Book description
Before there was Lois Lowry’s The Giver or M. T. Anderson’s Feed, there was Robert Cormier’s I Am the Cheese, a subversive classic that broke new ground for YA literature.
A boy’s search for his father becomes a desperate journey to unlock a secret past. But the past must not…
Why read it?
1 author picked I Am the Cheese as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Adam, the narrator of I Am the Cheese, lost his parents in a malicious car accident and, during the course of the novel, he attempts a journey to discover the truth behind what happened to them. Published in 1977, I Am the Cheese is the very first YA story I read as a young adult that did not unfold as I’d anticipated. The world of the novel was much darker than any I’d encountered before in YA literature, and for the first time I realized that I couldn’t necessarily believe what the first-person narrator was telling me. This was…
From Don's list on grappling with loss.
If you love I Am the Cheese...
Hard Lies
He will stop at nothing to keep his secrets hidden.
Denise Tyler’s future in New Jersey with fiancé Jeremy Guerdon unravels when she stumbles upon a kill list, with her name on it. A chilling directive, “Leave the family memories of her, nothing else,” exposes a nightmare she never imagined.…
Want books like I Am the Cheese?
Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 73 books like I Am the Cheese.
Share your top 3 reads of 2025!
And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.
1,210
readers submitted
so far, will you?
