Book picks similar to
The Stillness Before the Start by Jennifer Ann Shore


romance
young-adult
contemporary
goodreads-giveaways

Being Sloane Jacobs


Lauren Morrill - 2014
    What she does know is that she’d give anything to escape the mass of misery that is her life. Now meet Sloane Devon Jacobs, a spunky ice hockey player from Philly who’s been suspended from her team for too many aggressive hip checks. Her punishment? Hockey camp, now, when she’s playing the worst she’s ever played. If she messes up? Her life will be over.When the two Sloanes meet by chance in Montreal and decide to trade places for the summer, each girl thinks she’s the lucky one: no strangers to judge or laugh at Sloane Emily, no scouts expecting Sloane Devon to be a hero. But it didn’t occur to Sloane E. that while avoiding sequins and axels she might meet a hockey hottie—and Sloane D. never expected to run into a familiar (and very good-looking) face from home. It’s not long before the Sloanes discover that convincing people you’re someone else might be more difficult than being yourself.

I'm Not Missing


Carrie Fountain - 2018
    We won’t go begging for scraps.When Syd runs away suddenly and inexplicably in the middle of their senior year, Miranda is abandoned once again, left to untangle the questions of why Syd left, where she is—and if she’s even a friend worth saving. Her only clue is Syd’s discarded pink leopard print cell phone and a single text contained there from the mysterious HIM. Along the way, forced to step out from Syd’s enormous shadow, Miranda finds herself stumbling into first love with Nick Allison of all people and learning what it means to be truly seen, to be finally not missing in her own life.

As She Fades


Abbi Glines - 2018
    They were supposed to spend the summer planning for college, for a bright future full of possibility. Together. Instead, Vale spends long days in the hospital, hoping Crawford will awaken.Slate Allen, a college friend of Vale's brother, has been visiting his dying uncle at the same hospital. When he and Vale meet, she can't deny the flutter of an illicit attraction. She tries to ignore her feelings, but she's not immune to Slate's charm. Slowly, they form a cautious friendship.Then, Crawford wakes up . . . with no memory of Vale or their relationship. Heartbroken, Vale opts to leave for college and move on with her life. Except now, she's in Slate's territory, and their story is about to take a very strange turn.

Into the Light


L.B. Simmons - 2014
    Trust me when I say, it's a breathtaking sight to see. You burn as bright as the sun."When Aubrey Miller begins her education at Titan University, she is no longer the beautiful, blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl of her youth. In fact, she's no longer even Aubrey Miller. Overcome with guilt and unable to cope with the loss of her beloved family, she has long since buried eight-year old Aubrey along with them and transformed herself into Raven Miller. Now with jet-black hair, multiple sets of eccentric contact lenses, and several facial piercings, she's veiled herself in complete darkness as a form of protection for herself, as well as others. As she enters her first year of college, her goal is simple: Earn a degree with the least amount of social interaction as possible. What she never anticipates is the formation of very unlikely relationships with two people who will change her life in ways she never believed possible: Quinn Matthews, the overtly cheerful pageant queen, and Kaeleb McMadden, a childhood friend who never really let her go. Over the years, as their connections intertwine and strengthen, a seemingly indestructible bond is formed between the three. And eventually, the ties of friendship and discovery of first love begin to coax her from her darkened path as they slowly bring Aubrey back to life. But when faced with the possibility of yet another death, one from which she may never recover, Aubrey finds herself lost again, burying herself deeper than ever before beneath the familiar abyss of her fears. Spanning the course of four years, this is the story of a young woman's plight to finally reemerge, finding strength within unbreakable bonds as she delivers herself from her own manufactured darkness and safely back . . . Into the Light. ****WARNING - Due to the graphic nature of some scenes, this book is not recommended for those who are particularly sensitive to the death of a child and/or suicide and is intended for mature audiences only. Contains adult language and themes.****

Better Off Friends


Elizabeth Eulberg - 2014
    Everyone says guys and girls can’t be just friends, but these two are. They hang out after school, share tons of inside jokes, their families are super close, and Levi even starts dating one of Macallan’s friends. They are platonic and happy that way.Eventually they realize they’re best friends—which wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t keep getting in each other’s way. Guys won’t ask Macallan out because they think she’s with Levi, and Levi spends too much time joking around with Macallan, and maybe not enough time with his date. They can’t help but wonder . . . are they more than friends or are they better off without making it even more complicated?

