A work in progress, built for my wife with love. Suggestions welcome
Discover 525 new adult romance books on TropeScope.
Romance with protagonists in their late teens to mid-twenties, navigating college, first careers, and first independent relationships. The bridge between YA and full contemporary.
New adult emerged as a category in the early 2010s to capture readers who'd outgrown YA but weren't yet drawn to 30-something contemporary heroines. Settings lean hard into college campuses, hockey arenas, and sorority houses. Spice levels run higher than YA — often significantly so. Hannah Grace's Icebreaker is a defining modern example; Elle Kennedy's Off-Campus series pioneered the sports-NA overlap; Colleen Hoover's It Ends With Us and Ugly Love cemented NA's emotional-drama lane.

Colleen Hoover
No questions, no future — until his devastating past makes their arrangement impossible to keep.

Elle Kennedy · Off-Campus #1
She needs a fake date to impress her crush. He needs a tutor to save his hockey career. Neither expects the real thing.

Colleen Hoover · Hopeless #1
A girl with a buried past meets a boy with dangerous secrets — and the truth will shatter them both.

Colleen Hoover
A girl escaping poverty spends one last summer with a brooding rich stranger — and both their hearts pay the price.

Rainbow Rowell · Fangirl #1
A shy fanfic writer navigates college alone for the first time — and falls for the boy who keeps showing up.

Jamie McGuire · Beautiful #1
A good girl bets she can resist the campus bad boy — and ends up living in his apartment.

Chloe Walsh · Boys of Tommen #2
Shannon is hiding dark secrets to protect her brothers — and the boy who owns her heart is the only one who can reach he

Colleen Hoover · Maybe #1
Heartbroken after catching her boyfriend cheating, Sydney falls for the brooding musician next door — who has a girlfrie

Colleen Hoover
Auburn moves to Dallas and falls for an artist whose confessions — and secrets — could destroy them both.

Elle Kennedy · Off-Campus #2
A charming hockey player has one shot to win back the girl he let get away — and she's not making it easy.

Elle Kennedy · Off-Campus #3
One wild night with the campus playboy was supposed to fix her broken heart — now he won't let her go.

Colleen Hoover · Slammed #1
A grieving girl and her new neighbor find hope in poetry — until they discover why they can't be together.

Penelope Douglas
He's her secret pen pal, her bully, and the mysterious new student — but she has no idea he's all three.

Chloe Walsh · Boys of Tommen #3
A broken boy fighting addiction and a bright-eyed girl who refuses to give up on him — years in the making.

Elle Kennedy · Off-Campus #4
A one-night stand becomes a lot more complicated when she ends up pregnant with the hockey star's baby.

Colleen Hoover · Slammed #2
Layken and Will's love survived the impossible — but can it survive themselves?

Anna Todd · After #1
A good girl falls hard for a cruel, tattooed bad boy who keeps pushing her away — but can't let her go.

Colleen Hoover · Hopeless #2
Holder finally tells his side: the guilt, the search, and what it cost him to find Sky again.

Elle Kennedy · Briar U #2
A hockey coach's daughter needs the rival team's star player as her fake boyfriend — bad idea all around.

Elle Kennedy · Briar U #1
A bubbly socialite and a tattooed hockey nerd become roommates — opposites don't stand a chance.

Tammara Webber · Contours of the Heart #1
After a brutal assault on campus, a heartbroken girl finds her rescuer is closer than she thought.

Jamie McGuire · Beautiful #2
Travis Maddox — fighter, heartbreaker, untameable — finally meets the one girl who can destroy him.

Jessa Hastings · Magnolia Parks Universe #1
Two toxic exes who can't quit each other — everyone knows they're endgame, including them.

Penelope Douglas · Fall Away #1
Her childhood best friend spent years making her life hell — now she's done hiding and ready to fight back.
Dorm rooms, finals week, spring break. The classic new-adult setting.

Elle Kennedy · Off-Campus #1
She needs a fake date to impress her crush. He needs a tutor to save his hockey career. Neither expects the real thing.

Colleen Hoover · Hopeless #1
A girl with a buried past meets a boy with dangerous secrets — and the truth will shatter them both.

Rainbow Rowell · Fangirl #1
A shy fanfic writer navigates college alone for the first time — and falls for the boy who keeps showing up.

Jamie McGuire · Beautiful #1
A good girl bets she can resist the campus bad boy — and ends up living in his apartment.

Colleen Hoover · Maybe #1
Heartbroken after catching her boyfriend cheating, Sydney falls for the brooding musician next door — who has a girlfrie

Elle Kennedy · Off-Campus #2
A charming hockey player has one shot to win back the girl he let get away — and she's not making it easy.
Hockey, football, basketball — the jock-meets-outsider formula runs through much of the genre.

Elle Kennedy · Off-Campus #1
She needs a fake date to impress her crush. He needs a tutor to save his hockey career. Neither expects the real thing.

Chloe Walsh · Boys of Tommen #2
Shannon is hiding dark secrets to protect her brothers — and the boy who owns her heart is the only one who can reach he

Elle Kennedy · Off-Campus #2
A charming hockey player has one shot to win back the girl he let get away — and she's not making it easy.

Elle Kennedy · Off-Campus #3
One wild night with the campus playboy was supposed to fix her broken heart — now he won't let her go.

Chloe Walsh · Boys of Tommen #3
A broken boy fighting addiction and a bright-eyed girl who refuses to give up on him — years in the making.

Elle Kennedy · Off-Campus #4
A one-night stand becomes a lot more complicated when she ends up pregnant with the hockey star's baby.
Dark academia adjacents where the tormentor becomes the lover.

Erin Watt · The Royals #1
Orphaned and broke, Ella is thrown into a mansion full of rich, hostile boys — including the one who wants her gone.

L.J. Shen · All Saints High #1
He took her first kiss; she destroyed his world. Now they're forced to share a house — and a score to settle.

Penelope Douglas · Fall Away #2
He bullied her for years — but she came back from France with a spine, and now she pushes back.

Meagan Brandy · Brayshaw High #1
A defiant new girl refuses to bow to the ruling boys of her troubled-teen school — and they're obsessed.

Penelope Douglas
A perfect Catholic girl hides a dangerous secret — and the bad girl from the wrong side of tracks is about to expose it.

Ashley Jade · Royal Hearts Academy #1
She left him behind four years ago — now he's gorgeous, cruel, and determined to make her pay.
New adult romance features protagonists aged roughly 18-26, usually in college or early career. It's the maturity bridge between young adult (teen protagonists) and wider contemporary romance (late-20s+ protagonists). Spice levels are generally higher than YA.
Young adult romance is generally closed-door or fade-to-black. New adult is on-page, often explicit. The age of the protagonists and readership expectations differ — new adult assumes adult readers.
Roughly 18-26 — college-age through early career. The category exists to fill the gap between teenage YA protagonists and established-adult contemporary romance (30+). Some NA pushes into late 20s if the protagonist is still navigating first adult relationships or early-career milestones.
Icebreaker (Hannah Grace) for campus hockey romance; The Deal (Elle Kennedy) for the canonical early-2010s NA; It Ends with Us (Colleen Hoover) for emotional-drama NA. If you want the academy end: Rina Kent's Royal Elite or Lauren Asher's Dirty Air.