Fans pick 100 books like Wolf-Boy

Along with Anthropology of an American Girl, this is one of the books that made me want to become a writer. More specifically, it opened my eyes to what a writer can do with a teenage subject.

The story follows a prep-school student, Lee, but Sittenfeld handles her experience with all the nuance of “adult” subjects. I also admire how Sittenfeld captures the labyrinthine social politics of an elite boarding school and comments on class and race hierarchies without ever feeling didactic.

I think people mistake this book as YA—I certainly did when I first picked it up as a thirteen-year-old—but don’t be fooled by that candy-colored ribbon belt on the cover. This is as complex a novel as they come.     

I loved this book for its fantastical portrayal of a Pacific voyage that mirrors the internal conflicts many of us face. Like Pi, who embraced multiple faiths during his ordeal, I searched for answers to reconcile my faith and sexuality across various denominations, religions, and philosophies.

Pi’s story as he journeys across the Pacific, a tiger in tow, allowed me to reflect on the moments when I felt alone, wrestling with my faith in the face of an overwhelming challenge, given my fundamentalist upbringing. 

As a bad boy protagonist, I’ve always loathed Gene Forrester and love to loathe him. He starts as a quiet, intellectual student whose best friend and roommate is charming, self-confident, athletic, and a daredevil without being arrogant. Gene even seems to admire his roommate for having all those qualities until we learn the truth. He resents him. 

Like Gene, there were times in my life when playing wingman to a vastly more popular friend could be frustrating, doubly so when they made terrible decisions. Yet, Gene’s journey to the heart of darkness helps put things in perspective. There is no better warning against envy and jealousy than the one immortalized by John Knowles.

Where to start? I’d read The Secret History and found it mesmerizing, but I loved this book more. It was more personal, and I couldn’t get enough of it.

I loved the premise and the relationships between the characters, even though they were completely flawed. I bought into everything they did and thought and wondered what I would have done in the same circumstances and conditions. The writing is extraordinary, and anyone who loves to read prose that sings will adore this book as I did.

Bruiser is only nine years old, younger than most “coming of age” protagonists, but his anxiety-ridden family life in a Manhattan apartment has aged him. His father is a philanderer who rarely is home and often physically abusive when he is; his mother is a deeply depressed poet. Bruiser spends most of his time running around his Upper West Side neighborhood with a make-shift gang of older boys—and has the bruises to show for it, hence his nickname—or hiding at the bottom of the clothes hamper when his parents are going at it. He befriends a 10-year-old girl, Darla, who lives across the courtyard with her drug-addled mother and who convinces him to run away with her. Their journey, which takes them first to West Virginia in search of Darla’s father and eventually to North Carolina, is the book’s magic. Both kids are pre-puberty, so it’s… show more.

This book kept me turning the pages well into the night.

The Rev Jack Brooks moves to a new parish for a fresh start with her teenage daughter but they have barely unpacked when strange things begin to happen.

The book is well-paced with clever use of local superstitions which gives the story a supernatural feel. There is a looming threat to the main protagonist which builds the unease till the explosive end.

There isn’t another young adult book out there that makes me feel as seen as Lucy and Linh, alternately titled Laurinda in its native Australia.

It was the first novel I’d ever come across with a Chinese Vietnamese protagonist, and the details about her life as the daughter of working-class refugees really hit home.

That the prose is impeccable, the social observations incisive, and the themes not at all didactic (the main character Lucy makes plenty of mistakes) instantly turned me into an Alice Pung superfan. 

This story is in the style that Shari is making her own – a critical 24 hours in the intertwined lives of her characters.

It’s a skilful weaving of lightness and big laughs, plus painful, dramatic elements with break-neck plotting. Here, she builds her story round a group of friends and neighbours, who have known and supported each other for so long that they’ve created a ‘family’ owing nothing to genetics.

I love the Glasgow details, like the hospital carpark row with an audience of giggling nurses clutching sausage rolls. I also love the salt-of-the-earth older ladies in Shari’s books – the fiery ‘wummin’ holding lives together with their humour and strength of character.

Pick this up and you will not stop till you turn the last page. 

It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen sometimes: you start a book only to find you simply can’t put it down. This was the case for me with Lonely Castle in the Mirror, a coming-of-age story.

At first glance the book seems like an entertainment novel with a fantasy element. Six teenagers slip through their respective bedroom mirrors and find themselves in a surreal castle with a mission to complete. Only at second glance does it become clear what this book is really about.

It is about loneliness and friendship, and about the painful process of growing up. None of the teenagers are really any good at forming relationships. And yet: by taking the risk and accepting commitments, the sense of responsibility within them grows, and they surpass themselves.

A magical parable. And who actually says that good literature can’t also be entertaining? It’s ideal when both happen at… show more.

Prepare to cry! That’s my advice.

It is a beautiful story about childhood friends, Poppy and Rune, who are fated to be together. But circumstances break them apart, and when teenager Rune returns, Poppy has a secret – she has a terminal diagnosis.

This isn’t strictly a romance because the ending isn’t a traditional happy ever after. But it is bursting with love and all the strength that a gripping love story brings. I loved it.

It’s a book that makes you look at life and feel grateful again. To really remember how powerful we all are and can be when we harness our true meaning of loving ourselves and each other.

It is breathtakingly beautiful and will stay with you a long time after turning the final page.