Y2K YA Summer Romance Books

Looking for Y2K YA Summer Romance Books? Or 2000s YA Romance Books? I have a list of realistic YA fiction published in the early mid 2000s that have romantic coastal beach vacation vibes.

Y2K YA Summer Romance Books

Most of these beachy Y2K books are romantic but many are also kind of… complicated. That’s what makes them the best kind of beach reads: life can change like the tides and we might (or might not) want to get swept up in it.

This post started in May 2014 as a roundup of four YA novels set on Nantucket and the New England islands, and it’s grown into something bigger. 

But I had to add books by Sarah Dessen, who created an entire fictional beach town (Colby, North Carolina) and invited us to return to it for more than two decades.

And you might not know Jenny Han teamed up with Siobhan Vivian to make Jar Island a compelling Y2K YA destination for readers who like their summer romance with a side of vengeance.

This is the complete guide to the best Y2K YA novels set at the beach or lake.

Quick Y2K YA Romance Books Picks by Vibe

If you want…	Read this
A dark secret and a genuinely shocking ending	We Were Liars by e. lockhart
THE iconic YA love triangle	The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han
A tearjerker set at the lake	Second Chance Summer by Morgan Matson
The best slow burn in all of YA	The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen
Revenge, not romance	Burn for Burn by Jenny Han & Siobhan Vivian
A complicated romance with a class divide	What I Thought Was True by Huntley Fitzpatrick

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My Favorite Y2K YA Summer Romance Books

The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han (2009)

Is there a more iconic Y2K YA Summer Romance than this one?

Belly’s summers at Cousins Beach with the Fisher family defined Y2K YA Summer Romance. Every year, Belly returns to the same house with the same people, until the summer everything changes.

The love triangle that develops between Belly, brooding Conrad, and golden-boy Jeremiah is one of the most divisive in YA. But this book also has the nostalgia of a childhood spent in the same summer house, watching yourself grow up.

I didn’t review this one because the brother love triangle really annoyed me… BUT:

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We Were Liars by e. lockhart (2014)

We Were Liars takes place on a private island owned by a family that seems to have it all: wealth, privilege, and a gorgeous, private place to spend their summers.

But things are not always what they seem. If you’re looking for a sweet beachy romance, this really isn’t that book. It’s a gripping, lush story about the darker side of wealth and privilege, and about one of the most jaw-dropping endings in all of YA.

And that ending. I was shocked, and I loved it. I found the show just as compelling.

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Second Chance Summer by Morgan Matson (2013)

This is Morgan Matson’s most emotionally devastating novel. When Taylor’s father receives a shocking diagnosis, the family gathers for their usual summer at their Pennsylvania lake house. But everything will be different after this summer.

Taylor’s romance with Henry, the childhood neighbor who remembers every mean thing she ever said to him, is the kind of slow, complicated connection that feels completely real. You must read this book, but have the tissues ready!

Sarah Dessen’s Colby, North Carolina

No list of YA beach reads is complete without Sarah Dessen’s Colby, North Carolina books. Colby is a fictional beach town that appears in seven of her novels, from 1996 to 2013. Each book stands alone, but people and places from earlier books often make cameo appearances in later ones. (You’ll come to know and love the Last Chance Bar and Grill, Clementines, and the Gas Gro…. iykyk)

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That Summer by Sarah Dessen (1996)

In Dessen’s second novel, Haven faces a summer of teenage awkwardness and family upheaval, including the fact that her older sister is getting married. When Lewis, her sister’s ex-boyfriend reappears, things get even more complicated.

This book is 1990s YA, so it’s written more for a real teen audience. Haven is only fifteen and the book reads like it. But it’s a must read for Sarah Dessen fans.

Beach Readability Rating: Three and a half beach chairs. A quick, emotionally satisfying summer read.

Setting Authenticity Rating: Four Colby sunsets. You can feel the humid beach-town summer from the first page. 

Summer Romance Rating: Three sunsets. This one leans into family upheaval and teen angst more than romance.

Keeping the Moon by Sarah Dessen (1999)

Nicole “Colie” isn’t thrilled that her mother has become a celebrity fitness guru. Colie, who was once bullied for her weight, is sent to spend the summer with her eccentric Aunt Mira in Colby.

Colie’s new job at The Last Chance Bar and Grill, makes her unexpected friends, helps her find a new confidence, and gives her the beginnings of something with a quiet boy. Warm, funny, and quietly radical in its insistence that real transformation comes from within.

