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

🧲 Books like this

Patina

Jason Reynolds · 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
❤️

Counting by 7s

Holly Goldberg Sloan · 380 pages

AdoptionMiddle GradeTeen ProtagonistCharacter-Driven
❤️

The Crossover

Kwame Alexander · 240 pages

"A bolt of lightning on my kicks, the court is sizzling, my sweat is drizzling. Stop all that quivering, cuz tonight I'm delivering," raps basketball phenom Josh Bell. Thanks to his dad, he and his twin brother, Jordan, are kings on the court, with crossovers that make even the toughest ballers cry. But Josh has more than hoops in his blood. He's got a river of rhymes flowing through him -- a sick

AthleteDeath of a ParentMiddle GradeFirst Person Narrator
❤️

Orphan Train

Christina Baker Kline · 400 pages

Close to aging out of the foster care system, Molly Ayer takes a position helping an elderly woman named Vivian and discovers that they are more alike than different as she helps Vivian solve a mystery from her past. When 17-year-old Molly Ayer is sent to perform community service at elderly Vivian Daly's home in order to avoid juvenile hall, she discovers the two are very much alike, despite the

AdoptionDeath of a ParentCharacter-DrivenTeen Protagonist
❤️

Wonder

R.J. Palacio · 330 pages

## **Don't judge a boy by his face.** ## Auggie is a kid who just wants to be ordinary. He does ordinary things, like play on his Xbox and watch TV and eat. But ordinary kids don't make people stare just by walking down the block. They don't scare kids by looking at his face. They *definitely* haven't had over 20 surgeries by age 10. But when Auggie starts going to school for the first time in h

Chronic IllnessMiddle GradeFirst Person NarratorCharacter-Driven
❤️

Anne of Green Gables

L.M. Montgomery · 308 pages

Anne, an eleven-year-old orphan, is sent by mistake to live with a lonely, middle-aged brother and sister on a Prince Edward Island farm and proceeds to make an indelible impression on everyone around her.

AdoptionMiddle GradeDeath of a ParentCharacter-Driven
❤️

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt

Beth Hoffman · 313 pages

When Camille Sugarbaker Honeycutt, the pretty but crazy 1951 Vidalia Onion Queen dies, her twelve-year-old daughter CeeCee has barely a hope in the world. To her rescue arrives Great Aunt Tootie in the most magnificent car CeeCee has ever seen, and she is whisked away to the city of Savannah. Among the sweet scent of magnolias and the loving warmth of Tootie and her colourful collection of friends

Death of a ParentCharacter-DrivenFirst Person NarratorTeen Protagonist
❤️

Carrie Soto Is Back

Taylor Jenkins Reid · 400 pages

Carrie Soto is the greatest player the world has ever seen. But six years after her last match, she watches a young British tennis player steal her world record - and Carrie knows she has to go back and reclaim her rightful place at the top. Even if the world doesn't believe in her. Even if it almost breaks her. This is a story about the cost of greatness and the burden of fame. The fight

AthleteDeath of a ParentCharacter-DrivenEmotional
❤️

A Mango-Shaped Space

Wendy Mass · 230 pages

Thirteen-year-old Mia Winchell has a secret: sounds, numbers, and words appear to her in color. Mia has synesthesia, the mingling of perceptions whereby a person sees sounds or tastes shapes. This coming-of-age novel chronicles Mia's developing appreciation for her gift.

Middle GradeCharacter-DrivenTeen ProtagonistFirst Person Narrator
❤️

A Matter of Heart

Amy Fellner Dominy · 313 pages

Sixteen-year-old Abby Lipman is on track to win the state swim championships and qualify for the Olympic trials when a fainting incident at a swim meet leads to the diagnosis of a deadly heart condition. Now Abby is forced to discover who she is without the one thing that's defined her entire life.

AthleteChronic IllnessTeen ProtagonistContemporary Fiction
❤️

Ellen Foster

Kaye Gibbons · 126 pages

Having suffered abuse and misfortune for much of her life, a young child searches for a better life and finally gets a break in the home of a loving woman with several foster children.

