My favorite Jane Austen book is Sense and Sensibility. After you read it, rent the movie (there are actually 2 good ones, but the best one stars Hugh Grant and Emma Thompson).
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte is really good too. After you read that book, there are many excellent movie adaptations. Haven’t seen a bad one yet.
Bleak House by Charles Dickens is a pretty long book, but it’s worth it. There are several romances, a rags to riches life, and a couple of huge mysteries. After you read that, rent the recent Masterpiece Theater mini-series featuring Gillian Andersen.
And of course there’s always Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.
The library is great, but you should also try going to thrift stores and garage sales. I’ve found tons of books at both from ten cents to two dollars. And ask your friends, and their mothers if you guys can start swapping books (you can either return them when you’re finished or you can pay them forward to the next lucky recipient).
If you want to read a really great book, that is extremely romantic, but not in the man/woman sense, more in the “ideals of a girl” sense, you should read a book that I read when I was about 11 years old the first time (and have read it many times over the years) a book written by Julie Andrews (Edwards) yes- Mary Poppins herself, about a young girl living in an orphanage in England. The book is called Mandy and it is one of my most treasured books that I have ever read.