10 books like Eleanor & Park

If you’ve never read an A.S. King book, well, all I can say is: fix that immediately. King’s brilliance shines through her witty dialogue and her ability to peel back the layers on the uncomfortable parts of life all while managing to use magical realism perfectly. Her books are that good. I’m not kidding. This book focuses on 15-year-old Lucky Linderman, who is the target of Nader McMillan’s relentless bullying. You’ll fall in love with Lucky. You’ll fall in love with this book.

Before I Fall is Mean Girls meets Groundhog Day, with the popular and pretty protagonist, Sam, forced to relive February 12th (her beloved “Cupid’s Day”) over and over. In the beginning, I had no love for Sam and was appalled by her and her friend’s nasty behavior, but Sam’s character growth throughout the novel is inspirational. The time-turning in the novel is handled flawlessly with repeated events never growing dull, and each new loop offering another layer to Sam’s redemption. Admittedly the book didn’t end the way I wanted (I’m a fan of fairy tale endings, even if unrealistic), but watching Sam evolve from a shallow mean girl to a beautiful soul was a moving experience and made the book worth the read.

Teen twins, once close but now estranged, tell their tale in alternating sections. In an intriguing twist, Noah’s account takes place 3 years ago while Jude’s is in the present.

The reader gets bits of the full picture from each sibling until their turbulent narratives coalesce in a way that is both appropriately artistic and moving. Nelson weaves a great plot, but it’s her characters’ depth that makes this book exceptional.

This dark fantasy book had me sobbing more than once, thanks to some great writing and the personal resonance it had for me at the time of reading. It’s marketed as YA fiction, but don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s only for young adults—it’s for everyone, especially if they’re struggling with grief. Siobhan Dowd came up with the story while fighting cancer and sadly died before it could be written, but Patrick Ness has created something beautiful, melancholy, and strangely uplifting from her original idea, in which the young Connor befriends a monster who tells him three stories before forcing Connor to tell one of his own. It explores the complexities of grief with honesty and sensitivity. It’s also beautifully illustrated by Jim Kay.

This is a beautifully written book, that brings the marshes of North Carolina to life in a way I didn’t think was possible.

Not only will it transport you to this unique wilderness, it places you in Kya’s isolated world in a profound way, too. I was skeptical going in, because of the hype, but honestly—it was breathtaking. It’s also an example of a different type of worldbuilding which is why I wanted to include it here (narrowly beating out Kate Quinn’s The Rose Code, which will whisk you to the now-infamous Bletchley Park amid WWII).

There’s nothing dystopian, fantastical, or magical about this book, and yet Owens has managed to create a world that feels unearthly and transcendent. If you’re not a fan of fantasy or dystopian, but you enjoy escapism and topnotch worldbuilding, read this one! 

I like the way Goldman plays around with fairy-tale tropes without getting too snarky or satirical. The famous movie adaptation of the book includes the framing device of a grandparent reading to a child.  This may have subliminally affected me, as I imagine parents, grandparents, uncles, and aunts reading my books to kids while chuckling to themselves, or tearing up, doing it. There are a lot of books for both adults and kids that are great to read to yourself, but can be tiresome to read aloud. I strive to make mine good for both. 

Who thinks they are going to meet the love of their life at a cancer support group? Probably not too many people, and yet one of the greatest love stories of all time began there, as unlikely as it was. It is where Hazel Grace and Augustus, both battling cancer at different stages, first meet. How many times have I thought, I wish I had thought of that first? And yet, I always remind myself that I’m glad I didn’t because there could be no better version than this one. The moment that always sticks with me is when Hazel’s mom, instead of telling her to wait until she’s older to express her love to Augustus, encourages her to now because it is possible there won’t be a later for her. 

This book is a brilliantly written, honest story set at a prestigious prep school (Ault) in the US. Its sometimes infuriating main character, Lee, doesn’t have a great time there and mostly it’s her own fault. But Lee is a scholarship girl and the unwritten rules of the privileged society she has just chosen to enter bewilder her. This is definitely a coming-of-age book for people who are already well into adulthood. At the end of the book, when real life crashes in on Lee, Sittenfeld writes a chapter that I could read over and over again. It’s so hauntingly true and wise in the way that you can only get by looking back at a sad period in your life later, when you’re happier.

Once I read about Charlie, the main character in Stephen Chbosky’s novel, I was intrigued how a shy, bookish kid like me could become so wild and crazy in his first year of high school. Charlie is the main character who at fifteen writes about his freshman experience not unlike a diary. The story is written through Charlie’s detailed, and very personal letters. School begins with him being bullied. He finds it difficult to make friends, but finally there’s a boy he can relate to who is gay and who introduces Charlie to his sister, Sam. Love takes hold of Charlie, leaves him, he goes to parties, takes drugs, wants to kill himself, feels guilty over the death of his aunt, but finally seeks help from a psychiatrist. 

Unlike the previous two titles, Pure doesn’t have an author built-in soundtrack. However, this story, written in 2000 by a sixteen-year-old (!!!), is as paradoxically blunt and elusive as so many alternative music albums of the 1990s were. A mixtape for Pure would definitely include Hole, Radiohead, Tori Amos, an Explicit Content label, and just about all the trigger warnings you can think of. As difficult as some of the scenes of this book were to read, I found it deeply impactful and empathy-inducing. I’ve yet to meet another person who connected with this book that I don’t feel a certain kinship to. They are few and far between, like people who still own a Temple of the Dog CD.