Books like All We Ever Wanted — picked by fans

I don’t usually like commercial fiction, but as an L.A. filmmaker, I found this story of a scandalous actress in Hollywood and her love affairs with men and women irresistible.

Told partly through the eyes of a young journalist interviewing a fading star, and partly through Evelyn Hugo’s own words, the intergenerational relationship also intrigued me: Would Evelyn’s influence on the younger, ambitious woman be beneficial, or lead to disaster?

I thoroughly enjoyed the many unexpected twists and turns between husbands and lovers in Evelyn Hugo’s life.

Talk about a complicated mother-daughter relationship! Almost as soon as her daughter is born, Blythe suspects something is…off. And no kidding, is it ever? This book takes the idea of not being able to connect with your kid to a whole other, really terrifying level.

What I particularly love about this book is how much it challenges the idea of who is in charge in the mother-daughter relationship, and what it means if your kid is really, truly, bad. This book actually made me gasp. The title refers to the central incident of the book, but I like it because the book also pushes against all kinds of societal norms. 

I identified with WIllow, the musician, who poured her whole heart and soul into a record that never hit the big time. She is disappointed with her current level of success and goes home to New York to stay with her Aunt Gloria in her famous mother’s old penthouse. The story revolves around an investigation into stolen art and I adored the seventy-year-old Gloria who chose herself instead of the love she found in the arms of a passionate artist turned art smuggler. The characters are richly detailed and women you want to know, and the prose is lyrical and complex, so beautiful you have to pause to appreciate it. 

This book has so much to teach us about race and misconceptions. Faced with the decision of intervening to save a newborn baby’s life and the orders she’s been given not to touch the child of white supremacists, a NICU nurse, Ruth, hesitates for a moment then provides care. Her hesitation causes her to be charged with a serious crime. She is assigned a white public defender who wants to plead out and keep race out of the equation, but Ruth stands her ground. The women have to learn to trust each other and to find common ground. This is the most beautiful struggle about race from both perspectives that leaves you with a deeper understanding of both sides of the issue. 

I regularly recommend this terrific book, recently updated for the digital age, to both teens and their parents. Sean Covey is the son of the famous Stephen Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People). Sean is an experienced father, nationally known character educator (creator of The Leader in Me program), and highly talented author in his own right. His book on “the 6 most important decisions” tackles areas of a young person’s life where good decisions can bring big benefits and poor ones can carry a high cost: (1) choosing friends, (2) making the most of school, (3) creating a positive relationship with your parents, (4) building self-confidence, (5) dating and romantic relationships (without sex), and (6) steering clear of drugs, pornography, and other damaging addictions.

Covey’s gift for connecting with young readers combines straight talk, practical tips, humorous cartoon graphics, and hard-to-argue-with wisdom illustrated with true… show more.

This book was published ten years ago, and it’s as fresh and relevant as ever. I’ve chosen to highlight it here because, honestly, it’s the classic book that catalyzed many researchers into properly listening to young people and really respecting their views.

I learned a lot from danah boyd’s fieldwork about how to put effort into gaining teens’ trust, avoiding adult assumptions, and properly listening to what teens had to say. The teens in this book are often troubled, struggling with mental health problems and difficult life circumstances – but it's not their fault, they are facing so many real-world problems – poverty, family breakdown, racism, etc.

As a result, teens turn to technology for support, privacy, intimacy, and belonging. But in key ways, technology can also make things worse. I found this book truly thought-provoking.

This book is an awesome locked-room thriller about six teens who are invited to a dinner and find themselves trapped in a room with a bomb, a syringe filled with poison, and a note with instructions that they have to decide who among them to kill within the next hour or they’ll all be murdered.

There’s something about close-proximity thrillers that gets me every single time. As a person who is definitely not a big fan of enclosed spaces in real life, these types of books have me breathless.

The Pigman was the first YA novel I ever read that’s told in two separate voices. Each chapter alternates between two high school sophomores: John Conlan and Lorraine Jenson. The two meet Angelo Pignati, a lonely widower, due to making a random prank phone call asking for a monetary donation to the “L. and J. Fund.” John and Lorraine nickname Mr. Pignati the “Pigman” because of his deceased wife’s collection of ceramic pigs. Their prank call soon leads to friendship, which horrifically ends in tragedy inadvertently caused by John and Lorraine, thus inspiring both to choose to deal with their grief by writing “a memorial epic” of their friend.

I love the writing style of alternating two character voices, which inspired me to write my own first novel in two voices. The dialogue in The Pigman is filled with dark humor and sarcasm, which for me, brings even more shock… show more.

Chocolates for Breakfast was frequently compared to Bonjour Tristesse and Moore was called “the American Sagan.” Like Sagan, Moore was only eighteen when she wrote the bestselling novel. Written in the third person, it tells the story of a young woman’s sexual exploration and her feelings of depression. Courtney, a child of divorce, moves from her posh Connecticut boarding school to Beverly Hills when her depression keeps her from performing at school. She grapples with her mother, a down-on-her-heels alcoholic actress; explores her sexuality with both a gay male actor and an older straight manager in Hollywood; then relocates to New York where she drifts through cocktail parties, having affairs, until her best friend Janet commits suicide. Like Bonjour Tristesse, the novel flirts with existentialism but ultimately adopts a more hopeful tone as Courtney matures and aims to create meaning in her life.

I do have a real penchant for dark stories and thrillers that ooze suspense and intrigue and Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca is one of the best for that. I haven’t come across many stories that have adapted this so I was definitely interested in that. New Girl is a suspenseful adaptation of this classic. After the mysterious disappearance of an elite school’s most popular student, the new girl, who remains unnamed through most of the story, finds herself taking Becca’s place within the school and her friendship groups but is always aware she’ll never be able to escape her shadow. This is also a dual POV book. I enjoy both writing and reading from this perspective. This is an excellent adaptation of this mysterious classic.