Beach Readability Rating: Four beach chairs. A feel-good read that goes down easy.

Setting Authenticity Rating: Four Colby sunsets. The diner, the beach, the sleepy small-town summer — perfectly rendered. 

Summer Romance Rating: Four sunsets. This book has one of Dessen’s sweetest love interests, and the slow build is lovely.

The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen (2004)

Many people consider this Dessen’s best book (BUT my favorite will always be This Lullaby. Which is not set in Colby.)

After her father’s sudden death, Macy spent months distracting herself with perfect grades, a perfect boyfriend, a perfect plan. But her summer takes a turn and she ends up working at chaotic catering company and meeting a boy named Wes.

The Truth About Forever is funny, deeply emotional, and has a sweet and satisfying slow burn.

Beach Readability Rating: Five beach chairs. Masterful pacing: you’ll be laughing, then crying, then laughing while crying. 

Setting Authenticity Rating: Five Colby sunsets. The catering chaos and beach backdrop create a fun and authentic summer atmosphere. 

Summer Romance Rating: Five sunsets (if you love a slow burn)

Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen (2009)

Auden has always been serious, academic, responsible, too self-directed for frivolous fun. But a summer with her father and his new wife in Colby changes everything.

Auden meets Eli, an insomniac bike rider, and the two of them start biking around in the sleepy beach town in the middle of the night. Who would have thought that the Colby boardwalk at 3am feels like a place you want to visit every summer?

Beach Readability Rating: Five beach chairs. The late-night excursions make this book feel like you’re actually up with Auden and Eli. 

Setting Authenticity Rating: Five Colby sunsets. The boardwalk, the bike rides, the boutique girls, the beach at dawn: this is Colby at its most quirky and vivid. 

Summer Romance Rating: Five sunsets. The slow burn with Eli is deeply satisfying.

What Happened to Goodbye by Sarah Dessen (2011)

I didn’t warm up to this book at first, and it’s still not my favorite, but it’s also part of Colby lore.

McLean has gotten very good at reinventing herself. At each town and each new school her dad’s job takes them to, she morphs into someone different. When they land in Colby, McLean decides, for once, to try being herself. It’s a quieter story about identity and how scary it can be to reveal your true self.

Beach Readability Rating: Four beach chairs. Dessen’s prose is always absorbing. 

Setting Authenticity Rating: Three Colby sunsets. Colby takes a back seat to the restaurant world and McLean’s search for herself. 

Summer Romance Rating: Three sunsets. Sweet but secondary — this one is really about learning who you are.

The Moon and More by Sarah Dessen (2013)

Emaline has grown up in Colby and is ready to leave for college, until her estranged father arrives with his film-world girlfriend and a new boy in town starts making her question everything she’s planned. 

The Moon and More is about the tension between the future you mapped out vs what is in front of you, set against a Colby summer.

Beach Readability Rating: Three beach chairs.

Setting Authenticity Rating: Four Colby sunsets. I enjoyed the locals-versus-tourists dynamic. 

Summer Romance Rating: Three sunsets. Not my favorite Dessen couple.

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Burn for Burn by Jenny Han & Siobhan Vivian (2012)

Don’t come to Burn for Burn expecting a sweet beach romance. Read it for a gripping revenge plot set against the contained, claustrophobic social world of a small island community.

Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian’s co-written novel follows three very different girls (Lillia, Kat, and Mary) who band together to take down the people who’ve wronged them on Jar Island. 

The island setting is brilliant for this kind of story: everyone knows everyone, there’s nowhere to hide, and the ferry schedule controls your life. Jar Island feels real and specific, and the revenge plots unspooling against this backdrop make for genuinely tense, compulsive reading. Fair warning: this is the first book in a trilogy, and that ending will send you straight to the next one.

Beach Readability Rating: Five beach chairs. So gripping you’ll forget to check the ferry schedule. 

Summer Authenticity Rating: Four ferry tokens. Jar Island feels lived-in and specific — a small-town island community with its own rhythms.

Summer Romance Rating: Two sunsets. This one is more revenge than romance, but I wasn’t mad about it.

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What I Thought Was True by Huntley Fitzpatrick (2014)

What I Thought Was True was definitely not the same kind of romantic swoon-fest as My Life Next Door, but I still enjoyed it a lot.

Gwen was a great main character: tough and loyal and pretty hard on herself. Gwen has a complicated family situation (divorced parents and tight finances and a brother with some developmental issues) but she also has a cousin and a best friend who round out her family, and are dating one another.

