So, you have read The Fault in Our Stars and you have cried with Hazel and Augustus. But you can’t get them out of your mind, can you? Well, neither can we. But we need to. In Fact, we must find our replacement for Hazel and Augustus and then some more. We are here to your rescue.
Warning: These suggestions were written after heavy research. Don’t take them lightly.
1.She is Not Invisible by Marcus Sedgwick:
I liked what The Guardian said about the book:
Jack Peak is a author struggling to finish a book and his daughter Laureth is worried about him having a breakdown. When he disappears to Switzerland and his notebook turns up in New York, Laureth is worried enough to steal her mum’s credit card and thunder off to Switzerland with her little brother Benjamin in tow. Sedgwick’s Laureth is such a vibrant and forceful character and, like Hazel and Augustus, she has a lot of poignant things to say about people who treat the ill or impaired differently. “I don’t mind being blind. What I mind is people treating me as if I’m stupid,” she rages at one point. Quite right, too.
2.Naked Without a Hat by Jeanne Willis:
Life isn’t going so well for 19-year-old Will. His mother is always nagging him about the lucky knit hat that he never takes off; his mother’s boyfriend has forbidden Will to play “Wild Thing”—the only song he knows—on the guitar; and he just got fired from his job at Burger King. But Will’s luck changes when he moves into a flat with Chrissy, James, and Rocko and gets a new job at the local park.
At the park Will meets Zara, a gypsy girl whose family is camping there illegally. Will has never been happier. Until his mother threatens to ruin everything by revealing Will’s childhood secret. Is Will and Zara’s love for each other strong enough to survive?
3.Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell:
It’s John Green’s favorite. Do I need to say more?
Two misfits.
One extraordinary love.
Eleanor:Red hair, wrong clothes. Standing behind him until he turns his head. Lying beside him until he wakes up. Making everyone else seem drabber and flatter and never good enough…Eleanor.
Park… He knows she’ll love a song before he plays it for her. He laughs at her jokes before she ever gets to the punch line. There’s a place on his chest, just below his throat, that makes her want to keep promises…Park.
Set over the course of one school year, this is the story of two star-crossed sixteen-year-olds—smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try.
4.The History of Jane Doe by Michael Belanger (I personally love the blurb and sample)
History buff Ray knows everything about the peculiar legends and lore of his rural Connecticut hometown. Burgerville’s past is riddled with green cow sightings and human groundhogs, but the most interesting thing about the present is the new girl–we’ll call her Jane Doe.
Inscrutable, cool, and above all mysterious, Jane seems as determined to hide her past as Ray is to uncover it. As fascination turns to friendship and then to something more, Ray is certain he knows Jane’s darkest, most painful secrets and Jane herself–from past to present. But when the unthinkable happens, Ray is forced to acknowledge that perhaps history can only tell us so much.
5.Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta:
Francesca is stuck at St. Sebastian’s, a boys’ school that pretends it’s coed by giving the girls their own bathroom. Her only female companions are an ultra-feminist, a rumored slut, and an impossibly dorky accordion player. The boys are no better, from Thomas, who specializes in musical burping, to Will, the perpetually frowning, smug moron that Francesca can’t seem to stop thinking about.
Then there’s Francesca’s mother, who always thinks she knows what’s best for Francesca—until she is suddenly stricken with acute depression, leaving Francesca lost, alone, and without an inkling of who she really is. Simultaneously humorous, poignant, and impossible to put down, this is the story of a girl who must summon the strength to save her family, her social life and—hardest of all—herself.
PS: Two more books you can checkout ‘All my Friends are Superheroes’ by Andrew Kaufman and ‘The Miseducation of Cameron Post’ by Emily M. Danforth
Photo via TheNerdDilettante/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