By the Book


Amanda Sellet - 2020
    So when a girl at her new high school nearly succumbs to the wiles of a notorious cad, Mary starts compiling the Scoundrel Survival Guide, a rundown of literary types to be avoided at all costs.Unfortunately, Mary is better at dishing out advice than taking it—and the number one bad boy on her list is terribly debonair. As her best intentions go up in flames, Mary discovers life doesn’t follow the same rules as fiction. If she wants a happy ending IRL, she’ll have to write it herself.

My Eyes Are Up Here


Laura Zimmermann - 2020
    30H, for example. Fifteen-year-old Greer Walsh hasn't been fazed by basic algebra since fifth grade, but for the last year, 30H has felt like an unsolvable equation - one that's made her world a very small, very lonely place. 30H is her bra size - or it was the last time anyone checked. She stopped letting people get that close to her with a tape measure a while ago.Ever since everything changed the summer before ninth grade, Greer has felt out of control. She can't control her first impressions, the whispers that follow, or the stares that linger after. The best she can do is put on her faithful XXL sweatshirt and let her posture - and her expectations for other people - slump.But people - strangers and friends - seem strangely determined to remind her that life is not supposed to be this way. Despite carefully avoiding physical contact and anything tighter than a puffy coat, Greer finds an unexpected community on the volleyball squad, the team that hugs between every point and wears a uniform "so tight it can squeeze out tears." And then there's Jackson Oates, newly arrived at her school and maybe actually more interested in her banter than her breasts.Laura Zimmermann's debut is both laugh-out-loud funny and beautifully blunt, vulnerable and witty, heartbreaking and hopeful. And it will invite listeners to look carefully at a girl who just wants to be seen for all she is.

Swear on This Life


Renee Carlino - 2016
    As an adjunct writing instructor at UC San Diego with her own stalled literary career and a bumpy long-term relationship, Emiline isn’t thrilled to celebrate the accomplishments of a young and gifted writer.Yet from the very first page, Emiline is entranced by the story of Emerson and Jackson, two childhood best friends who fall in love and dream of a better life beyond the long dirt road that winds through their impoverished town in rural Ohio.That’s because the novel is patterned on Emiline’s own dark and desperate childhood, which means that “J. Colby” must be Jase: the best friend and first love she hasn’t seen in over a decade. Far from being flattered that he wrote the novel from her perspective, Emiline is furious that he co-opted her painful past and took some dramatic creative liberties with the ending.The only way she can put her mind at ease is to find and confront “J. Colby,” but is she prepared to learn the truth behind the fiction?

Breathless


Jennifer Niven - 2020
    She doesn't even need to be in love. Then her dad drops a bombshell: he's leaving Claude's mother. Suddenly, Claude's entire world feels like a lie, and her future anything but under control.After: Claude's mom whisks them away to the last place Claude could imagine nursing a broken heart: a remote, mosquito-infested island off the coast of Georgia. But then Jeremiah Crew happens. Miah is a local trail guide with a passion for photography--and a past he doesn't like to talk about. He's brash and enigmatic, and even more infuriatingly, he's the only one who seems to see Claude for who she wants to be. So when Claude decides to sleep with Miah, she tells herself it's just sex, nothing more. There's not enough time to fall in love, especially if it means putting her already broken heart at risk.Compulsively readable and impossible to forget, Jennifer Niven's luminous new novel is an insightful portrait of a young woman ready to write her own story.

Lovely, Dark and Deep


Amy McNamara - 2012
    Though she lived through the accident that killed her boyfriend Patrick, the girl she used to be didn’t survive. Instead of heading off to college as planned, Wren retreats to her father’s studio in the far-north woods of Maine. Somewhere she can be alone.Then she meets Cal Owen. Dealing with his own troubles, Cal’s hiding out too. When the chemistry between them threatens to pull Wren from her hard-won isolation, Wren has to choose: risk opening her broken heart to the world again, or join the ghosts who haunt her.

