YA Earworms for 2025: Titles To Get Stuck in Your Head
One of my favorite things every year when it comes to YA books is this: perusing every title I can find and discovering the titles which get stuck in my head because it’s shared with a song or familiar lyrics of a song. That’s the earworm. It’s a thing you may not have heard out loud but you get stuck in your head musically regardless.
It’s a joy to put these earworms together in a post every year and give folks a fun playlist of music and novels. Last year’s edition went out in a newsletter, so I don’t have it handy to link to here, but you can check out some past editions from 2023, 2022, 2020, and 2019.
Find below a selection of 2025 YA earworms. You’ll want to note that the vast majority of these titles are by white authors and that that is in no way reflective of 2025 YA as a whole. It’s simply the title convention that limits the scope here. I won’t lie—I’m really excited I get to share a title this year that is one of my nerdiest favorite songs of my own teenhood.
Call Your Boyfriend by Olivia A. Cole and Ashley Woodfolk (July 1)
Beginning with a title that needs a tiny edit to be an earworm but that, for me, is one nonetheless. This upcoming book by powerhouse duo Cole and Woodfolk follows Beau, who wants to know whether or not her crush, Maia, reciprocates her feelings. Sure she and Maia have been hooking up secretly, but that doesn’t mean feelings are really there.
So when Beau shows up to a huge party and sees Maia kissing Charm, she steps in. But that doesn’t matter too much, since Maia’s just also received a promposal from her popular boyfriend.
Now Beau and Charm are going to team up to get Maia back. First, by getting Charm to have Maia fall so hard that her boyfriend breaks up with her. Then, by turning the tables and letting Maia be the one who gets dumped.
Of course, there’s a hitch: Charm and Beau might begin to hit it off.
This book title is simply a gender swap of the catchy-as-heck Robyn song “Call Your Girlfriend.”
Come As You Are by Dahlia Adler (May 27)
This one’s for fans of grumpy-sunshine romances, and the description of this one gives me some The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks vibes.
Evie enrolls at Camden Academy for a new beginning, following a bad breakup, a sister who did her dirty, and more. But the start she hoped to be fresh is anything but. Evie is placed in an all-boys dorm room and has no way to get out.
So she’s going to lean into the rumors spreading about her, with the help of one of her dorm mates, Salem. Salem isn’t Evie’s favorite person but they’ve got skills to benefit each other. Salem needs to get his act together and become a flawless human; Evie needs Salem’s help to become the bad girl that everyone thinks she is.
The problem is that things go very well for Salem. That isn’t the case for Evie. Now she has to figure out whether to keep pursuing this dead-end road for herself or be who she really is.
No need to tell you how obvious the earworm is.
Run Away with Me by Brian Selznick (April 1)
Is there a coincidence that a lot of the novels on this roundup of 2025 earworms are queer romances? Maybe. Maybe not.
Danny’s spending summer in Rome as his mom is working at a mysterious museum. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a 16-year-old, of course, and he’s taking advantage of getting to know the ancient city. That’s when he encounters Angelo.
Before long, Danny and Angelo are spending every moment together. At first, it’s all about the city. Soon, though, they begin to share bits and pieces of their own lives with one another. That helps them build a home between them and romance begins to flourish.
But as much as Danny worries about telling Angelo about never feeling like he has had a home or fallen in love with another boy, the reality is that Angelo might be harboring even darker secrets that could end things between the two before they ever really begin.
“Run Away With Me” is a Carly Rae Jepsen banger. Both the song and video seem to have a lot of parallels with the book.
Say a Little Prayer by Jenna Voris (March 4)
What did I say about queer YA books and earworms?
Riley left her church a year ago because it was not a welcoming place for a bisexual girl like her and because of how the church treated her sister when she got an abortion.
So when Riley is sent to the principal’s office for smacking a girl who was talking poorly about her sister, she doesn’t anticipate being given the opportunity to avoid suspension by attending a church camp. She’ll take that option, in part because her best friend Julia will be there, too.
But Julia’s dad is in charge of the camp, and Riley has no interest in repenting. Instead, she’s going to use the week-long camp to dive deep into the seven deadly sins. It might help her peers understand that life doesn’t need to be about strict piety to be good.
There’s a hitch in the plan though, and it’s a big one. Riley is falling for Julia and hard.
Hello, Aretha!
Summer Girls by Jennifer Dugan (May 27)
Opposites attract, right?
Cass hates that every summer, her beach town is crawling with summer girls. Those privileged rich girls are completely unrelatable and never the kind of girl she’d want to date.
Birdie…is your queen summer girl. But this summer, despite being with her father at the beach, she’s there not for vacation but as punishment for crashing her boyfriend’s car.
