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🧲 Books like this

The Spectacular Now

Tim Tharp · 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
❤️

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.

Boarding SchoolTeenagersTeen ProtagonistEmotional
❤️

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

TeenagersSubstance AbuseBoarding SchoolTeen Protagonist
❤️

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Stephen Chbosky · 216 pages

Charlie writes letters to an unknown mail recipient, detailing his struggles with high school, family, and finding his place in the world. Full of beautiful quotes and written with such sincerity, this is a book that makes the reader reflect on their purpose in life, while simultaneously reminding us about the power music, friendships, and "feeling infinite" can have on our life. Read this book.

Substance AbuseTeenagersTeen ProtagonistFirst Heartbreak
❤️

Before I Fall

Lauren Oliver

Boarding SchoolTeenagersTeen ProtagonistCharacter-Driven
❤️

Crank

Ellen Hopkins · 537 pages

Kristina is the perfect daughter: gifted high school junior, quiet, never any trouble. Then she meets the monster: crank. And what begins as a wild ride turns into a struggle for her mind, her soul---her life.

Substance AbuseTeenagersAddictionTeen Protagonist
❤️

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.

TeenagersEmotionalFirst Person NarratorTeen Protagonist
❤️

The Goldfinch

Donna Tartt · 817 pages

"The Goldfinch is a rarity that comes along perhaps half a dozen times per decade, a smartly written literary novel that connects with the heart as well as the mind....Donna Tartt has delivered an extraordinary work of fiction."--Stephen King, The New York Times Book Review Composed with the skills of a master, The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present day America and a drama of enthra

Substance AbuseAddictionTeenagersTeen Protagonist
❤️

Go Ask Alice

Anonymous · 185 pages

You Can't Ask Alice Anything Anymore But you can do something. Read her diary. Strong, painfully honest, nakedly candid. The actual story of a desperate girl on drugs and on the run who almost made it. --back cover

AddictionSubstance AbuseTeenagersTeen Protagonist
❤️

Sloppy Firsts

Megan McCafferty · 297 pages

When her best friend moves away, sixteen-year-old Jessica is devastated and finds it difficult to deal with the girls at school, her obsessive parents, and her lack of a love life.

Boarding SchoolTeenagersTeen ProtagonistYoung Adult
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Before I Die

Jenny Downham · 332 pages

A terminally ill teenaged girl makes and carries out a list of things to do before she dies.

TeenagersSubstance AbuseCharacter-DrivenFirst Person Narrator
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The Impossible Knife of Memory

Laurie Halse Anderson · 391 pages

For the past five years Hayley Kincain and her father, Andy, have been on the road, never staying long in one place as he struggles to escape the demons that have tortured him since his return from Iraq. Now they are back in town where he grew up so Hayley can go to a proper school. Perhaps, for the first time, Hayley can have a normal life, put aside her own painful memories, even have a relation

AddictionSubstance AbuseTeen ProtagonistCharacter-Driven
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The Catcher in the Rye

Jerome David Salinger · 277 pages

With the author's recent passing, the classic novel about young Holden Caulfield's disillusionment with the adult world and its phoniness will only rise in popularity--and controversy, since it is a favorite target of censors, who often cite profan

Boarding SchoolTeenagersTeen ProtagonistFirst Person Narrator
🙂

That Was Then, This Is Now

S.E. Hinton · 159 pages

Sixteen-year-old Mark and Bryon have been like brothers since childhood, but now, as their involvement with girls, gangs, and drugs increases, their relationship seems to gradually disintegrate.

Substance AbuseTeenagersTeen ProtagonistEmotional
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The Beginning of Everything

Robyn Schneider · 352 pages

Boarding SchoolCharacter-DrivenTeen ProtagonistYoung Adult
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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.

TeenagersSubstance AbuseCharacter-DrivenTeen Protagonist
🙂

Every Day

David Levithan · 330 pages

Every morning A wakes in a different person's body, in a different person's life, learning over the years to never get too attached, until he wakes up in the body of Justin and falls in love with Justin's girlfriend, Rhiannon.

TeenagersTeen ProtagonistCharacter-DrivenFirst Person Narrator
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Saving Francesca

Melina Marchetta · 243 pages

Sixteen-year-old Francesca could use her outspoken mother's help with the problems of being one of a handful of girls at a parochial school that has just turned coed, but her mother has suddenly become severely depressed.

Boarding SchoolTeenagersTeen ProtagonistCharacter-Driven
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Gym Candy

Carl Deuker · 320 pages

Substance AbuseAddictionTeenagersTeen Protagonist
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Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

Benjamin Alire Saenz · 368 pages

Fifteen-year-old Ari Mendoza is an angry loner with a brother in prison, but when he meets Dante and they become friends, Ari starts to ask questions about himself, his parents, and his family that he has never asked before.

TeenagersCharacter-DrivenTeen ProtagonistYoung Adult
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Gather

Kenneth M. Cadow · 325 pages

Publisher Annotation: A resourceful teenager in rural Vermont struggles to hold on to the family home while his mom recovers from addiction in this striking debut novel.

AddictionSubstance AbuseTeen ProtagonistEmotional
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In the Wild Light

Jeff ZENTNER · 432 pages

Substance AbuseBoarding SchoolTeen ProtagonistEmotional
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My Life Next Door

Huntley Fitzpatrick · 432 pages

When Samantha, the seventeen-year-old daugher of a wealthy, perfectionistic, Republican state senator, falls in love with the boy next door, whose family is large, boisterous, and just making ends meet, she discovers a different way to live, but when her mother is involved in a hit-and-run accident Sam must make some difficult choices.

TeenagersTeen ProtagonistEmotionalFirst Person Narrator
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Girl in Pieces

Kathleen Glasgow · 416 pages

Charlotte Davis is in pieces. At 17 she's already lost more than most people do in a lifetime. But she's learned how to forget. The broken glass washes away the sorrow until there is nothing but calm. You don't have to think about your father and the river. Your best friend, who is gone forever. Or your mother, who has nothing left to give you. Every new scar hardens Charlie's heart just a lit

AddictionTeen ProtagonistEmotionalCharacter-Driven
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Blubber

Judy Blume · 153 pages

Jill goes along with the rest of the fifth-grade class in tormenting a classmate and then finds out what it's like when she, too, becomes a target.

Boarding SchoolTeenagersTeen ProtagonistCharacter-Driven
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