Books You’ll Devour If You Liked Heart Bones by Colleen Hoover

Heart Bones by Colleen Hoover is one of those heart-wrenching summer romance books that keeps you breathless until the very end. I loved it.

To set your expectations properly for this list, I like YA authors who focus on the kissing—and everything that leads up to the kissing—because a lot happens right there. There’s so much buildup for that first kiss. With a good first romance, by the time characters reach that point, you’re humming with tension and screaming, Kiss her already!!!

Here are my personal recommendations for some dreamy YA books that you’ll devour if you liked Heart Bones by Colleen Hoover.

I hope you find something that catches your interest.

Drive to June by Khristina Chess

“You do realize that a car is a mobile make-out location, right?” Ian said. ― Khristina Chess, quote from Drive to June.

Although pitched as a story about alcohol abuse and grief, this YA is also a romantic story about a dating and intimacy. The present story line is a relationship that develops between the protagonist, 18-year-old Adrianna, and a pizza delivery boy who goes to her school and who offers to help her get her driver’s license.

With her father traveling so much and her older sister away in college, no one knows Adrianna has been guzzling her dead mother's extensive wine collection. She drinks to forget something awful that she did; she drinks to go numb. To avoid her grief. And now she can't seem to stop. Since moving to this new school, she doesn't have close friends or teachers, so there's nothing to stop her free-fall.

But then one night, Ian spots her on the roof and makes an offer she can’t refuse. He comes into her life, and everything begins to change.

Wow, what a ride! Drive to June took off from the start and accelerated all the way to the finish. I had to find out Adrianna’s secret. What makes this book so special is the sweet relationship that develops between Adrianna and Ian as he teaches her how to drive and helps her get her driver’s license. Although it starts as a story about alcohol abuse, this is a dreamy and hopeful YA novel with heart.

If you’re a fan of romance, you want to add this one to your list of books like Heart Bones. In fact, Khristina Chess has written several awesome YA books. She’s on my list of Best YA Authors to Binge on Kindle Unlimited because she has so many titles to choose from!

Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell

“I just can’t believe that life would give us to each other,” he said, “and then take it back.”
“I can,” she said. “Life’s a bastard.” ― Rainbow Rowell, quote from Eleanor and Park

It's been a long time since I've encountered a novel that I literally couldn't put down. Eleanor & Park was one of those books. I loved every minute. I sat on the porch, on the couch, on the floor by the window... and devoured this book. It was a wonderful reading experience about first love. Sweet and heartbreaking and everything I wanted. I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes a good, romantic young love story.

The story unfolds from alternating points of view, both Eleanor and Park, as they fall in love over the course of one year. The dialog is witty, snappy, and fun.

As a super-dreamy YA book about about dating and intimacy, it will give you all the feels. If you liked Heart Bones, you will love this one.

Twilight Saga by Stephanie Meyer (Box Set)

“About three things I was absolutely positive. First, Edward was a vampire. Second, there was a part of him-and I didn’t know how potent that part might be-that thirsted for my blood. And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.” ― Stephanie Meyer, quote from Twilight

Oh. My. Gosh.

Twilight was my introduction to YA as an adult reader, and I remember plowing through these novels at a breakneck pace. They’re part love stories, part vampire and werewolf fantasy world, and just full of all the great emotions. At one point I contacted my friend who’d recommended the series and asked, “When do they finally have sex?!” By this point I felt as frustrated about the situation with Edward as Bella.

“It’s young adult,” she said. “Remember?”

Right.

For readers who have never read them or even those who read them a decade ago, these books are highly addicting, binge-worthy, can’t-put-down, and worth another look. There’s a reason millions of people loved them, watched all the movies, and bought posters.

You’ll devour this series if you liked Heart Bones by Colleen Hoover. The passion between Bella and Edward sizzles on the pages of every book. Even more, there is a love triangle between Bella, Edward, and Jacob in the middle books that turns up the heat.

My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick

“His bed’s really comfortable. And he never pees in it.” ― Huntley Fitzpatrick, quote from My Life Next Door

This adorable YA love story is compelling and has an unexpected ending. Everything about the messy Garrett house draws Samantha into it, but especially the good-looking son, Jase. He’s one of several children in the house. His little brother, George, has some of the best lines. I laughed out loud. The sneaking around teen love stuff was pretty wonderful. Samantha’s best friend is a jerk, and her sister is too. No wonder she’s so drawn to the loving family next door.

Samantha is keeping this relationship with Jase a secret from her mom and everyone else in her life, but eventually that blows up in her face. In the process, she learns some lessons about who she is and who she wants to be.

This dreamy YA book will leave you smiling for days. It evokes all those light feelings of happiness, joy, and romantic love. You just can’t help sighing about that first kiss. You can’t wait for Samantha and Jase to take their relationship to the next level, and your heart breaks when things get rocky. This is such a sweet story. So cute! Fans of Heart Bones by Colleen Hoover will be up all night reading it.

Hollow Beauty by Khristina Chess

“I wondered what it would feel like if he rolled over and kissed me. Would I feel that panicked need to escape that I always felt when Brody kissed me? When I thought about kissing Ross, I felt nothing but excitement.” ― Khristina Chess, quote from Hollow Beauty

This dreamy YA romantic love triangle will appeal to fans of Heart Bones as well. Olivia has a date with tall, gorgeous Brody to the prom, and she’s super ecstatic about that--until he suggests that she use the two months before the dance to lose some weight.

But how thin is thin enough?

Body's comment sends Olivia on a spiral of dangerously rapid weight loss that borders on anorexia. As her pounds vanish, her friendship deepens with Ross, the new prep cook at the diner where she works. Despite his mysterious limp, he doesn't suffer crippling low self-esteem issues like she does; she can't even look at herself in the mirror anymore. The only time she doesn't feel ugly or fat is when she goes riding dirt bikes and cave-hunting with Ross.

In fact, she’d rather be kissing Ross than Brody.

Holy cow! Buckle up for a fast read because Hollow Beauty hooked me from the beginning. What makes this book special is the realistic portrayal of how Olivia falls into the self-esteem trap of trying to change herself for someone else. I worried about her. I loved seeing her journey and choices as the events escalated toward the story’s climax. It’s a great positive message. This is the kind of authentic novel that really shows how someone with even a little insecurity can be manipulated and hurt.

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han

“I want to say yes, but I don't want to be with a boy whose heart belongs to somebody else. Just once, I want to be somebody else's first choice.” ― Jenny Han, quote from To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before

Lara Jean is a super sweet adorable character, and even though the story seems like a common love triangle, there are enough twists to keep the pages turning. Plus, Lara Jean herself is such a star. She’s naive and on her own for the first time, and she’s making all kinds of mistakes. She’s basically a train wreck. I love her immensely. Two plot points surprised me, and I thought I had those wrapped up early on.

I didn’t expect to like this book as much as I did, but I finished it in two sittings. Now I see why everyone’s been reading it! :-)

If you’re the last person on the planet to miss this one, you must go and read this book. Fans of Heart Bones will love this one (and it’s a series).

Breathless by Jennifer Niven

“All these words and stories. My mom calls them the color of a human life: those little moments that are so uniquely ours.” ― Jennifer Niven, quote from Breathless

I might love this book even more than Niven’s All the Bright Places—and that's saying a lot!

Breathless is the story of Claude's trip to a remote island off the coast of Georgia after graduation with her mom following the sudden separation of her parents. She meets a boy and falls in love. So simple. Yet Jennifer Niven beautifully captures that lovely, breathless feeling of first love. Passionate kisses. Romantic trysts. Mosquito bites on sunburned skin.

There is so much growing up packed into this brief summer for Claude. She learns that parents have secrets and tell lies. She and her lifelong best friend grow apart even as they prepare to truly separate for fall college classes. And she has this deep relationship with Miah on the island that changes her in fundamental ways.

Breathless is the perfect beach read for your summer reading list. In fact, Jennifer Niven is also on my list of Best YA Authors to Binge on Kindle Unlimited, so you might want to check out some of these others, too.

Tweet Cute by Emma Lord

Tweet Cute is a sweet YA romance told in alternating viewpoints of two teens who are engaged in a Twitter war for their family businesses. In a case of hidden identities, Pepper and Jack also are involved in a secret budding relationship through an app that conceals their identity from one another. What could possibly go wrong?

Plenty!

I loved all of the food in the book, and the world from Pepper's point of view felt very real to me. She has never left beyond the general radius of her NY apartment, and the adventure of getting on a train for her college interview seemed big and important. I could also get a real sense of Jack's neighborhood and the deli and its patrons. Both teens had very rich character development.

As a romantic novel, I had bigger expectations when the couple finally got together. It didn't feel quite as satisfying in that aspect as it might have been. Still, a great read, and I definitely recommend it as a YA book about dating that might appeal to fans of Heart Bones.

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

“But it is the nature of stars to cross, and never was Shakespeare more wrong than when he has Cassius note, ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves.” ― John Green, quote from The Fault in Our Stars

The Fault in Our Stars is the ultimate YA book about star-crossed lovers. Augustus Waters and Hazel Grace are two teens with cancer, and they fall in love during a sweet time of remission. They talk about literature and philosophy, and they go on a wonderful journey to meet the author of Hazel’s favorite novel. This person is not at all what she expected—a huge disappointment, as a matter of fact—but then, life happens that way.

When the inevitable plot turn comes and twists the knife in your heart, it doesn’t matter that you’re expecting it. Augustus and Hazel are supposed to be together, so every bittersweet moment of their parting is a gasp. Every breath counts. Every syllable.

If you’re looking for the sweetest, most dreamy and romantic book, pick up this classic. If you read it a long time ago, it’s just as good the second time around. Trust me.

Other Books You’ll Devour If You Liked Heart Bones by Colleen Hoover

If you are looking for other books like Heart Bones by Colleen Hoover, Goodreads also offers a great book list: Readers Who Enjoyed Heart Bones. You might also be interested in my post, Other Good Reads, which has a comprehensive list of book reviews.

Do you have any personal favorites to recommend to me? I’m always looking for another great read in this category.

Khristina Chess is the award-winning author of several YA novels about troubled teens turning corners. You can find her on Amazon, Goodreads, and Twitter as an active daily contributor in the #5amwritersclub.

Which Poignant YA Books about Rape and Sexual Assault Should You Read Next?

Find your next great read for Sexual Assault Awareness Month by exploring my reviews of these poignant YA books about rape and sexual assault.

Some parents might be uncomfortable with high school readers choosing books that deal with such violent content. Yet according to the CDC, nearly 1 in 5 women have experienced rape or attempted rape in her lifetime, and 1 in 3 experienced it for the first time between 11 and 17 years of age. For young men between 11 and 17, the statistic is 1 in 4. Rape is a global problem with an estimated 35% of women worldwide experiencing some form of sexual assault or harassment in their lifetime. Child sexual abuse and molestation come serious long-term effects.

Reading stories can help young survivors process their experience, especially during the early phase of their recovery when talking to other people is too difficult. Stories can provide support and healing. Stories can lead to conversations about these traumatic subjects and also help others to listen. Stories remind all of us that we are not alone.

The following are my reviews of the most poignant YA books about rape and sexual assault I’ve found. Be warned. These stories will break your heart. All of them come with trigger warnings. These stories are disturbing, explicit, difficult to read, terrible—and important.

The Cutting Edge of Friendship by Khristina Chess 

“My first time was supposed to be different. It wasn’t supposed to happen in darkness, dirt, and violence. It wasn’t supposed to be a two-man job.” ― Khristina Chess, quote from The Cutting Edge of Friendship

Sadie and Elana are keeping dangerous secrets.

Best friends since elementary school, they know everything about each other, but on the night of the fireworks, something terrible happened to Sadie that she hasn’t told anyone. She can’t even say the word to herself. Instead, she’s started cutting to deal with the pain.

Elana has a secret of her own; she’s texting Hunter and making plans for a clandestine meeting with him. She doesn’t know what he did or why he really wants to keep their relationship secret.

To end this dangerous cat-and-mouse game, Sadie must reclaim her courage and rescue Elana before a rapist can attack again.

So powerful! The Cutting Edge of Friendship instantly drew me into the tangled conflict, and I couldn’t look away until the girls were safe.

What I love most about The Cutting Edge of Friendship is Sadie’s fierce and resilient character and the raw and authentic emotion as this painful story escalates toward its thrilling climax. This is the kind of novel that really shows how someone self harms to cope with pain in the aftermath of sexual assault. You won’t want to miss this powerful YA book about rape and the complicated nature of friendship. Fans of Girl in Pieces and Speak will enjoy this one.

All the Rage by Courtney Summers

"What a stupid thing it is, to care about a girl." ― Courtney Summers, quote from All the Rage

This book tells the story of a girl who was raped at a party by a boy she thought was beautiful. And then, she loses her best friend for telling about it. And everyone in the school begins bullying her about it. And she ends up at another party in the same situation, only this time her ex-best friend turns up missing.

The plot alternates between bewildering and breathtaking. Who was the rapist? What happened to Penny? Will there be justice? Is the girl going to be okay?

I felt sorry for Romy because of what happened to her and what continued to happen as she suffered bullying by the other girls. At times, she is a difficult protagonist to embrace because she's a person in deep pain. She's not always nice. She doesn't make good decisions. She hurts kind people who care about her.

Although this is a fast read, the ending wasn't what I expected or hoped. I felt things remained unresolved. Still, if you're looking for an emotional roller coaster about rape, victim blaming, and bullying, All the Rage is definitely worth checking out.

The Way I Used to Be by Amber Smith 

“No, can’t cry. Because there’s nothing to cry about. Because it was just a dream. A bad dream. A nightmare. Not real. Not real. Not real. That’s what I keep thinking: NotRealNotRealNotReal. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Like a mantra. Like a prayer.” ― Amber Smith, quote from The Way I Used to Be

Fourteen-year-old Eden was raped by her brother’s best friend. In her own room. In her own bed.

Instead of telling anyone, she internalizes the trauma and begins a multi-year downward spiral of acting out, drinking, taking drugs, losing friends, and sleeping around. She’s no longer the “good girl” she used to be.

This book shows how a young girl can stay silent about rape for years, why it can be so hard to tell someone, and what it’s like to try to survive in silence.

The Way I Used to Be is a poignant YA book about rape and sexual assault that can be hard to read because Eden’s pain makes her an unlikeable character at times, but this story is worthwhile.

