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The Heart of Thomas

Moto Hagio · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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Winger

Andrew Smith

Two years younger than his classmates at a prestigious boarding school, fourteen-year-old Ryan Dean West grapples with living in the dorm for troublemakers, falling for his female best friend who thinks of him as just a kid, and playing wing on the Varsity rugby team with some of his frightening new dorm-mates.

Boarding SchoolSexual OrientationLGBTQ+ ProtagonistEmotional
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Hana-Kimi, Vol. 1

Hisaya Nakajo · 184 pages

Boarding SchoolMangaSexual OrientationTeen Protagonist
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Another Country

James Baldwin · 366 pages

Published in 1962, this is an emotionally intense novel of love, hatred, race and liberal America in the 1960s. Set in Greenwhich Village, Harlem and France, ANOTHER COUNTRY tells the story of the suicide of jazz-musician Rufus Scott and the friends who search for an understanding of his life and death, discovering uncomfortable truths about themselves along the way.

Suicide ContentSexual OrientationLGBTQ+ ProtagonistEmotional
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Honestly Ben

Bill Konigsberg · 339 pages

Ben Carver returns for the spring semester at the exclusive Natick School in Massachusetts determined to put his relationship with Rafe Goldberg behind him and concentrate on his grades and the award that will mean a full scholarship--but Rafe is still there, there is a girl named Hannah whom he meets in the library, and behind it all is his relationship with his distant, but demanding father.

Boarding SchoolSexual OrientationLGBTQ+ ProtagonistTeen Protagonist
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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 SchoolSexual OrientationEmotionalLGBTQ+ Protagonist
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This Is Where It Ends

Marieke Nijkamp · 304 pages

Everyone has a reason to fear the boy with the gun. 10:00 a.m. The principal of Opportunity, Alabama's high school finishes her speech, welcoming the entire student body to a new semester and encouraging them to excel and achieve. 10:02 a.m. The students get up to leave the auditorium for their next class. 10:03 The auditorium doors won't open. 10:05 Someone starts shooting. Tol

Boarding SchoolSexual OrientationEmotionalLGBTQ+ Protagonist
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Perfect

Ellen Hopkins · 656 pages

Everyone has something, someone, somewhere else that they’d rather be. For four high-school seniors, their goals of perfection are just as different as the paths they take to get there. Cara’s parents’ unrealistic expectations have already sent her twin brother Conner spiraling toward suicide. For her, perfect means rejecting their ideals to take a chance on a new kind of love. Kendra covets the p

Sexual OrientationSuicide ContentLGBTQ+ ProtagonistEmotional
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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.

Sexual OrientationLGBTQ+ ProtagonistSuicide ContentEmotional
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Olivia

Dorothy Bussy, Olivia, Dorothy Strachey · 114 pages

“Considered one of the most subtle and beautifully written lesbian novels of the century, this 1949 classic returns to print in a Cleis Press edition. Dorothy Strachey’s classic Olivia captures the awakening passions of an English adolescent sent away for a year to a small finishing school outside Paris. The innocent but watchful Olivia develops an infatuation for her headmistress, Mlle. Julie, an

Boarding SchoolSexual OrientationLGBTQ+ ProtagonistClassics
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Learned by Heart

Emma Donoghue · 338 pages

Boarding SchoolSexual OrientationLGBTQ+ ProtagonistEmotional
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Carry On

Rainbow Rowell · 519 pages

Simon Snow is the worst Chosen One who’s ever been chosen. That’s what his roommate, Baz, says. And Baz might be evil and a vampire and a complete git, but he’s probably right. Half the time, Simon can’t even make his wand work, and the other half, he sets something on fire. His mentor’s avoiding him, his girlfriend broke up with him, and there’s a magic-eating monster running around wearing

Boarding SchoolSexual OrientationLGBTQ+ ProtagonistTeen Protagonist
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The Hours

Michael Cunningham

Suicide ContentSexual OrientationLGBTQ+ ProtagonistEmotional
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I'll Give You the Sun

Jandy Nelson · 400 pages

A brilliant, luminous story of first love, family, loss, and betrayal for fans of John Green, David Levithan, and Rainbow Rowell Jude and her twin brother, Noah, are incredibly close. At thirteen, isolated Noah draws constantly and is falling in love with the charismatic boy next door, while daredevil Jude cliff-dives and wears red-red lipstick and does the talking for both of them. But three y

Sexual OrientationLGBTQ+ ProtagonistEmotionalBoarding School
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We Are the Ants

Shaun David Hutchinson · 464 pages

Suicide ContentSexual OrientationLGBTQ+ ProtagonistEmotional
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Before I Fall

Lauren Oliver

Boarding SchoolSuicide ContentEmotionalTeen Protagonist
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Skim

Mariko Tamaki · 146 pages

"Skim" is Kimberly Keiko Cameron, a not-slim, would-be Wiccan goth who goes to a private girls' school in the early '90s. When her classmate Katie Matthews is dumped by her boyfriend, who then kills himself — possibly because he's (maybe) gay — the entire school goes into mourning overdrive. It's a weird time to fall in love, but that's what happens to Skim when she starts meeting secretly with he

Boarding SchoolSuicide ContentLGBTQ+ ProtagonistEmotional
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More Than This

Patrick Ness · 480 pages

A boy called Seth drowns, desperate and alone in his final moments, losing his life as the pounding sea claims him. But then he wakes. He is naked, thirsty, starving. But alive. How is that possible? He remembers dying, his bones breaking, his skull dashed upon the rocks. So how is he is here? And where is this place? It looks like the suburban English town where he lived as a child, before an unt

Sexual OrientationSuicide ContentLGBTQ+ ProtagonistEmotional
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MangaSexual OrientationLGBTQ+ ProtagonistTeen Protagonist
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Sand Chronicles, Volume 2

Hinako Ashihara · 200 pages

MangaSuicide ContentEmotionalTeen Protagonist
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Thérèse and Isabelle

Violette Leduc · 126 pages

"Thérèse and Isabelle is the tale of two boarding school girls in love. In 1966 when it was originally published in France, the text was censored because of its explicit depiction of young homosexuality. With this publication, the original, unexpurgated text--a stunning literary portrayal of female desire and sexuality--is available to a US audience for the first time. Included is an afterword by

Boarding SchoolSexual OrientationLGBTQ+ ProtagonistClassics
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Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

Alison Bechdel · 236 pages

A fresh and brilliantly told memoir from a cult favorite comic artist, marked by gothic twists, a family funeral home, sexual angst, and great books. This breakout book by Alison Bechdel is a darkly funny family tale, pitch-perfectly illustrated with Bechdel's sweetly gothic drawings. Like Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, it's a story exhilaratingly suited to graphic memoir form. Meet Alison's

Suicide ContentSexual OrientationLGBTQ+ ProtagonistEmotional
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Dead Poets Society

N.H. Kleinbaum · 166 pages

Todd Anderson and his friends at Welton Academy can hardly believe how different life is since their new English professor, the flamboyant John Keating, has challenged them to "make your lives extraordinary!" Inspired by Keating, the boys resurrect the Dead Poets Society--a secret club where, free from the constraints and expectations of school and parents, they let their passions run wild. As Kea

Boarding SchoolSuicide ContentEmotionalTeen Protagonist
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Something Like Winter

Jay Bell · 372 pages

Sexual OrientationSuicide ContentLGBTQ+ ProtagonistEmotional
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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.

Suicide ContentSexual OrientationEmotionalLGBTQ+ Protagonist

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