Here are 12 books that Roar fans have personally recommended if you like
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The honesty of the book surprised me. The author, an Irishman, didn’t hold back in detailing the terrible part the Catholic Church played in Ireland, when many children were the victims of abuse by priests. Most young men who joined the priesthood had a vocation, but others merely followed family tradition or were victims of family pressures. So, where does the blame lie?
The victims and the accused are fundamental to the book, but as important are the witnesses who did nothing to protect the children. I was drawn into the dilemma of the main character. It left me wondering what if I had been a witness – would I have recognized what I was witnessing and if so, what would I have one with that knowing?
Odran Yates enters Clonliffe Seminary in 1972 after his mother informs him that he has a vocation to the priesthood. He goes in full of ambition and hope, dedicated to his studies and keen to make friends. Forty years later, Odran's devotion has been challenged by the revelations that have shattered the Irish people's faith in the church. He has seen friends stand trial, colleagues jailed, the lives of young parishioners destroyed and has become nervous of venturing out in public for fear of disapproving stares and insulting remarks. But when a family tragedy opens wounds from his past, he…
Transforming Pandora, women's fiction with a metaphysical undercurrent, is written with humour and a light touch. As the plot slips between two time frames, separated by more than thirty years, the reader explores her life and loves: her ups and downs.
This is one of those books that left me wondering - what would I have done? It also made me question the way I judge people and how much of that judgement is due to the expectations of society and how much due to my own experiences. What does it mean to be good? The story is about two sisters who disappeared. Then three years later one of the sisters returns. She tells her story slowly and carefully, pulling the reader along from page to page from chapter to chapter. She kept me enthralled to the end. An end which was well worth waiting for.
When my sister and I disappeared three years ago, they found Emma's car at the beach. Some people believed she had gone there to find a party or meet a friend who never showed. They believed that she'd gone for a swim. They believed that she'd drowned. Maybe by accident. Maybe a suicide.
I’m a professor and YA author. Books helped me navigate the difficult choices I faced growing up. I gravitated to characters that I could picture myself befriending and looking up to because they had the bravery and strength that I wanted to have. As an author, I believe we need more stories about people who leave a positive mark on the world. I try to write characters that I can both relate to and would want to be friends with: characters who, in facing difficulty, discover the strength of their humanity because they have a light and goodness that shines somewhere deep inside.
Jonas is our youngest protagonist on the list. He is destined to be the receiver of memories in a futuristic utopian society. Those memories are to be passed down to him by an old man, the Giver.
Jonas lives in a society where people are innocent—innocent of emotion, pain, and suffering. He must lose his innocence to experience the joys and pains of humane experience.
That’s a heavy responsibility. And it’s Jonas’ thoughtfulness and curiosity that draws me to him. He faces difficult ethical choices. His awakening is unique to the fictional world he inhabits, but it is universal in theme. His quest to gain knowledge, his willingness to question authority to get to the truth, and his ability to make tough choices to experience the depth of what it means to be human make him someone I would want in my corner.
THE GIVER is soon to be a major motion picture starring Jeff Bridges, Katie Holmes and Taylor Swift.
Now available for the first time in the UK, THE GIVER QUARTET is the complete four-novel collection.
THE GIVER: It is the future. There is no war, no hunger, no pain. No one in the community wants for anything. Everything needed is provided. And at twelve years old, each member of the community has their profession carefully chosen for them by the Committee of Elders.
Jonas has never thought there was anything wrong with his world. But from the…
Six months ago, Tom Halliday left his job. Two days after that, his wife left him. Now, with his mother seriously ill, he is forced to return to his childhood home and rejoin the family he has worked to avoid for the past twenty years.
I love to cheer for underdogs, and young women who are in this category have my special devotion. As a child of the 1960s, I remember a time when women didn’t have the same rights and opportunities as men, and we still seem to be fighting it today. Coming from a trauma-based childhood myself, I find myself comparing and contrasting coping mechanisms. Luckily, I haven’t found it necessary to kill anyone with dragon stone or jacked-up hornets so far. It delights me when these girls win, whether they game the system or fight their way with guns and knives.
