AmongReaders.com Add a tiny library
📚 AmongReaders — track what you read, talk chapter by chapter without spoilers, and read with friends. Free.Join AmongReadersSign in

🧲 Books like this

Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy

Sonya Sones · 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
❤️

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.

Verse NovelMental Health AdvocacyEmotionalYoung Adult
❤️

Glimpse

Carol Lynch Williams

Verse NovelSistersEmotionalYoung Adult
❤️

One

Sarah Crossan · 393 pages

Despite problems at home, sixteen-year-old conjoined twins Tippi and Grace are loving going to school for the first time and making real friends when they learn that a cardiac problem will force them to have separation surgery, which they have never before considered.

Verse NovelSistersEmotionalYoung Adult
❤️

The Sky Is Everywhere

Jandy Nelson · 275 pages

In the months after her sister dies, seventeen-year-old Lennie falls into a love triangle and discovers the strength to follow her dream of becoming a musician.

SistersVerse NovelEmotionalTeen Protagonist
❤️

The Illustrated Mum

Jacqueline Wilson · 223 pages

A powerful novel of two sisters who have to cope with living in a very dysfunctional household where their tattoo-crazy mum has real difficulties in coping. A new edition with new cover look and introduction.Dolphin adores her mother: she's got wonderful clothes, bright hair and vivid tattoos all over her body. She definitely lives a colourful life. Dolphin's older sister, Star, also loves her but

Bipolar DisorderSistersEmotionalTeen Protagonist
❤️

Because I Am Furniture

Thalia Chaltas

The youngest of three siblings, fourteen-year-old Anke feels both relieved and neglected that her father abuses her brother and sister but ignores her, but when she catches him with one of her friends, she finally becomes angry enough to take action.

Verse NovelEmotionalSistersTeen Protagonist
❤️

The Weight of Zero

Karen Fortunati · 400 pages

A seventeen-year-old suffering from bipolar disease wants to commit suicide, but a meaningful relationship and the care of a gifted psychiatrist alter her perception of her diagnosis as a death sentence.

Bipolar DisorderEmotionalTeen ProtagonistYoung Adult
❤️

All the Bright Places

Jennifer Niven · 408 pages

Theodore Finch is fascinated by death, and he constantly thinks of ways he might kill himself. But each time, something good, no matter how small, stops him. Violet Markey lives for the future, counting the days until graduation, when she can escape her Indiana town and her aching grief in the wake of her sister’s recent death. When Finch and Violet meet on the ledge of the bell tower at s

Bipolar DisorderEmotionalYoung AdultTeen Protagonist
🙂

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.

SistersMental Health AdvocacyEmotionalTeen Protagonist
🙂

Sold

Patricia McCormick · 272 pages

Lakshmi is a thirteen-year-old girl who lives with her family in a small hut in the mountains of Nepal. Her family is desperately poor, but her life is full of simple pleasures, like raising her black-and-white speckled goat, and having her mother brush her hair by the light of an oil lamp. But when the harsh Himalayan monsoons wash away all that remains of the family’s crops, Lakshmi’s stepfather

Verse NovelEmotionalTeen ProtagonistYoung Adult
🙂

Two Girls Staring at the Ceiling

Lucy Frank · 272 pages

This novel-in-verse—at once literary and emotionally gripping—follows the unfolding friendship between two very different teenage girls who share a hospital room and an illness. Chess, the narrator, is sick, but with what exactly, she isn’t sure. And to make matters worse, she must share a hospital room with Shannon, her polar opposite. Where Chess is polite, Shannon is rude. Where Chess tolera

Verse NovelTeen ProtagonistYoung AdultEmotional
🙂

Ask Me How I Got Here

Christine Heppermann · 225 pages

Addie has always known what she was running toward. In cross country, in life, in love. Until she and her boyfriend her sensitive, good-guy boyfriend are careless one night and she ends up pregnant. Addie makes the difficult choice to have an abortion. And after that even though she knows it was the right decision for her nothing is the same anymore. She doesn t want anyone besides her parents and

Verse NovelTeen ProtagonistYoung AdultEmotional
🙂

Out of the Dust

Karen Hesse · 235 pages

"Dust piles up like snow across the prairie. . . ." A terrible accident has transformed Billie Jo's life, scarring her inside and out. Her mother is gone. Her father can't talk about it. And the one thing that might make her feel better -- playing the piano -- is impossible with her wounded hands. To make matters worse, dust storms are devastating the family farm and all the farms nearby. Wh

Verse NovelEmotionalYoung AdultTeen Protagonist
🙂

A Tragic Kind of Wonderful

Eric Lindstrom · 278 pages

"A sixteen-year-old girl living with bipolar disorder learns to balance romance, friendship, and grief"--

Bipolar DisorderEmotionalTeen ProtagonistYoung Adult
🙂
Bipolar DisorderMental Health AdvocacyEmotionalFirst Person Narrator
🙂

An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

Kay Redfield Jamison · 223 pages

From Kay Redfield Jamison - an international authority on manic-depressive illness, and one of the few women who are full professors of medicine at American universities - a remarkable personal testimony: the revelation of her own struggle since adolescence with manic-depression, and how it has shaped her life. Vividly, directly, with candor, wit, and simplicity, she takes us into the fascinating

Bipolar DisorderMental Health AdvocacyEmotionalDepression
🙂

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.

SistersEmotionalYoung AdultTeen Protagonist
🙂

My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward

Mark Lukach · 320 pages

"A heart-wrenching, yet hopeful, memoir of a young marriage that is redefined by mental illness and affirms the power of love. Mark and Giulia's life together began as a storybook romance. The fell in love at eighteen, married at twenty-four, and were living their dream life in San Francisco. When Giulia was twenty-seven, she suffered a terrifying and unexpected psychotic break that landed her in

Bipolar DisorderMental Health AdvocacyEmotionalDepression
🙂

Exposed

Kimberly Marcus

High school senior Liz, a gifted photographer, can no longer see things clearly after her best friend accuses Liz's older brother of raping her while she was sleeping over at Liz's house.

Verse NovelEmotionalTeen ProtagonistYoung Adult
🙂

Prozac Nation

Elizabeth Wurtzel · 336 pages

Full of promise is how anyone would have described Elizabeth Wurtzel at age ten, a bright-eyed little girl who painted, wrote stories, and excelled in every way. By twelve she was cutting her legs in the girls' bathroom and listening to scratchy recordings of the Velvet Underground. College was marked by a series of breakdowns, suicide attempts, and hospitalizations before she was finally given P

Bipolar DisorderMental Health AdvocacyEmotionalFirst Person Narrator
🙂

I Heart You, You Haunt Me

Lisa Schroeder · 240 pages

Verse NovelEmotionalYoung AdultFirst Person Narrator
🙂

Solo

Kwame Alexander, Mary Rand Hess · 461 pages

Seventeen-year-old Blade, who endeavors to resolve painful issues from his past to navigate the challenges of his former rockstar father's addictions, scathing tabloid rumors, and a protected secret that threatens his own identity.

Verse NovelEmotionalTeen ProtagonistYoung Adult
🙂

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...

SistersEmotionalYoung AdultFirst Person Narrator
🙂

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

Mental Health AdvocacyEmotionalYoung AdultTeen Protagonist
📖 New 2026 Kindles just released. See them on Amazon ↗