Girl Made of Stars by Ashley Herring Blake

“This. This is why I never said anything. Because no one ever believes the girl.” ― Ashley Herring Blake, quote from Girl Made of Stars

Mara and her twin brother Owen are as close as any twins can be. So when Owen says he is innocent and never raped his girlfriend, Mara is faced with a difficult decision. She’s friends with the victim. Who is telling the truth? Her brother, who she knows as well as she knows herself, or the girl?

In addition to Mara’s confusion about her twin brother’s role as an accused rapist, she’s also dealing with her own sexual identity and relationship with her best friend, a girl named Charlie. Her parents pressure her to support her brother, but why would the victim lie? And in wrestling with these conflicts, Mara can no longer ignore a secret trauma from her own past and what happened to her.

This powerful YA book about rape, consent, teen relationships, and sexual identity deals with so many issues that the conflict is a bit overwhelming at times. Yet the author handles the emotional issues in a beautiful, heartbreaking, and important way.

Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott

Three life lessons:

1.     No one will see you.

2.     No one will say anything.

3.     No one will save you. ― Elizabeth Scott, quote from Living Dead Girl

Fifteen-year-old Alice is the kidnapping victim of a pedophile named Ray who took her at age ten. This haunting, horrifying, graphic, disturbing, and tragic book is about so much more than child rape, although that certainly happens. This novel shows how a person—a child—can lose their self-worth and believe their captor’s lies.

How someone can lose their own humanity.

This thin novel was a fast read, but Alice and her story have stayed with me long after I finished. It’s her voice. In her unflinching viewpoint, Alice shows us what happens to children who are taken and never found. She challenges us to look more closely at the people around us. To notice.

Pay attention. Speak.

The monsters prey on the mute.

If you are looking for a poignant YA book about rape and sexual assault that you will never forget, this one is a must-read.

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

“When people don't express themselves, they die one piece at a time.” ― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from Speak

Just before beginning high school, Melinda Sordino is raped at a party, and as a result of this experience, she can’t speak. Everyone hates her at school. Her parents aren’t very supportive. She feels alone, depressed, powerless, and unsafe everywhere except in art class.

When her friend starts a relationship with her rapist, Melinda speaks.

This is an important YA book about rape that shows how victims feel silenced by their assailant and the culture around them and how speaking out can liberate.

Some Boys by Patty Blount

“Brave. The word hangs in the air for a moment and then falls away, almost like it even knows it has no business being used to describe me.” ― Patty Blount, quote from Some Boys

In this book, Grace was raped by the “golden boy” student and star athlete at their school named Zac, and she does speak. But no one believes her. Instead she is bullied and ostracized for daring to accuse the prince of such a heinous crime.

Zac’s best friend is Ian. Although he has a major crush on Grace, he no longer feels he can follow-through on that because the whole school is slut-shaming her.

Grace sets on a plan to prove to everyone that Zac isn’t the perfect son everyone believes him to be, and she’s the kind of fighter to make that happen. Instead of a depressed and withdrawn rape survivor, this character is a middle-finger-in-your-face girl who goes after her rapist despite nearly everyone being against her.

This YA book about rape takes a look at how girls are labeled by how they dress or act.

The Female of the Species by Mindy McGinnis

"I am vengeance."― Mindy McGinnis, quote from The Female of the Species

I loved this book. Alex Craft is a unique female YA protagonist, and I had a hard time pinning her down. Sometimes I wanted to label her as a psychopath / sociopath based on her actions and reactions to things, but I don't think that's right.

She is a criminal. It's easy to forget that about her because she makes friends, takes care of kittens, shows compassion to other kids, and falls in love. But she also kills people. So there's that.

This is my third Mindy McGinnis novel, and I'm hooked on her. She writes compelling stories and tough, unflinching characters, and she’s one of the top authors in my list of the Best YA Authors to Binge on Kindle Unlimited. Alex Craft in The Female of the Species is definitely a five-star read! It is an unflinching, painful, searing, riveting, brutal YA book about rape and sexual assault that will shock you to the core.

Scars by Cheryl Rainfield

“Other times, I look at my scars and see something else: a girl who was trying to cope with something horrible that she should never have had to live through at all. My scars show pain and suffering, but they also show my will to survive. They're part of my history that'll always be there.” ― Cheryl Rainfield, quote from Scars

Wow! What a powerful, thrilling, emotional, heartbreaking book. Scars packs a real punch, touching on multiple tough topics, including cutting, sexual abuse, and relationships. Kendra was raped at a very young age by a man whose face she cannot remember. The story opens with her in therapy with a counselor who is helping her to cope with the painful memories that have started to surface, but the plot accelerates quickly as Kendra feels her abuser is stalking her. She copes with her pain through self-harming and also in her art, which is both beautiful and darkly disturbing. Descriptions of her art in this book are very vivid.

The revelation of her abuser is both a shock and a non-shock, and I was rooting for her to confront him and find a path to justice and healing. Scars is a great read if you’re looking for a YA book about rape and sexual assault.

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

“Murderers are not monsters, they're men. And that's the most frightening thing about them.” ― Alice Sebold, quote from The Lovely Bones

Susie Salmon is dead.

She was raped and murdered in a most gruesome fashion by a most gruesome man, and now she exists in an afterlife, observing her family and her killer.

The story is a bit disorienting, but I think that’s kind of the point. Most of the novel is about Susie’s struggle to come to terms with the fact that she’s dead and move on. The “why?” questions haunt her. Her family and former life haunts her. The desire for justice and vengeance haunts her.

It’s the disquiet that comes when a young person dies tragically, suddenly, whether or not by foul means. There is a profound unfairness. The soul cries out.

If you are looking for a poignant YA book about rape and sexual assault that you will never forget, this one is another must-read.

Other YA Books about Rape and Sexual Abuse

If you are looking other YA books about rape and sexual abuse, check out the Young Adult Books about Rape & Sexual Abuse (331 books), YA Books about Rape/Sexual Assault, and Rape Book Lists on Goodreads. You might also be interested in my post, Other Good Reads, which has a comprehensive list of reviews of YA books by type of tough topic, including self-harming, eating disorders, substance abuse, mental illness, and others.

Do you have any personal favorites to recommend to me? I’m always looking for another great read in this category.

Khristina Chess is the award-winning author of several YA novels about troubled teens turning corners. You can find her on Amazon, Goodreads, and Twitter as an active daily contributor in the #5amwritersclub.

YA Books about Bullying

Find your next great read for National Bullying Prevention Awareness Month by exploring my reviews of these YA books about bullying.

Bullying is a problem that spans generations. Everyone understands what it’s like to be bullied—or perhaps to be the bully and later regret those actions. What makes bullying different today is that it can lead teens to depression, violence, and even suicide.

Reading YA books about bullying can shed light on the complex worlds facing teens so we can recognize the signs and offer the right kind of help. Cyberbullying and technology in general takes the problem to a whole new level.

Here are my top personal recommendations for the best YA books about bullying that are guaranteed page-turners. The list includes complex stories with both bullies and the bullied that are sure to generate discussion. 

Unquiet Riot by Khristina Chess

“When you’re the smallest and ugliest kid in third grade, you can’t stare blankly out the window like an alien pod person awaiting the return of the mother ship; that was a fast jaunt to a bloody playground brawl.” ― Khristina Chess, quote from Unquiet Riot

Riley’s life is filled with mind-numbing boredom until Henry arrives at his school.

Henry’s amazing! Henry believes the world is populated by robots posing as humans. He believes the shadows in his room are monsters escaping from the electrical wires, and he sleeps with knives under his mattresses. For Riley, visiting Henry’s world is like being a tourist in a foreign land.

Henry’s strangeness makes him a target for the same slander, harassment, and assault that Riley has been suffering for most of his school life.

But when the bullies take it too far, Henry decides to strike back.

Exhilarating and mind-bending! What I love most about Unquiet Riot is the slow unfolding of the friendship between the boys and the way Henry’s mental illness becomes revealed a little at a time. I worried for him. Riley is a great unreliable narrator who is witty and scary. This is the kind of authentic novel that really shows how factors like bullying, mental illness, and lack of teacher and parental involvement can allow an environment for a mass school violence event to occur.

You won’t want to miss this powerful YA book about bullying that explores the consequences of remaining silent. Fans of My Sister Rosa will love this psychological thriller.

By The Time You Read This I’ll Be Dead by Julie Anne Peters

I want to tell them, "Chip, Kim, there is no way to suicide-proof a person.” ― Julie Anne Peters, quote from By the Time You Read This I’ll Be Dead

Daelyn is going to kill herself in 23 days.

Daelyn is a bullied girl who failed her first suicide attempt but intends to get it right the next time. A website named Through the Light provides support to wanna-be suicide “completers” like Daelyn, and she spends a lot of free time there. Counting down the days.

Then she meets a boy. She tries to ignore him, but he’s pushy. Persistent. Charming, even.

But is he charming enough to keep her from going through the light when the countdown ends?

This short, brutal novel is a fast read. It’s not easy, happy, or hopeful, but it’s a raw and real look at suicide. If you are looking for an unflinching YA book about bullying its consequences on teens, this one is a must-read!

The Truth about Alice by Jennifer Mathieu

“There is one thing I've learned about people: they don't get that mean and nasty overnight. It's not human nature. But if you give people enough time, eventually they'll do the most heartbreaking stuff in the world.” ― Jennifer Mathieu, quote from The Truth About Alice

Told through multiple points of view, this YA novel tells the story Alice, a girl who is being bullied and shamed by her classmates because of sex. Each of the four narrators have a different perspective of Alice and what happened the night of the party, but because of their agendas, they are unreliable narrators. The worst ones are the girls who create the cloud of hate and shame around Alice.

The narrators are cruel and generally unlikeable people who spend their time justifying their actions. At the same time, because the book is short, there isn’t enough depth for them to do this adequately. I wish I’d had a little more.

In the end, only Alice can tell us what really happened—in her own voice.

You won’t want to miss this challenging YA book about bullying and the peer pressure, lying, and groupthink to cover up the truth.

Tease by Amanda Maciel

“Emma was a boyfriend-stealing bitch right up until the day in March when she killed herself. I didn’t do anything wrong, but she totally ruined my life.” ― Amanda Maciel, quote from Tease

In this YA book about bullying, readers get a chance to take the bully’s journey and explore the escalation of events through a different set of eyes. How did things go so far? Why? This book does something important in showing that children do evil things, but that doesn’t make them evil. They take actions without thinking of consequences, and in their world they have tools to do tremendous harm—even push others to kill themselves.

The protagonist Sara demonstrates the most beautiful change through the story, and the last few scenes brought tears to my eyes because her speech was very powerful and honest. The fact that she was often quite unlikeable was real, even if difficult to read. Her friend Brielle was horrible and even a bit over-the-top, but I still thought that the story itself was very resonant and thought-provoking.

All the Rage by Courtney Summers

"What a stupid thing it is, to care about a girl." ― Courtney Summers, quote from All the Rage

This book tells the story of a girl who was raped at a party by a boy she thought was beautiful. And then, she loses her best friend for telling about it. And everyone in the school begins bullying her about it. And she ends up at another party in the same situation, only this time her ex-best friend turns up missing.

The plot alternates between bewildering and breathtaking. Who was the rapist? What happened to Penny? Will there be justice? Is the girl going to be okay?

I felt sorry for Romy because of what happened to her and what continued to happen as she suffered bullying by the other girls. At times, she is a difficult protagonist to embrace because she's a person in deep pain. She's not always nice. She doesn't make good decisions. She hurts kind people who care about her.

Although this is a fast read, the ending wasn't what I expected or hoped. I felt things remained unresolved. Still, if you're looking for an emotional roller coaster about rape, victim blaming, and bullying, All the Rage is definitely worth checking out.

Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

“But before you start pointing fingers, let me ask you: is what I did really so bad? So bad I deserved to die? So bad I deserved to die like that? Is what I did really so much worse than what anybody else does? Is it really so much worse than what you do?”  ― Lauren Oliver, quote from Before I Fall

Samantha Kingston is dead.

In this YA-version of Groundhog Day, a “mean girl” gets a chance to relive her last day and the party she attended with her friends before the fatal car crash. She has an opportunity to make the same choices over and over, until she makes different ones.

This beautiful novel is an atypical mystery about redemption as the reader follows Samantha’s journey to figure out how she died. Her character arc really blew me away, and although I disliked her in the beginning, I was cheering for her by the end, and I love the way Lauren Oliver wrote the ending.

Don’t miss this YA book about bullying that shows the consequences of the bully’s actions.

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

“You don’t know what goes on in anyone’s life but your own. And when you mess with one part of a person’s life, you’re not messing with just that part. Unfortunately you can’t be that precise and selective. When you mess with one part of a person’s life, you’re messing with their entire life. Everything… affects everything.” ― Jay Asher, quote from Thirteen Reasons Why

Hannah Baker committed suicide, and she left behind 13 tapes explaining why she did it.

When Clay receives these tapes, he goes on a journey to understand why she did it. It’s a terrible story involving crimes, and with every tape, there is suspense in wondering how Clay contributed to this girl’s death.

Clay is a nice guy. He has a thing for Hannah. It doesn’t seem he could have anything to do with it, but this story shows how you often don’t know what another person is going through.

Jay Asher’s popular novel, Thirteen Reasons Why, is one of the best YA books about suicide, and it’s one of the most popular YA books about bullying. It became a super-popular series on Netflix; there’s a reason it has become a #1 New York Times and International Bestseller. If you somehow missed it, you should definitely check it out.

Other YA Books about Bullying

Goodreads also has lists on YA Bullying Books and Cyber Bullying Books. You might also be interested in my post, Other Good Reads, which has a comprehensive list of reviews of YA books by type of tough topic impacting teens.

Do you have any personal YA books about bullying to recommend for my list? I’m always looking for another great read in this category.

Khristina Chess is the award-winning author of several YA novels about troubled teens turning corners. You can find her on Amazon, Goodreads, and Twitter as an active daily contributor in the #5amwritersclub.

Classic Books about School Shootings That Give Unique Perspectives

Find your next great read for National Reading Month by exploring my reviews of these YA books about school shootings and school violence.

When a fifteen-year-old boy takes a gun to school, kills multiple classmates, and wounds dozens of others, it’s hard to believe that he is a child. Someone’s child. Maybe even someone’s boyfriend. It’s hard to see anything beyond the pain of children who are dead or bleeding.

