10 books like The Titan's Curse

The Hunger Games was a game changer in the world of dystopian YA novels.

From the moment Katniss volunteers to take Prim’s place, the stage is set for readers to be immersed in major social themes including the inequality between Panem and the districts as Katniss is thrown into the games as a tribute—a fight she never wanted but one where she refuses to back down when pushed by Snow.

Of course, there is the love story between Katniss and Peeta—which is evolving and complicated but keeps readers flipping the pages.

Suzanne Collins had a unique approach with one of the standout takeaways from The Hunger Games being society and culture are influenced by what we are exposed to through entertainment.

Positive and negative. It’s a valuable lesson for all of us.

The Giver is close to my heart, as it played a huge role in my development as an author and was one of the first book recommendations my mother gave me. This novel shows you what it could take for humanity to reach perfection, and makes you question whether perfection is something really worth reaching for. It also introduced me to the wonderful dystopian genre, and showed me that literature is much more than entertainment: it’s a whole world of important messages that the world needs to hear.

In Like Water for Chocolate, how people feel when they are cooking affects what they are creating, and the people eating that food feel what the cook was feeling. I love that. It shows how truly magical, healing, and transformative cooking can be even though it is an ordinary everyday task that most of us perform. Each chapter has a recipe, and each recipe is tinged with magic. As a bonus, the book taught me to pay attention to how I feel when I cook—I try not to cry or be angry when preparing dishes. Just in case.

One of the most powerful, magical poetic storytelling I have ever read. Amanda Lovelace weaves heartache and magic into a tale of love, loss, and rebirth. Unraveling the magical tropes, this poetic tale proves that the greatest hero is ourself. That the princess can be both victim and heroine, and that wielding a broken heart can be as powerful as any magic talisman.

My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is described as a graphic novel, but it takes the form of the notebook of a 10-year-old girl who is obsessed with monsters. The art is terrific and the story is haunting and mysterious. I’ve always been a notebook person myself, filling up stacks of sketchbooks through my childhood and teens, so the way the main character processed her life by scribbling on a page really resonated with me. This book is super unique, from the way the character always draws herself as a werewolf, to the mysterious death of her upstairs neighbor, and the way she remembers conversations by drawing them as comics.

The Iliad is not a book on strategy. Nor on tactics, nor on logistics, nor on command and control, nor on any other individual aspect of warfare about which any number of lesser authors have written. An epic poem, it provides an unparalleled panorama of men (and, playing a secondary yet crucially important role, a few women) at war: the hope, the despair, the fear, the elation, the kindness, the rage, the horror, the love and the sex (which both increases the horror and to some extent makes up for it). All intertwined, and all pulsating along with the human heart. Probably written down around 750 BCE, but making use of much older material, for almost three millennia now it has been regarded not just as a classic but as the greatest classic of all. Unquestionably it will continue doing so for millennia more. 

Most of the people I’ve spoken to received terrible sex and relationship education. This is the comic book to rectify that. Buy it for young people so that they have a better experience than you did, and buy it for yourself to make up for what you went through back then.

Let’s Talk About It is an awesome inclusive, accessible graphic book, and beautifully illustrated throughout. Erika and Matthew do a great job of covering the questions young people really want answered, through dialogues between a beautifully drawn cast of characters who are navigating their own way through this complex, confusing territory. 

The guidance given is warm, friendly, realistic, and clear, likely to alleviate much of the fear and shame we all have around these topics.

I’ve added this graphic novel to my list in part for nostalgic reasons. Although the book and its two sequels were published in the 2000s, they are all set in 1970s Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, when I had the good fortune to live there. Aya is an adolescent girl living in the vibrant neighborhood of Yopougon, where everyone knows each other’s business. While she just wants to focus on her studies, she keeps getting distracted by the drama of those around her—from the boy-chasing machinations of her girlfriends to the foolish missteps of her parent's generation.

This series turns the “tortured outcast” trope on its head: these nerd characters are proud to be outcasts, and the one thing they don't want to be associated with is beautiful, popular people! I love this story because I, too, once fell into the “us vs. them” mentality against people I thought were too cool for me as a youth— people who could have potentially become my best friends! This manga series beautifully celebrates how we are all different, but still might have more in common than we think.

This is one of the first graphic novels I ever read, and I couldn’t stop laughing. The story is fun, and it’s the perfect example of a girl staying true to who she is while realizing that sometimes people change and friends grow apart as they grow up. I loved that I got to learn a new sport while enjoying this coming-of-age story.