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🧲 Books like this

A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandwich

Alice Childress · 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
❤️

Fallout

Ellen Hopkins · 720 pages

Hunter, Autumn, and Summer—three of Kristina Snow’s five children—live in different homes, with different guardians and different last names. They share only a predisposition for addiction and a host of troubled feelings toward the mother who barely knows them, a mother who has been riding with the monster, crank, for twenty years. Told in three voices and punctuated by news articles chronicli

AddictionSubstance AbuseTeen ProtagonistMultiple POV
❤️

Someone to Run With

David Grossman · 352 pages

AddictionSubstance AbuseBig CityComing of Age
❤️

Smack

Melvin Burgess · 348 pages

After running away from their troubled homes, two English teenagers move in with a group of squatters in the port city of Bristol and try to find ways to support their growing addiction to heroin.

AddictionSubstance AbuseTeen ProtagonistMultiple POV
❤️

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.

AddictionTeen ProtagonistSubstance AbuseComing of Age
❤️

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

AddictionSubstance AbuseTeen ProtagonistComing of Age
❤️

Trainspotting

Irvine Welsh · 352 pages

Scottish writer Irvine Welsh's first novel, Trainspotting, is a collection of short-stories revolving around a group of friends, their drug use, and struggles in the city of Edinburgh.

AddictionSubstance AbuseBig CityMultiple POV
❤️

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 AbuseComing of AgeTeen Protagonist
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Zoo Station: The Story of Christiane F.

Christiane F., Kai Hermann, Horst Rieck · 366 pages

In 1978 Christiane F. testified against a man who had traded heroin for sex with teenage girls at Berlin's notorious Zoo Station. In the course of that trial, Christiane F. became connected with two journalists who helped to turn her story, which begins with a dysfunctional but otherwise fairly normal childhood, into an acclaimed bestseller.

AddictionSubstance AbuseBig CityTeen Protagonist
❤️

The Spectacular Now

Tim Tharp

In the last months of high school, charismatic eighteen-year-old Sutter Keely lives in the present, staying drunk or high most of the time, but that could change when starts working to boost the self-confidence of a classmate, Aimee.

Substance AbuseAddictionTeen ProtagonistComing of Age
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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

AddictionSubstance AbuseTeen ProtagonistComing of Age
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Last Night I Sang to the Monster

Benjamin Alire Saenz · 271 pages

Zach is eighteen. He is bright and articulate. He's also an alcoholic and in rehab instead of high school, but he doesn't remember how he got there. He's not sure he wants to remember. Something bad must have happened. Something really, really bad. Remembering sucks and being alive—well, what's up with that?I have it in my head that when we're born, God writes things down on our hearts. See, on so

AddictionSubstance AbuseTeen ProtagonistYoung Adult
❤️

Valiant

Holly Black · 320 pages

Second in the Modern Tale of Faerie series.

AddictionBig CityComing of AgeSubstance Abuse
❤️

Smashed

Lisa Luedeke · 336 pages

Maine high school senior Katie Martin is set to win a field hockey scholarship until her life is derailed by drinking, a car accident, and an angry classmate.

AddictionSubstance AbuseComing of AgeTeen Protagonist
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Requiem for a Dream

Hubert Selby Jr. · 288 pages

AddictionSubstance AbuseBig CityEmotional
🙂

The Man With the Golden Arm

Nelson Algren · 364 pages

"A novel of rare genius, The Man with the Golden Arm has been called "Algren's most satisfying work." It describes the dissolution of a card-dealing WWII veteran named Frankie Machine, caught in the act of slowly cutting his own heart into water-thin slices. For Frankie, a murder committed may be the least of his problems.". "In this first critical edition of an Algren work, Algren's novel is joi

AddictionSubstance AbuseBig CityMale Lead
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Coming of AgeBig CityTeen ProtagonistYoung Adult
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Scar Tissue

Anthony Kiedis · 465 pages

Scar Tissue is Anthony Kiedis's searingly honest memoir of a life spent in the fast lane. In 1983, four self-described "knuckleheads" burst out of the mosh-pitted mosaic of the neo-punk rock scene in L.A. with their own unique brand of cosmic hardcore mayhem funk. Over twenty years later, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, against all odds, have become one of the most successful bands in the world. Though

AddictionSubstance AbuseComing of AgeEmotional
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Dry

Augusten Burroughs · 304 pages

Fans of Augusten Burroughs's darkly funny memoir Running with Scissors were left wondering at the end of that book what would become of young Augusten after his squalid and fascinating childhood ended. In Dry, we find that although adult Augusten is doing well professionally, earning a handsome living as an ad writer for a top New York agency, Burroughs's personal life is a disaster. His apartment

AddictionSubstance AbuseBig CityEmotional
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Ballads of Suburbia

Stephanie Kuehnert

Ballads are the kind of songs that Kara McNaughton likes best. Not the clichéd ones where a diva hits her dramatic high note or a rock band tones it down a couple of notches for the ladies, but the true ballads: the punk rocker or the country crooner reminding their listeners of the numerous ways to screw things up. In high school, Kara helped maintain the "Stories of Suburbia" notebook, which con

AddictionSubstance AbuseComing of AgeYoung Adult
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Long Bright River

Liz Moore · 473 pages

A female cop begins to fear for her addicted sister. A serial murder is targeting homeless female prostitutes. Can Mickey find her sister before the killer does ?

AddictionSubstance AbuseBig CityEmotional
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Will Grayson, Will Grayson

John Green, David Levithan · 331 pages

One cold night, in a most unlikely corner of Chicago, two teens—both named Will Grayson—are about to cross paths. As their worlds collide and intertwine, the Will Graysons find their lives going in new and unexpected directions, building toward romantic turns-of-heart and the epic production of history’s most fabulous high school musical.Hilarious, poignant, and deeply insightful, John Green and D

Big CityTeen ProtagonistComing of AgeMultiple POV
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Leaving Las Vegas

John O'Brien

AddictionSubstance AbuseBig CityLiterary Fiction
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Run the Game

Jason Myers · 518 pages

A cocaine-addicted teenaged guitarist in a rock band falls dangerously in love with a fourteen-year-old prostitute.

AddictionSubstance AbuseTeen ProtagonistYoung Adult
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Freefall

Mindi Scott · 315 pages

A bass guitar player in a teen rock band deals with alcoholism, his best friend's death, and first love.

AddictionSubstance AbuseTeen ProtagonistYoung Adult

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