I loved these books. The mystery of this society and its strict divisions fascinated me. I related to Tris immediately and her need for more excitement than her Abnegation family could provide. The detachment felt by so many of the characters in their daily roles resonated in my soul as something I have felt as well when confined by societal definition.
As I reflected in our own society, those at the top scheme to gain power for themselves, regardless of the effect on the rest of the people. I was proud of Tris and her colleagues, who joined together to create a better, more just society.
The explosive debut by No. 1 New York Times bestselling author Veronica Roth.
DIVERGENT - a major motion picture series.
For sixteen-year-old Tris, the world changes in a heartbeat when she is forced to make a terrible choice. Turning her back on her family, Tris ventures out, alone, determined to find out where she truly belongs.
Shocked by the brutality of her new life, Tris can trust no one. And yet she is drawn to a boy who seems to both threaten and protect her. The hardest choices may yet lie ahead....
I’m an avid reader turned author. I’m a Canadian YA Speculative Fiction author who takes books along as I hike, cycle, and go to the beach. I love audiobooks! In the years leading up to writing my first novel, I must have read over three hundred books. My favorites were Young Adult Fantasy and Science Fiction. When I ran out of happy, positive, and wholesome books, I started writing them. I feel like I'm often called back to my favorites, and hope more authors will jump on the happy train! Now that the world has literally turned into a Dystopian Society, perhaps more authors will start writing about hope and change.
In this society where people are matched with their jobs, but also with their future mates, arts and culture are carefully selected and limited by leadership. People take mandatory medications.
The most horrifying part, for me, is that they can no longer write without a keypad. Whatever they write on a computer is censured. Can you imagine better ways to control the population? Does it sound familiar?
Cassia has always trusted the Society to make the right choices for her: what to read, what to watch, what to believe. So when Xander's face appears on-screen at her Matching ceremony, Cassia knows with complete certainty that he is her ideal mate . . . until she sees Ky Markham's face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black.
The Society tells her it's a glitch, a rare malfunction, and that she should focus on the happy life she's destined to lead with Xander. But Cassia can't stop thinking about Ky, and as they slowly fall in…
My family moved from America to rural China when I was four. We never stayed in one place for very long. Ever since, I’ve been searching for home in books and countries around the world. The themes of home, belonging, and identity are important ones to me that I explore in my young adult novels. My love of travel, martial arts, and tech also lend themselves well to writing fast-paced adventure books with epic battles and fight scenes. I hope you enjoy the novels on this list as much as I do!
I rarely read a book twice, but this is one of the few that I’ve read multiple times because it is such a unique premise. The concept of people going from “ugly” to “pretty” on their sixteenth birthday (thanks, futuristic technology) is such an interesting one to dive into.
Also, I love how the main character straddles both the world of the pretties and that of the uglies—not knowing where she belongs. As a third culture kid, and someone who frequently feels like a misfit, I really related to her.
Soon to be a major motion picture streaming on Netflix!
The first installment of Scott Westerfeld’s New York Times bestselling and award-winning Uglies series—a global phenomenon that started the dystopian trend.
Tally is about to turn sixteen, and she can’t wait. In just a few weeks she’ll have the operation that will turn her from a repellent ugly into a stunningly attractive pretty. And as a pretty, she’ll be catapulted into a high-tech paradise where her only job is to have fun.
But Tally’s new friend Shay isn’t sure she wants to become a pretty. When Shay runs…
I’m an avid reader turned author. I’m a Canadian YA Speculative Fiction author who takes books along as I hike, cycle, and go to the beach. I love audiobooks! In the years leading up to writing my first novel, I must have read over three hundred books. My favorites were Young Adult Fantasy and Science Fiction. When I ran out of happy, positive, and wholesome books, I started writing them. I feel like I'm often called back to my favorites, and hope more authors will jump on the happy train! Now that the world has literally turned into a Dystopian Society, perhaps more authors will start writing about hope and change.
I love Cecelia Ahern’s earlier books and this was her first YA duology. The second book is called Perfect. This society also praises beauty and perfection, but mistakes are punishable offenses with a serious consequence of being branded, literally, are Flawed. The book is chilling in so many ways, but what I loved about it is that making mistakes is an inherently ‘human’ thing to do. Older generations have been taught to avoid making mistakes at all costs, or at least never own up to them. The younger ones are learning that it’s all part of life and we should all have a little more compassion. We’re all doing the best we can with what we have.