Don't Breathe a Word


Holly Cupala - 2012
    She can take his cruel words, his tender words . . . until the night they go too far.To escape, Joy sacrifices her suburban life to find the one who offered his help, a homeless boy called Creed. He introduces her to a world of fierce loyalty, to its rules of survival, and to love—a world she won’t easily let go.Set against the backdrop of the streets of Seattle, Holly Cupala’s power­ful new novel explores the subtleties of abuse, the secrets we keep, and the ways to redemption. But above all, it is an unflinching story about the extraordinary lengths one girl will go to discover her own strength.

How to Hack a Heartbreak


Kristin Rockaway - 2019
    Swipe left for disaster.By day, Mel Strickland is an underemployed helpdesk tech at a startup incubator, Hatch, where she helps entitled brogrammers—"Hatchlings"—who can't even fix their own laptops, but are apparently the next wave of startup geniuses. And by night, she goes on bad dates with misbehaving dudes she's matched with on the ubiquitous dating app, Fluttr.But after one dick pic too many, Mel has had it. Using her brilliant coding skills, she designs an app of her own, one that allows users to log harrassers and abusers in online dating space. It's called JerkAlert, and it goes viral overnight.Mel is suddenly in way over her head. Worse still, her almost-boyfriend, the dreamy Alex Hernandez—the only non-douchey guy at Hatch—has no idea she's the brains behind the app. Soon, Mel is faced with a terrible choice: one that could destroy her career, love life, and friendships, or change her life forever.

Proof of Forever


Lexa Hillyer - 2015
    Joy, Tali, Luce, and Zoe knew their final summer at Camp Okahatchee would come to an end, but they swore they’d stay friends.After: Now, two years later, their bond has faded along with those memories.Then: That is, until the fateful flash of a photo booth camera transports the four of them back in time, to the summer they were fifteen—the summer everything changed.Now: The girls must recreate the past in order to return to the present. As they live through their second-chance summer, the mystery behind their lost friendship unravels, and a dark secret threatens to tear the girls apart all over again.Always: Summers end. But this one will change them forever.

Breathe into Me


Sara Fawkes - 2014
    HEA ENDING, NO CLIFFHANGERS.How did my life get so broken?  It’s a question Lacey St. James asks herself every day. Stuck raising her little brother in a trailer park while she works a dead end job at a grocery store, she has a stalker exboyfriend, a bad reputation, and no way out.And then she meets Everett, whose presence changes her entire existence.Everett is an outsider to her small community, in town for the summer housesitting one of the grand mansions off the Mississippi coast. When he saves her in a bar one night, she’s grateful but wary of his intentions. Lacey doesn’t trust most men in her life, but for reasons Lacey can't understand, Everett is completely captivated by her. He’s determined to show her that life can offer more than she’d ever hoped for, if only she believes in herself. As she works with him to free herself, Lacey desperately yearns to trust him, to move on and perhaps start fresh.But what happens when she finds out that everything he’s told her about himself was a lie?

The Right Side of Reckless


Whitney D. Grandison - 2021
    Sparks fly in this edgy own voices novel, perfect for fans of Sandhya Menon, S. K. Ali, and Kristina Forest.They were supposed to ignore each other and respect that fine line between them…Guillermo Lozano is getting a fresh start. New town, new school, and no more reckless behavior. He’s done his time, and now he needs to right his wrongs. But when his work at the local community center throws him into the path of the one girl who is off-limits, friendship sparks…and maybe more.Regan London needs a fresh perspective. The pressure to stay in her “perfect” relationship and be the good girl all the time has worn her down. But when the walls start to cave in and she finds unexpected understanding from the boy her parents warned about, she can’t ignore her feelings anymore.The disapproval is instant. Being together might just get Guillermo sent away. But when it comes to the heart, sometimes you have to break the rules and be a little bit reckless…