession.
As Kerewin succumbs to Simon’s feral charm, she also falls under the spell of his Maori foster father Joe, who rescued the boy from a shipwreck and now treats him with an unsettling mixture of tenderness and brutality. Out of this unorthodox trinity Keri Hulme has created what is at once a mystery, a love story, and an ambitious exploration of the zone where Maori and European New Zealand meet, clash, and sometimes merge.
Category: Young Adult, NZ Author
Representation: Asexual, aromantic, takatāpui
Content Warnings: Abuse, violence, substance use/abuse, suicide, ableism, sexual violence, homophobia
ISBN: 9780143116455
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Seven Ways We Lie
Riley Redgate
Paloma High School is ordinary by anyone’s standards. It’s got the same cliques, the same prejudices, the same suspect cafeteria food. And like every high school, every student has something to hide—from Kat, the thespian who conceals her trust issues onstage, to Valentine, the neurotic genius who’s planted the seed of a school scandal.
Category: Young Adult
Representation: Aromantic, asexual, pansexual, diverse sexualities
Content Warnings: Discrimination, sexual violence, substance use/abuse
ISBN: 9781537902296
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An Accident Of Stars
Foz Meadows
When Saffron Coulter stumbles through a hole in reality, she finds herself trapped in Kena—a magical realm on the brink of civil war. It’s there that her fate becomes intertwined with that of three very different women: Zech, the fast-thinking acolyte of a cunning, powerful exile; Viya, the spoiled, runaway consort of the empire-building ruler, Vex Leoden; and Gwen, an Earth-born worldwalker whose greatest regret is putting Leoden on the throne. But Leoden has allies, too, and chief among them is the Vex’Mara Kadeja, a dangerous ex-priestess who shares his dreams of conquest.
Pursued by Leoden and aided by the Shavaktiin—a secretive order of storytellers and mystics—the rebels flee to Veksh, a neighboring matriarchy ruled by the fearsome Council of Queens. Saffron is out of her world and out of her depth, but the further she travels, the more she finds herself bound to her friends with ties of blood and magic. Can one girl—and an accidental worldwalker at that—really be the key to saving Kena? Or will she die trying?
Category: Young Adult, Fantasy
Representation: Aromantic, bisexual, pansexual, diverse genders, diverse sexualities
Content Warnings: Abuse, substance use/abuse, violence, sexual violence, character death, transphobia
ISBN: 9780857665843
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)