AdoptionCharacter-DrivenFirst Person NarratorTeen Protagonist
❤️

When You Reach Me

Rebecca Stead · 199 pages

As her mother prepares to be a contestant on the 1980s television game show, "The $20,000 Pyramid," a twelve-year-old New York City girl tries to make sense of a series of mysterious notes received from an anonymous source that seems to defy the laws of time and space.

Middle GradeTeen ProtagonistCharacter-DrivenFirst Person Narrator
❤️

The Art of Racing in the Rain

Garth Stein · 321 pages

Enzo knows he is different from other dogs: a philosopher with a nearly human soul (and an obsession with opposable thumbs), he has educated himself by watching television extensively, and by listening very closely to the words of his master, Denny Swift, an up-and-coming race car driver.Through Denny, Enzo has gained tremendous insight into the human condition, and he sees that life, like racing,

AthleteChronic IllnessCharacter-DrivenFirst Person Narrator
❤️

Nowhere Boy

Katherine Marsh · 366 pages

Death of a ParentMiddle GradeCharacter-DrivenTeen Protagonist
❤️

North of Beautiful

Justina Chen

As he continued to stare, I wanted to point to my cheek and remind him, But you were the one who wanted this, remember? You're the one who asked-and I repeat-Why not fix your face? It's hard not to notice Terra Cooper. She's tall, blond, and has an enviable body. But with one turn of her cheek, all people notice is her unmistakably "flawed" face. Terra secretly plans to leave her stifling small

AdoptionFirst Person NarratorTeen ProtagonistEmotional
❤️

The One & Only

Emily Giffin · 582 pages

Centering her life on the successful Walker family, into which she plans to marry, Shea struggles to end her affair with a less-than-stellar boyfriend only to have her entire existence placed in question by the death of the family's mother.

Death of a ParentAthleteCharacter-DrivenFirst Person Narrator
❤️

Out of My Mind

Sharon M. Draper · 305 pages

Eleven-year-old Melody has a photographic memory. Her head is like a video camera that is always recording. Always. And there's no delete button. She's the smartest kid in her whole school, but no one knows it. Most people — her teachers and doctors included — don't think she's capable of learning, and until recently her school days consisted of listening to the same preschool-level alphabet lesso

Middle GradeCharacter-DrivenFirst Person NarratorContemporary Fiction
❤️

Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus

Dusti Bowling · 288 pages

New friends and a mystery help Aden, thirteen, adjust to middle school and life at a dying western theme park in a new state, where her being born armless presents many challenges.

AdoptionMiddle GradeTeen ProtagonistFirst Person Narrator
🙂

I'm With Stupid

Geoff Herbach

AthleteDeath of a ParentTeen ProtagonistCharacter-Driven
🙂

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

Chronic IllnessCharacter-DrivenFirst Person NarratorTeen Protagonist
🙂

Girl in Translation

Jean Kwok · 293 pages

Character-DrivenFirst Person NarratorTeen ProtagonistEmotional
🙂

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.

Chronic IllnessDeath of a ParentTeen ProtagonistFirst Person Narrator
🙂

Smile

Raina Telgemeier · 213 pages

Middle GradeTeen ProtagonistEmotionalFirst Person Narrator
🙂

Fast Break

Mike Lupica · 261 pages

Since his mother's death, Jayson, twelve, has focused on basketball and surviving but he is found out and placed with an affluent foster family of a different race, and must learn to accept many changes, including facing his former teammates in a championship game.

AthleteMiddle GradeDeath of a ParentTeen Protagonist
🙂

The War I Finally Won

Kimberly Brubaker Bradley · 400 pages

When Ada's clubfoot is surgically fixed at last, she knows for certain that she's not what her mother said she was--damaged, deranged, crippled mentally as well as physically. She's not a daughter anymore, either. What is she? World War II continues, and Ada and her brother, Jamie, are living with their loving legal guardian, Susan, in a borrowed cottage on the estate of the formidable Lady Thorto

Middle GradeDeath of a ParentCharacter-DrivenFirst Person Narrator
📖 New 2026 Kindles just released. See them on Amazon ↗