Sarah Dessen Readalikes

 

 

 

 

Abdel-Fattah, Randa. Ten Things I Hate About Me. 2009. (YA Fiction Abdel.R)

Lebanese-Australian Jamilah, known in school as Jamie, hides her heritage from her classmates and tries to pass by dyeing her hair blonde and wearing blue-tinted contact lenses, until her conflicted feelings become too much for her to bear.

 

 

Anderson, Laurie Halse. Prom. 2005. (YA Fiction Ander.L)

Eighteen-year-old Ash wants nothing to do with senior prom, but when disaster strikes and her desperate friend, Nat, needs her help to get it back on track, Ash's involvement transforms her life.

 

 

Barkley, Brad. Scrambled Eggs at Midnight. 2006. (YA Fiction Barkl.B)

Calliope and Eliot, two fifteen-year-olds in Asheville, North Carolina, begin to acknowledge some unpleasant truths about their parents and form their own ideas about love.

 

 

 

Bauer, Joan. Hope Was Here. 2000. (YA Fiction Bauer.J)

When sixteen-year-old Hope and the aunt who has raised her move from Brooklyn to Mulhoney, Wisconsin, to work as waitress and cook in the Welcome Stairways diner, they become involved with the diner owner's political campaign to oust the town's corrupt mayor.

 

 

Caletti, Deb. Honey, Baby, Sweetheart. 2004. (YA Fiction Calet.D)

In the summer of her junior year, sixteen-year-old Ruby McQueen and her mother, both nursing broken hearts, set out on a journey to reunite an elderly woman with her long-lost love and in the process learn many things about "the real ties that bind" people to one another.

 

 

Castellucci, Cecil. Boy Proof. 2005. (YA Fiction Caste.C)

Feeling alienated from everyone around her, Los Angeles high school senior and cinephile Victoria Denton hides behind the identity of a favorite movie character until an interesting new boy arrives at school and helps her realize that there is more to life than just the movies.

 

 

Cohn, Rachel. Gingerbread. 2002. (YA Fiction Cohn.R)

After being expelled from a fancy boarding school, Cyd Charisse's problems with her mother escalate after Cyd falls in love with a sensitive surfer and is subsequently sent from San Francisco to New York City to spend time with her biological father.

 

 

Colasanti, Susane. So Much Closer. 2011. (YA Fiction Colas.S)

Seventeen-year-old Brooke has a crush on Scott so big that when he heads for New York City, she moves into her estranged father's Greenwich Village apartment, but soon she begins to focus on knowing herself and finding her future path.

 

 

Forman, Gayle. If I Stay : A Novel. 2009. (YA Fiction Forma.G)

While in a coma following an automobile accident that killed her parents and younger brother, seventeen-year-old Mia, a gifted cellist, weights whether to live with her grief or join her family in death.

 

 

Frank, E. R.. Wrecked. 2005. (YA Fiction Frank.E)

After a car accident seriously injures her best friend and kills her brother's girlfriend, sixteen-year-old Anna tries to cope with her guilt and grief, while learning some truths about her family and herself.

 

 

Green, John. Paper Towns. 2008. (YA Fiction Green.J)

One month before graduating from his Central Florida high school, Quentin "Q" Jacobsen basks in the predictable boringness of his life until the beautiful and exciting Margo Roth Spiegelman, Q's neighbor and classmate, takes him on a midnight adventure and then mysteriously disappears.

 

Griffin, Adele. Where I Want To Be. 2005. (YA Fiction Griff.A)

Two teenaged sisters, separated by death but still connected, work through their feelings of loss over the closeness they shared as children that was later destroyed by one's mental illness, and finally make peace with each other.

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