When a teen falls in love for the first time, it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to them. But it can quickly become the worst, because however much it may feel as if it’s going to last forever, it probably won’t. The right story can help kids to cherish their first love while it lasts – and try to  ensure that it leaves them with mostly happy memories.

For newly stricken boys, we suggest leaving the graphic novel Blankets outside the bedroom door. Craig – a brooding, skinny boy with a fine, poetic nose – is bullied at home as well as at school (see: bullied, being) and has always felt at odds with the world. So when he meets Raina at Christian summer camp – both of them nervously tucking a strand of long hair behind an ear – we know how deeply he’s likely to fall. Their relationship is tender and playful and honest; and though the complications of living far apart does for them in the end (and it’s no spoiler to say so), they ride a number of challenges along the way, including coping with each of their challenging families. Thompson’s black-and-white drawings, as full of movement as they are of sadness and the lonely spaces of the human heart, will haunt young readers just as Raina continues to haunt Craig once the relationship’s over; but the memory of their love remains free of bitterness. As a love story, it offers an innocent yet meaningful model of how new love can be.

First-love stories from a girl’s point of view don’t come any more heart-rending than The Fault in Our Stars. Sixteen-year-old Hazel – sassy, dry and on “best friends” terms with her parents –  is fully aware that her cancer is terminal. So when she meets the smoky-voiced Augustus Waters at a cancer support group, we know their story is going to be intense. This may be first love but, for Hazel at least, it’ll most likely be her last.

There’s an honesty and wit to their interactions from the start. “‘Are you serious?’” Hazel asks, not missing a beat when Augustus takes out a cigarette. Augustus shrugs and explains that the cigarette is just a metaphor, and by not lighting it he’s refusing to give it its power. That’s when Hazel taps the window of her mum’s waiting car and tells her to go home. Hazel might have lungs that “suck at being lungs” and be forced to wear an oxygen-feeding cannula in her nostrils at all times, and Augustus might have only one non-artificial leg (osteosarcoma having taken the other), but it doesn’t stop them going to Amsterdam to meet Hazel’s all-time favourite author, Peter Van Houten. Their genuine connection – and the way both sets of parents keep a respectful yet supportive distance – is one to which all teens and their grown-ups can aspire.

The love affair in Annie on My Mind is all the more special for being unexpected and will reassure those finding themselves falling for someone of the same gender. When two seventeen-year-old girls catch one another’s eye at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, it’s a real Cupid’s arrow moment. “We looked at each other, really looked, I mean for the first time, and for a moment or two I don’t think I could have told anyone my name, let alone where I was,” Liza  recollects in a letter to Annie a year later. It takes a while for the relationship to develop, neither being sure if it’s what the other one wants. But at Coney Island one day, Liza puts her arm around Annie to keep her warm and, before either of them know what’s happening, Annie’s “soft and gentle mouth” is on Liza’s. Liza wrestles with her homosexuality, feeling it’s “sinful” – while also knowing that nothing has ever felt so right.

We infer that something has forced them to be apart – hence the need for the letter – and realise that, this being the early Eighties, they have felt the need to keep their relationship secret. But the wise words of two female teachers from their school who they’ve accidentally outed keep them strong: “‘Don’t let ignorance win, let love,’” their teachers say – a philosophy we have reason to believe that Liza and Annie will follow.

See also: betrayal • gay, not sure if you are • innocence, loss of • virginity, loss of • wet dreams