Over the last few decades, an entire body of literature has grown around the topic of school shootings, including YA, adult fiction, non-fiction, movies, and television. These stories helps us wrestle with something we cannot grasp. Why? How could this happen? Who is responsible for this? Novels in particular allow us to see the world from inside a character’s perspective, and through that connection, we may gain some small measure of understanding.

Perhaps that’s why so many novels about school shootings offer multiple points of view to readers: the girlfriend of the shooter, the mother of the perpetrator, the best friend of someone who was killed, even the shooter. There are so many perspectives in these situations.

The following novels about school violence give unique perspectives on these horrific tragedies. The characters are not one-dimensional, flat caricatures but offer rich portrayals of the human complexity behind each story.

Unquiet Riot by Khristina Chess

Best Friend of the Killer

“Best friends don’t label each other as crazy or rat each other out to adults.” ― Khristina Chess, quote from Unquiet Riot

Riley is not a psychopath.

It’s just that he was born unable to feel emotions. Is that person embarrassed or insecure? Suspicious or curious? It’s confusing when someone says, “Please don’t hate me,” but their face says, “You should definitely hate me for occupying the same planet right now because I wrecked your car.”

Riley’s life is filled with mind-numbing boredom until Henry arrives at his school. Henry’s amazing! Henry believes the world is populated by robots posing as humans. He believes the shadows in his room are monsters escaping from the electrical wires, and he sleeps with knives under his mattresses. For Riley, visiting Henry’s world is like being a tourist in a foreign land.

When police question Riley about Henry’s disappearance, Riley lies about their dangerous game and scrambles to save himself from being named accessory to mass murder. If Henry talks, Riley loses.

When someone feels nothing, do things like loyalty, friendship, and trust really matter?

Exhilarating and mind-bending! What I love most about Unquiet Riot is the slow unfolding of the friendship between the boys and the way Henry’s mental illness becomes revealed a little at a time. I worried for him. Riley is a great unreliable narrator who is witty and scary. This is the kind of authentic novel that really shows how factors like bullying, mental illness, and lack of teacher and parental involvement can allow an environment for a mass school violence event to occur.

You won’t want to miss this YA psychological thriller that shows unique perspectives of friends of the killer. Fans of My Sister Rosa will love this one.

We Need to Talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver

Mother of the Shooter

“Had I catalogued the downsides of parenthood, ‘son might turn out to be a killer’ would never have turned up on the list.” ― Lionel Shriver, quote from We Need to Talk about Kevin

Told through a series of letters, this novel tells the story from a mother’s point of view. Eva isn’t a particularly likeable mother, and she portrays her son, Kevin, as a bad seed from birth. As events unfold, however, the reader is left wondering about the difference between nature and nurture. Was Kevin born a psychopath who would bring violence to his classmates? Or was he made into a sociopath because of the way he was raised and the failure of his mother to love him?

This novel includes a dramatic crescendo to the actual events at the school, and although I’ve read this book twice now, I could read it again and still find is as chilling as the first time. Shriver deftly manages to create nuanced characters that I simultaneously felt empathy for and utter disgust and loathing.

Though not a YA novel because of the viewpoint, don’t miss this devastatingly powerful book that tackles important issues of school violence, parenting, and the problem of silence.

Hate List by Jennifer Brown

Girlfriend of the Shooter

“I was both the monster and the sad girl. I couldn't separate the two.” ― Jennifer Brown, quote from Hate List

This novel is told from the viewpoint of the school shooter’s girlfriend Valerie. She is shot trying to stop him from killing some of their classmates, but unfortunately, she is also implicated in his crime because they created a “hate list” of people and things that they hated.

The title of this book is ironic because Hate List is about forgiveness and healing. As the story unfolds, Valerie exchanges enemies for friends, and even in her own family, there is a softening around the hard edges. Both Nick and Valerie's father betray her; she loves them, but they do terrible things. In the end, she must reconcile herself with the ambiguity of human relationships. People are usually not who we think they are.

One thing I really liked about this novel is that the author allows us to see Valerie grieve her boyfriend’s death. The Nick she loved wasn’t the same person who killed their classmates, and the Nick she loved is gone.

Check out this thought-provoking and heartbreaking novel that wrestles with the aftermath of a school shooting and the impact on the people left behind.

Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Piccoult

Multiple Viewpoints

“If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn't be filled?” ― Jodi Picoult, quote from Nineteen Minutes

Josie Cormier is a survivor of the school shooting and a former friend of the shooter. She knows how much he was bullied. In fact, her boyfriend Matt was one of the bullies. And now Matt’s dead.

Alex Cormier is the judge of the case, until she has to recuse herself because her daughter Josie is called as a witness for the defense.

Peter is the boy who went into the school with a gun and a list. Josie was on the list too, but her name was circled and noted, “Don’t Kill.”

Lucy is Peter’s mother. She’s already lost one son, and now she’s about to lose another.

Patrick is the first responding police officer at the school. He found Josie. At first he thought she was dead, but she wasn’t. And now he’s dating her mother.

As with all Jodi Piccoult novels, none of the circumstances are black and white or one-dimensional. There are many individuals involved, and it’s messy. It’s hard to find someone to blame because the tragedy pulls everyone in.

If you are looking for a classic book about school shootings with unique perspectives, you will love Nineteen Minutes.

That’s Not What Happened by Jodi Keplinger

Best Friend of Deceased Victim

“It’s a good story. And you know what people like way more than the truth? A good story.“ ― Jodi Keplinger, quote from That’s Not What Happened

This novel has an interesting approach to viewpoint by showing the reader how the victims lose their voices and their ability to tell their side of the story. The concept is that Lee’s best friend died during a school shooting, and because she was wearing a cross and proclaimed her faith to her assailant, she became a martyr. Except, that’s not the truth.

As a trauma survivor, Lee is not an especially likeable protagonist. Her motives for telling the truth and pushing the others to do so are muddy at times, and I struggled to have emotional investment in her character. At the same time, the concept of this story makes That’s Not What Happened an important title in the collection of novels about high school mass shootings.

There are so many viewpoints in these tragedies. Even the viewpoints of the victims.

This Is Where It Ends by Marieke Nijkamp

Sister of Shooter, Other Students

I wanted to like this book more. The premise and structure holds such promise, and the pacing was good. However, I just couldn't care enough about the characters. It felt like the author was trying to insert too many issues into one story without developing any of them enough for the reader to be fully invested.

You may feel differently. Still, this classic YA book about school shootings has enough popularity and buzz that I offer it in my list for consideration so you can make up your own mind.

Other YA Books about School Shootings

What about you? There are many other books about school shootings. You will find some great lists on Goodreads (links): School Shooting Fiction (82 books) and School Shooting Books (149). You might also be interested in my post, Other Good Reads, which has a comprehensive list of reviews of YA books by type of tough topic, including eating disorders, substance abuse, mental illness, and others.

Do you have any other recommendations to add to mine?

Khristina Chess is the award-winning author of several YA novels about troubled teens turning corners. You can find her on Amazon, Goodreads, and Twitter as an active daily contributor in the #5amwritersclub.

Which Unforgettable YA Books about Separation and Divorce Should You Read Next?

Find your next great read for National Reading Month in these unforgettable YA books about divorce and separation.

Teens have enough trouble in their lives, and when parents split, the change can be too much. On the outside, young adults may look like they’re holding it all together: They’ve “got this.”

But on the inside, they really don’t.

How could they? They’ve only been on the planet for 15, 16, or 18 years. Not even two decades. The brain doesn’t even reach full development until around age 25, and now the two people who were supposed to be their tour guides on Earth have abandoned them.

Here are my reviews of a few unforgettable YA books about separation and divorce that I think are just great. I think you’ll love them too. These teens are resilient despite huge changes happening in their lives. I rooted for them all the way.

Straight A’s by Khristina Chess

“Dad didn’t ask about my grades or anything else about my life—which was good, in a way—and after awhile, I told him I had to go home and study. ... I worried about leaving him alone in that big empty house with his shiny guns and his terrible anger and sadness. But I didn’t know what else to do.“ ― Khristina Chess, quote from Straight A’s

Separation and divorce plays a central role in this YA novel about a teen who struggles to find a path out of a downward spiral of despair.

Kim was supposed to be valedictorian of her class. Then her parents split, and everything went wrong. She’s bouncing between them and trying to carry the weight of their emotional meltdowns, and it’s too much. Too much!

Now she’s planning to kill herself.

With time running out in the semester and academic pressures mounting, depression threatens to overwhelm her. Being valedictorian means everything: scholarships, acceptance to top schools, everything! A B in calculus is unacceptable.

Wonderful, a real page-turner! Straight A’s grabbed and held my interest all the way. What I love most about this book is Kim’s resilient character and her emotions as events escalate toward the story’s climax. It’s a great positive message for youths. This is the kind of authentic novel that really shows how someone can fall into a downward spiral of despair and see no way out of their own circumstances.

Don’t miss this ultimately sweet, hopeful, and unforgettable YA novel about separation and divorce that depicts one teenager’s struggle with anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts. Fans of All the Bright Places will enjoy this one.

Mosquitoland by David Arnold

“I call it Mim’s Theorem of Monkey See Monkey Don’t, and what it boils down to is this: it is my belief that there are some people whose sole purpose of existence is to show the rest of us how not to act.” ― David Arnold, quote from Mosquitoland

I loved this book! I’ve included it in my list of The Best YA Book Recommendations for All Ages (And Why), and one of the reasons is that the lyrical and often lough out loud funny voice of the narrator.

Mosquitoland is the story is about a girl named Mim Malone, whose parents have divorced. She’s living with her dad, who has custody of Mim and has remarried, but Mim runs away and rides a bus to Ohio to return to her mom.

This is a long journey where Mim (a young girl on her own) encounters a cast of diverse characters, dangers, and adventures. If you are looking for an unforgettable YA book about separation and divorce and how that impacts young people, let Mim tell you in her own voice. She has a lot to say.

If you are looking for an unforgettable YA book about separation and divorce and how that impacts young people, this fun coming of age novel belongs in your TBR pile.

One Big Mess by Melody Loomis

What happens when tragedy strikes, parents divorce, and children become caretakers of one of the adults? That’s what you’ll find in One Big Mess.

Gracie is a teen living with her mom who is grieving the loss of a child and copes through hoarding. The mess is overwhelming. Gracie is such an optimistic and hopeful girl who devises a plan to help her mom by trying to get her onto a reality TV show for hoarders. She's convinced that the show has the resources to provide therapy and cleanup that her mom won't take from Gracie and her sister.

I loved Gracie's character and her relationships with her friends, sister, and her parents. I was rooting for her and her mom to find some way to clean things up.

If you’re looking for a thoughtful and unforgettable YA book about separation and divorce, as well as mental illness, you should definitely pick up this one.

Breathless by Jennifer Niven

“All these words and stories. My mom calls them the color of a human life: those little moments that are so uniquely ours.” ― Jennifer Niven, quote from Breathless

I might love this book even more than Niven’s All the Bright Places—and that's saying a lot!

Breathless is the story of Claude's trip to a remote island off the coast of Georgia after graduation with her mom following the sudden separation of her parents. She meets a boy and falls in love. So simple. Yet Jennifer Niven beautifully captures that lovely, breathless feeling of first love. Passionate kisses. Romantic trysts. Mosquito bites on sunburned skin.

There is so much growing up packed into this brief summer for Claude. She learns that parents have secrets and tell lies. She and her lifelong best friend grow apart even as they prepare to truly separate for fall college classes. And she has this deep relationship with Miah on the island that changes her in fundamental ways.

Jennifer Niven is on my list of Best YA Authors to Binge on Kindle Unlimited, so if Breathless is one of the unforgettable YA books about separation and divorce that belongs on your reading list, you might check out her others too.

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

“One of the best things about Charlie is he doesn’t hover.” ― Stephanie Meyer, quote from Twilight

You may be wondering why it’s included on my list of unforgettable YA books about separation and divorce. However, the Twilight saga opens with Bella leaving her mom and moving to Forks to live with her dad Charlie. She doesn’t want to go there, but her mom has a new husband, a baseball player, and Bella feels she’s in the way. So, she goes to live with Charlie, which is a strained relationship, and this tension continues to play between them throughout the books. Ultimately, Bella and her dad develop a very close father-daughter relationship over the duration of this series.

Sure, Twilight is a story about vampires, werewolves, and a romantic love triangle, but there’s a whole lot of family stuff going on here too. If you’ve never read it—or if you haven’t read it in more than a decade—maybe this is the year to visit this amazing series again. 

Other Unforgettable YA Books about Separation and Divorce

If you are looking for other unforgettable YA books about separation and divorce, you might also be interested in my post, Other Good Reads, which has a comprehensive list of reviews of YA books.

Do you have any personal favorites to recommend to me? I’m always looking for another great read in this category.

Khristina Chess is the award-winning author of several YA novels about troubled teens turning corners. You can find her on Amazon, Goodreads, and Twitter as an active daily contributor in the #5amwritersclub.

Books You'll Devour If You Liked You'd Be Home Now by Kathleen Glasgow

You’d Be Home Now by Kathleen Glasgow is a YA story about substance abuse, siblings, unrequited love, bullying, finding one’s voice, friendship, hope, and so much more. I couldn’t put it down.

Emory’s older brother Joey is struggling to recover from opioid addiction. Her overbearing mother assigns her the task of monitoring his progress, and when he stumbles, Emory tries to cover for him. Meanwhile, Emory is hooking up with the baseball star next door, and things have gone too far. She finds herself in a storm where everything—everything—is wrong!

I loved this book. I love all Kathleen Glasgow’s book. If you’re looking for similar books like You’d Be Home By Now, you will find something on this list that catches your interest. Happy reading!

The Delinquent Hero by Khristina Chess

“I stare at my sister in this bed. She is mine. She is here, and I cannot imagine that she is not. That she will never be here again. How can it be true? I see her before me. Her chest is rising, falling, rising, falling. Her hand is warm in mine.“ ― Khristina Chess, quote from The Delinquent Hero

Kat is dying.

The big question is: why?

Everyone is saying Kat fell and hit her head, causing a catastrophic brain bleed. She’s severely malnourished and on life support, and in a few days, the doctors will remove the ventilator.

But when 18-year-old Molly visits her sister’s rental house, it looks more like a crime scene that someone cleaned up. Stories about what happened are inconsistent.

