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🧲 Books like this

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S.E. Hinton · back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

Include books by the same author
❤️

Stupid Fast

Geoff Herbach

Absent ParentComing of AgeBrothersTeen Protagonist
❤️

Rot & Ruin

Jonathan Maberry · 458 pages

In a post-apocalyptic world where fences and border patrols guard the few people left from the zombies that have overtaken civilization, fifteen-year-old Benny Imura is finally convinced that he must follow in his older brother's footsteps and become a bounty hunter.

BrothersAbsent ParentComing of AgeTeen Protagonist
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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.

Absent ParentComing of AgeBrothersTeen Protagonist
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I Am the Messenger

Markus Zusak · 386 pages

Coming of AgeAbsent ParentTeen ProtagonistYoung Adult
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In the Path of Falling Objects

Andrew Smith

In 1970, after their older brother is shipped off to Vietnam, sixteen-year-old Jonah and his younger brother Simon leave home to find their father, who is being released from a Arizona prison, but soon find themselves hitching a ride with a violent killer.

BrothersAbsent ParentComing of AgeTeen Protagonist
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Unearthly

Cynthia Hand

Sixteen-year-old Clara Gardner's purpose as an angel-blood begins to manifest itself, forcing her family to pull up stakes and move to Jackson, Wyoming, where she learns that danger and heartbreak come with her powers.

Coming of AgeBrothersTeen ProtagonistAbsent Parent
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Absent ParentComing of AgeTeen ProtagonistYoung Adult
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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.

Coming of AgeAbsent ParentTeen 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.

Coming of AgeAbsent ParentTeen ProtagonistYoung Adult
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Demon Copperhead

Barbara Kingsolver · 560 pages

"Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose." Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in hi

Absent ParentComing of AgeTeen ProtagonistFirst Person Narrator
❤️

Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow

Faiza Guene · 179 pages

Struggling with an overworked mother, an absent father, and the challenges of life within the infamous Paradise projects of suburban Paris, fifteen-year-old French Muslim Doria endures a parade of social workers, experiences a first kiss, and assumes a philosophical outlook regarding her circumstances.

Absent ParentComing of AgeTeen ProtagonistFirst Person Narrator
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The Man Without a Face

Isabelle Holland · 157 pages

A fatherless fourteen-year-old boy develops an unusual relationship with the man living near his summer home who helps him prepare his entrance exams to boarding school.

Absent ParentComing of AgeTeen ProtagonistYoung Adult
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The Zigzag Kid

David Grossman, Betsy Rosenberg · 314 pages

Twelve-year-old Nonny Feuerberg's father is the world's greatest detective, wholly dedicated to the war on crime. Nonny aspires to follow in his father's footsteps but, to his father's dismay, his wild side keeps breaking out. Then all of a sudden Nonny finds himself traveling on a train with the magnetic, elegant Felix Glick, international outlaw extraordinaire. Not until Felix has hijacked the

Absent ParentComing of AgeTeen ProtagonistFirst Person Narrator
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Cutting for Stone

Abraham Verghese · 670 pages

Cutting for Stone (2009) is a novel written by Ethiopian-born Indian-American medical doctor and author Abraham Verghese. It is a saga of twin brothers, orphaned by their mother's death at their births and forsaken by their father. The book includes both a deep description of medical procedures and an exploration of the human side of medical practices. When first published, the novel was on The

BrothersAbsent ParentComing of AgeFirst Person Narrator
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Lock and Key

Sarah Dessen · 427 pages

"Ruby, where is your mother?"Ruby knows that the game is up. For the past few months, she's been on her own in the yellow house, managing somehow, knowing that her mother will probably never return.That's how she comes to live with Cora, the sister she hasn't seen in ten years, and Cora's husband Jamie, whose down-to-earth demeanor makes it hard for Ruby to believe he founded the most popular netw

Absent ParentComing of AgeTeen ProtagonistYoung Adult
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By the River

Steven Herrick · 232 pages

A fourteen-year-old describes, through prose poems, his life in a small Australian town in 1962, where, since their mother's death, he and his brother have been mainly on their own to learn about life, death, and love.

BrothersComing of AgeTeen ProtagonistYoung Adult
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He Forgot to Say Goodbye

Benjamin Alire Saenz · 336 pages

Absent ParentComing of AgeTeen ProtagonistYoung Adult
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All the Right Stuff

Walter Dean Myers

The summer after his absentee father is killed in a random shooting, Paul volunteers at a Harlem soup kitchen where he listens to lessons about "the social contract" from an elderly African American man, and mentors a seventeen-year-old unwed mother who wants to make it to college on a basketball scholarship.

Absent ParentComing of AgeTeen ProtagonistYoung Adult
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Don't Fail Me Now

Una LaMarche · 288 pages

Michelle and her little siblings Cass and Denny are African-American and living on the poverty line in urban Baltimore, struggling to keep it together with their mom in jail and only Michelle s part-time job at the Taco Bell to sustain them. Leah and her stepbrother Tim are white and middle class from suburban Maryland, with few worries beyond winning lacrosse games and getting college application

Absent ParentComing of AgeTeen ProtagonistYoung Adult
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Canada

Richard Ford · 420 pages

After his parents are arrested and imprisoned for robbing a bank, fifteen-year-old Dell Parsons is taken in by Arthur Remlinger who, unbeknownst to Dell, is hiding a dark and violent nature that interferes with Dell's quest to find grace and peace on the prairie of Saskatchewan.

Absent ParentComing of AgeTeen ProtagonistFirst Person Narrator
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Please Don't Come Back from the Moon

Dean Bakopoulos · 280 pages

When his father disappears along with several other men from their blue-collar Detroit neighborhood, sixteen-year-old Michael Smolij witnesses the effects of large-scale abandonment on the community's wives and mothers.

Absent ParentComing of AgeTeen ProtagonistFirst Person Narrator
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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain · 330 pages

Absent ParentComing of AgeTeen ProtagonistFirst Person Narrator
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The Unexpected Everything

Morgan Matson · 528 pages

Andie has a plan. And she always sticks to her plan. Future? A top-tier medical school. Dad? Avoid him as much as possible (which isn t that hard considering he s a Congressman and he s never around). Friends? Palmer, Bri, and Toby pretty much the most awesome people on the planet, who needs anyone else? Relationships? No one s worth more than three weeks.

Absent ParentComing of AgeTeen ProtagonistYoung Adult
🙂

The Tender Bar

J.R. Moehringer · 384 pages

JR Moehringer grew up listening for a voice, the voice of his missing father, a disc jockey who disappeared before JR spoke his first words. As a boy, JR would press his ear to a battered clock radio, straining to hear in that resonant voice the secrets of identity and masculinity. When the voice disappeared, JR found new voices in the bar on the corner. A grand old New York saloon, the bar was a

Absent ParentComing of AgeTeen ProtagonistFirst Person Narrator

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