Lily's Crossing
by Patricia Reilly Giff
Middle grade · ages 10–14 · grades 5–9 · 730L
A quiet masterpiece about privilege colliding with wartime reality—Giff trusts the reader to sit with moral ambiguity and the cost of a single lie.
For a reader who just finished
Books like Five Feet Apart
after Five Feet Apart by Rachael Lippincott · ages 14–18
Young adult · grades 9–12 · 750L
A genuinely affecting love story that doesn't sentimentalize illness—Stella and Will feel like real teenagers grappling with mortality, autonomy, and the weight of choice.
Same style
Starfish
by Akemi Dawn Bowman
Young adult · ages 14–18 · grades 9–12 · 750L
A stealthy masterpiece about bisexual Japanese-American identity and the lifelong work of separating parents' harm from parents' love—gorgeously written, structurally clever, and utterly unpatronizing.
It’s Not Like It’s A Secret
by Misa Sugiura
Young adult · ages 14–18 · grades 9–12 · 780L
A thoughtful, tender coming-of-age that centers Japanese American identity and lesbian romance without apology — funny, grounded, and earned in its emotional beats.
Stretch them up
Strange the Dreamer
by Laini Taylor
Young adult · ages 14–18 · grades 9–12 · 950L
Laini Taylor at her most lyrical and expansive—a sensual, ornate fantasy that trusts teen readers to sit in ambiguity and mystery without rushing toward answers.
The Passion of Dolssa
by Julie Berry
Young adult · ages 14–18 · grades 9–12 · 820L
A historically grounded love story about conviction and heresy that trusts teens to hold complexity—the Church isn't evil, the family's fear is rational, and Dolssa's choices carry real cost.
Children of Blood and Bone
by Tomi Adeyemi
Young adult · ages 14–18 · grades 9–12 · 820L
A genuinely epic YA fantasy grounded in West African worldbuilding and cosmology — propulsive, emotionally earned, and unafraid to let systemic oppression matter.
Complementing on a good life
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
by E. L. Konigsburg
Middle grade · ages 8–12 · grades 3–7 · 790L
A book that trusts kids to be intellectually bored and emotionally complex—Claudia's runaway isn't melodrama, it's a quiet reckoning with identity that lands harder on rereads.
The Midwife's Apprentice
by Karen Cushman
Middle grade · ages 10–14 · grades 5–9 · 780L
A Newbery winner that earns it: a girl with no name becomes herself through honest work and adult recognition; the medieval setting and childbirth apprenticeship feel urgent and real, not decorative.
True Biz
by Sara Nović
Middle grade · ages 10–14 · grades 5–9 · 820L
A genuinely original YA-crossover novel that treats Deaf culture as protagonist, not obstacle—kids learn to think in sign while wrestling with identity questions that feel urgent, not didactic.