Later at the hospital, when Molly whispers into her sister’s ear about the odd things she discovered, alarms start wailing on Kat’s cardiac monitor. It’s like, even though she’s supposedly brain dead, some part of Kat still hears her. Like maybe something evil happened in that house.

Like maybe someone tried to murder her.

Wow! The Delinquent Hero grabbed me from the first page and never stopped! What I love most about The Delinquent Hero is the puzzle that Molly is trying to solve—not just about the how this terrible thing happened, but also about her sister herself. Although pitched as an action-packed murder mystery, this YA is also a raw and unforgettable story about a complicated sisterhood, eating disorders, addiction, and loss. It’s hard to put down. The present story line is an investigation of the odd circumstances and events that landed Kat in the hospital on a ventilator, but as the hours and days unfold, the close relationship between these sisters becomes apparent.

You won’t want to miss this heartbreaking YA novel. Fans of You’d Be Home Now will enjoy this one.

Drive to June by Khristina Chess

“You do realize that a car is a mobile make-out location, right?” ― Khristina Chess, quote from Drive to June.

Eighteen-year-old Adriana refuses to text anymore.

She doesn’t drive.

And she’s secretly guzzling her dead mother’s wine collection.

With her father traveling so much and her older sister away in college, no one knows about Adriana’s drinking. She drinks to forget something awful that she did; she drinks to go numb. To avoid her grief. And now she can't seem to stop. Since moving to this new school, she doesn't have close friends or teachers, so there's nothing to stop her free-fall.

But then one night, Ian spots her on the roof and makes an offer she can’t refuse. He comes into her life, and everything begins to change.

Amazing, what a ride! Drive to June took off from the start and accelerated all the way to the finish. I had to find out Adriana’s secret. What makes this book so special is the sweet relationship that develops between Adriana and Ian as he teaches her how to drive and helps her get her driver’s license. Although it starts as a story about alcohol abuse, this is a dreamy and hopeful YA novel with heart.

If you liked You’d Be Home Now, you won’t want to miss this this surprisingly romantic YA book about sisterhood, addiction, grief and loss. In fact, Khristina Chess is also on my list of Best YA Authors to Binge on Kindle Unlimited, so be sure to check out her other books.

Heroine by Mindy McGinnis

“When I wake up, all my friends are dead. I don’t know when they stopped breathing, or how long I slept while they dropped off one by one.” ― Mindy McGinnis, quote from Heroine

Those are the opening words of Heroine, the compelling novel about the slow slide of Mickey from Catalan from her position as a star student athlete to heroin addict. It begins with a terrible car accident and pain. Determine to make it back on the field, she uses the prescription painkillers to accelerate her recovery.

But then she’s out of pills and needs more.

What’s so compelling about Heroine is Mickey’s slow slide into addiction and her denial about her situation. She justifies every step of the way. The means justifies the ends, every time.

I did not watch my friends die.
I did not leave their bodies cooling in a basement.
I am not an addict.

Heroine is one of the best YA books featuring characters dealing with substance abuse that I’ve ever read. It’s real and raw, and I couldn’t look away. I really rooted for her to find a way to health. If you enjoyed You’d Be Home Now, you won’t want to miss this one!

The Sky Is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson

“What kind of girl wants to kiss every boy at a funeral, wants to maul a guy in a tree after making out with her sister’s boyfriend the previous night? Speaking of which, what kind of girl makes out with her sister’s boyfriend, period?” ― Jandy Nelson, quote from The Sky Is Everywhere

I love, love, loved this book! The writing is so lyrical, and the story is incredibly sad. It begins with protagonist Lennie, who is grieving the sudden death of her sister. Although Bailey is dead, the relationship between these siblings is very much alive on the pages of this novel. Lennie writes beautiful poems, and she spends time in their room and shares so many memories that I feel I know Bailey.

A charismatic new boy shows up at school, and Lennie ends up entering into 2 romances at the same time. This is the love triangle. One romance is with the new boy at school, and the other is with her dead sister’s grieving boyfriend. Sooner or later, she has to decide which one of these guys is the one she’s going to stick with. Oh, boy.

All of the characters are vivid, and the story is captivating. The creative visual aspect of the novel is also a nice touch; Lennie writes her poems on scraps and scatters them everywhere, and these appear at the beginning of chapters.

This book is a must-read for anyone looking for books similar to Kathleen Glasgow’’s You’d Be Home Now.

Looking for Alaska by John Green

“There comes a time when we realize that our parents cannot save themselves or save us, that everyone who wades through time eventually gets dragged out to sea by the undertow-that, in short, we are all going.” ― John Green, quote from Looking for Alaska

A quiet boy at boarding school meets a charismatic girl, then loses her.

Miles Halter goes away to boarding school, where he makes new friends, takes up drinking and smoking, breaks some rules, and meets a hot girl named Alaska Young. She’s the ringleader of the merry group’s adventures. She’s the one who can get alcohol and cigarettes.

She’s a bit wild.

Then one night while they’re all partying, she receives a phone call and takes off in her car. She never returns.

I don’t want to give too much away. For a cautionary tale about alcohol and drug abuse, this award-winning story is a must-read. If you liked You’d Be Home Now, read this one.

Car Heroin Train by Virginia Austin

This slim novel is a fast and unexpected read. The main story is about Evan, who leaves graduation in Chicago and travels to Buffalo to find a girl who survived the car crash that killed his father. He's looking for some closure. Instead, he meets a beautiful young woman who is a heroine addict and also a child. The child is an unexpected subplot, equally important, and a bit odd.

Although the viewpoint character is a recent college graduate (and therefore technically knocks this one outside the YA genre), you should add this one to your list of books like You’d Be Home Now by Kathleen Glasgow. It’s great.

The First True Thing by Claire Needell

“People sometimes go with their instincts. They have sympathy. They care about people. I think Martin learned something when he messed up. Like now he really knows he wants to be here. Like he actually knows why he’s here and what this Group is really for.” ― Claire Needell, quote from The First True Thing

The First True Thing is both a mystery and a book about a teen working through the hard parts of recovery.

The mystery is that Marcelle’s friend Hannah is missing, and Marcelle was the last person to hear from her. What happened? What should she do? And if she tells the truth, the whole truth, what does that mean for her friends?

Working through this dilemma is part of her recovery because lying, hiding, hanging out with people who aren't good for her are all behaviors associated with her drinking.

Books about people in recovery can be hard to read. Addiction and drug abuse makes people choose the wrong thing, and Marcelle does that before she chooses the right thing. Therapy and group can seem dull or even frustrating. However, the ending of her story was satisfying to me because she grew and made the positive steps she needed to make. I felt she was on a good track by the end.

If you’re looking for books about alcohol and drug abuse like You’d Be Home Now, The First True Thing is definitely worth a look.

Other Books You’ll Devour If You Liked You’d Be Home Now by Kathleen Glasgow

If you are looking for other books like You’d Be Home Now by Kathleen Glasgow, Goodreads offers a list of Similar Books for Readers Who Enjoyed You’d Be Home Now. You might also be interested in my post, Other Good Reads.

Do you have any recommendations? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

Khristina Chess is the award-winning author of several YA novels about troubled teens turning corners. You can find her on Amazon, Goodreads, and Twitter as an active daily contributor in the #5amwritersclub.

Eclectic Collection of YA Books about Self Esteem and Self Reliance

Find your next great read by exploring my reviews of this eclectic collection of YA books about self esteem and self reliance.

Reading books about confident protagonists or characters who overcome challenges to achieve great things can be very motivational. Who doesn’t love a hero? Don’t we all cheer for survivors and winners? Those words apply to ordinary people, not just Marvels.

Here are my personal recommendations for YA books about self esteem and self reliance. What the stories have in common is one or more characters who struggle and grow. This is what it means to be human.

Against the Pack by Khristina Chess

“And once you decided you were going in the wrong direction, how did you find your way back? What happened when you couldn’t go back?” ― Khristina Chess, quote from Against the Pack

OH MY GOSH!!! Incredible! What I love most about Against the Pack is the way this story hooks you from the beginning and doesn’t let go. It’s impossible to put this one down. Melender is a gritty character who fights to live, and I was breathless as she journeyed toward the novel’s thrilling ending. This is the kind of wilderness survival adventure that explores the core spirit of a person, and as the hours and days unfold, the complicated nature of the relationship between Melender and her mom becomes apparent.

You won’t want to miss this action-packed, emotionally raw YA book about self reliance and self esteem.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

This series has everything: a relatable and flawed heroine in Katniss, a love triangle, life-and-death adventure, good and evil, self reliance, a stark world of intense poverty contrasted against ridiculous gluttony, and deeper themes about society at large.

This series is amazing. I could read it multiple times and still find new things to love. I have seen the movies multiple times, but there are things in the books that are just wonderful.

Don’t miss these lovely books if you’re looking for YA books about self esteem and self reliance.

Not a Drop to Drink by Mindy McGinnis

“There's different ways of doing things wrong, Lynn, and not all of it is choosing to hurt others. Sometimes it's the things you don't do that make you feel the worst.” ― Mindy McGinnis, quote from Not a Drop to Drink

Set in an apocalyptic future where drinking water is scarce and people fight for survival in a wild frontier, Lynn is a young woman in rural Ohio defending a pond and her homestead. Her mother raised her to distrust, to fight, and to live, and that's what she intends to do.

I enjoyed watching Lynn's fierce character evolve into a person who was willing to allow others into her life, to trust and even love. Despite her hardness, she had a kind heart. There were some interesting scenes in interactions with other people, like the stranger on the road, that tested her humanity.

Not a Drop to Drink was also a fast, thrilling YA book about dystopian survival, and its sequel, In a Handful of Dust, follows Lynn and her adopted daughter Lucy into the unknown after a mysterious plague drives them away from their home and community and into the wilderness.

If you’re looking for compelling YA books about self esteem and self reliance, give these two a try. In fact, Mindy McGinnis is so awesome she’s on my list of Best YA Authors to Binge on Kindle Unlimited.

Wonder When You’ll Miss Me by Amanda Davis

“I'd lost forty-eight pounds and my skin had mostly cleared up. I'd missed a whole semester of school and disappeared for seven months. It seemed like no one had even noticed I was gone.” ― Amanda Davis, quote from Wonder When You’ll Miss Me

In Wonder When You’ll Miss Me, sixteen-year-old Faith Duckle still talks to The Fat Girl. She sees her too. Usually The Fat Girl is eating something and offering snarky commentary or advice. Sometimes Faith tells her to go away. Sometimes she listens to her.

Faith was sexually assaulted by a group of boys who made sport of her as the fat girl, and then she tried to kill herself. Then she ended up in a hospital, where she lost the weight but not The Fat Girl. She’s still hanging around.

This is the beginning of the story.

The real story is Faith’s journey when she runs away to join the circus, takes a new name, gets a tattoo, and becomes a handler of elephants. The real story is how Faith and The Fat Girl found healing after such a terrible event.

I loved this book when I read it twenty years ago, and I love it still. Amanda Davis was a gifted author, and you don’t want to miss this YA book about a girl with low self esteem who finds a path through trauma to redemption. Sadly, this author died in a small plane crash at the age of 32, and Wonder When You’ll Miss Me was her only novel.

Holding Up the Universe by Jennifer Niven

“I know what you’re thinking- if you hate it so much and it’s such a burden, just lose the weight, and then that job will go away. But I’m comfortable where I am. I may lose more weight. I may not. But why should what I weigh affect other people? I mean unless I’m sitting on them, who cares?” ― Jennifer Niven, quote from Holding Up the Universe

I loved this book. Told in alternating viewpoints, this is the story of Libby and Jack. Libby, who weighed 653 pounds at her heaviest, was once labeled “America’s Fattest Teen” and had to be cut out of her own house. After losing a great deal of weight, she returns to school, where she meets Jack through a rather bumpy beginning.

Their relationship struggles are painful but authentic, and the message of the book is that “seeing someone” can happen in many ways. This theme comes through in Jack’s rare condition, Prosopagnosia, which means he can’t recognize people’s faces. He can see but can’t.

As events unfold, Jack and Libby learn about forgiveness and self-acceptance, as well as the transformational power of kindness.

If you’re looking for one of the the sweetest YA books about self esteem and self reliance that give all the good feels, pick up this classic from Jennifer Niven. I hope you like it as much as I did.

Hollow Beauty by Khristina Chess

“I’d always called my body ‘athletic.’ Words like ‘stocky’ and ‘muscular’ described my figure. I was the fastest girl on the track and cross country teams. Muscular, stocky girls weren’t beautiful, though. Skinny girls were. Girls like Erica Miller.” ― Khristina Chess, quote from Hollow Beauty

When tall, gorgeous Brody asks Olivia to the prom, she's ecstatic until he suggests that she use the two months before the dance to lose some weight.

But how thin is thin enough?

Body's comment sends Olivia on a spiral of dangerously rapid weight loss that borders on anorexia. As her pounds vanish, her friendship deepens with Ross, the new prep cook at the diner where she works. Despite his mysterious limp, he doesn't suffer crippling low self-esteem issues like she does; she can't even look at herself in the mirror anymore. The only time she doesn't feel ugly or fat is when she goes riding dirt bikes and cave-hunting with Ross. With Brody, instead of finding romance and true love, she feels like a terrified rabbit he's going to devour. 

She's almost thin enough to be beautiful for the prom when the unthinkable happens.

Holy cow! Buckle up for a fast read because Hollow Beauty hooked me from the beginning.

What makes Hollow Beauty special is the realistic portrayal of how Olivia falls into the self-esteem trap of trying to change herself for someone else. I worried about her. I loved seeing her journey and choices as the events escalated toward the story’s climax. It’s a great positive message. This is the kind of authentic novel that really shows how someone with even a little insecurity can be manipulated and hurt.

This book is a must-read for anyone looking for YA novels about self esteem and eating disorders.

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

“What’s the point of having a voice if you’re gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn’t be?” ― Angie Thomas, quote from The Hate U Give

I saw this book everywhere and picked it up, wondering what all the fuss is about. Wow. I couldn't put it down. Starr is an amazing character in a perfectly-crafted situation that screams with tension, suspense, and emotion. Her emotions are raw and authentic. You can feel her little-girl timidity in the grand jury testimony and her grief and rage in the scene with Hailey. Her world is vivid and real. The pain of her dual life and the conflict it causes her is palatable. I loved this book. I love this girl. I want to see her again, doing more, making a difference. She's made me believe in her.

