Dara is excited about the possibilities of life that await her. After graduating high school, she finds there is so much to explore. She enjoys hanging with her friend, Sam, and looks forward to launching into a professional tennis career. But she needs her birth certificate to enter a tennis program and, interestingly enough, her mother Mellie cannot seem to locate it.

Seems fishy, so Dara embarks on a search of her own once the house is quiet. What she finds shocks her… and ultimately turns life as she knows it upside down.

The 18-year-old discovers that her mother is actually her biological father. Her mother, Celeste, died in a car crash when Dara was quite young. Angry at Mellie for keeping this a secret for so long, Dara sets out on an impromptu car trip to meet the relatives on Celeste's side of the family. She longs desperately to reconnect with a family she has never known and, luckily, Sam agrees to travel by her side.

The young woman feels lost and bewildered by the fact that so much of her history was obscured by her mother. Dara is ecstatic to meet her long-lost family, and delights in getting to know them. They have so much fun learning about each other and building relationships.

The trip has another benefit: Dara gets increasingly closer to Sam, as she begins to explore the world as an adult in foreign, uncharted territory.

And She Was by Jessica Verdi, 2018

Books on transgender people
Jessica Verdi's website
 

Ryden Brooks is left with one thing when his girlfriend, Meg, dies of cancer: Hope… literally, a beautiful baby girl by that name, who's the spitting image of her mother. Wracked with guilt for getting his sick lover pregnant, teenage Ryden struggles to be the best father he can be. He is confident that he can balance soccer, his new friend Joni, and Hope, all during his senior year in high school. It seems like a lot, and his mother predicts that it will all fall apart. 

Ryden's turning down hangout invites, keeping knowledge of his daughter's existence from Joni, running late to soccer practice frequently, and practically collapsing from sheer exhaustion—something in his life needs to give. More than anything, he craves a full soccer scholarship to UCLA. Can this young man lace together all the typical high school milestones with his newfound parental responsibilities?

Ryden is not over Meg nor the memories of her that drift into his consciousness. Meg's sister, Mabel, searches through Meg's journals like Ryden does. He is hungry for information on what she was thinking during her last days: How much did she know about her illness and when did she know it? Ryden's mind burns to find out. 

What You Left Behind by Jessica Verdi, 2015

An excellent book on teenage single fatherhood, albeit with rough language.

Books about teen fathers