Once Was Lost
10 best books like Once Was Lost (Sara Zarr): The Things a Brother Knows, Strings Attached, Love You Hate You Miss You, The Patron Saint of Butterflies, The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin, Secrets of Truth and Beauty, Sorta Like a Rock Star, The Big Game of Everything, The Sweetheart of Prosper County, Brutal
The Things a Brother Knows
| Author | Dana Reinhardt |
| ISBN | 0375844554 |
The story of a young marine’s return from war in the Middle East and the psychological effects it has on his family.
Finally, Levi Katznelson’s older brother, Boaz, has returned. Boaz was a high school star who had it all and gave it up to serve in a war Levi can’t understand. Things have...
| Author | Judy Blundell |
| ISBN | 0545221269 |
From National Book Award winner Judy Blundell, the tale of a sixteen-year-old girl caught in a mix of love, mystery, Broadway glamour, and Mob retribution in 1950 New York. When Kit Corrigan arrives in New York City, she doesn't have much. She's fled from her family in Providence, Rhode Island, and she's...
Love You Hate You Miss You
| Author | Elizabeth Scott |
| ISBN | 0061122831 |
Get this, I'm supposed to be starting a journal about "my journey." Please. I can see it now: Dear Diary, As I'm set adrift on this crazy sea called "life" . . . I don't think so.
It's been seventy-five days. Amy's sick of her parents suddenly taking an interest in her.
And she's really sick...
| Author | Cecilia Galante |
| ISBN | 1599902494 |
Agnes and Honey have always been best friends, but they haven't always been so different. Agnes loves being a Believer. She knows the rules at the Mount Blessing religious commune are there to make her a better person. Honey hates Mount Blessing and the control Emmanuel, their leader, has over her life....
| Author | Josh Berk |
| ISBN | 0375956999 |
Being a hefty, deaf newcomer almost makes Will Halpin the least popular guy at Coaler High. But when he befriends the only guy less popular than him, the dork-namic duo has the smarts and guts to figure out who knocked off the star quarterback. Will can’t hear what’s going on, but he’s a great observer....
| Author | Megan Frazer Blakemore |
| ISBN | 1423117115 |
And the first runner up is... When Dara Cohen was little, she was a bright, shiny star. She was the cutest seven-year-old who ever sang Ella Fitzgerald, and it was no wonder she was crowned Little Miss Maine.
That was then. Now Dara's seventeen and she's not so little anymore. So not little, that...
| Author | Matthew Quick |
| ISBN | 0316043524 |
Amber Appleton lives in a bus. Ever since her mom's boyfriend kicked them out, Amber, her mom, and her totally loyal dog, Bobby Big Boy (aka Thrice B) have been camped out in the back of Hello Yellow (the school bus her mom drives). Still, Amber, the self-proclaimed princess of hope and girl of unyielding...
| Author | Chris Lynch |
| ISBN | 0060740345 |
You have to love your family. You do, even if you don't, right? You don't have to understand them or play tennis with them, but you have to love them. It's a rule, and it's the kind of rule you don't break unless you're some kind of animal.
My brother happens to be some kind of animal. My sister rides...
| Author | Jill S. Alexander |
| ISBN | 0312548567 |
Almost-15-year-old Austin Gray is tired of standing at the curb and watching the parade pass her by. Literally. She decides this is the year she’ll ride on the hood of a shiny pickup truck in the annual parade, waving to the crowd and finally showing the town bully that she’s got what it takes to be the...
| Author | Michael Harmon |
| ISBN | 0375940995 |
With her martyr-doctor mother gone to save lives in some South American country, Poe Holly suddenly finds herself on the suburban doorstep of the father she never knew, who also happens to be a counselor at her new high school. She misses Los Angeles. She misses the guys in her punk band. Weirdly, she even...
| Author | L.K. Madigan |
| ISBN | 0547194897 |
Winner of the 2010 William C. Morris Award!
Fifteen-year-old Blake has a girlfriend and a friend who’s a girl. One of them loves him; the other one needs him.