The Hate You Give should be at the top of your must-read list of eclectic YA books about self esteem and self reliance. In fact, after reading this one, I wanted to read everything Angie Thomas has written and also added her to my list of Best YA Authors to Binge on Kindle Unlimited because she’s so amazing!

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

“We all have to find our own ways to say good-bye.” ― Sherman Alexie, quote from The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Junior Spirit is a courageous boy who dares to leave the reservation, his school, and his best friend to seek a different life. His story is funny, heartbreaking, inspiring, and brave. I loved his quirky voice, his cartoons, and I cheered so hard for him in his basketball game.

This novel highlights the contrast between extreme poverty and wealth, as well as racial differences. These themes are handled with humor and sensitivity.

In a list of thought-provoking YA books self esteem books, this one really shines!

We Walked the Sky by Lisa Fiedler

“The show must go on, even when it's not the show you expected to be in.” ― Lisa Felder, quote from We Walked the Sky

Fiedler's multi-generational novel really captured and held my interest. Two parallel stories are running: the grandmother, Victoria, is a 16-year-old who runs away and joins the circus in 1965, and her granddaughter, Callie, is a teen who has followed in her circus footsteps, but now finds herself in a new place.

There are mysteries to unravel and friendships to develop. I loved all the circus lore and animals and characters. Really, it was an enchanting story. I want to read more by this author.

When compiling the list of eclectic YA books about self esteem and self reliance, to read next, be sure to add this one near the top.

Other YA Books about Self Esteem and Self Reliance

If you are looking other YA books about self esteem and self reliance, check out the YA Self Esteem Books list on Goodreads. You might also be interested in my post, Other Good Reads, which has a comprehensive list of reviews of YA books by type of tough topic, including substance abuse, mental illness, and others.

Do you have any personal favorites to recommend to me? I’m always looking for another great read in this category.

Khristina Chess is the award-winning author of several YA novels about troubled teens turning corners. You can find her on Amazon, Goodreads, and Twitter as an active daily contributor in the #5amwritersclub.

Readers Magnet Scam

Here are some links to help you make an informed decision about book fairs and book publishing companies like Readers Magnet before deciding to part with your cash.

This blog collects a list of public resource links in one place, as well as tips for how to deal with the situation if you find yourself scammed.

Dozens of authors have also used this place to comment and share their own experiences with Readers Magnet, including cheering in the background as someone in the call center makes a new sale.

Some have contacted me privately through my Form Submission, which makes it harder to share tips with the larger community. For example, one writer said that it seems they may be targeting new Twitter accounts as a different variation of the scam and inviting authors to promote their books “free of charge” on their website’s Author Lounge as the initial hook.

Don’t be fooled. Do your own research and make an informed choice.

My Experience

Scammers have been targeting authors for a long time. On December 29, 2017, I received a call from someone from Readers Magnet, claiming that my wonderful, award-winning novel, Drive to June, had been selected by their talent scouts, and they wanted to partner with me for representation in the 2018 New York Rights Fair. They were extremely complimentary about my work. They knew that the book had won an award and that I’d written multiple novels. I let the person talk for a long time even though I was pretty sure it was a scam because I wanted to hear the pitch.

“As stated we will be the ones taking care of the other expenditures and all the legwork since we were the ones that found you, although you will be entitled to all of the proceeds and hoping that you would be able to continue the momentum that we will be setting for you and your book’s success. We aim to create publicity for our company through your book’s success.”

She was a woman named Ruby Baker with a strong accent. She was very smooth, asking about my goals for my writing career and what sorts of things I had done for self-promotion to date. At one point I clarified that she wasn’t seeking rights for the book or commissions on sales. She wanted some sort of fee, correct? It still took her awhile to get to the point where she wanted $600 for the registration fee for this show.

That's right: $600.

The amount would cover the publicity listing in the directory and the booth showing. They only needed one signed copy of my book for display. All other sales would be handled directly with me. This didn’t pass the sniff test.

After hanging up, I searched for this company and found a bunch of other complaints from authors who’ve been contacted by these scam artists over the years.

Useful Resources

If you’re looking for resources for avoiding scammers or other experiences with Readers Magnet, here are some links:

Ripoff Reports – Readers Magnet

https://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/specific_search/READERS+MAGNET

https://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/readers-magnet/nyc-new-york-10004/readers-magnet-literary-book-scout-wanted-450-to-market-my-book-which-they-said-came-hig-1364410

https://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/readers-magnet/vilonia-ar-72173/readers-magnet-offered-services-theycould-not-completes-and-when-asked-for-money-as-per-c-1474153

Other Stories and Resources for Research

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/pw-select/article/80459-diy-how-to-avoid-self-publishing-scams.html

https://victoriastrauss.com/2019/08/16/from-the-philippines-not-with-love-a-plague-of-publishing-and-marketing-scams/

https://victoriastrauss.com/2018/01/25/army-of-clones-author-solutions-spawns-a-legion-of-copycats/

https://victoriastrauss.com/2018/12/27/army-of-clones-part-2-twenty-one-more-publishing-and-marketing-services-to-beware-of/

https://victoriastrauss.com/2019/12/11/vanity-radio-why-you-should-think-twice-before-paying-for-an-interview/

https://www.janefriedman.com/dont-pay-for-bea/

https://writersweekly.com/this-weeks-article/it-happened-to-me-readers-magnet-called-a-humorous-contribution-by-chris-hanly

https://victoriastrauss.com/2020/02/14/should-you-pay-to-display-your-book-at-bookexpo-short-answer-no-2/

https://writersweekly.com/this-weeks-article/it-happened-to-me-readers-magnet-called-a-humorous-contribution-by-chris-hanly

https://milled.com/bookbaby/watch-out-for-the-slimeball-fraudsters-oMCE1iVBW2vBiqS4

https://annerallen.com/2019/06/1-mistake-vulnerable-publishing-scams/

https://justpublishingadvice.com/publishing-companies-to-avoid-and-nasty-new-author-scams/

http://www.scamion.com/readersmagnet-49

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/18715656-anyone-here-ever-contacted-by-readersmagnet

https://www.kboards.com/index.php?topic=262483.0

https://authorchristopherdschmitz.wordpress.com/2017/09/08/dont-get-scammed-by-companies-like-readers-magnet/

https://thestoryreadingapeblog.com/2018/02/03/dont-get-scammed-by-companies-like-readers-magnet/

https://accrispin.blogspot.com/2018/07/how-predatory-companies-are-trying-to.html

https://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?329269-Marketing-ReadersMagnet

https://medium.com/@jmcogdell/authors-beware-watch-out-for-this-scam-jeans-writing-on-wordpress-com-a6a1683f940f

https://davidgaughran.com/2019/09/12/combined-book-exhibit-author-scams-new-title-showcase/

https://www.combinedbook.com/book-promotion-services/marketing-scams-false-promises.html

https://www.reddit.com/r/selfpublishing/comments/7pieuo/readersmagnet_fake_quote_scam_readersmagnet_is_a/

https://www.pissedconsumer.com/readersmagnet/RT-F.html

Better Business Bureau:

https://www.bbb.org/sdoc/business-reviews/digital-marketing/readersmagnet-in-san-diego-ca-172021180/reviews-and-complaints?section=complaints

Regarding ReadersMagnet LLC Publishing

During the week of August 31, 2018, someone named "Dee" posted a comment 3 times with links to a book that ReadersMagnet LLC published on Amazon and Barnes & Noble--presumably as "proof" that they are a legitimate outfit. However, this book has only 2 reviews, and one of the reviews seems to be a fake one with a post date from 2006. This is a real trick considering that the publication date on the book is March, 2018. There is no author presence on Google, although there is an author website listed through Amazon. Any digging at all quickly raised my suspicions.

What to Do If You Are Scammed

A US-based author contacted me to say that he'd been scammed out of $9,643.00. "Any recommendations on how to get out of this?"

My suggestion is to search Google for consumer information on how to report and resolve international fraud and scams. Specifically, the US Federal Trade Commission has a Website for reporting scams like this one:  https://consumer.ftc.gov/scams

You can also visit this site: http://www.sec.gov.ph/, which is referenced from https://www.pinoymoneytalk.com/where-to-report-scammers-in-the-philippines/.

What about you? Do you have an experience with a Readers Magnet scam to share? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

Cat, Consistency, and #5amwritersclub: How You Can Write a Novel in One Year

How do you write a novel in one year?

J.R.R. Tolkien took more than 12 years to write The Lord of the Rings, while in one month NaNoWriMo writers churn out whole manuscripts. One of the top reasons would-be authors cited for failure to write is “too busy.” Okay, so maybe we can cut some slack for the following people:

• New parents

• People fighting illness or illness of a loved one

• People dealing with the IRS or similar circumstances

For everyone else, the following 3 tools are guaranteed to help you make significant progress on that book you’ve always wanted to write or finish: a cat, consistency, and the #5amwritersclub on Twitter.

Let me explain.

1.       Get a Cat

My cat Minnie ensures I never miss a #5amwritersclub writing session—not even on weekends. Sometimes she tail-swishes me awake at 1:30 AM instead of 3 AM because she’s so excited to get started. Other times she throws up beside the bed and in the hall to launch me out of bed. And if her bowl is empty, no one is sleeping in until the situation is corrected.

Maine Coons are the “gentle giants” of the cat world. She’s a big girl. She needs to eat... now! Just saying.

Once her belly’s full, she “helps” my writing sessions too by sitting on my editing notes and purring to cheer me on. She’s a huge fan of my work. She’s an even bigger fan of nose rubs and ear rubs.

Frankly, she’s a bit of a distraction when I’m on a roll, but when I’m blocked for words, she’s soft and passes the time until something comes to me.

A cat is necessary if you want to write a novel in one year. And being on time for #5amwritersclub.

2.       Consistency

Writing a novel in one year also requires putting your butt in the chair every day. Stare at the screen and think about the work, even if the only thing that happens is a few tweaks. Sometimes that’s it. Sometimes there’s a deluge, and sometimes there’s a sprinkle. That’s the process. Fiddling counts as writing. Research also counts. Staring counts too. Deleting 5,000 words counts—even if it hurts and you need to grieve for a few days (or weeks) about it. Just show up and do something.

Feed the cat. Sit in the chair. Write. Tweet on #5amwritersclub.

Every single day.

Photo by Michael

Consistency is the drumbeat of the novelist’s heart.

In 2018 I began researching for the new book on February 23, 2018, and I wrapped it up on December 10 with 60,000 words—including the round with my editor. If you review my Twitter feed during that year, you’ll see a journey of highs and lows through the creative process:

• I alternate between confidence and doubt. Yesterday’s paragraphs were fast and furious; today, I struggled to add half a page before backtracking. This is the #writerslife (May 21)

• Writing novels is like working puzzles. I fit this piece here… and then that one goes over there… I’m still a long way from seeing the whole picture. (June 21)

• Creativity versus the clock: this morning the clock won. I stared and stared and stared at the screen, but minutes dribbled away without words. (July 16)

• Life in the middle:

Day X: Write Great scene. Feels good.

Day Y: This book is awful. What am I doing? Reread book from page 1.

Day Z: Okay, that’s not half bad. Continue.

Day A: Write the next scene. Feels good.

Day B: This book is awful. Repeat.  (August 6)

• My MC finally told me how to end the book, and it’s a surprise. I have to let go of the old idea, so I have to sit with that for a few days. I don’t like being bossed around by my characters. (August 29)

• For an hour and a half, I struggled to write two lousy paragraphs. Then with five minutes of my time left, these guys finally start talking and give me a page of workable dialog. Sheesh! (September 11)

What you should notice most from the year’s entries is consistency. I post every day to #5amwritersclub. I write every day. Sometimes I write well, and sometimes I don’t. But I write.

As my favorite author Stephen King said, “Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration. The rest of us just get up and go to work.”

As of January 2021, I’ve published 5 YA novels on Amazon.

I also have another one coming out in May 2021, and 2 more in revision.

In fact, over a 20-year period I’ve written at least 14 novels. It's hard to identify an exact count because I've rewritten a few so drastically that you might "count" them as new novels. Many of these early books are so terrible they must never see the light of day.

Photo by Samuel Zeller on Unsplash

Consistency does not always equal quality.

Side note: There have been 3 cats accompanying those 14 novels.

3.       #5amwritersclub

Photo by Vladimíra Osadníková on Unsplash

The #5amwritersclub is an amazing support group for writers. Like many indie authors, when I joined Twitter initially, I went mainly to post annoying ads and sell books.

But instead, to my great delight, I found my tribe on Twitter! The #5amwritersclub is a group of like-minded authors of every genre who are facing similar struggles and joys.

I’m inspired by the new mothers who manage to squeeze in a few moments for writing or the writers putting in 12-hour shifts and still finding time to write. We are a passionate bunch. And funny. And wise. There’s a lot of wisdom in this group.

Sometimes the #5amwritersclub is the motivation I need to write on the weekends because I know the regulars will be there and will say hello. There might even be a game of “favorites” and tagging.

Closing Thoughts

Everyone is busy. We’re so busy we don’t even want to drive our own cars anymore because we need to text and call and send email while in transit to wherever we’re going. We don’t have time to shop so we have things auto-delivered to our house on a recurring schedule. (My current favorite service is chewy.com because in addition to that giant cat, there are dogs to feed.)

In all the hustle-and-bustle of modern life, it’s hard to carve out quiet time for the simple joy of writing, especially if we don’t believe in ourselves. What if we’re just not any good? What if we can’t do it? What if, what if?

That’s why #5amwritersclub is essential if you want to write a novel in one year. Honestly, I cannot guarantee that Get a Cat will provide fan support because cat temperament is too hit-or-miss. Even if you feed the cat, you may have a sarcastic critic who mainly stares at you every morning with a withering expression that says, “Who do you think you are, hack?”

If the thought of this worries you in any way, you might consider substituting Get a Cat with Get a Dog. On the whole, dogs are notoriously more reliable as supportive fans. My boys, Smokey and Bandit, always think I’m amazing.

Are you ready to make a commitment to your book in the new year? Come on, join us at #5amwritersclub. I know you want to!

And if you do, you just may find yourself writing that brilliant novel that you’ve been talking about for years.

Khristina Chess is the award-winning author of several YA novels about troubled teens turning corners. You can find her on Amazon, Goodreads, and Twitter as an active daily contributor in the #5amwritersclub.

