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🧲 Books like this

Hard Love

Ellen Wittlinger · back to the book

What’s in it

Tap a tag: ❤ = this matters to me · tap again ✕ = don’t care · again to reset. The list below updates each time.

24 books with the same feel

Include books by the same author
❤️

Rats Saw God

Rob Thomas · 208 pages

In hopes of graduating, Steve York agrees to complete a hundred-page writing assignment which helps him to sort out his relationship with his famous astronaut father and the events that changed him from promising student to troubled teen.

First HeartbreakDivorced ParentsWriter ProtagonistYoung Adult
❤️

How to Build a House

Dana Reinhardt · 227 pages

HARPER'S DAD IS getting a divorce from her beloved stepmother, Jane. Even worse, Harper has lost her stepsister, Tess; the divorce divides them. Harper decides to escape by joining a volunteer program to build a house for a family in Tennessee who lost their home in a tornado. Not that she knows a thing about construction.Soon she's living in a funky motel and working long days in blazing heat wit

First HeartbreakDivorced ParentsYoung AdultContemporary Fiction
❤️

I Know It's Over

C.K. Kelly Martin · 244 pages

Sixteen-year-old Nick, still trying to come to terms with his parents' divorce, experiences exhiliration and despair in his relationship with his girlfriend Sasha especially when, after instigating a trial separation, she announces that she is pregnant.

First HeartbreakDivorced ParentsYoung AdultContemporary Fiction
❤️

Love Letters to the Dead

Ava Dellaira · 327 pages

When Laurel starts writing letters to dead people for a school assignment, she begins to spill about her sister's mysterious death, her mother's departure from the family, her new friends, and her first love.

Divorced ParentsWriter ProtagonistYoung AdultContemporary Fiction
🙂

That Summer

Sarah Dessen · 198 pages

During the summer of her divorced father's remarriage and her sister's wedding, fifteen-year-old Haven comes into her own by letting go of the myths of the past.

First HeartbreakDivorced ParentsYoung AdultContemporary Fiction
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Anna and the French Kiss

Stephanie Perkins · 372 pages

Anna is looking forward to her senior year in Atlanta, where she has a great job, a loyal best friend, and a crush on the verge of becoming more. Which is why she is less than thrilled about being shipped off to boarding school in Paris--until she meets Étienne St. Clair. Smart, charming, beautiful, Étienne has it all...including a serious girlfriend. But in the City of Light, wishes have a wa

Divorced ParentsFirst HeartbreakYoung AdultFirst Person Narrator
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It's Not Summer Without You

Jenny Han · 288 pages

Teenaged Isobel "Belly" Conklin, whose life revolves around spending the summer at her mother's best friend's beach house, reflects on the tragic events of the past year that changed her life forever.

First HeartbreakDivorced ParentsYoung AdultContemporary Fiction
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The Vast Fields of Ordinary

Nick Burd · 309 pages

It's Dade Hamilton's last summer at home. He has a crappy job at Food World, a boyfriend who won't publicly acknowledge his existence (maybe because Pablo also has a girlfriend), and parents on the verge of a divorce. College is Dade's shining beacon of possibility, a horizon to keep him from floating away. Then he meets the mysterious Alex Kincaid. Falling in real love finally lets Dade come o

Divorced ParentsYoung AdultContemporary FictionFirst Person Narrator
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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Mark Haddon · 240 pages

This is Christopher's murder mystery story. There are no lies in this story because Christopher can't tell lies. Christopher does not like strangers or the colours yellow or brown or being touched. On the other hand, he knows all the countries in the world and their capital cities and every prime number up to 7507. When Christohper decides to find out who killed the neighbour's dog, his mystery st

Divorced ParentsWriter ProtagonistFirst Person NarratorContemporary Fiction
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Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You

Peter Cameron · 234 pages

Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You is the story of James Sveck, a sophisticated, vulnerable young man with a deep appreciation for the world and no idea how to live in it. James is eighteen, the child of divorced parents living in Manhattan. Articulate, sensitive, and cynical, he rejects all of the assumptions that govern the adult world around him–including the expectation that he will go to

Divorced ParentsLGBTQ+ ProtagonistContemporary FictionYoung Adult
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Cut Both Ways

Carrie Mesrobian · 356 pages

Senior Will Caynes must face unsettling feelings for his best friend Angus after they share a drunken kiss, while also embarking on his first real relationship with sophomore Brandy--all as the burden of home-life troubles weigh heavily.

