100 books like The Things We Do to Our Friends

Imogen, Obviously was such a fantastic read that I really could relate to.

Imogen was a lot like me in high school, a people pleaser who thought she was straight. She considered herself an ally, but then sometimes would have thoughts about girls, but passed them off as wanting to be their friend and looking back, I had the same thing happen to me. I really wished this book was available to me in high school because it would have helped me understand a lot more about myself.

This book has a memorable cast of characters including Imogen’s love interest Tessa and I’m going to be thinking about this book for a long time. 

Exit Here. was one of the first exhibits of teen literature I studied on my journey to publishing. Jason Myers portrays college-age Travis with the weight of traumatic experiences and the loft of the future spinning in his head. Readers are brought immediately into Travis’ headspace, wherein they feel all the trauma, excitement, and uncertainty Travis experiences. Because I wrote my Edgar finalist book from the male point of view, I reread Myers shortly before drafting. It’s a great example of human fallibility.

If We Were Villains centers around seven students enrolled in the elite Shakespeare program at Dellecher Classical Conservatory.

The fictional college is housed on the grounds of an old country estate in rural Illinois, and the novel unfolds in the autumn and winter. The way Rio weaves Shakespearean passages into the book to reflect what the students are experiencing at the time is flawless. But this book isn’t just for Shakespeare fans (though it helps a little if you don’t hate it); it provides enough twists and turns to make even the most sophisticated thriller reader’s head spin.

The ‘sorority girl’ is a stock character in most novels set on American college campuses, and you’ll be hard pressed to find one who isn’t portrayed as beautiful but vapid and one misstep away from the twin horrors of having a bad hair day and witnessing their ex leave a party with their best friend.

Patton’s novel self-consciously leans into the stereotypes of white Greek culture at a big southern university, which makes its critique of that culture and its broader cast of characters both funny in their exaggeration and horrifying in their appeal.

This is exactly the kind of sorority-themed novel you would expect from the genre but also, because of a couple of unexpected twists, the one you never saw coming.

Wait for You by Jennifer L. Armentrout was a book I read long ago, and it's one that still sticks with me to this day. It's a book I've read and reread.

I love how the main character, Avery, is flawed–making her feel real. And I love Cam and how patient he is with her. Avery is a character who's had some trauma, and she's running. Little does she know she's running right into the arms of the man she's supposed to be with. These characters felt so real.

The writing was good, but not over the top to where I had to stop and think, "Who talks like this?" And it was paced perfectly–the couple grew to be closer over a longer amount of time rather than to meet, fall in love, and overcome everything in a matter of days or weeks. It's another example of something beautiful coming… show more.

I’ve always wanted to study literature at Oxford University. I never have and almost certainly never will, but Carolyn Weber is the friend I would have made if I had that opportunity, and thanks to this powerful, luminous memoir I still got to “meet” that friend and experience what our long conversations over tea might have been like. 

Weber’s deeply honest story of discovering Christianity while stumbling upon the footsteps of other seekers after truth and beauty at an ancient university made both an old, old town and the ancient truth of the Gospel seem bright and fresh. 

When Lacey Campbell escapes a serial killer as a co-ed, she helped send him to prison for life. Years later, she’s a forensic scientist, working for the Medical Examiner and the case comes back to haunt her. 

Elliot’s skill with writing chilling suspense and steamy romance – combined with a knowledge of forensics – leaves the reader always wanting more. Luckily, there are five books in the Bone Secrets series, so there’s a lot more to enjoy. 

What drew me to Kendra Elliot’s work was a review someone else wrote where they said her accuracy and penchant for realism were so good that they (a forensic scientist in real life) didn’t get pulled out of the story by any errors. 

That reviewer was right. The accuracy, combined with the twists and turns in the stories, have you reading with the lights on. (My favorite kind of book!)

Anthropology professor Rebekah Nathan made the bold decision to do what anthropologists do best: live amongst those of a misunderstood culture. After fifteen years of teaching at a large university, she left her faculty position and went undercover as a freshman. Nathan moved into a dorm, ate off the student meal plan, and enrolled in courses as a full-time student. The book is filled with thoughtful insights about the challenges first-year students face, including academic stressors, looming student debt, and an increasingly disengaged student culture. My Freshman Year exposes a realistic view of the new transactional-cultured university campus, while simultaneously offering a compassionate peek into the daily struggles of new students.

As with the creation of 2001, this 2009 book was written simultaneously with a screenplay, by Aaron Sorkin for The Social Network. As author Ben Mezrich admits up front, entire scenes and stretches of dialog are made up, making this account of Mark Zuckerberg’s real experiences conjuring Facebook as a student at Harvard more like a work of fiction. While the book is wildly entertaining, it falls way short as a cautionary tale about the social media platform that would end up doing damage to our democracy as a petri dish of misinformation and manipulation. Only at the very end of the 2010 movie do we receive notes of alarm, thanks to the film’s closing song. “Now that you know who you are,” the Beatles sing in "Baby You’re a Rich Man", “what do you want to be?” It suggests that Facebook’s business plan… show more.

Campus Traditions is a complete study of college culture that spans centuries and all of the United States. It is thorough, entertaining, and presents a clear evolution of post-secondary education from old-time colleges to today’s mega-university. Professors and students from all fields will recognize their university in this book and marvel at traditions that were thought to have been unique to their school but are, in fact, part of a much greater national trend.