Recommendations for a 17-year-old, please

Woollybear

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I suggest you go subversive.

Look at the titles on this list and find the ones that embody the values you'd like to impart on this young woman, and buy her those.
 

Brightdreamer

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That looks like a decent list Patty linked to, though I'm not sure I'd count the Percy Jackson books as "romance" - there are touches of it through the books, but ultimately it's more action and Greek mythology.

I'll throw in Kristen Cashore's Graceling (fantasy with romance, which has one of the most empowering messages about women and romance I've read anywhere, even in grown-up books), These Broken Stars by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner (SF romance that starts with a shipwreck on an alien world), the Bloody Jack series by L. A. Meyer (historical fiction with a wildly adventurous and resourceful heroine), and the Arabella books by David D. Levine (throwback SF with a Jules Verne/Edgar Rice Burroughs feel.)
 

frimble3

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When I was a teen, there was no YA, so we had to find out own way.
These are adult books, but your reader is seventeen, and the books aren't excessively violent or 'sexy' although love is fallen into. And 'exotic' settings. Romantic mysteries.

All the older Mary Stewarts:
Nine Coaches Waiting, The Gabriel Hounds, Airs Above the Ground, My Brother Michael, and others, if she likes the first few.
 
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Paul Lamb

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By the time I was 17, I was reading adult fiction (not that adult fiction) and literature. Depending on this person's reading experience/interests, you might want to supplement the young adult books with a few selections from the adult library. Any librarian would be able to give you loads of help with this.
 

Cyia

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By the time I was 17, I was reading adult fiction (not that adult fiction) and literature. Depending on this person's reading experience/interests, you might want to supplement the young adult books with a few selections from the adult library. Any librarian would be able to give you loads of help with this.

Same. I jumped from "kid lit" to Stephen King. Of course, at that time, YA really wasn't a thing, and NA definitely wasn't. Plenty of YA series have action and romance intertwined. Goodreads has several lists of current titles, and some older ones that might still appeal to a girl her age. (Throne of Glass, maybe?)
 

Introversion

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If she likes romance & action, maybe William Goldman’s “The Princess Bride”? Subversive, funny, timeless.

Me being me, I’d probably try to broaden her literary horizons with SF. John Scalzi’s “Old Man’s War” is a romance (don’t let anyone tell you otherwise) gussied up in the clothing of a darkly-comedic war novel.

Or fantasy? Martha Wells’ “The Cloud Roads” is the first in a solidly consistent series, full of romance, action, shape-shifting, other-world strangeness, with a very believable outsider protagonist who finds acceptance, friendship and love.
 

ULTRAGOTHA

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Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein. Not romance, but such wonderful books.
Or, for Romance, Daughter of Mystery by Heather Rose Jones. F/f, BEST worldbuilding, swash and buckle, action, politics. great book in a great series.
 

Brightdreamer

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Anne McCaffery's Pern series

I'd consider them with an asterisk; some parts of it don't age particularly well, though the concept remains iconic. The Harper Hall trilogy holds up a bit better, IMHO.

For dragon-related reads that might appeal to an older teen girl who likes romance and action, I'd throw in Marie Brennan's Memoirs of Lady Trent (alternate-world lady naturalist traveling the globe to study dragons; not much romance, but plenty of adventure) or Carrie Vaughn's Voices of Dragons (not much romance either, but a special bond between a teen girl and a young dragon in an alternate-modern world divided between dragonlands and humans), possibly Jen Williams's The Copper Promise (a ton of adventure with a little romance, sort of an update on the classic Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser but with much better gender balance and representation - though the dragon in question in this one is an ancient and evil menace) or Elle Katharine White's Heartstone (which is quite literally Pride and Prejudice rewritten in a world with dragons and monsters.) Naomi Novik's Temeraire series is great (though it ends weaker than it starts), but might come across as a bit stiff or slow, especially the first volume.
 
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