Divorced ParentsLGBTQ+ ProtagonistYoung AdultContemporary Fiction
🙂

This Is How You Lose Her

Junot Diaz · 240 pages

This is a collection of stories that explores the power of love in all its forms, obsessive love, illicit love, fading love, maternal love, as it is shaped by passion, betrayal, and the echoes of intimacy.

First HeartbreakWriter ProtagonistContemporary FictionFirst Person Narrator
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Read Me Like a Book

Liz Kessler · 304 pages

Ashleigh Walker is a mediocre student with an assortment of friends, a sort-of boyfriend, and no plans for the future. Then a straight-from-college English teacher, Miss Murray, takes over Ash s class and changes everything. Miss Murray smiles a lot. She shares poetry with curse words in it. She s, well, cool. And she seems to really care about her students. About Ashleigh. For the first time, Ash

Divorced ParentsYoung AdultContemporary FictionLGBTQ+ Protagonist
🙂

Annie on My Mind

Nancy Garden · 233 pages

This groundbreaking book is the story of two teenage girls whose friendship blossoms into love and who, despite pressures from family and school that threaten their relationship, promise to be true to each other and their feelings. This book is so truthful and honest, it has been banned from many school libraries and even publicly burned in Kansas City.

First HeartbreakYoung AdultFirst Person NarratorLGBTQ+ Protagonist
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Other Words for Love

Lorraine Zago Rosenthal · 354 pages

First HeartbreakYoung AdultFirst Person NarratorContemporary Fiction
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Honey, Baby, Sweetheart

Deb Caletti · 322 pages

In the summer of her junior year, sixteen-year-old Ruby McQueen and her mother, both nursing broken hearts, set out on a journey to reunite an elderly woman with her long-lost love, and in the process, learn many things about "the real ties that bind" people to one another.

First HeartbreakYoung AdultContemporary FictionFirst Person Narrator
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The Karma Club

Jessica Brody

When high school senior Maddy catches her boyfriend cheating on her, she devises a complicated plan to get revenge.

First HeartbreakYoung AdultFirst Person NarratorContemporary Fiction
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Getting Over Garrett Delaney

Abby McDonald · 326 pages

Seventeen-year-old Sadie Allen has spent the last two years pining for her best friend, Garrett, but when he heads off to literary camp for the summer without her, she decides to kick her unrequited crush for good, with the help of her co-workers, another boy, and her own summer twelve-step program.

First HeartbreakYoung AdultContemporary FictionFirst Person Narrator
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Anatomy of a Boyfriend

Daria Snadowsky · 272 pages

In her last semester at a private school in Fort Myers, Florida, seventeen-year-old Dom finds her life transformed by her first boyfriend, Wes, a track star at the public school her best friend attends.

First HeartbreakYoung AdultFirst Person NarratorContemporary Fiction
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Looking for Alaska

John Green · 262 pages

Before. Miles “Pudge” Halter is done with his safe life at home. His whole life has been one big non-event, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave “the Great Perhaps” even more (Francois Rabelais, poet). He heads off to the sometimes crazy and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Ala

First HeartbreakYoung AdultContemporary FictionFirst Person Narrator
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Something like Normal

Trish Doller · 240 pages

When Travis returns home from Afghanistan, his parents are splitting up, his brother has stolen his girlfriend and car, and he has nightmares of his best friend getting killed but when he runs into Harper, a girl who has despised him since middle school, life actually starts looking up.

Divorced ParentsYoung AdultContemporary FictionFirst Person Narrator
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Everything Leads to You

Nina LaCour · 321 pages

Just out of high school, Emi Price is a talented young set designer already beginning to thrive in the L.A. film scene. But her artistic eye has failed her in one key area: helping her to design a love life that’s more than make-believe. Then she finds a mysterious letter at an estate sale, and it sends her chasing down the loose ends of a movie icon’s hidden life. And along the way, she finds Ava

First HeartbreakYoung AdultLGBTQ+ ProtagonistFirst Person Narrator
🙂

Aftercare Instructions

Bonnie Pipkin · 322 pages

Questioning everything after deciding to terminate an unexpected pregnancy, 17-year-old Genesis works to establish her identity apart from her ex while confronting her most painful memories and rediscovering a long-forgotten dream.

First HeartbreakYoung AdultContemporary FictionFirst Person Narrator
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The Spectacular Now

Tim Tharp

In the last months of high school, charismatic eighteen-year-old Sutter Keely lives in the present, staying drunk or high most of the time, but that could change when starts working to boost the self-confidence of a classmate, Aimee.

First HeartbreakYoung AdultContemporary FictionFirst Person Narrator

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