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🧲 Books like this

Reality Boy

A.S. King · back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

Include books by the same author
❤️

Something Real

Heather Demetrios · 406 pages

Since the cancellation of her family's reality television show, seventeen-year-old Bonnie Baker, one of twelve siblings, has tried to live a normal life with real friends and a possible boyfriend, until her mother and the show's producers decide to bring "Baker's Dozen" back on the air.

Reality TVToxic Family DynamicsSelf-DiscoveryContemporary Fiction
❤️

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.

Childhood TraumaSelf-DiscoveryEmotionalYoung Adult
❤️

The Shipping News

Annie Proulx · 337 pages

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, The Shipping News is a celebration of Annie Proulx's genius for storytelling and her vigorous contribution to the art of the novel. Quoyle, a third-rate newspaper hack, with a "head shaped like a crenshaw, no neck, reddish hair...features as bunched as kissed fingertips," is wrenched violently out of his workaday life when his two-timing

Childhood TraumaToxic Family DynamicsSelf-DiscoveryContemporary Fiction
❤️

White Oleander

Janet Fitch · 390 pages

Everywhere hailed as a novel of rare beauty and power, White Oleander tells the unforgettable story of Ingrid, a brilliant poet imprisoned for murder, and her daughter, Astrid, whose odyssey through a series of Los Angeles foster homes-each its own universe, with its own laws, its own dangers, its own hard lessons to be learned-becomes a redeeming and surprising journey of self-discovery.

Toxic Family DynamicsChildhood TraumaSelf-DiscoveryEmotional
❤️

The Face on the Milk Carton

Caroline B. Cooney · 188 pages

After recognizing the photo of the little girl listed as missing on the milk carton, 15-year-old Janie Johnson’s life is forever changed as she struggles to balance loyalty with doing what is right.

Childhood TraumaSelf-DiscoveryEmotionalYoung Adult
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The Problem with Forever

Jennifer L. Armentrout · 344 pages

Childhood TraumaSelf-DiscoveryEmotionalYoung Adult
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Identical

Ellen Hopkins · 624 pages

Do twins begin in the womb? Or in a better place? Kaeleigh and Raeanne are identical down to the dimple. As daughters of a district-court judge father and a politician mother, they are an all-American family—on the surface. Behind the facade each sister has her own dark secret, and that's where their differences begin. For Kaeleigh, she's the misplaced focus of Daddy's love, intended for a

Childhood TraumaToxic Family DynamicsEmotionalYoung Adult
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Touching Snow

M. Sindy Felin · 237 pages

After her stepfather is arrested for child abuse, thirteen-year-old Karina's home life improves but while the severity of her older sister's injuries and the urging of her younger sister, their uncle, and a friend tempt her to testify against him, her mother and other well-meaning adults pursuade her to claim responsibility.

Childhood TraumaToxic Family DynamicsEmotionalYoung Adult
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Twisted

Laurie Halse Anderson · 272 pages

High school senior Tyler Miller used to be the kind of guy who faded into the background—average student, average looks, average dysfunctional family. But since he got busted for doing graffiti on the school, and spent the summer doing outdoor work to pay for it, he stands out like you wouldn't believe. His new physique attracts the attention of queen bee Bethany Milbury, who just so happens to be

Self-DiscoveryToxic Family DynamicsChildhood TraumaYoung Adult
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Reason to Breathe

Rebecca Donovan

Toxic Family DynamicsSelf-DiscoveryYoung AdultContemporary Fiction
🙂

The Only Alien on the Planet

Kristen D. Randle · 234 pages

After moving to the East Coast, Ginny enters her senior year of high school and uncovers the secret behind a new friend's refusal to speak.

Childhood TraumaToxic Family DynamicsEmotionalYoung Adult
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Such a Pretty Girl

Laura Wiess · 224 pages

Haunted by flashbacks, fifteen-year-old Meredith learns that three years in prison has not changed the abusive father who molested her.

Toxic Family DynamicsChildhood TraumaEmotionalYoung Adult
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We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Karen Joy Fowler · 336 pages

Meet the Cooke family: Mother and Dad, brother Lowell, sister Fern, and Rosemary, who begins her story in the middle. She has her reasons. "I was raised with a chimpanzee," she explains. "I tell you Fern is a chimp and, already, you aren't thinking of her as my sister. . . . Until Fern's expulsion . . . she was my twin, my fun-house mirror, my whirlwind other half. . . . I loved her as a sister."

Childhood TraumaToxic Family DynamicsSelf-DiscoveryEmotional
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Everything, Everything

Nicola Yoon · 320 pages

The story of a teenage girl who's literally allergic to the outside world. When a new family moves in next door, she begins a complicated romance that challenges everything she's ever known. The narrative unfolds via vignettes, diary entries, texts, charts, lists, illustrations, and more.

Self-DiscoveryEmotionalToxic Family DynamicsYoung Adult
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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

Childhood TraumaToxic Family DynamicsEmotionalContemporary Fiction
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Star

V.C. Andrews · 168 pages

Toxic Family DynamicsChildhood TraumaEmotionalContemporary Fiction
🙂

Dreamland

Sarah Dessen · 256 pages

Rogerson Biscoe, with his green eyes and dark curly hair, is absolutely seductive. Before long, sixteen-year-old Caitlin finds herself under his spell. And when he starts to abuse her, she finds she's in too deep to get herself out...

Toxic Family DynamicsSelf-DiscoveryEmotionalYoung Adult
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The Boy Who Sneaks in My Bedroom Window

Kirsty Moseley · 274 pages

Childhood TraumaToxic Family DynamicsYoung AdultEmotional
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She's Come Undone

Wally Lamb · 465 pages

In this extraordinary coming-of-age odyssey, Wally Lamb invites us to hitch a wild ride on a journey of love, pain, and renewal with the most heartbreakingly comical heroine to come along in years. Meet Dolores Price. She's 13, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Stranded in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato

Childhood TraumaToxic Family DynamicsSelf-DiscoveryEmotional
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Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Jeanette Winterson · 240 pages

Memories of the author about her difficult childhood as the adopted daughter of an English mother with strong religious convictions, and her subsequent search for her biological mother.

Toxic Family DynamicsChildhood TraumaSelf-DiscoveryEmotional
🙂

Cut

Patricia McCormick · 160 pages

While confined to a mental hospital, thirteen-year-old Callie slowly comes to understand some of the reasons behind her self-mutilation, and gradually starts to get better.

Childhood TraumaSelf-DiscoveryEmotionalYoung Adult
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Wishing for Someday Soon

Tiffany King · 282 pages

Childhood TraumaToxic Family DynamicsEmotionalYoung Adult
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Losing Hope

Colleen Hoover · 380 pages

"In Hopeless, Sky left no secret unearthed, no feeling unshared and no memory forgotten, but Holder's past remains a mystery. He is haunted by the little girl he let walk away from him and he has spent his entire life searching for her. He had hoped that he would finally gain closure and be able to rid himself of his guilt the moment they were reconnected. But he could not have anticipated that th

Childhood TraumaToxic Family DynamicsContemporary FictionEmotional
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The Prince of Tides

Pat Conroy · 668 pages

PAT CONROY has created a huge, brash thunderstorm of a novel, stinging with honesty and resounding with drama. Spanning forty years, this is the story of turbulent Tom Wingo, his gifted and troubled twin sister Savannah, and their struggle to triumph over the dark and tragic legacy of the extraordinary family into which they were born. Filled with the vanishing beauty of the South Carolina low

Toxic Family DynamicsChildhood TraumaEmotionalContemporary Fiction

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