Severe Weather in Alabama and Opioids: Unusual Inspiration for YA Books

Looking for your next great read about weather and natural disasters? You’ve come to the right place.

Severe weather is a fact of life in Alabama. The tornados come every spring and fall, and residents watch the radar, listen for alerts, and head for shelters because we know that failure to do so can mean death. If you talk to anyone who’s lived here for any length of time, they have a tornado story to tell. A “big one” that they’ve lived through. They can tell you exactly where they were when it hit and what happened in the aftermath.

For my family, the “big one” was the Super Outbreak of tornados of April 27, 2011. Severe weather was in the forecast, and we knew it would be bad. But not that bad. Tornado paths stretched for thousands of miles, and one town was hit twice in the same day. Hundreds of people died, and thousands were injured. Hundreds of thousands were left without power.

Severe weather in Alabama and the opioid epidemic seems like an unusual combination to inspire a YA book. I know.

How did these two meet?

I wanted to write a book about opioid abuse because it was a subject that had both national and personal significance. Like so many, I personally knew someone struggling with addiction and recovery from narcotics abuse, and I wanted to explore this tough topic for better understanding of their journey. And in crafting a novel, I needed some additional story conflict to drive the plot, and this storm became my inspiration for the setting.

Addiction is a storm that ravages individuals. Like a tornado, it can obliterate everything and leave whole families destitute. Once I introduced these two elements, opioid abuse and the Super Outbreak of tornados, writing the story and the symbolic elements behind its themes came very naturally.

A rare book

After writing a novel that combined bad weather with drug abuse, I was very surprised to find that there were so few young adult books about this topic. Finding “comps” to place Swallow the Rainbow with was a real challenge. Considering the impact of the opioid epidemic on young people, this seems odd. Overdosing is a leading cause of death.

Maybe the reason is that writing about tough topics, like tornados, means hunkering in the darkness for some time while the windows howl. There’s a lot of risk that the whole house might collapse around you. A lot of people are terrified of severe storms.

I am.

Since the April 27 Super Outbreak, I’m scared whenever we have severe weather. I want to be close to the storm shelter. I want to be prepared. I know what can come from the sky. In Savannah’s very wise words from Swallow the Rainbow:

We lived through the most historic super outbreak of tornados ever recorded, and they are still adding up the number of tornados, costs, and people killed across multiple states. Yet more storms are guaranteed to come. Life is full of twists and turns, and disasters like this expose the very best and the very worst inside us.

Sometimes it takes almost losing everything to discover what matters most.

Other Books about Severe Weather

Goodreads has a list of The Best of Bad Weather Books you might want to check out, as well as Weather and Disasters Books. If you’re interested in reading more about the April 27 Super Outbreak, you can also check out What Stands in a Storm by Kim Cross.

Khristina Chess is the award-winning author of several YA novels about troubled teens turning corners. You can find her on Amazon, Goodreads, and Twitter as an active daily contributor in the #5amwritersclub.

COVID-19, the Opioid Crisis, Isolation, and Books

The months of stress and social isolation from the Coronavirus pandemic created a “national relapse trigger” for thousands of individuals in substance abuse recovery. For those wrestling with active opioid or other narcotics addiction, finding help became even more difficult because COVID-19 meant reduced hours, cancellation of programs, or closures of facilities. It was a bad movie: the pandemic meets the epidemic.

Nearly 72,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2019, compared to the 200,000 American deaths to COVID-19 in the first 9 months of 2020. Both numbers are devastating statistics. Drug-related deaths impact people of all ages, including teens.

Swallow the Rainbow by Khristina Chess

Swallow the Rainbow by Khristina Chess is a new release in a small but growing list of YA books about the opioid epidemic that is predicted to claim hundreds of thousands of lives over the next decade. Inspired by the actual storms of April 27, 2011, this novel is the story of Savannah Young, a teen soccer star who is stranded with the neighbors following an outbreak of devastating tornados. The worst part isn’t the car on her roof, the isolation from her friends, or the fact that her mom is missing.

She’s out of pain pills. And when withdrawal sets in, she’s going to get very, very sick.

Wow! Swallow the Rainbow hooked me from the first page and never let me go. What I love most about this book is Savannah’s voice and unique way of looking at the world, especially in the aftermath of the tornadoes. I love the tree stuff! And the romance with the neighbor boy. And the cat. This isn’t the usual stereotypical teen addiction story.

You won’t want to miss this important YA book featuring characters dealing with substance abuse, recovery, and grief. Fans of Heroine will enjoy this one.

Swallow the Rainbow: A Novel

By Chess, Khristina

Buy on Amazon

Why Books?

Despite the tragic toll of the opioid crisis on young people, few YA novels exist that actually feature characters dealing with substance abuse and recovery. Why? Reading these stories gives important insight into understanding how addiction can take hold of friends, siblings, children, or other loved ones and forever change life for everyone.

Reading books about heroine and pain pill abuse can help save lives by illuminating what the symptoms and behaviors of narcotics abuse looks like. Through the dramatic power of story, someone may recognize that something is wrong in their own life or in the lives of one of their friends or loved ones. Reading stories through the character’s viewpoint may also grant an additional level of compassion for someone wrestling with addiction. In the best scenario, holding up a fictional mirror leads someone to seek help.

In addition to Swallow the Rainbow, you can also find YA Drug & Substance Abuse Novels on Goodreads, but those lists are broad and do not necessarily focus only on characters wrestling with opioid addiction.

Khristina Chess is the award-winning author of several YA novels about troubled teens turning corners. You can find her on Amazon, Goodreads, and Twitter as an active daily contributor in the #5amwritersclub.

How Goodreads Reading Challenges Keep Me On Track

I upped my Goodreads Reading Challenge from 20 to 25 books and felt pressured the entire year to reach my goal.

“You’re 2 books behind schedule,” the progress indicator on the Goodreads Home page noted whenever I logged in—as if my life isn’t stressful enough already.

I might as well add that dismal statistic to the list:

• You’re 10 pounds above goal weight.

• Your department is over-budget.

• The average bounce rate for your website is above 70%, which is officialy classified as ‘disappointing’.

Good grief, who wouldn’t want to just turn on Netflix and binge for the next twenty years?

I have friends on Goodreads who are reading machines. They must be professionals or something. One woman had a Reading Challenge of 150 books, and she sailed past that with more than 200 before the year ended. She wasn’t alone with this kind of goal and outcome either. Compared to those readers, I felt like a total failure with my measley 25-book goal.

The thing is—I love reading. When I go on vacation, I take at least 4 novels and devour all of them, often while in transit. It’s not unusual to arrive at my destination with half of my books already consumed. Reading is a joy, not a chore. It’s a guilty pleasure. If anything, I put it off until all my other must-do activities are done for the day, so that by the time I finally sit down to read, I often fall asleep within 10 pages.

This could be part of the reason I’m falling behind.

So how does a Goodreads Reading Challenge help me stay on track?

1.     Competition

I’m a competitive person. If I set a goal, I’ll pour everything into achieving it. This hyper-drive competitive force is a recurring theme in the characters of my own YA novels. A girl decides she wants to be Valedictorian of her class, and nothing will stop her. A girl decides she’s going to lose weight for the prom, and nothing will stop her. A girl decides she has to attend MIT, and nothing will stop her—including an unplanned pregnacy.

If my Goodreads friends can meet their goals of reading 150 books in a year, I can meet my modest challenge of 25. Nothing will stop me. I will not sleep until the work is done. Please pass the caffeine.

2.     Visual progress reminder

I’ve made a habit to check Goodreads daily to update progress on my book, so the Reading Challenge progress indicator is right there for me to see. Either I’m “on track” or behind schedule. When I’m racing against a clock, there’s nothing like a stopwatch to kick me into high gear.

The Reading Challenge progress indicator lets me know every day whether I’m still on target to meet my goal—or I’m behind.

And by the way, the panel above also shames me with the books that I’ve started and failed to make any progress with for the past 6 months. They just sit there… waiting, mocking, daring me to finish them. The indicators point out that I could meet my Reading Challenge goal if I’d simply finish the two books I’ve already started. They make it seem so easy and achievable with their little graph and numbers in nice fonts.

Why am I still sitting here on the computer when I could be reading?

3.     Congratulations for Success

To motivate me further, when someone else meets their goal, Goodreads posts a banner in my feed so I can celebrate with them.

I celebrate with Jennifer and am simultaneously humiliated by my pittiful progress on 25 books—which I still have not yet completed.

Plus, Goodreads celebrates everyone. Dave isn’t even my friend.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m happy for Dave. Yeah Dave, congratulations! He’s amazing. But his celebration only serves to remind me that I’m still not at goal—and the clock is ticking down to the end of the year.

I need to pick up the pace.

If I wasn’t overwhelmed for being behind in my Reading Challenge before, when I start seeing other people complete Reading Challenges with 5 times more books, I definitely start feeling the heat to complete my own goal.

Parting Thoughts

While setting a reading goal and tracking progress on Goodreads is great, I also see how the Reading Challenge can distort something lovely into a thing of pain. Reading is meant to be a joy to be savored, not a checklist to be rushed and forgotten. Reading is that pleasure best enjoyed on a rainy afternoon with a warm cup of tea or on a beach lounge chair with a cool drink. A good book is as wonderful the second or third time time through as it was on the first.

I never want the challenge to create such anxiety that I dread reading; a 150 book challenge would do that to me. In fact, my challenge for next year will be fewer books.

I’m already excited about my reading list for next year. There are several titles I’m eager to pick up, and this means a trip to the bookstore to wander the shelves for an hour or so—another guilty pleasure of mine.

What about you? What are your goals for next year’s Reading Challenge? Are you going to cover the classics or explore some new authors?

Khristina Chess is the award-winning author of several YA novels about troubled teens turning corners. You can find her on Amazon, Goodreads, and Twitter as an active daily contributor in the #5amwritersclub.

What Do These 3 Popular YA Authors Have in Common?

Have you ever wondered why some page-turning novels keep you up at night, while others fall flat? These 3 popular YA authors employ the same writing craft techniques in their books that guarantee a great read.

1. The Astonishing Color of After by Emily X.R. Pan

To begin at the beginning, this popular YA author demonstrates the first master storytelling secret: the hook. In the opening sentence—and certainly in the brief first paragraph—Pan captures the reader’s full attention:

My mother is a bird. This isn’t like some William Faulkner stream-of-consciousness metaphorical crap. My mother. Is literally. A bird.

Who can stop reading after that? She has your attention. She has a story tell. Something interesting is about to happen with this narrator.

Photo by joyce huis

In fact, I devoured Emily X.R. Pan’s lovely, heartbreaking, poetic, mysterious, and wonderful debut novel in less than 5 days—a fast pace for me.

The very best, most intriguing and engaging novels are the ones whose first thirty words introduce some kind of change that will become the catalyst for the rest of the story. It can be very simple. It can start in the middle of action. In fact, what often grabs you in a great first line is the disorientation: what’s happening? As readers, we are observers of some action that may have already happened, and we’re in catch-up mode. Who’s talking? In the case of Pan’s book, why does this character think her mother is a bird?

The story’s engine starts. We turn the page to satisfy our curiosity, and in a very good novel like The Astonishing Color of After, even more interesting questions unfold.

Want to read some more great hooks by popular YA authors? Here are some lists:

20 YA Novels That Will Hook You From the First Line

15 of the Best Opening Lines in YA

38 Best First Lines in Novels (YA Edition)

2. Missing by Kelly Armstrong

The hook in Missing is also compelling:

Reeve’s End is the kind of town every kid can’t wait to escape. Each summer, a dozen kids leave and at least a quarter never come back. I don’t blame them—I’ll do the same in another year. We thought it was just something that happened in towns like ours. We were wrong.

This novel employs a second storytelling secret: the ticking clock.

In missing-person cases, police only have so much time to find victims before their chance of returning home safe diminishes. In the case of Winter Crane’s sister, the timeline for how long she might have been missing is already unclear. As the mystery quickly unfolds, the urgency to find out what might have happened to her—and other missing kids—is tied to an invisible clock like a heartbeat. It creates suspense and raises the stakes. The tension increases with each turn of the page because we believe the situation is life-or-death. The hero spends a lot of time literally running from one place to another, trying to beat the clock.

Photo by Wil Stewart

Combined, the hook and the ticking clock make a one-two punch for great storytelling. In my novel The Future Unborn, here is the hook on page one:

I knew there’d be a ubiquitous plethora of tests to take my senior year—tests with vocabulary words like ubiquitous and plethora. But I never expected to need to take a pregnancy test, too.

The heading of this opening chapter is Week 2, which sets the ticking clock and identifies the structure for the entire novel, which is 10 weeks long.

In Hollow Beauty, the ticking clock is in the hook itself:

When I placed my order, I had no idea it would be my last medium curly fry and regular Coke for the next two months. If I’d known, I would have asked for a large.

What happens in the next two months? The prom. The narrator just needs to lose weight for it.

In my first novel, Straight A’s, the clock is the end of the nine-week grading period. The main character is overwhelmed with anxiety and academic pressure to be valedictorian of her class, and if she gets a B in calcus at the end of the grading period, she’s making plans to commit suicide.

3. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Angie Thomas and her debut novel became a bestselling success because of this next secret: conflict. In The Hate U Give, this popular YA author demonstrates how to layer inner and outer conflicts to create a dramatic story that readers cannot put down.

It starts with the hook:

I shouldn’t have come to this party.

I’m not even sure I belong at this party. That’s not on some bougie shit, either. There are just some places where it’s not enough to be me. Either version of me.

And there it is: the inner and outer conflicts. This narrator lives in two worlds, and those worlds soon clash when sixteen-year-old Starr Carter witnesses the fatal police shooting of a childhood friend. What makes this conflict harder for Starr is that she attends a suburban prep school far from the neighborhood where she lives and where the shooting happened, and the action she takes will shatter the careful balancing act she’s been maintaining between these separate versions of herself.

Photo by Boris Smokrovic

What makes this novel special and why it resonates with so many readers are the complex conflicts that each character faces. You will think about Starr for months after closing the cover on this novel because the multiple layers of conflict will continue to spin at the back of your mind. The questions and issues are important, and the answers aren’t easy. She is sympathetic in her struggles to find the best path.