In her breathtaking young adult debut, bestselling author Cecelia Ahern depicts a society in Flawed in which obedience is paramount and rebellion is punished. And where one young woman decides to take a stand that could cost her everything.
Celestine North lives a perfect life. She's a model daughter and sister, she's well-liked by her classmates and teachers, and she's dating the impossibly charming Art Crevan.
But then Celestine encounters a situation in which she makes an instinctive decision. She breaks a rule and now faces life-changing repercussions. She could be imprisoned. She could be branded. She could be found…
I am a reasonably emotional person, and I love strong emotional books. I don’t specifically choose a book because I want to cry. If the book is emotional enough, the body reacts in the form of tears trickling from the eyes. I am a solo book reader and audiobook listener, and I rarely DNF. Some stories stay with you for a long, long time, and sometimes you need to relive that story again. My writing inspiration came from reading more than a hundred books and from the idea that even my ideas can become a novel.
This novel portrays grief in such a real and raw way that it stays with you long after you have finished it.
I knew that the book was deeply personal to the author, and that is one of the reasons she is able to portray how to hold yourself in vulnerable situations. I love the books that wreck you and make you ugly cry, and this one surely met those criteria.
A December 2023 Book of the Month Selection and Book of the Year Nominee
A Washington Post Noteworthy Book
A National Bestseller
You may never stop loving the one you lost. But you can still find love again.
Two years after losing her husband, Cameron, Kate is a bit of a mess. Lurching from one comedic crisis to the next, she does her best to navigate work, friendships, and parenting a five-year-old without Cam's support.
When a flight diversion on a business trip unexpectedly leaves her stranded in a beach town in Australia, Kate…
I am a reasonably emotional person, and I love strong emotional books. I don’t specifically choose a book because I want to cry. If the book is emotional enough, the body reacts in the form of tears trickling from the eyes. I am a solo book reader and audiobook listener, and I rarely DNF. Some stories stay with you for a long, long time, and sometimes you need to relive that story again. My writing inspiration came from reading more than a hundred books and from the idea that even my ideas can become a novel.
It was one of my early reading days when I read the book.
I remember reading the book on a train commute to work. And the ending, “She died. I survived. Because I survived, I died every day,” made me cry in the Mumbai Local.
This was more devastating because the author chose to relive the pain he went through to tell the world how much he loved his would-be fiancée. Fate was that they were meant to fall in love, but it had other plans. They were never meant to be together.
THE MULTI-MILLION-COPY BESTSELLER: a heartbreaking true story that has broken records in India and will make you believe in the power of love.
++++
Not all love stories are meant to have a happy ending . . .
I TOO HAD A LOVE STORY is the tender and heartfelt tale of Ravin and Khushi - two people who found each other on a dating website and fell in love . . . until life put their love to the ultimate test.
Do love stories ever die? How would you react if a beautiful person came into your life, and then…
I am a reasonably emotional person, and I love strong emotional books. I don’t specifically choose a book because I want to cry. If the book is emotional enough, the body reacts in the form of tears trickling from the eyes. I am a solo book reader and audiobook listener, and I rarely DNF. Some stories stay with you for a long, long time, and sometimes you need to relive that story again. My writing inspiration came from reading more than a hundred books and from the idea that even my ideas can become a novel.
I used to write small blogs and poems in my early days, and I loved the poem “If I’d only known” in the book. Being an author myself, I know how good the poem felt. Why it hit hard, giving me goosebumps, I am unable to explain. I loved the characters and how the love story is revealed through the half-burnt diary.
The book, until the end, made me believe that the story was going north, only for me to find out that I was made to look in the wrong direction from the very start.
To the everlasting power of love . . . When Deb, an author and publisher, survives the bomb blasts at Chandni Chowk, he knows his life is nothing short of a miracle. And though he escapes with minor injuries, he is haunted by the images and voices that he heard on that unfortunate day. Even as he recovers, his feet take him to where the blasts took place. From the burnt remains he discovers a diary. It seems to belong to a dead man who was deeply in love with a girl. As he reads the heartbreaking narrative, he knows…
