Book picks similar to
Tag Along by Tom Ryan


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young-adult
white-pine
contemporary

The Beginning of Everything


Robyn Schneider - 2013
    Here are teens who could easily trade barbs and double entendres with the characters that fill John Green's novels."Funny, smart, and including everything from flash mobs to blanket forts to a poodle who just might be the reincarnation of Jay Gatsby, The Beginning of Everything is a refreshing contemporary twist on the classic coming-of-age novel—a heart-wrenching story about how difficult it is to play the part that people expect, and how new beginnings can stem from abrupt and tragic endings.

M or F?


Lisa Papademetriou - 2005
    Too bad Frannie’s terrified. She won’t type a word without Marcus’s help.In the chat room, Marcus and Jeffrey hit it off. But the more Marcus writes, the more he’s convinced that Jeffrey is falling for him, not Frannie.Whose romance is this anyway? Read this heartwarming comedy of errors to find out.

Faking Faith


Josie Bloss - 2011
    Thanks to a humiliating and painfully public sexting incident, Dylan has become the social pariah at her suburban Chicago high school. She's ignored by everyone--when she's not being taunted--and estranged from her two best friends. So when Dylan discovers the blogs of homeschooled fundamentalist Christian girls, she's immediately drawn into their fascinating world of hope chests, chaperoned courtships, and wifely submission. Blogging as Faith, her devout and wholesome alter ego, Dylan befriends Abigail, the online group's queen bee. After staying with Abigail and her family for a few days, Dylan begins to grow closer to Abigail (and her intriguingly complicated older brother). Soon, Dylan is forced to choose: keep living a lie . . . or come clean and face the consequences.

Now a Major Motion Picture


Cory McCarthy - 2018
    E. Thorne. So it's just a little annoying that M. E. Thorne is her grandmother—and that Iris has to deal with the trilogy's crazy fans.When Iris gets dropped in Ireland for the movie adaptation, she sees her opportunity: if she can shut down production, the Elementia craze won't grow any bigger, and she can finally have a normal life. Not even the rascally-cute actor Eamon O'Brien can get in her way.But the crew's passion is contagious, and as Iris begins to find herself in the very world she has avoided her whole life, she realizes that this movie might just be amazing…

The Pearl Thief


Elizabeth Wein - 2017
    And once she returns to her grandfather’s estate, a bit banged up but alive, she begins to realize that her injury might not have been an accident. One of her family’s employees is missing, and he disappeared on the very same day she landed in the hospital.Desperate to figure out what happened, she befriends Euan McEwen, the Scottish Traveller boy who found her when she was injured, and his standoffish sister, Ellen. As Julie grows closer to this family, she experiences some of the prejudices they’ve grown used to firsthand, a stark contrast to her own upbringing, and finds herself exploring thrilling new experiences that have nothing to do with a missing-person investigation.Her memory of that day returns to her in pieces, and when a body is discovered, her new friends are caught in the crosshairs of long-held biases about Travellers. Julie must get to the bottom of the mystery in order to keep them from being framed for the crime.

You and Me and Him


Kris Dinnison - 2015
    That is Best Friend 101.” —NashMaggie and Nash are outsiders. She’s overweight. He’s out of the closet. The best of friends, they have seen each other through thick and thin, but when Tom moves to town at the start of the school year, they have something unexpected in common: feelings for the same guy. This warm, witty novel—with a clear, true voice and a clever soundtrack of musical references—sings a song of love and forgiveness.

The Summer I Wasn't Me


Jessica Verdi - 2014
    And now she's afraid that what's left of her family is going to fall apart for good.Lexi knows she can fix everything. She can change. She can learn to like boys. New Horizons summer camp has promised to transform her life, and there's nothing she wants more than to start over.But sometimes love has its own path...

The People We Choose


Katelyn Detweiler - 2021
    She's never wanted anything more than her best friends, her moms, their house in the woods, and their family-run yoga studio--except maybe knowing who her sperm donor is. Her curiosity has been building for years, and she can finally find out this summer when she turns eighteen.But when Max and his family move into the sad old house across the woods from Calliope, she realizes it's nice to get to know someone new, so nice that she decides to break her no dating rule. The stability of her longtime trio wavers as she and Max start to spend more and more time together.When Calliope finally finds out who her sperm donor is, she learns a truth more shocking and unfathomable than she could have ever dreamed: her donor is Max's father. How is this even possible? As she and Max struggle to redefine their friendship, Calliope realizes that she can turn a horrific situation into something positive by recognizing and accepting that family is both the one we are born into and the one we choose to make.

