84 books like One to Watch

Dolores Price is one of the most honest, funny, and irresistible narrators I’ve ever encountered, and the story of her coming of age grabbed me by the heart and didn’t let go until the very last page. I found the trauma she suffers to be highly relatable, and her way of plowing through it is both admirable and heartbreaking.

I’ve read this book at least three times over the last several years, and each time, it has made me cry harder than any other book I’ve read. For me, each time I’ve read this book, it’s been an amazing, cathartic experience.

This book follows the lives of three friends, Emerson, Georgia, and Marley, who first met at fat camp as teenagers. Back then, they made a list of all the things they would do when they were skinny.

The novel opens with the tragic death of Emerson, who gives her friends a copy of the list and asks that they complete all the items.

As Georgia and Marley work to fulfill their friend’s dying wish, they must confront the loss and emptiness in their own lives, believe in their own worth, and beat back their detractors – quite literally in one empowering physical altercation in a bar. The characters in this book are complex, easy to love, and hard to forget.

A box or two of tissues is definitely recommended for this read.

Unlike the other recommendations, the plus-sized protagonist in this book is a man. Arthur Opp is a lonely shut-in who has lost his career, his friend, and his family of origin. His main solace is his correspondence with a former student, who, one day, asks him for help in guiding her son, Kel. 

From that point forward, the story is told from the alternating perspectives of Arthur and Kel. Both are plagued by isolation and tragedy. Though Arthur views himself as part of the shared soul of the lonely, he nonetheless begins to welcome people back into his life again and extols the virtues of found family to Kel.

This is a haunting, yet hopeful, book that stays with the reader for a very long time.

This book is a memoir of the childhood and early adulthood of a woman overshadowed by her own weight.

The writing in this book is beautiful and evocative, particularly the descriptions of food and eating. That being said, this work is, otherwise, a tough read. The author feels unwanted and alone. She never achieves self-love or the sense of belonging she desires. Moore grew up long before size positivity existed and so she focused her energy and strength on changing rather than accepting herself. 

Though it is, at times, an excruciating chronicle of pain, this memoir is an important work because it reminds us how destructive anti-fat bias was in the past, highlighting, as well, how it continues today.

One of the first books I remember reading that had lots of sex with a plus-size heroine. There are many now (thank goodness – a long time coming!), but when this first came out, it was quite unique.

Grace Jenkins has long wanted Noah Harper. She gets her chance, but her body image makes her hesitate.

I loved Noah’s flat-out desire of Grace and all her curves. This made me come up with a mantra that I use to my friends, on myself, and in my writing: To men; any naked is good naked.

Rose is dumped by her boyfriend for a thinner woman, throwing her into a body image crisis. But a chef (a chef! How perfect! Or horrific?) makes her appreciate herself just the way she is.

Very, very sexy. It was the first Bella Andre I read (waaaaay back when) and I’ve been a fan since. Much like Too Much Temptation, the fully-realized love scenes with a plus-size heroine (at least, in her mind) are romantic, arousing and so, so satisfying.

I was teaching high school when this novel came out over twenty years ago, and it immediately struck a chord with me, and with my students. This story of a lifelong friendship and the pain that comes with growing up has so many great characters. But Carmen has always been my favorite. The relationship with her father, her emergence into the (literal) spotlight, and her willingness to speak her mind to her loved ones, make her, for me, the true heroine of this novel. One of my favorite moments is her surprise and wonder when the pants actually fit her, not just her skinny friends. The idea that she had access to all the things they did, regardless of her size, is a beautiful metaphor for living. 

This is a unique entry in that the cursed place is a framing device, for this collection of mostly disturbing tales. For his first-ever collection of short stories, Palahniuk brings his wretched cast of characters to a haunted house, where each in turn offers his or her own demented tale. They don’t all work, but a number of the stories really stick with you, and this spooky old house at the center of it ratchets the intensity up another level—it’s not a static situation they are in, there, so the plot progresses to its own warped conclusion on this front as well. 

Also environmentally themed (a town threatened by a giant clear-cutting lumber operation), Whispering Alaska is ultimately a family story of twin sisters coming to Alaska. I loved the way Jones depicts the vastly different twin girls: one compliant and friendly, the other withdrawn and driving her father nuts. Tolstoy famously said all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way. Well, this family is struggling with the loss of the girl’s mother on top of trying to find their places in the rainy Southeast coastal town. Listed as “middle-grade” Y/A, it’s a great read for adults interested in Alaska too. 

A survival book list should definitely contain at least one treasure from your childhood. This one never left me and it’s a book I return to for its haunting, beautiful, disturbing depiction of Marianne, the little girl who dreams what she draws. Battling against a mysterious, unnamed illness, she escapes from the daily monotony by drawing a house, and a boy, and some sentinel stones. Slowly, this dreamworld becomes her reality. As the children struggle to break out of their house, surrounded by them, the stony watchers, the reader is dimly aware that it mirrors their fight to recover from their sickness. Lyrical, very scary, and a cliffhanger ending like no other, it is deservedly a classic.

I first read it when I was 10, the exact same age as Marianne (the story begins on her birthday), and I have reread it for the umpteenth time forty years later.… show more.