Other YA Books with Complex Conflicts

Want to read some more popular YA authors with complex conflicts? Here are some lists:

25 Morally Complicated YA Novels That Show How Complex Young Adult Lit Really Is

10 Young Adult Books That Tackle Racism

7 Morally Complex Works of YA Fiction You Shouldn’t Miss

If you are ready to learn more, you can download free samples of any of my books from this website.

Khristina Chess is the award-winning author of several YA novels about troubled teens turning corners. You can find her on Amazon, Goodreads, and Twitter as an active daily contributor in the #5amwritersclub.

How Grief Shattered My Creative Writing Practice

My beloved dog Terra died in June, 2019. It was sudden and violent, and in the aftermath, I passed through the initial stages of grief in rapid succession: denial, anger, and bargaining. Some acceptance came with the results of the necropsy report and subsequent lab results. The pneumonia that had swiftly filled her lungs was an antibacterial-resistant strain of staph that also choked her liver, kidneys, and spleen. Nothing could have saved her.

Still, heavy feelings of guilt and despair overwhelmed me. Those final seconds when she looked in my eyes, struggling for breath, terrified, and I was helpless to save her, helpless to do anything at all. The horror of that moment is imprinted on my heart forever.

Writer’s Block

The one thing in my life that’s always worked is writing. It’s my sanctuary and escape. It’s the well that never goes dry.

Until this.

Photo by Pedro Gabriel Miziara

I try to write. I sit at the desk at 3 AM and put some words into the file. There’s no spark. No life. I doubt everything. I’m not interested in writing. I worry that I will never write another book and that all my good ideas have dried up. I’m not interested in reading either. I float through space and time. I exist.

After such loss and grief of my dear friend, having the words also abandon me feels like a brutal betrayal. Writing is supposed to nourish me back to health. I am without comfort. Mute. Joyless.

It’s a myth that suffering makes writers into better artists. Suffering is just suffering.

One article on the subject suggests that when you have creative blocks from grief, you should try other outlets. Since I’m a YA novelist, maybe I should do a few of the crafty things I used to enjoy:

·        Scrapbooking

·        Making collages

·        Painting

·        Poetry

I do not have an appetite for these things either.

Ice cream. That’s what I have an appetite for. And 1000 piece puzzles.

Grief Will Pass

The depression that comes with grief feels both the same and different from garden-variety depression. In my head I know that this apathy is related to sadness. Sometimes strong emotions and crying are involved. I keep waiting for it to end so my life can return to normal.

People say grief passes with time. You get another dog, and that chases this terrible sadness away. But getting another dog means truly saying goodbye to sweet Terra and making space for someone new, and that process is more painful than any physical pain. It means accepting that I’ll never, ever, ever see, pet, brush, smell, hear, or feel this girl again.

I loved her so much more than my writer words can express.

She was a 100-pound wanna-be lap dog, a cuddly teddy bear.

She loved long walks in the pasture with me and belly rubs.

She protected the yard from dangerous groundhogs and raccoons.

She played fetch to humor me because she liked spending time together, but Akitas really don’t like fetch.

She converted me from a cat-person to a cat-and-dog person.

She made me laugh with her silliness and sweetness.

She loved me and forgave me for being an imperfect human who sometimes worked too late for much petting.

I loved and forgave her for being an imperfect dog who sometimes ate shoes and Amazon boxes.

I know she’s no longer suffering.

I know I will always miss her and love her and never forget her, for the rest of my life.

A new dog cannot fill the humongous hole that Terra leaves behind. She was a unique and larger-than-life individual.

But perhaps two can help to heal my shattered heart. We are adopting a young bonded pair of brothers at the end of the month from a rescue organization. We’ve met them, and they are full of energy and love, needing lots of attention and care and a home. We need each other, I think.

Perhaps as the leaves begin to turn with fall, my grief will change colors, and my words will return.

Khristina Chess is the award-winning author of several YA novels about troubled teens turning corners. You can find her on Amazon, Goodreads, and Twitter as an active daily contributor in the #5amwritersclub.

Discover 11 Secret Steps to Becoming a World-Class Bookworm

Are bookworms secret superheroes? I don’t know about that, but most superheros are super-smart, brainyacs. I bet Wonder Woman loves to curl up with a cozy mystery when she’s not off fighting crime. And Bruce Wayne seems like a Clive Cussler guy. Or could you imagine a book club meeting with the Avengers discussing something like Farenheit 451 or Atlas Shrugged?

So how does an ordinary mortal become a world-class bookworm and join this elite group?

It’s easy!

1.     Visit your local library and get a library card

Seriously. You’re going to be reading a lot of books, and with that kind of volume, you need to begin with the library—at least until you can handle the pace and budget. Plus, the library is amazing. Have you been there in awhile? They offer lots of services in addition to the books, and they’re great people. Look them up.

2.     Browse the shelves and determine your favorite genre

Photo by Michael D Beckwith

This step can be overwhelming. You have so many choices. In YA fiction alone, there are subgenres of fantasy, romance, historical, thriller/horror, sci-fi/distopian, crime/mystery, and contemporary. What do you like? What interests you? If you don’t know where to start, sample a few pages and see what resonates with you the best. Maybe you’ll discover that you like something new that you’d never heard of before.

Maybe you like Steampunk—or Mannerpunk.

3.     Pick your favorite medium: Print or Electronic

Most libraries offer both formats on books, so if you want to check out a digital copy of your selected title, go ahead. However, if you want the “look” of a world-class bookworm, you will need the physical asset to carry around with you. No one ever gives much credit to the guy waving his phone around and claiming to be reading Les Miserables on it—even if it’s true. When he’s lugging that weight around with him, you know he’s truly committed to the thing.

4.     Check out lots of books

This one should be obvious, but don’t leave the library without actually checking out some books. This step requires you to fill out the paperwork for a library card if you don’t have one.

Photo by Claudia

5.     Find some reading buddies

Your local library probably has some book clubs in the genre you enjoy. Join one of them and find friends who want to read and talk about books too. Book clubs are a great way to explore new authors and titles and enjoy good conversation—and also practice your skills as a budding world-class bookworm. Most of the members of the book clubs will be veterans, so you can pick up tips by asking questions and listening to them. Don’t be intimidated if everyone seems super funny and intelligent except you. You have lots to say, and you will gain confidence.

Many cities also have Meetups for book clubs if that appeals more to you. These book clubs gather in informal settings like coffee shops instead of libraries, but the agenda is the same:

1.       Meet the group

2.      Talk about the book

3.      Read the next book

4.      Repeat

Book clubs may also include food and, depending on the age of the book club members, adult beverages.

6. Get a Goodreads account

You’re an introvert. I understand. Many world-class bookworms are. That’s why they prefer to escape into the world of books for hours at a time.

Photo by Igor Cancarevic

If meeting and talking to actual human beings sounds completely overwhelming at first, you can start with social media. Sign up for Goodreads and start by making friends there. You can join Groups and Buddy Reads, track the books you read, share titles with others, and set a reading challenge for the year. Goodreads is an excellent tool for keeping up with all the books you’re reading, which is important because a world-class bookworm reads hundreds of books and tends to forget whether or not they’ve read a given book before. A tool like Goodreads comes in handy for answering questions like A) Yes, I read that book and B) No, I didn’t like it.

7. Create your own reading nook

A craftsman needs a place to work, and you are no different. Reading books requires a quiet space. You won’t do your best if you’re in the middle of the family room surrounded by other people, barking dogs, a blaring television, and electronic devices.

Retreat.

Photo by Josh Applegate

Find a room where you can be alone for awhile and be comfortable. A fluffy throw blanket and pillows might entice you to go there often, or maybe it’s a well-worn chair and a window that overlooks a nice yard. (But not a yard that’s too distracting.) You want a space with good lighting because you’ll be reading. If you need reading glasses, leave a pair there so you don’t have to go searching for them.

8. Read every single day

You brush your teeth every day, don’t you?

A world-class bookworm reads every day. It’s a habit. For bookworms, not reading would be like not brushing their teeth. A foul smell would hover around their head, and they would have a slight slur to their speech.

If you’re just starting out, you might pace yourself to short sprints: a half hour at lunch and a half hour before bed. As you build your reading muscle, you might add another half hour in the morning and also read during spare time throughout the day. Alternatively, you might set page counts as your reading goals: 20-30 pages every day, for example.

Here are a few tips about reading to help make reading a compulsion. Some of them might seem like no-brainers, but new readers can get hung up on them:

• Give yourself permission to abandon a book that’s not engaging you. Are you thirty, forty, or fifty pages in, and every time you think about reading, you want to clip your toenails instead? There are too many books in the world. If this one isn’t working for you, break up. Shelve it. “Sorry, it’s really you, Mr. Book. You have to go.” Yes, even if it’s an author you love.

• If you choose books in a series, you might read more books faster. This rule assumes that they are good books, of course, but if they are, you are guaranteed good reading material for awhile.

• Find an author you like who has also written several books. Then you have a lot to read. If you like their style and type of book, you will have a lot of good reading material.

• Listen to audio books too. They count as reading, and that means you can cover books while you’re exercising or traveling.

The most important thing is to read. This step cannot be skipped.

The next two steps are advanced.

9. Visit a bookstore and buy lots of books

Once you know what you like and enjoy reading, you may want to own physical books—especially the titles that you want to re-read. (Re-reading is a trait of world-class bookworms.)

Warning: Bookstores are dangerous vortexes.

Photo by Serge Kutuzov

You may consider visiting a bookstore with cash only to limit yourself to a budget or visit thrift book stores to maximize your purchasing power.

Side Note: eReaders are equally dangerous because it’s too easy to click the Buy Now option in the middle of the night when you are half-asleep. Buy ebooks only when you are fully awake to minimize credit card shock.

10. Carry a book with you everywhere

Once you begin acquiring and carrying your own physical books, your transformation into a world-class bookworm is complete. Your bookmarks are tattered, and ideally, ironic or not even bookmarks at all—but random bits of paper.

11. Wear glasses

A world-class bookworm wears reading glasses even if no prescription is required—at least in public. It’s part of the “look.”

That’s it. If you follow these steps, you’ll find yourself among the distinguished group of individuals who call ourselves bookworms. Like many superheroes, we live in plain sight among mere mortals.

Are you ready to join us?

Start today by exploring some new authors of contemporary YA.

Khristina Chess is the award-winning author of several YA novels about troubled teens turning corners. You can find her on Amazon, Goodreads, and Twitter as an active daily contributor in the #5amwritersclub.

What Your Books Reveal about You

Do your bookshelves contain the roadmap of the journey of your life? Do the titles tell a story of where have you been and where are you going? You may be surprised by what your books reveal about you.

The Books You Keep

Bookworms will show you pictures of their books the way other people show off their children. “Look at these!” we post on Instagram and Twitter. “I couldn’t resist. Aren’t they lovely?” These words are accompanied by images of new shelving arrangements, bookstore visits, and stacks of new books arranged on tables beside cups of tea.

The problem with books is that you must make hard choices—the kind of choices people don’t have to make with their children. Books keep coming in. There’s too many.

Photo by Taylor Barber

Despite fervent rearranging and squeezing, there’s not enough room. Some must go—either to boxes and storage or… Purge.

What do you keep? What do you let go? And why?

The Books You Purge

Obviously, I purged all of my college textbooks immediately. In fact, I dropped off my calculus textbook at the bookstore on my way back to the dorm following my final exam.

I kept my poetry chapbooks and fiction anthologies for decades, until last year’s purge when I ran out of room and had to make deep cuts.

The last college novel to survive is Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. It’s one of those unexpected titles that has lingered with me and haunted me, much like Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451 and George Orwell’s 1984.

Now you know something more about me.

The Books You Miss

Speaking of the books you purged, what titles slipped through your fingers that you miss? Have you ever re-purchased a book because once you gave it away, you realized you loved it too much?

Or maybe you’ve bought it a second time because you forgot you have it.

As a girl, I owned every horse book ever written: The Black Stallion, The Island Stallion, The Black Stallion and the Girl, and all the other derivatives, as well as Misty of the Chincoteague, King of the Wind, and Black Beauty. Those books transported me to worlds where I ran with wild horses.

Photo by Gene Devine

Unfortunately I lost everything in the great purge that was my parents’ divorce and my subsequent exit to college. It was time to give up childhood. Hello Aldus Huxley and Brave New World.

The Places You Keep Books

Where do you keep your books?

In our house, literary fiction resides in the living room. Young adult is located in the hallway. My office includes horror, self-help, religion, and writing reference. None of my books are boxed or stored away. Either they reside on shelves, or they’re purged.

I tried using a Kindle for awhile, but I like seeing the books in a physical space. Holding them and smelling them is part of the relationship. I always keep one close on the bedside table for reading at night. Two or three are scattered across the surface of my writing desk at any given time.

The Times You Found Books

Some say that the books you read are related to your personality. I don’t know about you, but my reading tastes have seen different phases. When I discovered Jodi Piccoult, I bought and read everything she’d published to date. During the Oprah’s Book Club phase, I read every selection faithfully—and often continued to read subsequent titles by those authors.

I had an Anne Rice phase after Interview with a Vampire, and I still remember the co-worker who introduced me to Patricia Highsmith and The Talented Mr. Ripley. And I’ve had a love affair with Stephen King books since the early 1980s.

Many books on the shelves came at life-changing pivot points in my life. I’m immensely grateful to so many authors for their work and the impact it had on my own journey. A few of the top ones include:

• Julia Cameron

• C.S. Lewis

• Ayn Rand

When I look at their books now and think about the time when I was reading them, I am transported to another decade and my younger self for a second. I remember rainy afternoons reading them on my screened porch. I remember long conversations with my friend over dinner and writing poetry. I am transported to another time and place, to another self.

Photo by Aziz Acharki

What do your books reveal about you? What were you reading in your teens versus your twenties? What are you reading today? Have your reading tastes changed dramatically?

The Books That Change a Life

I’ve offered several authors and titles without naming my favorite books. As I write this blog, I’ve realized that that this simple question can be deeply personal and revealing. What I read says a lot about who I am.

Do I list the self-help books that have been so transformative? What about the books about my faith? I’m a writer, so perhaps I should talk about the great books on writing that line my shelves. There have been so many books along the journey of my life that it’s hard stop with a handful of titles that are my very most favorite of all time, but here goes:

• The Stand by Stephen King – I began reading King as a young teen, and this one was quite an accomplishment to plow through—a thick book. Unlike the other somewhat-silly monsters books, The Stand tapped into real fears that people might cause an accident of catastrophic proportions. Reading Stephen King made me want to be a writer. I’ve read this book many times.

• Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott – There is so much grace and kindness in her books. I ate this one up during a time in my life when I was discovering and developing my own faith, before I really understood what those words meant.

• Drinking: A Love Story by Carline Knapp – Her tragic death to lung cancer in her early forties really shook me. She was a smart young professional, like me, and she died. I read all of her books, but this memoir was especially poignant.

• Twilight by Stephenie Meyer – This was the first YA novel I read as an adult, and I was pleasantly surprised that it changed all my misconceptions about the genre as “children’s” literature. After reading it, I picked up several other titles and ultimately stopped writing literary fiction and began writing YA novels instead.

What about you? Are you surprised by what your books reveal about you? Are there some unexpected books that touched your life and why? I’d love to hear from you.

Khristina Chess is the award-winning author of several YA novels about troubled teens turning corners. You can find her on Amazon, Goodreads, and Twitter as an active daily contributor in the #5amwritersclub.

3 Reasons Why the Show 13 Reasons Why Is Better Than Book

True confession from a YA book addict: Although I liked Jay Asher’s book, Thirteen Reasons Why, I LOVED Netflix’s miniseries version of it. Admitting that I binge-watched the whole first season but struggled to turn the pages is hard for a bibliophile. I’m biased toward books. Three rooms in my house contain bookshelves crowded with books. I write them.

Books rule. They’re always supposed to be better. Always.

But Netflix did several things right:

1. Adaptation Changes

Usually when screenwriters mess with a book I love, I groan, “No, no, no!” during the offending scenes. “That’s not how it was! You’re messing it up!” In the case of the Netflix adaptation of Thirteen Reasons Why, the writers did such an amazing job that I often found myself wondering, “Was that in the book?” or “I like that better than the book.” There was never a moment when I felt the series wasn’t doing the original novel justice. Rather, the changes made the whole story more honest. Everything shown told openly, including Hannah’s graphic suicide scene, and this way of showing events makes the whole narrative compelling.

2. Point of View

Photo by Christian Fregnan on Unsplash

The viewpoint in the book is limited to Hannah and Clay, but the show expands scenes in a way that develops the entire world and all of the characters in Hannah’s life. Giving the full picture of what happened through multiple viewpoints helped me put the events together in a more complete way, and I felt more strongly connected to them on an emotional level than with the book characters. Each of them became real, and their roles in the events leading up to her death were more poignant.

It helped that the entire cast was amazing.

3. Length

With lower word counts in average YA fiction, Jay Asher faced certain constraints. However with 13 episodes, the writers of the series could expand the entire story and character development over a longer timeline. In particular, Hanna herself became three-dimensional in the series, and that gave her character a depth that felt so much stronger than in the novel.

In fact this storytelling technique of using multiple episodes in a series to tell a whole story, such as with Netflix’s Stranger Things, has become both popular and effective because of the binge-watching phenomenon. A great many of us will happily watch an entire season of a series in a weekend the way we’d watch a two-hour movie, so the effect feels very much the same except more satisfying because there is… more.

Which leads me to my closing point. Sometimes writers don’t know when to stop. There’s the tendency to conclude that if audiences liked the show so much, maybe they’ll want more. Another season. Another story. They think, “Hey, the book ended here, but maybe we could come up with something.”

Just don’t.

With Thirteen Reasons Why, Netflix should have stopped with Season 1 along with the novel. The End.

If you liked Jay Asher’s book and are looking for similar reads, check out my blog, 6 Gripping Books about Depression and Anxiety Struggles. Happy reading!

Khristina Chess is the award-winning author of several YA novels about troubled teens turning corners. You can find her on Amazon, Goodreads, and Twitter as an active daily contributor in the #5amwritersclub.

Why Readers Magnet Should Fear Google and Facebook

Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash

As I’ve written before, my top blog post is about the Readers Magnet Scam. People around the world search Google and Facebook for information about this outfit and land on my page. Their call center must have been working really hard last night to find a mark because the analytics on my web site was blew up with hits from the US, Canada, UK, and even Japan.

I imagined all these indie authors in their homes, receiving calls similar to the one I did. A quick Google or Facebook search on Readers Magnet pulls up blog posts about the scam, and they have instant access to everything they need to make an informed decision.

Google Analytics Data

I began analyzing the data, and here is what I found:

Readers Magnet appears to be a company located in the Philippines or with an outsourced call center in that country which targets authors primarily in the US and Canada, with some in the UK. Other inquiries in my site came from Japan, India, Croatia, Australia, Montenegro, Nigeria, and Singapore. I believe this because—in addition to the website traffic data—I had a cryptic comment from a user Flumpas@elink.com.ph – I am Philippines who darkly said “I can justify this” in response to my original blog post about their activities.

Here is another view of the keyword analytics on traffic for the past two months relating to Readers Magnet.

They like weekends, and apparently Saturday nights are a good time for calling authors with their aggressive marketing tactics.

I have weeks of logs like this about this article.

Better Business Bureau

Digging a little further with Google research, you can find 6 complaints against this company on the San Diego, CA Better Business Bureau.

Under Customer Reviews, you can find a complaint as recent as September 7, 2018 from an author.

And in case you are interested in other complaints by consumers, you can also check out Ripoff Report as well.

Readers Magnet Publishing

They do publish books. A quick search of Readersmagnet LLC in the Search bar of Amazon.com will reveal several pages of results. Most titles were published in 2018 or 2017, and few have more than 2-3 reviews. Many have none at all. If they are helping these authors with marketing services, the results are not evident.

Are They Legit?

There are ways to check if a company is genuine, including the company website itself. Readers Magnet lists an address in the US and show a physical location on a map. Ultimately you have to trust your instincts, and if you have a “bad vibe” about the location, try to dig deeper because there are virtual office scammers. I have not investigated the address to determine its validity.

Conclusions

Independent authors have a hard enough time publishing and marketing our books. Achieving sufficient sales to recuperate the cost of gorgeous book covers and professional editing services, not to mention any additional marketing or advertisement costs, is a challenge. It may be hard to resist the seductive lure of a scammer’s quick fix and the dream of reaching wider audiences, but armed with the right information, we can help each other to avoid becoming victims of this kind of predator.

If you’ve had any experiences, please like or comment and share. I’d love to hear from you.

Why I Hate Censorship in YA Fiction

The YA fiction choices of my generation were fewer and tamer. Judy Blume was the author who took on tough topics for teens, and I believe there was some scandal surrounding the reading of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.

Photo by Maxim Lugina on Unsplash

My parents rarely censored my reading. As a latchkey GenX kid, I had free reign of their adult library, as well as Grandma’s closet of harlequin romance novels, and I read everything. Early in the book, Stephen King’s Cujo has a pretty graphic adult scene, so Judy Blume’s Forever was not as shocking for me as it might have been. But this lack of oversight is not the reason why I hate censorship.

Today’s youth have outstanding choices in YA fiction and a whole section of their own in the bookstore, so they don’t have to pillage their parents’ shelves for good reading material. Some critics argue that dark themes in YA literature are contributing to the violence in schools, ranging from bullying to gang violence, and therefore we should censor the books that teens read for their own good.

Here's why I hate censorship.

1.     Books Are Not Bad

I never want to be afraid to read books—any books, not even books whose content I might disagree with. Words and ideas are information that a thinking person can use to make better decisions. I want to always be free to choose for myself whether or not to read a particular book. Shouldn’t young adults also be able to make up their minds about what to read, particularly 15-18-year-olds who are developing their intellect?

2.     The Digital Age Makes Banning Books Silly

My parents had the ability to block my reading habits. They could have restricted my library access, and I didn’t have money to buy books on my own. There wasn’t an Internet or eBooks.

But today, banning books just seems silly. Students have phones with unlimited access to the Internet and the ability to download anything they want. If some school or library decides that Jay Asher’s Thirteen Reasons Why or Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian should be banned from the school library, students can simply download the books on their phones. Who can stop this? What is the point of restricting access to these books? It seems like a silly protest.

Another reason why banning books is foolishness in the digital age is because students can find and read books that never even arrive at school libraries for the local school boards, librarians, and other “powers that be” to ban, like Straight A’s by Khristina Chess.

3.     Banning Books Doesn’t Erase Teen Problems

Okay, so parents censor the books that their fragile children are reading, and now nothing bad will happen to them, right? Wrong. The bullies are still in their schools, as well as the drugs. Guess what? Girls still get raped at parties, and girls still cut themselves and drink too much, and kids die from driving while under the influence. Banning books about these things doesn’t stop them from happening.

4.     It’s about Power, Not Helping

Maybe people who want to censor the reading material of others truly believe their motives are well-intentioned and good. Their concern comes from a well-intentioned place. Maybe. My perception is that those who want to control others, like the book-banners in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, really want power.

• I know what’s best for you.

• I know what you can handle (and what you can’t)

• I know what you need (and you don’t)

The only good thing to come from banning books is that it drives popularity. What’s better than forbidden fruit, right? If it’s banned, it must be good. If you’ll look at the Banned Books that Shaped America, you’ll see some titles that have become some of our literary staples:

• Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

• Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Do you hate censorship too? Start today by checking out some of The Best Banned YA Books and Why You Should Read Them.

Khristina Chess is the award-winning author of several YA novels about troubled teens turning corners. You can find her on Amazon, Goodreads, and Twitter as an active daily contributor in the #5amwritersclub.

13 Reasons Why Adults Love Reading YA

The wonderful thing about the novel as an art form is that its appreciation is subjective. I don’t care for The Great Gatsby, but some people find it amazing. I’d rather pick up Stephen King than Jane Austen, although these days I’m reading a lot more YA than horror.

Market statistics point to more than 50% of YA readers are adults like me. This information has led many to speculate on the trend, but I’ve come up with 13 reasons why I think adults love reading YA:

1.      Amazing Story

First and foremost, I want a great story. I’m a plot junkie. I want pages that turn, chapters that beg me to leave the light on for ten more minutes, and twists that I don’t expect. Not every book is a suspense thriller, but I don’t want the whole novel to be predictable. Surprise me a few times.

Recommendation: Missing by Kelly Armstrong and One of Us Is Lying by Karen McManus

2.      Real, Sweet Love

It seems the teenage love triangle has fallen out of favor these days, but I still enjoy a sweet love story, like Everything Everything by Nicola Yoon. When the emotional stuff is done well, not love at first sight or some other contrived device, but the excited fever that comes with new, young love—that’s something! It’s complicated, clean, and messy all at the same time.

Recommendations: Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell and Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz

3.      Delightful Writing

Some of the YA novels have witty and beautiful language. David Arnold’s Mosquitoland is particularly lyrical: “So I float in silence, watching the final touches of this perfect moonrise, and in a moment of heavenly revelation, it occurs to me that detours are not without purpose. They provide safe passage to a destination, avoiding pitfalls in the process.”

Recommendation: The Absolute Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

4.      Tough Topics

Many of the breakout novels and films in YA have been in the category of issue-driven fiction. Jay Asher’s Thirteen Reasons Why tackles the topics of bullying and suicide. John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars is about children with terminal cancer. Some critics argue that authors are too cavalier with their treatment of topics like mental health, eating disorders, physical illnesses, self-harm, depression, or other issues, but others applaud such books for taking on the challenging stories and handling them with honesty, humor, and a bit of hope.

Recommendations: All The Bright Places by Jennifer Niven and The Future Unborn by Khristina Chess

5.      Memorable Characters

The best characters stay with me long after I’ve closed the book, and YA has characters with strong, memorable voices.

Recommendations: Elizabeth Scott’s Living Dead Girl and By The Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead by Julie Anne Peters

6.      Breadth of Genre

Within YA, there’s so much variety. In addition to contemporary literary novels, I’ve discovered books that are historical, like Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson or The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. The dystopian future is popular in YA and adult alike. My whole introduction to YA started back with a teen vampire named Edward and a friend who said, “You have to read this! You won’t believe how good it is.”

Recommendation: Razorland Series by Ann Aguirre and The Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer

7.      Unpretentious

Because YA novels focus on story and have a reduced page length from mainstream literary fiction, most authors don’t waste time on fluff. Descriptions are not overly complex and drawn-out, and characters are developed without so much backstory that you know their kin’s next-of-kin. The language is meant to be readable at the high school level. This is not War and Peace or Waiting for Godot.

Recommendations: Me, Earl, and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews

8.      Universal Experience

Most YA novels have some coming of age aspect to them, and all readers relate to this, young and not-so-young. The journey of change is one that most of us continue into our twenties, thirties, and beyond as life events and stages continue. Leaving high school to go to college and having your kids graduate high school are similar moments, evoking common feelings and memories.

Recommendations: Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between by Jennifer Smith and The Unexpected Everything by Morgan Matson

9.      Diversity

YA novels seem to make a more concerted effort to include diverse characters in them, as well as to publish books by diverse authors. This opens the genre to more inclusive voices and stories.

Recommendations: The Astonishing Color of After by Emily X. R. Pan and The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

10.   Creative Techniques

Many YA novels employ creative storytelling techniques. They can be more visual, a step away from picture books, as if still in transition from their middle-grade and elementary levels. This format gives the novels a fresh appeal that reminds the reader the characters are still students.

Recommendations: Me, Earl, and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews and The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson

11.   Movies

Sometimes the movie tie-in is the hook that brings adult readers to YA novels. YA novels have been made into movies and television series more than ever: The Maze Runner, Divergent, The Hunger Games, Thirteen Reasons Why, If I Stay, Pretty Little Liars, The Fault of Our Stars, and so on. Sometimes the movie is the hook that brings adult readers into the world of YA fiction.

12.   Cost

A lot of YA fiction is cheaper than adult books because of its shorter page count.

13.   Positive Escapism

For those who read for respite from lives that are full of stress and worries, YA fiction offers positive escapism. Even in those “tough topics” books, the themes are overwhelmingly full of hope and good messages. The novels portray strong young women and men who are learning about life and finding their voices. The characters explore friendship, love, loss, and the other range of experiences that it means to be human.

All of these are great reasons to pick up a YA book. They’re some of the reasons why I love reading and writing them. It’s become my go-to genre, slowly displacing the literary fiction on some of my bookshelves at home.

What about you? Start today by exploring new authors of contemporary YA.

Khristina Chess is the award-winning author of several YA novels about troubled teens turning corners. You can find her on Amazon, Goodreads, and Twitter as an active daily contributor in the #5amwritersclub.