Birdie’s being babysat by Cass all summer, as Cass’s father works for Birdie’s dad. Understandably, both girls hate this arrangement immediately. But then, well, once they start to get to know each other from all of the forced proximity, their feelings toward one another might end up changing a little bit.
And then a lot.
I have indeed been waiting this entire book list so far to get to this song. I have no shame in talking about how much I absolutely love this piece of my own teen nostalgia. How the night that Rich Cronin died, he was honored with the karaoke take on the song to end all karaoke takes on the song.
Ahem, anyway. It’s “Summer Girls” by LFO. (Somehow there are over 14,000 comments on this video!).
Take a Chance on Me by Elizabeth Eulberg (March 4)
Evie’s breakup with her cheating ex-boyfriend ends up going viral, and it makes the whole ending of that relationship feel even worse than it already did. So she decides to head to London for the summer. It’s the perfect opportunity to escape, except that being in London means being with her father, too. They do not have a good relationship.
To avoid him, Evie spends every day wandering the streets of London. That’s where she meets Aiden, a busker who she finds charming and funny. But Evie is definitely not ready for a new relationship yet. This summer is about healing.
Except sometimes you don’t get to choose when love enters your life.
Abba would agree, don’t you think?
Time After Time by Mikki Daughtry (May 20)
Libby has always loved this one Victorian house in her neighborhood. When it goes on the market, she literally uses every penny she’s ever saved, plus an inheritance from her grandmother, to buy it and, she hopes, fix it up to its former glory (#relatable). Her parents will be mad, but it is her dream. It’s her calling.
Tish is broke as a joke, but she’s extremely handy. Something compels her to knock on the door of the newly purchased Victorian home and it’s there she meets Libby. The two strike a deal: Tish will help fix up the old house in exchange for being able to live there and save some money up.
Libby then finds a diary from 100 years ago in the old home, and it’s one that details a secret relationship between Elizabeth and Patricia. As Libby reads more about the forbidden relationship between the two girls, she begins to see too many eerie coincidences between Elizabeth and Patricia and she and Tish.
Are they here together not for the first time…but for the first time to get it right?
Here’s your Cyndi Lauper.
You Belong to Me by Hayley Krischer (April 15)
This might be the only book on this list that’s not a capital-R romance, though sapphic romance plays a big part in this psychological thriller. If you, like me, are obsessed with pyramid schemes and especially those related to the beauty industry (think books like Rouge by Mona Awad), put this on your TBR.
Frances is paired up with Julia for a class project. Julia is not only kind of Frances’s crush, but she’s also the daughter of social media and wellness influencer Deena. Deena’s DEEP is known for its magical skincare products, sound baths, and more, and while Frances has never cared about it before, now that she’s been introduced to this world, she cannot get enough.
Being invited to an exclusive DEEP party shows Frances a whole side of Julia’s life that she cannot believe exists. Now, Frances is excited, feeling her best, and really looking forward to a deeper relationship with Julia.
Then a DEEP party goes sideways and suddenly, Frances begins to wonder if everything that was tempting her about Julia and her life was meant to be a distraction from something far more deadly.
The first time I read the description of this book, I wondered if the author knew what she did with her main character’s name. She has to, right?
Anyway, the earworm here is the only Taylor Swift title on the list and it’s the perfect one for the book. Yes, the book title and the Swift song are a word apart, but you cannot tell me that you aren’t hearing the song when you see the title anyway.
Don’t worry. If you’re a purist about the earworm, Carly Simon’s got you covered.
YA Book News
Because I was out of the office for several weeks, I didn’t get the opportunity to share the latest in YA news. Let’s catch up here in a bit way, and then, we can get back on track with links being included weekly or biweekly.
- Speaking of earworms, Hayley Kiyoko will be directing the adaptation of her book Girls Like Girls, which is based on her song of the same name.
- The most anticipated science fiction, fantasy, and horror reads of November and December 2024.
- This forthcoming YA graphic novel series about a Black teen British punk band sounds awesome.
- The original Twilight cast won’t be starring in the reprisal of the series.
- Speaking of Twilight, the original films are now streaming on Hulu.
- Here’s a big roundup of the casting news as it relates to the adaptation of Maggie Stiefvater’s Shiver. I’m so curious how a book this old will do adapted with a very different audience than when it was first published. The adaptation of Uglies did not go over well and while Shiver isn’t as old…it’s still pretty old in YA years.
- And speaking of Stiefvater, The Raven Boys has a graphic novel adaptation coming.
- Clown in a Cornfield, a horror adaptation I am so looking forward to, has a release date of next May.
- Although the series XO, Kitty is not YA—it’s middle grade—it is a spin-off of the YA adaptation To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before from Jenny Han. All of that is a preface to say that the second season will be arriving before too long.
- It is likely by now fans of the book and series know this, but just in case: A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder got the exceedingly rare order for a second season at Netflix.
