To All the Boys…and Other YA Novels We’d Love to See Adapted for Netflix
P.S. I Still Love You, the long-awaited sequel to 2018’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is finally on Netflix – just in time for us to all swoon over Peter Kavinsky and write fake (totally real) valentines to him. But the fact that we still cannot stop thinking about every delicious moment of this fake-romance-turned-real-relationship movie is really making us wonder. What would happen if Netflix swept up a ton of really excellent YA novels and turned them all into movies? Here are our picks, not that anyone was asking.
The Music of What Happens by Bill Konigsberg
In this beautiful coming of age novel – where the coming of age centers around a first job and the realization that your parent is also a human being – two boys turn a run-down food truck into an incredibly profitable business, navigating health code certifications and business licenses and the cost of ingredients and every other reality of running a small business. But it’s done in a cute way, a wonderful way, because these two boys are slowly and then quickly falling for each other. Set against the backdrop of a too hot Arizona summer, The Music of What Happens is the summer Netflix movie we want to see, um, yesterday.
Buy the book:
Amazon | Barnes and Noble | IndieBound
Tell Me How You Really Feel by Aminah Mae Safi
We all love an enemies to lovers high school romance, especially when the “enemies” piece is a simple misunderstanding paired with a whole lot of frustration, and the “lovers” piece is just another way of saying “it’s going to be very very cute.” Tell Me How You Really Feel gives itself away right there on the cover, but we’re far from mad about it. We just want to see the movie-within-a-movie storyline that will inevitably look spectacular and only a little embarrassing when a professional production arm (ahem, Netflix) captures Rachel’s student film in all its glory.
Buy the book:
Amazon | Barnes and Noble | IndieBound
The Summer of Jordi Perez (And the Best Burger in Los Angeles) by Amy Spalding
We love a great summer timeline, especially when the plot includes a three-month search for the best burger in the city. We love a food-based scavenger hunt! And while The Summer of Jordi Perez is so much more about Jordi and Abby than it is about (The Best Burger in Los Angeles) we’re still stoked to see how Netflix shoots all the incredible food in this book. And yes, this is the third queer YA romance in a list of (so far) three YA romances. Can you honestly blame us for wanting to see more queer representation in the movies Netflix makes?
Buy the book:
Amazon | Barnes and Noble | IndieBound
The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
When we first read The Poet X, we fell so madly in love with this story that we could not put it down. Everything about Xiomara’s poetry screams imagery, drive, and flight. There’s an urgency to this character’s words, to her actions, to the joy that pulses through her veins every time she picks up a pen. It demands to be seen on the screen, lifted off the page and translated into something as close to reality as we can witness. Trust us, Netflix. You’re going to want to sign on for this one.
Buy the book:
Amazon | Barnes and Noble | IndieBound
Geekerella by Ashley Poston
We have nothing but love for Ashley Poston’s modern adaptation of Cinderella, which brings together some of our favorite young adult tropes: working in a food truck (check), the fleeting infinity of the summer (check), mistaken identity (check, check), and comic cons (hell yeah). There’s a cinematic quality to this novel already, from the pacing right down to the we’re-filming-a-movie antics of the plot. It would make the perfect Netflix movie, one that guarantees we won’t be turned into a pumpkin – because we’ll already be home.
Buy the book:
