YA Bookalikes for Summer Reading
Not sure what to recommend next for your teen? These in-the-adult-section novels are great follow-ups to classic kid favorites and great YA books to read this summer.
IF YOU LOVED: The Giver
CHECK OUT: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
There’s a reason utopia means “nowhere.” The perfect world always comes at a cost. Lowry’s starkly beautiful dystopia reads like a little sister to Ishiguro’s lyrical science-fiction novel about an idyllic English boarding school where special children are groomed for a bleak future. The same questions resonate through both books: Who decides how the truth is revealed? What does it mean to have free will? What makes a person alive? And in both books, the answers are complicated.
IF YOU LOVED: The Harry Potter series
CHECK OUT: The Magicians by Lev Grossman
Just like the indomitable Mr. Potter, Brooklyn teen Quentin Coldwater finds himself enrolled in a school for magicians. But he quickly discovers Brakebills Academy is quite unlike Hogwarts and that being a magician isn’t a cure-all for dissatisfaction with everyday life. Quentin doesn't share Harry's likable heroism, which makes him a more complicated protagonist.
IF YOU LOVED: Sideways Stories from Wayside School
CHECK OUT: Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Heller takes a darker view of human nonsense in his World War II classic, but there’s plenty of similarity between characters like the major who never sees anyone in his office when he’s in his office and the teacher who sends herself home on the kindergarten bus for (temporarily) turning evil.
IF YOU LOVED: The Hunger Games
CHECK OUT: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Panem is an equal opportunity dystopia—young men and women are equally at risk in the country’s annual battle-to-the-death games. But in the republic of Gilead, a totalitarian Christian theocracy, women like Offred must play an even more dangerous game. Atwood’s dark imagined future is ripe for rebellion, but rising up against an entrenched government in The Handmaid’s Tale is not as easy — or dramatic — as taking on Panem’s President Snow.
We’re reprinting some of Amy’s summer reading series favorites from home/school/life magazine. This list appeared in our 2014 summer reading guide.
If you can’t get enough of Greek mythology, add these myth-inspired books to your summer reading list.