100 books like I Wanna Be Where You Are

Two words: Wesley Rush. I’m a sucker for a bad boy with charisma. And Bianca—my girl!—definitely gives Wesley a run for his money. I love her feistiness. Wesley dubs Bianca the “Designated Ugly Fat Friend” which is a huge no-no, but somehow he and Bianca began a steamy enemies with benefits fling and I lived for it. Naturally, their walls began to come down the closer they got, and there’s a line in the book (I will not spoil it) that took my breath away and made me fall completely in love with Wesley. Skip the movie, read the book! I loved Keplinger’s authentic uncensored teen voice in this. It made me a fan.

First things first, Simone Elkeles is my favorite YA author, and I couldn’t do a list of recs without mentioning one of her books, and my all-time favorite has always been Leaving Paradise. I also recommend LP because it’s close to my own book in that it features a reformed bad boy, Caleb, freshly on probation who’s trying to navigate his way into society and fix his “mistakes.” I so love the sorta forbidden dynamic between him and Maggie, because Caleb is actually on probation for hitting Maggie in a hit-and-run while drinking and driving. So not only is he trying to win over his former friends, parents, and town, he’s gotta make things right with Maggie, who is not giving him any play whatsoever—in the beginning! Love love Caleb’s voice in this novel.

This title is for the upper YA crowd, I’m talking sixteen going on seventeen because while set in high school, this read is steamy. What I love about this book is the humane side of things. Ares Hidalgo is far from perfect. He messes up with our heroine Raquel quite a few times, and I love that he’s flawed and kept trying to right his wrongs. I just loved Ares’s boldness, from stealing Raquel’s WiFi, to climbing through her window to fix said WiFi when it’s down, to calling her out on her crush on him. This book is total wish fulfillment, because imagine obtaining your crush!! Do watch the Netflix movie as well!

Right away, I really loved the musical connection for the male lead’s side. He and his siblings are named after musicians, and I’m big on character names and I adored that element. Not to mention I’m a huge Swiftie and I peeped the title reference right away. Hendrix or “Drix” is recently released from juvie for a crime he did not commit and is inducted into a program aiming to give young offenders second chances and rehabilitate them, sponsored by the governor. And who does he meet while doing press releases for this program? The governor’s daughter Elle! This forbidden element had me engrossed immediately. I loved the idea of Drix being off-limits for Elle, but him being the only person she could be herself with and open up to!

“Peoples,” the protagonist of Jackson’s coming of age novel is apt to announce, an African-Americanized riff on Shakespeare’s “Friends, Romans, countrymen” which Jackson’s narrator voices from the recesses of his Mississippi, Portland neighborhood. Everything about this book is centered by the protagonist’s remarkable voice, a voice that very much inspired me to write my book. This is to say nothing of the deeply tragic, crack-era intergenerational family drama that The Residue Years tells.

Evie Thomas and her family are forced to move away from her childhood home, leaving behind family and friends to protect her father from his fellow officers. Evie has to get used to a new name, life without her older sister, and most importantly, life with her father, whose deep depression has transformed him from a lively, protector to a sad man who sits by the window, gazing at nothing. Tackling depression using an African American protagonist, Woodson has written a moving coming of age novel that shines the light on what it means to live with someone suffering from mental illness. I felt a kinship with Woodson because both of our characters have fathers whose mental health deeply affects how they move about in the world. 

Set in Georgia in 1958, Tang Mae is the darkest of ten fatherless children and considered by her mother the ugliest. However, she is selected to attend a white school because she is gifted. This gives her an opportunity to change her life, but she must first break free from her mother's grasp.

There were many times I wanted to put this book down and not finish it. The brutality and abuse were hard to bear. And yet, I felt compelled to read the entire thing because I wanted to see Tang Mae succeed.

It inspired me that she never gave up on her dream of completing her education despite all the abuse and loss she experienced. I spent a lot of time thinking about this book long after I read it.  

Nothing Special follows Mae, a teenager in 1967, who drops out of school and becomes a typist in Andy Warhol’s Factory studio.

Transcribing taped conversations of Warhol and his contemporaries, Mae feels like she’s entered a new world – along with Shelley, a fellow typist who soon becomes a close friend. But is Shelley all she seems? This is a closely observed psychological novel exploring what it means to truly know another person, and how much we have the right to expect from our friends.

The writing zips along effortlessly, driven by Mae’s poised, ironic voice, which expertly captures the ersatz confidence of being young.  

It’s been years since I first read this book, but I still remember how I felt when I turned the last page, stunned by the voice and the way Jones used horror and humor to explore such tender parts of being alive. I was obsessed with the language, but also the imagery and the characters, vicious yet vulnerable.

Jones has (rightfully!) become even more popular through his Indian Lake trilogy, but I always shove this book into my friends’ hands at the first opportunity because I think about it easily once a week, and I think it’s beautiful and also very fun.

I loved the honesty of Charlie’s narration and how no subject was off-limits. While it might feel a bit overwhelming that Charlie deals with homophobia, suicide, rape, PTSD, mental illness, and child abuse, I thought Charlie’s acknowledgment of these social issues was realistic.

I often feel like these and other human problems are on my mind in a way that restricts my outer actions and that most other people don’t think about things like these as frequently as I do. Charlie made me feel understood.