69 Books Like Keep This to Yourself

Sixteen-year-old Dylan has lost everything. His mother has thrown him out of their house and he’s forced to live on the streets, begging for handouts and avoiding the thugs that threaten him daily. During my work as a literacy mentor, one of the teachers I supported taught a particularly challenging group with a ringleader (I’ll call him Sean) who frequently interrupted lessons with unruly outbursts. I suggested that the teacher try ending his lessons ten minutes early and reading a few pages of Theories of Relativity as a reward when the group performed well. A week later when I came to observe the teacher’s practice, Sean stopped me before class and demanded, “Have you read Theories of Relativity?” I pretended I hadn’t and he breathlessly summarized the story they’d heard so far. And during the lesson, he shushed anyone whose behaviour might have interfered with that day’s reading, which… show more.

Nix Minus One is a heartbreaking story of a 15-year-old boy who must come to terms with the death of his older sister, Roxy, whom he adored. Told in free verse, it recounts the guilt he feels at having argued with her on the night she got drunk at a party and staggered into the path of an oncoming truck. I loved how each poem can stand alone but, sequenced together as they are, they form an unforgettable narrative. More than a novel about the sorrow of loss, this is a poignant, beautifully written story about the painful process of healing.

Nico’s mother vanished when she was four, and a chance discovery begins a search to uncover the truth of her disappearance. Reading it, I couldn’t believe this was the author’s first novel. Nico’s “voice” is amazingly real, continually pulling me along to the bittersweet conclusion, where she discovers what really happened to her mother. There was never a misstep in this book—everything worked perfectly, including the relationship between Nico and her dad, which was one of the most moving father-daughter relationships I’ve ever encountered in a YA novel. Her interweaving of Kurt Cobain’s life and music into the story of a girl searching for her mother was brilliant, and the writing is sublime. I lost track of the times when I read an image and thought, “Yes, this is exactly what that’s like!”, followed by “I so wish I’d written that.” Save Me, Kurt Cobain is a must-read.

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 an eye-opener for me, both as a reader and as a future author who would eventually explore various ways to tell my own stories. More important, I Am the Cheese has stood the test of time, remaining as engaging (and disturbing) a read as ever.

I love every book by this author. Mason is a different kid, learning-disabled, but with a heart full of goodness. He is bullied and discounted and put down and misunderstood, but his persistent goodness wins out.

I rooted for Mason, for his good heart, every step of the way. 

This compulsively readable novel by Cape Cod native and television writer Kepnes (7th Heaven, The Secret Life of the American Teenager) begins in a New Hampshire middle school where nerdy Jon and sweet Chloe are best friends united against the provincial attitudes of their small town. Everyone is shocked when John is kidnapped and given up for dead. Years later he turns up in Providence, where he has been kept in a coma by a rogue neuroscience professor who wants to transform him into the monster of The Dunwich Horror by Providence’s own, ambivalently celebrated H.P. Lovecraft. When John learns that he now has terrifying powers that put him at odds with everyone he loves, he sets out to find the professor whose recklessness got him into this mess—and maybe saved his life.

I gave a standing ovation to this lesson in being careful about what one wishes for and facing the consequences when one’s wishes come true in a heart-pounding fight of good versus evil. This gem is one of the most imaginative and descriptively written tales I ever read.

I could almost feel the heat from the sinister, demonic Ifrit breathing fire and the slash of its tail across the protagonist’s face. If you start out reading this book doubting the existence of djinns and parallel universes, you’ll be questioning your beliefs when you get to the end.

Shiver is one of the best books I read last year. Essentially it’s a locked room mystery set in the world of professional snowboarding. Milla gets an invitation to reunite with friends from her snowboarding days, but they’ve not been together since their friend, Saskia, went missing. And then, as is the way with edge-of-your-seat thrillers, they can’t get off the mountain, the storm’s closing in and someone is watching them. The truth about Saskia will come out one way or another. Milla and Saskia had been competitors, rivals, and then friends. It’s a complicated friendship and a fascinating look at professional sport and women at the top of their game, what they will sacrifice, and what they’ll do to win.

I’m already a sucker for a locked-room mystery—but being locked inside a motor home? Sign me up! Well, not literally, but I certainly love reading about it.

Holly Jackson is an auto-buy for me, and this is her at her best. How she manages thrills and chills while keeping her characters in a tight space, I’ll never know. She also does an amazing job of showing the fragility of friendship when secrets are threatened to be exposed. This book definitely kept me on the edge of my seat.

The biggest strength of this book is a large spoiler, which is a shame. I’d love to gush about it. You (should you choose to read it) get to learn about it as the work unfolds, though. For that, I’m jealous. Who doesn’t love to enjoy something so fun for the first time? The choice of victims and the reason for the kills makes the serial killer so compelling I rooted for the detective to always be one step behind. I loved him, don’t get me wrong. He is flawed and damaged, and I wanted him to succeed eventually. Thomas Holgate makes it easy to do that—want them both to “win”—as both have a point-of-view. The book was fun, interesting, and just a little brutal.