100 Books Like Say You'll Remember Me

Two words: Wesley Rush. I’m a sucker for a bad boy with charisma. And Bianca—my girl!—definitely gives Wesley a run for his money. I love her feistiness. Wesley dubs Bianca the “Designated Ugly Fat Friend” which is a huge no-no, but somehow he and Bianca began a steamy enemies with benefits fling and I lived for it. Naturally, their walls began to come down the closer they got, and there’s a line in the book (I will not spoil it) that took my breath away and made me fall completely in love with Wesley. Skip the movie, read the book! I loved Keplinger’s authentic uncensored teen voice in this. It made me a fan.

First things first, Simone Elkeles is my favorite YA author, and I couldn’t do a list of recs without mentioning one of her books, and my all-time favorite has always been Leaving Paradise. I also recommend LP because it’s close to my own book in that it features a reformed bad boy, Caleb, freshly on probation who’s trying to navigate his way into society and fix his “mistakes.” I so love the sorta forbidden dynamic between him and Maggie, because Caleb is actually on probation for hitting Maggie in a hit-and-run while drinking and driving. So not only is he trying to win over his former friends, parents, and town, he’s gotta make things right with Maggie, who is not giving him any play whatsoever—in the beginning! Love love Caleb’s voice in this novel.

This title is for the upper YA crowd, I’m talking sixteen going on seventeen because while set in high school, this read is steamy. What I love about this book is the humane side of things. Ares Hidalgo is far from perfect. He messes up with our heroine Raquel quite a few times, and I love that he’s flawed and kept trying to right his wrongs. I just loved Ares’s boldness, from stealing Raquel’s WiFi, to climbing through her window to fix said WiFi when it’s down, to calling her out on her crush on him. This book is total wish fulfillment, because imagine obtaining your crush!! Do watch the Netflix movie as well!

I love that our heroine Chloe had a backbone and was able to put our hero Eli in his place and not take his crap. I also like how their road trip adventure to bring Chloe to an important ballet audition starts off with Eli blackmailing her into bringing him, and his dog, along. Eli was another flawed male lead I loved, there were moments where he’s so close to being adorable and perfect, but then he’d be clueless and frustrate Chloe—and me! I really enjoyed that Chloe was ready to forge forward on her own and Eli had to whip himself into shape to earn her!! 

Rich in detailed scene-setting, Dan T. Carter’s biography of George Wallace is as much about the governor of Alabama as it is about everyone who attended his rallies and cast ballots with his name. I love biography as a medium for rethinking standard periodization, blurring boundaries, whether that be regional or cultural, among others, and using one person’s life to clarify sweeping societal trends.

This book explains, as much as possible, the extreme contradictions of one of the twentieth century’s most consequential firebrands. Carter demonstrates how unadulterated racism and commitment to white supremacy could be repackaged in the 1960s as an answer to a myriad of ills. In my opinion, Wallace is the prime example of the dangers posed by an ambitious politician who exploits divisiveness and weaponizes the worst of our inclinations. 

Brammer’s novel has resonated throughout my career, warning of almost inevitable disillusionment with a political powerhouse. Brammer had served as a top aide to Lyndon Johnson, on whom he based Arthur Fenstemaker, a star as bright as Penn Warren’s Willie Stark. The Gay Place spoke to me even more directly, focusing on minor politicos and their ambitions, frailties, and humanity. And the book drove home, through a pervading sadness, the anomie that rises from disillusionment. Brammer’s “Flea Circus” metaphor continues to amuse and bum me.

George W. Bush, even today, 14 years after leaving the presidency, is a controversial president. But as with all presidents, to understand their politics and policies you have to first understand their personality and character. That’s what I like about this book: Bruni seeks to explain and understand who Bush was as a man—a man who, although the son of a president, never seemed destined to lead a nation and the world and yet ultimately faced one of the greatest crises in US history. Bruni, a former New York Times reporter who covered Bush as presidential nominee and president, shows W.’s weaknesses and strengths, his somewhat surprising life journey of serious endeavors for an often less-than-serious man, and ultimately how the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, changed Bush’s entire outlook and demeanor, thrusting him into an unprecedented challenge that elevated the laid-back good-time guy to a serious and dedicated leader.… show more.

I’m not usually a fan of political memoirs (I tend to be skeptical of the authors), but this one is an enlightening read in terms of understanding the sorts of structural and governmental prejudices that Hispanic people faced in the early twentieth century as exemplified by New Mexico’s long struggle to obtain statehood. Otero was from a prominent New Mexican family and was the governor of the territory from 1897 to 1906. New Mexico was acquired as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in the aftermath of the Mexican-American war in 1848, but it didn’t become a state until 1912, due in part to the anti-Hispanic attitudes in Washington DC that Otero discusses in his book.

Mukhopadhyay’s book joined an emerging cohort of books that sought to demonstrate that the collapse of the state does not necessarily lead to a vacuum. This is because any vacuum left by the decline of the state is bound to be filled by other forces, be they local or external to the region.

In the case of Afghanistan, Mukhopadhyay shows through the case of Afghanistan, and based on a fieldwork in the country, how the state that was born out of the ousting of the Taliban in 2001 was capable of co-opting local warlords in the remote periphery and integrate them into the emerging order in the country.

Through a close examination and detailed accounts of several case studies from across Afghanistan, Mukhopadhyay offers persuading arguments about what makes warlords and other peripheral actors useful allies to a weak central government.

I knew Lobianco (we call him T-Lo) when he was a reporter at the Indiana Statehouse for the Associated Press and the Indianapolis Star. His chronicle of Pence’s story from his youth in Columbus, Indiana, through his rise in Republican politics to his surprising pick to join the Trump ticket is fascinating.

The connection between the strategies and choices Pence made along the way shows a collection of moral bargaining that explains what we see in the former VP today. Hoosiers knew much of these stories in isolation, but the collection of them and the contextualizing of them in hindsight makes sense of the seemingly senseless things he did in his political life.