Books like Run Girl Run — picked by fans

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.

I love a story that features flawed characters who stand up for themselves and fight for what they believe in when it counts the most. Part science-fiction, part fantasy, part nail-biting thriller, part teenage angst.

This book is a heart-pounding fight of good versus evil that throws the protagonist and her friends into a baptism-by-fire situation and fight for survival. This beauty is one of the most imaginative tales I ever read. If you start out reading this book doubting the existence of dragons and parallel universes, you’ll change your tune by the time you finish the story.   

Give me a YA novel that begins with a normal high school setting and suddenly veers into an utterly out-of-this-world scenario. This book takes the perennial issue of teenage angst and sends it into another plane. The cast is a group of believable but imperfect characters who are ordinary kids doing extraordinary things. 

The detailed descriptions of both the out-of-body experiences as well as the places in the astral plane that Abby and Logan travel are so exquisitely vivid that readers cross over from fantasy to the possibility of the experience being real. Readers are taken on a wild intergalactic rollercoaster ride at a breakneck pace. Reading it is as though Space Mountain and Lost in Space were celestial parents who gave birth to new species. 

Show me a gritty, graphic post-apocalyptic tale that still manages to create believable teenage characters with equal amounts of angst and audacity, and I’ll show you a fabulous tale you won’t soon forget. I held my breath when an ordinary teenager and her friend, still grieving their lost families and life as they knew it, stared death in the face as they made a perilous journey wrought with danger at every turn. They fought for survival while trying to save the life of a little girl.

I marveled at this spine-tingling story of survival, young love, loss, trust, and the inner strength one must summon to face adversity created by both human fallibility and fate. 

From the first chapter, as I read Charlie’s letter to a friend, I wished I could meet the man this teenager would become. The magic of this book is that it is related entirely through journal-like letters. Charlie writes with so much authenticity, curiosity, and vulnerability that I’m glad he has three friends who hold him with love as he faces his demons and comes of age.

I found the ways he makes sense of the world fascinating, humourous, and admirable, and at other times heartbreaking. I sincerely admire Charlie’s strength as he manages to sustain vulnerability and a constant rope of connection to himself, even though it gets very thin at times. 

Gah! Virgins! I should mention that this book was actually written in the 80s and flashes back to the 50s, but in the spirit of this list (and simply because I flipping love it), I’m including it here. Peggy and Sean are two good little Catholic teens navigating their senior year of high school. Sean is slated to enter the priesthood upon graduation, testing the limits of the pair’s carnal restraint in the final days of their relationship. I don’t think there’s a book in the world that has influenced my storytelling more than this one. It’s hot, hilarious, and heartbreaking… and pretty much serves as the blueprint for my own book. Highly recommend.

This book made me want to write a book of my own.

So many stories of the mountains are about bravado, grit, or conquest. Yet I go to the mountains for beauty and connection. Those are values that the Italian writer Paolo Cognetti prizes. His gentle novel uses the mountains as a setting for the relationship between two people.

The book chronicles a lifetime of friendship between a pair of boys who grow apart over the years. For a time, their shared history in the outdoors and love of the alpine is enough to maintain a connection. And then life intervenes. Yet the steady majesty of the Italian Alps remains a constant. I took my novel’s epigraph from this book: “It was impossible to convey what it feels like up there to those who have stayed below.” 

This book kept me turning the pages well into the night.

The Rev Jack Brooks moves to a new parish for a fresh start with her teenage daughter but they have barely unpacked when strange things begin to happen.

The book is well-paced with clever use of local superstitions which gives the story a supernatural feel. There is a looming threat to the main protagonist which builds the unease till the explosive end.

This story is in the style that Shari is making her own – a critical 24 hours in the intertwined lives of her characters.

It’s a skilful weaving of lightness and big laughs, plus painful, dramatic elements with break-neck plotting. Here, she builds her story round a group of friends and neighbours, who have known and supported each other for so long that they’ve created a ‘family’ owing nothing to genetics.

I love the Glasgow details, like the hospital carpark row with an audience of giggling nurses clutching sausage rolls. I also love the salt-of-the-earth older ladies in Shari’s books – the fiery ‘wummin’ holding lives together with their humour and strength of character.

Pick this up and you will not stop till you turn the last page. 

The protagonist is a Pakistani girl moving from the urban city of Rawalpindi to a rural city in the US, as part of a program that places students abroad for a year in high school.

There were so many instances when I completely understood Hira, the way she talked about the US, about growing up in Pakistan, about language. Her adjusting to life far from home is complicated by her illness, a disease the perception of which further makes us question our prejudices about a place and its people.