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🧲 Books like this

Bitter Melon

Cara Chow · 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.

Rebellion Against AuthorityToxic Family DynamicsIdentity FormationMother and Daughter
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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.

Mother and DaughterEmotional AbuseToxic Family DynamicsIdentity Formation
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Dreams of Joy

Lisa See · 354 pages

A continuation of "Shanghai Girls" finds a devastated Joy fleeing to China to search for her real father while her mother, Pearl, desperately pursues her, a dual quest marked by their encounters with the nation's intolerant Communist culture.

Mother and DaughterRebellion Against AuthorityCultural IdentityToxic Family Dynamics
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Wait for Me

An Na · 169 pages

As her senior year in high school approaches, Mina yearns to find her own path in life but working at the family business, taking care of her little sister, and dealing with her mother's impossible expectations are as stifling as the southern California heat, until she falls in love with a man who offers a way out.

Identity FormationCultural IdentityToxic Family DynamicsTeen Protagonist
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The Kitchen God's Wife

Amy Tan · 532 pages

Winnie and Helen have kept each other's worst secrets for more than fifty years. Now, because she believes she is dying, Helen wants to expose everything. And Winnie angrily determines that she must be the one to tell her daughter, Pearl, about the past--including the terrible truth even Helen does not know. And so begins Winnie's story of her life on a small island outside Shanghai in the 1920s,

Mother and DaughterEmotional AbuseCultural IdentityToxic Family Dynamics
❤️

Polarity in Motion

Brenda Vicars · 254 pages

Fifteen-year-old Polarity Weeks just wants to live a normal life, but with a mother diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, that's rarely easy. Her life gets exponentially more disastrous when her sixth-period history classmates start ogling a nude picture of her on the Internet. Polarity would never have struck such a shameless pose, but the photo is definitely of her, and she's at a comp

Emotional AbuseToxic Family DynamicsMother and DaughterTeen Protagonist
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How Moon Fuentez Fell in Love with the Universe

Raquel Vasquez Gilliland · 432 pages

Emotional AbuseToxic Family DynamicsCultural IdentityTeen Protagonist
❤️

Massive

Julia Bell, Andrew Biscomb · 280 pages

"I'm fat," I hear myself saying. I look in the mirror. My face has gone hot and red; I feel like I'm going to explode. "I'm fat." It sizzles under my skin, puffing me up, pushing me out, making me massive. Weight has always been a big issue in Carmen's life. How could it not? Her mom is obsessed with the idea that thin equals beautiful, thin equals successful, thin equals the way to get what you w

Mother and DaughterToxic Family DynamicsTeen ProtagonistYoung Adult
❤️

The Record Keeper

Agnes Gomillion · 464 pages

Identity FormationRebellion Against AuthorityCultural IdentityTeen Protagonist
❤️

This Side of Home

Renee Watson · 339 pages

Twins Nikki and Maya Younger always agreed on most things, but as they head into their senior year they react differently to the gentrification of their Portland, Oregon, neighborhood and the new--white--family that moves in after their best friend and her mother are evicted.

Identity FormationCultural IdentityTeen ProtagonistYoung Adult
❤️

Allegiant

Veronica Roth · 526 pages

The faction-based society that Tris Prior once believed in is shattered -- fractured by violence and power struggles and scarred by loss and betrayal. So when offered a chance to explore the world past the limits she's known, Tris is ready. Perhaps beyond the fence, she and Tobias will find a simple new life together, free from complicated lies, tangled loyalties, and painful memories. But Tris's

Identity FormationRebellion Against AuthorityCultural IdentityTeen Protagonist
🙂

The Poisonwood Bible

Barbara Kingsolver · 596 pages

The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it -- from garden seeds to Scripture -- is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of on

Toxic Family DynamicsEmotional AbuseMother and DaughterCultural Identity
🙂

Flowers in the Attic

V.C. Andrews

Mother and DaughterEmotional AbuseToxic Family DynamicsTeen Protagonist
🙂

Ms. Marvel, Vol. 1: No Normal

G. Willow Wilson · 120 pages

Identity FormationCultural IdentityRebellion Against AuthorityTeen Protagonist
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Barely Breathing

Rebecca Donovan · 592 pages

Toxic Family DynamicsEmotional AbuseTeen ProtagonistYoung Adult
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Burnt Sugar

Avni Doshi · 240 pages

Emotional AbuseMother and DaughterToxic Family DynamicsContemporary Fiction
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Good Enough

Paula Yoo · 336 pages

How to make your Korean parents happy:1. Get a perfect score on the SATs.2. Get into HarvardYalePrinceton.3. Don't talk to boys.*Patti's parents expect nothing less than the best from their Korean-American daughter. Everything she does affects her chances of getting into an Ivy League school. So winning assistant concertmaster in her All-State violin competition and earning less than 2300 on her S

Identity FormationCultural IdentityTeen ProtagonistYoung Adult
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Identity FormationToxic Family DynamicsTeen ProtagonistYoung Adult
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Cuba 15

Nancy Osa · 304 pages

Identity FormationCultural IdentityTeen ProtagonistYoung Adult
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Looking for Alibrandi

Melina Marchetta · 256 pages

During her senior year in a Catholic school in Sydney, Australia, seventeen-year-old Josie meets and must contend with the father she has never known.

Mother and DaughterIdentity FormationCultural IdentityYoung Adult
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The Rapture of Canaan

Sheri Reynolds · 328 pages

At the Church of Fire and Brimstone and Gods Almighty Baptizing Wind, Grandpa Herman makes the rules for everyone, and everyone obeys, or else. Try as she might, Ninah hasn't succeeded in resisting temptation her prayer partner, James and finds herself pregnant. She fears the wrath of Grandpa Herman, the congregation and of God Himself. But the events that follow show Ninah that Gods ways are more

Emotional AbuseIdentity FormationToxic Family DynamicsTeen Protagonist
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The Chosen

Chaim Potok · 284 pages

It's about two jewish boys from different jewish sects with very differing doctrine. The kids meet in the unlikely circumstance of a baseball game, and a terrible accident, that leads them to be lifelong friends

Identity FormationRebellion Against AuthorityCultural IdentityTeen Protagonist
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Does My Head Look Big In This?

Randa Abdel-Fattah · 368 pages

Year Eleven at an exclusive prep school in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia, would be tough enough, but it is further complicated for Amal when she decides to wear the hijab, the Muslim head scarf, full-time as a badge of her faith--without losing her identity or sense of style.

Identity FormationCultural IdentityTeen ProtagonistYoung Adult
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Virtuosity

Jessica Martinez · 294 pages

Just before the most important violin competition of her career, seventeen-year-old prodigy Carmen faces critical decisions about her anti-anxiety drug addiction, her controlling mother, and a potential romance with her most talented rival.

Mother and DaughterToxic Family DynamicsTeen ProtagonistYoung Adult

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