Falling into Place


Amy Zhang - 2014
    cause and effect.Liz Emerson doesn't understand any of it.But I do.I understand how we fall. Where we fall. Why we fall.I understand her sadness and loneliness and silence, her shattered heart.It doesn't have to be this way, does it?It wasn't always this way, was it?Stay alive, Liz Emerson, stay alive.On the day Liz Emerson tries to die, they had reviewed Newton's laws of motion in physics class. Then, after school, she put them into practice by running her Mercedes off the road. Why did Liz Emerson decide that the world would be better off without her? Why did she give up? The nonlinear novel pieces together the short and devastating life of Meridian High's most popular junior girl. Mass, acceleration, momentum, force—Liz didn't understand it in physics, and even as her Mercedes hurtles toward the tree, she doesn't understand it now. How do we impact one another? How do our actions reverberate? What does it mean to be a friend? To love someone? To be a daughter? Or a mother? Is life truly more than cause and effect? Amy Zhang's haunting and universal story will appeal to fans of Lauren Oliver, Gayle Forman, and Jay Asher.

The Last to Let Go


Amber Smith - 2018
    She’s transferring schools, starting fresh, and making plans for college so she can finally leave her hometown, her family, and her past behind.But all of her dreams are shattered one hot summer afternoon when her mother is arrested for killing Brooke’s abusive father. No one really knows what happened that day, if it was premeditated or self-defense, whether it was right or wrong. And now Brooke and her siblings are on their own.In a year of firsts—the first year without parents, first love, first heartbreak, and her first taste of freedom—Brooke must confront the shadow of her family’s violence and dysfunction, as she struggles to embrace her identity, finds her true place in the world, and learns how to let go.

Nice Try, Jane Sinner


Lianne Oelke - 2018
    After a personal crisis and her subsequent expulsion from high school, she’s going nowhere fast. Jane’s well-meaning parents push her to attend a high school completion program at the nearby Elbow River Community College, and she agrees, on one condition: she gets to move out.   Jane tackles her housing problem by signing up for House of Orange, a student-run reality show that is basically Big Brother, but for Elbow River Students. Living away from home, the chance to win a car (used, but whatever), and a campus full of people who don't know what she did in high school… what more could she want? Okay, maybe a family that understands why she’d rather turn to Freud than Jesus to make sense of her life, but she'll settle for fifteen minutes in the proverbial spotlight.   As House of Orange grows from a low-budget web series to a local TV show with fans and shoddy T-shirts, Jane finally has the chance to let her cynical, competitive nature thrive. She'll use her growing fan base, and whatever Intro to Psychology can teach her, to prove to the world—or at least viewers of substandard TV—that she has what it takes to win.

My Beautiful Failure


Janet Ruth Young - 2012
    Billy, struggling with the deteriorating relationship with his depressed father, is the only one who understands. Through her pain, he sees hope. Through her tears, he feels her heart. And through her despair, he finds love. But is that enough?     Acclaimed author Janet Ruth Young has written a stunning and powerful story with no easy answers; it is about pain and heartbreak, reality and illusion, and finding redemption and the strength to forgive in the darkest of times.

Since You've Been Gone


Morgan Matson - 2014
    But right before what should have been the most epic summer, Sloane just…disappears. All she leaves behind is a to-do list.On it, thirteen Sloane-inspired tasks that Emily would normally never try. But what if they could bring her best friend back?Apple picking at night? Okay, easy enough.Dance until dawn? Sure. Why not?Kiss a stranger? Um... Emily now has this unexpected summer, and the help of Frank Porter (totally unexpected), to check things off Sloane's list. Who knows what she’ll find?Go skinny-dipping? Wait...what?

Undercover


Beth Kephart - 2007
    But when Elisa falls for Theo Moses, things change fast. Theo asks for verses to court the lovely Lila—a girl known for her beauty, her popularity, and a cutting ability to remind Elisa that she has none of these. At home, Elisa's father, the one person she feels understands her, has left on an extended business trip. As the days grow shorter, Elisa worries that the increasingly urgent letters she sends her father won't bring him home. Like the undercover agent she feels she has become, Elisa retreats to a pond in the woods, where her talent for ice-skating gives her the confidence to come out from under cover and take center stage. But when Lila becomes jealous of Theo's friendship with Elisa, her revenge nearly destroys Elisa's ice-skating dreams and her plan to reunite her family.National Book Award nominee Beth Kephart's first young adult novel is a stunning debut.

The Flywheel


Erin Gough - 2015
    Preferring chaos to bullying, Del makes it her mission to save her dad's crumbling café, the Flywheel, while he 'finds himself' overseas. Accompanied by her charming troublemaker best friend Charlie, Del sets out to save the cafe, keep Charlie out of prison, and maybe get a date with Rosa, the beautiful flamenco dancer from across the road. But when life is messy enough as it is, can girl-on-girl romance ever have a happy ending? This hilarious and accident-prone novel is about how to be heartbroken and how to fall in love; about rising above high-school drama and wrestling with problems that are (almost) too big. It speaks directly to teens and assures them that they’re not alone, and does it all with an abundance of heart.