The main source of suspense centers around an incident between Gwen and a boy named Cassidy Somers. I liked the fact that Gwen isn’t perfect — who is? — and is still trying to sort out the kind of person she’d like to be. While the book was about love, it wasn’t about storybook perfect love, but about relationships with real obstacles.

What I Thought Was True has a plot that depends on slow reveals, which may frustrate some readers. I didn’t mind, but I did find the flashbacks occasionally confusing. All in all a really enjoyable read with a good blend of summer romance and reality.

Beach Readability Rating: Three beach chairs, because I had to re-read those flashbacks, causing squinting. 

Setting Authenticity Rating: Five Nantucket baskets, because I can picture Seashell Island in my mind. 

Summer Romance Rating: Four sunsets, because I like romance with a heavy dose of realism.

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The Nantucket Series (Nantucket Blue and Nantucket Red) by Leila Howland (2013-2014)

For me, reading Nantucket Blue really captured the feel of teenage summers: the sense of possibility, the promise of romance, all wrapped up with in scent of sunscreen and the sound of Top 40 hits on the radio.

After a tragedy in her best friend Jules’s family ruins Cricket’s plans of summering with them in Nantucket, Cricket decides she’ll make the summer happen on her own.

Cricket was a character I didn’t love at first, but she slowly grew on me. Her relationship with her best friend Jules was an unequal one, with Jules holding all the power and Cricket always feeling uncertain. And I while I felt Cricket’s despair at losing her best friend, I never understood what Cricket saw in Jules. Still, I can fully accept that for a teenage girl, losing a best friend can be even more devastating than a romantic breakup, and I thought this aspect of the story was movingly portrayed.

I’m familiar with Nantucket and, while I thought some of the scenes felt a bit predictable — stuff like crusty Nantucketers in faded Murray’s Toggery pants snubbing the washashores with their ACK bumper stickers — the book does do a good job of depicting the uneasy relationship between the locals who live on Nantucket year round, the people who vacation there, and the army of seasonal workers who make hotel beds and sling fried clams when the island’s population increases five-fold in the summer months.

The scenes of Cricket working at the inn were my favorite. Cricket’s blunt, funny co-worker Liz was a standout and their exchanges about cleaning other people’s toilets were priceless. Liz was a far better friend to Cricket than Jules ever seemed to be.

Nantucket Blue had an abundance of plot lines. There was the Clayton family tragedy, the breach in Jules’ and Cricket’s friendship, the death of a local politician, Cricket’s discovery of her mother’s journal, Cricket’s relationship with a writer staying at the inn, and Cricket’s forbidden summer romance. 

While many of these did converge toward the end, I did wonder if the story might have been stronger if it had been streamlined a bit.

In Nantucket Red, Cricket is headed to Brown University in the fall. When she’s offered the chance to earn enough cash for a real college experience, she heads to Nantucket for the summer. A friendship blossoms with Ben, the gorgeous surfer and bartender who encourages Cricket to be free, even as she smarts at the pain of seeing Zack fall for her worst enemy.

I started out unsure about this one, as the first few chapters moved through an entire winter and spring at a rapid clip. But once summer arrived and the story really got going, I got much more invested. Nantucket Red is a story about change: facing it, accepting it, adapting to it. Friendships and romances are strained and broken and sometimes remade, but nothing remained exactly the same.

Overall, I’m a fan of this duology, which has a lot more depth than your typical summer romance. 

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The Sound by Sarah Alderson (2014)

Ren Kingston, reeling from heartbreak, just wants a quiet summer as a nanny for one of Nantucket’s wealthy families. Getting acquainted with handsome Jeremy and his young group of trust fund, private school kids was not part of the plan. Neither was befriending the local bad boy whose reputation is more dangerous than charming. After a dead body is found, Ren starts to wonder where the real threat lies.

I’ve always been a fan of romantic suspense, and I enjoyed this one. I really liked Ren and watching her navigate the summer playground of some rich American kids was genuinely fun. The romance was pretty good too. Not surprisingly, Ren falls for a brooding bad boy, but at least she makes fun of herself for doing so, cracking a few Twilight jokes. If you’re not a stickler about mysteries making perfect sense and are looking for a good beachy read, dive in!

Have you read any of these? Have any favorite beach-themed books? Tell me in comments!

Looking for 2020s books set at the beach? Check these titles out!

Liars Beach by Katie Cotugno

The Reunion by Kit Frick