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🧲 Books like this

My Sunshine Away

M.O. Walsh · back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

Include books by the same author
❤️

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.

Sexual AssaultSuburbiaComing of AgeNostalgic
❤️

The Jealous Kind

James Lee Burke · 383 pages

Intervening when he sees the beautiful and gifted Valerie Epstein fighting with her boyfriend, Aaron Holland Broussard inadvertently challenges the power of the Mob in his Korean War-era Texas community.

Coming of AgeFirst LoveNostalgicAmerican South
❤️

The Fields

Kevin Maher · 393 pages

Set in 1980s Dublin and London, THE FIELDS tells the vividly evocative story of Jim Finnegan's unfairly interrupted adolescence. I slept right through to the next day. Missed the funeral and everything. Mam said it was just as well. Would've been too upsetting. I think of him now, though. Right at this moment. Here in this kitchen. And I wonder if it could've been different. Dublin, 1984: Ireland

Sexual AssaultComing of AgeNostalgicTeen Protagonist
❤️

A Fine Dark Line

Joe R. Lansdale · 308 pages

Coming of AgeAmerican SouthNostalgicAtmospheric
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The Age of Miracles

Karen Thompson Walker · 304 pages

The coming-of-age story of young Julia, whose world is thrown into upheaval when it is discovered that the Earth's rotation has suddenly begun to slow, posing a catastrophic threat to all life.

SuburbiaComing of AgeFirst LoveFirst Person Narrator
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Metroland

Julian Barnes · 224 pages

SuburbiaComing of AgeFirst LoveNostalgic
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The Silver Star

Jeannette Walls · 304 pages

Two motherless sisters--Bean and Liz--are shuttled to Virginia, where their Uncle Tinsley lives in the decaying mansion that's been in their family for generations. When school starts in the fall, Bean easily adjusts and makes friends, and Liz becomes increasingly withdrawn. Then something happens to Liz and Bean is left to challenge the injustice of the adult world.

Coming of AgeSexual AssaultAmerican SouthTeen Protagonist
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Where All Light Tends to Go

David Joy · 289 pages

"Set in North Carolina's Appalachian Mountains, eighteen-year-old Jacob McNeely is torn between appeasing his meth-dealing kingpin father and leaving the mountains forever with the girl he loves"--

First LoveAmerican SouthComing of AgeAtmospheric
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The Virgin Suicides

Jeffrey Eugenides · 249 pages

SuburbiaNostalgicComing of AgeTeen Protagonist
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The Round House

Louise Erdrich · 352 pages

A young man is upended after a violent attack on his mother, which leaves his family in turmoil. Well-written page turner that is hard to put down!

Sexual AssaultComing of AgeAtmosphericTeen Protagonist
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The Blue Star

Tony Earley · 295 pages

Seven years ago, readers everywhere fell in love with Jim Glass, the precocious ten-year-old at the heart of Tony Earley's bestseller Jim the Boy. Now a teenager, Jim returns in another tender and wise story of young love on the eve of World War Two. Jim Glass has fallen in love, as only a teenage boy can fall in love, with his classmate Chrissie Steppe. Unfortunately, Chrissie is Bucky Bucklaw's

Coming of AgeNostalgicAmerican SouthFirst Love
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A Walk to Remember

Nicholas Sparks · 240 pages

There was a time when the world was sweeter....when the women in Beaufort, North Carolina, wore dresses, and the men donned hats.... Every April, when the wind smells of both the sea and lilacs, Landon Carter remembers 1958, his last year at Beaufort High. Landon had dated a girl or two, and even once sworn that he'd been in love. Certainly the last person he thought he'd fall for was Jamie, the s

NostalgicComing of AgeAmerican SouthFirst Love
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I Capture the Castle

Dodie Smith · 360 pages

Cassandra, the 17-year-old narrator, lives an eccentric existence in a crumbling castle in the English countryside in the 1930s. Her father is a former bestselling novelist now suffering from a chronic case of writer's block and her glamorous but bohemian stepmother Topaz is a sometime artist model. Money is in short supply but Cassandra and her discontented older sister Rose are forced to make th

First LoveNostalgicComing of AgeAtmospheric
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The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys

Chris Fuhrman · 200 pages

Set in Savannah, Georgia, in the early 1970s, this is a novel of youth, its anarchic joy, and its first encounters with the concerns and apprehensions of early adulthood. Francis Doyle, Tim Sullivan, and their three closest friends are altar boys at Blessed Heart Catholic Church and eight-grade classmates at the parish school. They are also inveterate pranksters, suburban Tom Saywers. Bright, art

Coming of AgeAmerican SouthNostalgicTeen Protagonist
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Where the Crawdads Sing

Delia Owens · 384 pages

For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons

Coming of AgeFirst LoveAmerican SouthSexual Assault
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Coming of AgeNostalgicAtmosphericTeen Protagonist
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Prep

Curtis Sittenfeld · 427 pages

Curtis Sittenfeld's debut novel, Prep, is an insightful, achingly funny coming-of-age story as well as a brilliant dissection of class, race, and gender in a hothouse of adolescent angst and ambition.Lee Fiora is an intelligent, observant fourteen-year-old when her father drops her off in front of her dorm at the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts. She leaves her animated, affectionate famil

Sexual AssaultFirst LoveComing of AgeTeen Protagonist
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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.

Sexual AssaultComing of AgeFirst LoveFirst Person Narrator
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Summer of '42

Herman Raucher · 251 pages

One summer in the life of a 15-year old boy.

Coming of AgeFirst LoveNostalgicTeen Protagonist
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Let the Right One In

John Ajvide Lindqvist · 480 pages

Twelve-year-old Oskar is obsessed by the murder that's taken place in his neighborhood. Then he meets the new girl from next door. She's a bit weird, though. And she only comes out at night--Publisher's description.

SuburbiaFirst LoveComing of AgeAtmospheric
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A Painted House

John Grisham · 465 pages

Using his own childhood for inspiration (and leaving the lawyers behind), bestselling author John Grisham sets A Painted House in 1950s rural Arkansas. During harvest time, together with hired Mexicans and hill people, seven-year-old Luke Chandler picks cotton on his family's rented 80 acres. But racial tension, a forbidden love affair, and murder cause Luke to grow up before he's ready.

Coming of AgeAmerican SouthNostalgicTeen Protagonist
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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.

Sexual AssaultComing of AgeFirst LoveFirst Person Narrator
🙂

The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green

Joshua Braff · 265 pages

It's 1977. Jacob Green, a Jewish kid from suburban New Jersey, sits on the stairs during his family's housewarming party, waiting for his father, Abram--charming host, everyone's best friend, and amateur emcee--to introduce him to the crowd. Housewarming parties, Annie Hall parties, and bar mitzvah parties punctuate Jacob's childhood and require command performances by all the Green family members

SuburbiaComing of AgeNostalgicTeen Protagonist
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That Night

Alice McDermott · 192 pages

SuburbiaNostalgicFirst LoveComing of Age

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