100 Books Like Somebody That I Used to Know

When I was a teenager, I would have felt very much at home at the vintage record store in London where this story is set. (In fact, my hometown is named London, except my London is in Canada.) The quirky clerks who work there adore their boss, Rob Fleming, and spend their days attempting to outwit one another with music trivia and compiling funny and far-reaching Top Five lists.

As Rob negotiates a recent breakup, he must sort through his ex-girlfriend’s belongings and the emotional baggage he’s collected over the years. Though Rob is an adult, this still feels like a coming-of-age tale. I came away from the book resonating with the bittersweet awareness of what it means to become an adult with a list of careers if time and money were no object.

I read fiction to experience the delicious sensation of seeing the world through a protagonist’s eyes—the exhilarating leap into another time and place. As a teen, I often daydreamed about bumping into a favorite music performer. Part coming-of-age tale, part fish-out-of-water adventure, this novel follows innocent and strait-laced Mary Jane as she gets a crash course in how other people live when a famous rock star and his movie-star wife check into rehab at the house where she’s working as a summer nanny.

I shared Mary Jane’s sense of awe and curiosity and admired the grit and care she brought to the often out-of-control adults around her. This novel is a joy to read and a masterclass in character creation and development—I recommend it for aspiring and experienced writers.

I have a soft spot for books about writers, the journey to becoming one, and the creative life in general. This book surprised me and delighted my writerly heart, especially when protagonist Dani decides to write letters to her favorite Black women writers about a secret she’s afraid to share with her family. When a DJ friend dares her to fall in love with him in just three days, this gritty, urban, and heart-rending story unexpectedly takes on a rom-com energy that just works. 

As a social-emotional learning researcher, I was also wowed by how this writing/music/personal trauma narrative explores various forms of love: platonic, familial, romantic, and self-love. 

In the spirit of many of Rushdie’s books, an atmosphere of magic and myth sets the tone of this extraordinary story of love, death, passion, and rock and roll. The narrator, Rai, is a deceptively meek photographer who reminds me of The Great Gatsby’s Nick Carraway.

Rushdie’s stories lead me past historical and literary monoliths, and this story unfolds as a modern-day Orpheus retelling. But that’s the challenge—and reward—of reading Salman Rushdie: I get a history lesson, a dose of mythology, an unflinching lens on modern culture, a sweetening of magic realism, and a few belly laughs and tears along the way. 

Mariza Kuznetsova (Something Unbelievable), Irina Reyn (Mother Country), and I all left the Soviet Union as children, before Putin and before all the changes he brought. Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry came of age in the new Russia. The Orchard is a tale of what our own lives might have been if our families had stayed. This loose retelling of Chekov zeroes in on how a childhood begun in the USSR and a young adulthood lived in Russia affected everyone who went through it, how it shaped worldviews, and how it continues to resonate even after decades of immigrant life in America.

A contemporary YA novel, this book will still appeal to all the adults who can remember what it was like trying to figure out who you were as a teenager, how your friends fit into your life, and what it means to shake things up but still maintain who you are at your core. Main character, Codi Teller, is lucky to have two very close friends by her side through it all, but she develops an additional, unexpected friendship with cool kid, Ricky, when she stumbles upon him kissing another boy at a party. Ricky brings Codi into his world full of new experiences, late nights, and a cute girl named Lydia who Codi definitely has a crush on. 

It’s always great to get a reminder to be true to yourself when you don’t fit in easily.

This dystopian YA novel has good worldbuilding and a rich lexicon of new words that gives it that idiosyncratic futuristic feeling. The protagonist is a barely fifteen-year-old girl “bender”—someone who doesn’t feel comfortable in their assigned gender and doesn’t hide that. She has been sent to a camp that will determine her future, making sure she doesn’t end up in the “Blight”, a huge concentration camp for society’s undesirables.

But for a good outcome, she must conform, and her fellow campers and new experiences make that confusing and difficult. The ending is fairly open, but she has clearly learned to be true to herself and reject arbitrarily assigned labels.

I picked out this book because I wanted to read more indie Canadiana YA, and OMG, am I ever glad that this was my first pick!

It had music and private school drama (not the club), it was fun, I was invested, and I was really sad when it ended because I wanted to know what happened next.

I also loved the epistolary format. It made it feel like they were being written to me. I borrowed this one from the library and then bought it because I loved it so much.

I found myself surprisingly captivated by this present-day body horror mermaid transformation tale focused on a high school swim team.

This novel follows a gradual decline from an everyday reality towards an increasingly unhinged climax, and I appreciated how slowly this sneaks up on you. Even though the book makes no secret of where it’s ultimately going, I was still pleasantly surprised about how we got there and the weirdness of the ending.

The sapphic relationship between the protagonist and her best friend is a key throughline, with an interesting dichotomy between the best friend’s long-term adoration and the protagonist’s relative detachment and bitterness.

I loved Natalia Sylvester’s tender and gripping YA novel about a young woman living with hip dysplasia yearning to be a mermaid because it reminded me of the big dreams I had as a young teenage girl.

Verónica will do just about anything to get a job as a real-life mermaid at Mermaid Cove, however her parents are not having it. They want Verónica to be a “serious” young woman and pursue jobs and opportunities that will benefit her future and they think they know what’s best for her body and her disability.

I resonated with this deeply because I too pursued goals and dreams that my parents were often not in favor of and have had to advocate for myself and what my body needs.