When he snapped a picture of a street person for his photography homework, Blake never dreamed that the woman in the photo was...
| Author | Donna Freitas |
| ISBN | 0374360871 |
Antonia Lucia Labella has two secrets: at fifteen, she’s still waiting for her first kiss, and she wants to be a saint. An official one. Unfortunately, the two events Antonia’s prayed for seem equally unlikely to happen...
Antonia Lucia Labella has two secrets: at fifteen, she’s still...
| Author | Eric Luper |
| ISBN | 0061827533 |
Seth Baumgartner just had the worst day of his life.
His girlfriend dumped him (at Applebee's), he spied his father on a date with a woman who is not his mother (also at Applebee's!), and he lost his fourth job of the year. It's like every relationship he cares about is imploding, and he can't figure...
| Author | Emily Wing Smith |
| ISBN | 0738714046 |
"It's a testament to Smith's skills that although her central character speaks only through other people's recollections, his identity emerges distinctly by the end of the novel."
--Publishers Weekly, starred review
Winner of the 2009 Utah Book Award (young adult category)
Sometimes...
| Author | Cristina García |
| ISBN | 0739365150 |
Because Yumi Ruíz-Hirsch has grandparents from Japan, Cuba, and Brooklyn, her mother calls her a poster child for the twenty-first century. Yumi would laugh if only her life wasn’t getting as complicated as her heritage. All of a sudden she’s starting eighth grade with a girl who collects tinfoil...
| Author | Ann Dee Ellis |
| ISBN | 0316013641 |
Stuck at home caring for her severely depressed mother and abandoned by her father, Mazzy has only the day-to-day dramas of her neighborhood to keep her busy. But between flirting with the boy next door and worrying about the fact that she's flat-chested, Mazzy has to face the fact that her mom is emotionally...
| Author | Delia Ephron |
| ISBN | 0060747161 |
What does you in—brain or heart? Frannie asks herself this question when, a week before she turns fifteen, her dad dies, leaving her suddenly deprived of the only human being on planet Earth she feels understands her. Frannie struggles to make sense of a world that no longer seems safe, a world in which...
| Author | Gene Fehler |
| ISBN | 0618843485 |
It's the last inning of a high school baseball game between arch-rivals Oak Grove and Compton. Center fielder Luke "Wizard" Wallace steps up to the plate--and is hit by a beanball, a wild pitch that shatters his skull, destroys the vision in his left eye, and changes his life forever.
In this riveting...
| Author | Robin Epstein |
| ISBN | 0803733828 |
Fifteen-year-old Grace Manning is a candy striper in a nursing home, and Mr. Sands is the one patient who makes the job bearable. He keeps up with her sarcasm, teaches her to play poker . . . and one day cheerfully asks her to help him die. At first Grace says no way, but as Mr. Sands's disease progresses, she's...
Ever since her mother passed away, Katie's been alone in her too-big house with her genius dad, who restores old paintings for a living. Katie takes a summer job at a garden estate, where, with the help of two brothers and a glamorous librarian, she soon becomes embroiled in decoding a mystery. There are...
We were going to see the world together, Lindsay and I. We were going to eat it up, whole. But it didn't happen that way. It didn't happen that way at all....
When Chloe's parents decide to take her to Europe the summer before senior year of high school, she's ecstatic...she only wishes her best friend,...
| Author | Mary E. Pearson |
| ISBN | 0805088288 |
Destiny Faraday makes a point of keeping her distance from her classmates at Hedgebrook Academy. Her number-one rule: Don’t get attached. But one day, unexpectedly finding a car at their disposal, Destiny and three of her classmates embark on an unauthorized road trip.
They’re searching...
| Author | Siobhan Vivian |
| ISBN | 0545004071 |
Portrait of the artist as a young girl, from new teen writer Siobhan Vivian
Emily is ready for a change. She's been in the same town with the same friends for a long time...and none of them really understand her art. But when she goes to Philadelphia for a summer art institute, she suddenly finds...
