Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Favourite YA Couples from Books I’ve Read in the Past Year

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Each week there is a new topic for bloggers to choose and list their top ten. It was a Valentine’s Day themed free pick this week so I chose; Top Ten Favourite YA Couples from Books I’ve Read in the Past Year.

I have a lot of OTP’s and it was a real challenge to narrow it down to just ten. Looking through my ‘Read’ list on Goodreads I saw so many amazing books, all full of amazing characters and amazing relationships; it was nearly impossible to choose. Some of my picks for this week are couples from standalone books or finished series so I know how their stories end, but there are a few from series where the last book is still to be released and I am desperate to find out how it ends, hoping for a happily ever after.

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Blue and Gansey

“Blue,” he warned, but his voice was chaotic. This close, his throat was scented with mint and wool sweater and vinyl car seat, and Gansey, just Gansey.

She said, “I just want to pretend. I want to pretend that I could.”

He breathed out.

What was a kiss without a kiss?

It was a tablecloth tugged from beneath a party service. Everything jumbled against everything else in just a few chaotic moments. Fingers in hair, hands cupping necks, mouths dragged on cheeks and chins in dangerous proximity.

– Blue Lily, Lily Blue, Maggie Stiefvater

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Cath and Levi

She didn’t have words for what Levi was. He was a cave painting. He was The Red Balloon. She lifted her heels and pulled him forward until his face was so close, she could look at only one of his eyes at a time. “You’re magic,” she said.

– Fangirl, Rainbow Rowell

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Lilac and Tarver

“You’re you,” he repeats, his eyes full of grief. “You’re the same girl who crashed on this planet with me, who I dragged through forests and over mountains, who climbed through a shipwreck full of bodies to save my life. You’re the same girl I loved, and I love you now.”

– These Broken Stars, Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner

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Etta and Nicholas

Nicholas blinked and started to laugh. He tilted his head back, catching the rain across his face; and when he finally leaned down to kiss her, the sweetness of it lingered on his lips.

It seemed to end before it even began. He pulled back, looking equally abashed and afraid, studying her face. Her hands itched to smooth the lines of worry away from his forehead, from around his beautiful, dark eyes. But he wasn’t the type to like being soothed—she knew that—and she also knew that this concern was more than stupid eighteenth-century propriety. They were beyond that now.

She set her shoulders back, meeting his gaze with a challenge. “You call that a kiss?”

One corner of his mouth quirked up. “We haven’t the time for a proper one, pirate. Now tell me precisely where are we?”

– Passenger, Alexandra Bracken

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Sam and Jase

In movies, no one ever gets self-conscious at this point, thinking they should have brushed their teeth. In movies, it’s all beautifully choreographed, set to an increasingly dramatic soundtrack.

In movies, when the boy pulls the girl to him when they are both finally undressed, they never bump their teeth together and get embarrassed and have to laugh and try again.

But here’s the truth: In movies, it’s never half so lovely as it is here and now with Jase.

– My Life Next Door, Huntley Fitzpatrick

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Paige and Warden

In the darkness, I was nothing but feeling. Fingers pushing through my hair, climbing up the column of my spine. I pulled him closer, draping one arm around his neck, winding my fingers into rough-spun hair. He tasted of red wine and something else, something earthen and rich and just faintly amaroidal. A callused palm came to rest against my bare stomach, where my breaths came quick and shallow.

Until now, I hadn’t understood how much I’d wanted him to hold me, to touch me. Intimacy had no place in either of our worlds.

Warden lifted me, swinging the floor from under my feet. His hand cupped my cheek, and we broke the silence with our breathing. He held me so our foreheads touched, as if he were reassuring me that this was all right. As if that wasn’t a lie. I pressed my mouth against his jaw, savouring the warmth of his skin and the low-pitched notes of Gloss that trembled in his throat.

– The Mime Order, Samantha Shannon

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Kami and Jared

“I said once that my idea of happiness is to always be with you, and it is. I’m always going to think of you as the source of everything. To me, the sun rises and sets on you. You make all things true. I am in love with you, and I cannot imagine being in love with anyone else. It would be like becoming someone else. Your name was the first word for love I ever knew.”

– Unmade, Sarah Rees Brennan

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Alyssa, and Jeb and Morpheus

“Jeb is an anchor; he holds me grounded to my humanity and compassion. But Morpheus is the wind; he drags me kicking and screaming to the highest precipice, shoves me off, then watches me fly with netherling wings. When Jeb’s at my side, the world is a canvas—unblemished and welcoming; when I’m with Morpheus, it’s a wanton playground—wicked and addictive.”

– Ensnared, A.G. Howard

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Penryn and Raffe

“You’re a very special girl, Penryn. An amazing girl. An I-didn’t-even-know-someone-like-you-existed kind of girl. And you deserve someone who treats you like you’re the only important thing in his life because you are.”

– End of Days, Susan Ee

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Cinder and Kai

She hesitated before asking, “Do you ever think about the future?”

His expression turned wary. “Of course I do.”

“And…does it include me?”

His gaze softened in a way that made her pulse skip. Releasing the overhead pipe, he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “That depends on whether I’m thinking about the good future or the bad one.”

Cinder shut her eyes and tucked her head under his chin. “As long as one of them does.”

– Winter, Marissa Meyer

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In the end I couldn’t narrow my list down to just ten. I made it to eleven and couldn’t get rid of any of the couples I had picked to make it ten. So I kept all eleven.

Saira and Archer from the Immortal Descendants series are my all-time favourite couple; they may have their ups and downs but they always come through the other side stronger than before. The Immortal Descendants is a brilliant series and it deserves so much more recognition than it currently has.

Saira and Archer

“So, on this birthday, I would tell you about the night we met again. How dumbstruck I was that my memories of your energy and your smile and your wild beauty were transparent ghosts in comparison to the living , breathing, stunning girl who jumped into my car. You took my breath away You made my heart remember to beat. The scent of you filled blanks in my memory I hadn’t know were there. And then I spent those first week utterly terrified to lose you. I’m not even certain how I was able to function as a rational being some nights. I would have killed Bob Shaw if you hadn’t gotten between us the night he was training you to kill…me, I suppose.”

“Not you. Never you” My voice broke on its whisper.

“And in the end, when it was completely out of my hands, I finally surrendered to the reality of what it means to love you. And it truly was surrender or break into a thousand pieces every day.”

– Changing Nature, April White

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So what do you think? Did you take part in this week’s Top Ten Tuesday, if so let me know who some of your favourite YA couples are or what you picked for this week’s Valentine’s Day themed free-for-all.