100 books like The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be

I could not put this down. This book immediately drew me in and never let me go.

The way the characters were written made me feel like I intimately knew each person, and the many mysteries and secrets among and between each family member made me want to know more. The undeniable effect of how we deal–or don’t deal–with grief is a thread throughout the book, one that I definitely connected with.

But, it was how each family member pursued, put down, or attempted to pass down their hopes and dreams that made me think about the dynamics within my own family.

The Space Between Worlds is less time travel than it is parallel dimensional travel but I think it’s worth fibbing for.

Cara is a traverser – someone who can travel between different versions of her world. She retrieves data about those worlds – what went wrong and what went right – and brings it back to her own for study. She can do this because the Caras in these worlds are all dead. Except when one isn’t, royally mucking up her job.

This book is gritty and queer (though I’m not going to promise an ending wrapped up in a bow) and the method of travel the author created makes for a unique and thought-provoking read.

I love books that make me feel like a teenager again. That makes me remember the swoon of first love and how vulnerable it can be figuring out who you are. In the Key of Us not only accomplishes this once, but twice through the dual-POV narration of Andi and Zora, two of the only Black girls at a summer music camp. This middle grade novel tackles topics such as death and anxiety and mental health with such delicacy and warmth. This book felt like a crackling bonfire, lighting up young aches that I’d forgotten were there.

I was first captivated by the stunning cover, but stayed because I love stories about groups of friends and the emotions and connections that bind them for better or worse. Deep in Providence showcases this beautifully through the lenses of Miliani, Inez, and Natalie, three girls whose lives are shattered when their friend Jasmine is killed by a drunk driver. The girls turn to Filipino spells and folklore in an attempt to bring Jasmine back from the dead. Desperation and yearning bleed through these pages, and by the end, I was sobbing. This book is a beautiful exploration of grief, told in the tenderest way.

I try to limit the amount of physical books I purchase because my apartment is already overflowing with them. But there are some books so good, I need a copy of my own—The Weight of the Stars is one of those. Told in short, micro-fiction style chapters is the story of Ryann, a girl who dreams of traveling to space but doesn’t see a way out her trailer park on the “wrong” side of town. But then she meets Alexandria, a mysterious loner who is angry at the world because her own mother is an astronaut who volunteered for a one-way trip to the edge of the solar system. Lush and heartbreaking, this queer, big-hearted book cemented Ancrum as one of my must-read authors.

This was one of the most sensitive portrayals of the effects of deportation on families that I’ve ever read.

I resonated even more strongly because it was set in New York City (my hometown), and the descriptions of different neighborhoods really came to life. I also appreciated the dual point of view narration (the story is told from both the mother and son’s perspective), and I could relate to both characters, even when they made difficult choices that ended up being hurtful. 

Chung was born and adopted five years after me, also in Washington state. Like me, she wrestled her whole life with feelings of shame and discomfort around her adoption. Unlike me, Chung is a woman of color, adopted into a white family in a super-white town where she stood out like a sore thumb. Unlike me, Chung took the brave step, before having her own children, of searching for her birth family.

While I read this vulnerable and beautifully written memoir, I felt like I was walking with Chung on her journey as an adoptee and mother, all the while wishing I could be as brave as Chung. This is a truly inspiring story.

When I picked up this book at a local bookstore in Indiana, I knew that it was going to take me places – the cover photo of two adorable children, one white and one black, standing in front of a yellow school bus told me that.

Julia Scheeres’s parents adopted an African American child her age named David, and the two became inseparable. Their extraordinary story – their intense commitment to each other as they move through dystopian settings ranging from the bleakness of rural Indiana to a strict religious reform school in the tropical Caribbean – was inspiring.

And the jaw-dropping ending of the book just broke me into pieces. 

I should have read this book years ago. This singularly brilliant memoir is an undoing of the most pernicious adoption myth: that which traces the success of adopted children to their new families.

In this case, a bright and talented young woman makes it out of the foster system before eventually going to Penn and becoming an accomplished journalist and professor, but her adoption out of foster care turns into yet another traumatic experience.

Ambitiously, Patton spins that trauma outward, expanding the background until it spans centuries. When, by the close, she makes the start of a career for herself, that triumph is pretty much hers alone.

The writing is gorgeous, but it is the story – heartbreaking at first and then, as it closes, heartwarming – that grabs you.

Rebecca Carroll, marked as black, is adopted by white parents and raised in an all-white town. Determined to learn more about herself, she sets out to reconnect with her birth parents, but what she learns is a set of hard, painful truths. As the thread slowly unspools, her white birth mother is also revealed as abusive and controlling.

Still searching for a sense of who she is, Carroll discovers her own blackness through found family, and by doing so challenges her readers to cling tight to anyone who makes us whole.