100 Books Like The Wakefields of Sweet Valley (Sweet Valley High)

I’m going even further back with this one. Unusual pick certainly, a YA novel from 1989 that I stole off my sister’s shelf circa 1994.

I was ten and ready for something darker than The Baby-Sitters Club. This was one of those early reads that made me want to write in the first place. The first real suspense book that had me staying up late, wondering how does one create a story like this? I still have that book, tattered and sitting on my shelf as a reminder of that first spark.

Christopher Pike is able to write stories to young readers in a timeless way. The nostalgia and sheer thrill from this story about a young woman who finds herself dead after falling four stories will bring you back to nights with covers over your head. Did she jump or was something more sinister behind her death? Only her… show more.

I have loved many a Sunfire historical Romance. Danielle (pirates!), Caroline (Gold Rush!), Amanda (Oregon Trail!), Nicole (Titanic—way before there was a movie). There’s always a kick-ass heroine and a love triangle and fun outfits (also a must for me—I was a fashion designer before becoming a writer and styling the wardrobe and “sets” is very important to me when crafting a story. I keep a Pinterest board for all my books and unlock it once a book/series is fully published). Anyway, I especially loved Roxanne because I’ve always loved Old Hollywood and old movies (much like Elisha in Keystone). I moved to Orange County, California from Pittsburgh when I was a kid, and on day trips to Los Angeles, I preferred seeing Hollywood through Roxanne’s eyes. It was her story that connected me to my new home. 

The best kind of books are books that are your friends, aren’t they? As a reader, I usually feel connected to characters and don’t think much about authors (and I feel this is how it should be. I think once they leave an author’s hands, books belong to the reader!) but in this case, I also feel like Lucy Maude and I are kindred spirits. We both had two imaginary friends growing up, after all. That’s enough to make us BFF’s, right? 😉 Anyway, I have visited with all my Anne book friends many times, but the one I always come back to is Anne of the Island. This is probably because I love a slow-burn romance, and this is the book where Anne and Gilbert finally get together. After three books of will-they-won’t-they banter the payoff is totally worth it! (And on a side note, would this book… show more.

I love an underdog. I love a fish out of water. I love a character who discovers a secret power they didn’t know they possessed (be it other-worldly or grounded in reality). I love being on the inside of a secret society (especially a teenage one). The Secret Circle series is all these things and demanded many a re-read! 

Calvino, like Perec, was an experimental novelist, interested in imposing games and rules on what he created. Here, he took the convention of the short story collection and used it to dramatise the arrival of the twentieth century into rural Italy—the machine age, but also the fascist age, and the consuming fires of the Second World War. The incremental tension that comes from time passing is a powerful reading experience.

The book offers a powerful evocation through snapshots of lives in South London through recent post-war history. Something that emerges almost without you noticing is how much they were all affected by the political and economic changes of the eighties and early nineties. There is no political polemic here, but even those who prosper from these changes suffer from them, possibly more than the others. 

It presents recent history in which a way of life was changed forever without us realizing it, and we are still living with the consequences.

Undersea Victory is the definitive history of submarine warfare in the Pacific during World War II. Holmes was a giant in the field and really knows his stuff. You’ll come away having a much greater appreciation for how sub combat operations were conducted both by the U.S. and Japan. Importantly, Holmes doesn’t hesitate to tell you the good and the bad regardless of which side he’s writing about. No sub enthusiast’s library is complete without it.

This dual timeline novel is expertly researched and woven into a tapestry. In 1940, a German archaeologist is forced to marry an SS officer—and to catalog art stolen from the Jews. In modern times, a young woman with a traumatic past in the neo-Nazi movement works with the Holocaust Museum to fight hate crimes. Their entwining stories show the courage needed to stand up against racism—and the necessity of doing so, no matter the cost.

There are a lot of World War II books out there, and in truth, I was growing tired of them until I read Sarah Blake’s. Partially located on my home turf of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, the brush against our local history pre-World War II fascinated me. But Blake doesn’t stay local; she leaves the postmistress to do—or not do—her job and flies off to London with a female war correspondent. How their stories cleverly intertwine is part of my fascination with this tale. Blake has a habit of dropping unforgettable characters on my doorstep, where they tease and tantalize long after I’ve turned the last page. 

Hashimoto was the Japanese sub captain of the I-58, who sank the USS Indianapolis shortly after it delivered the atomic bomb in the closing days of World War II. The story of the Indianapolis has been told in several excellent books including, “In Harms Way” and “Fatal Voyage” as well as the movie, “Jaws,” but never from the Japanese point of view. How Hashimoto and his crew survived the war is integral to this story which makes The Hunt for Red October seem like child’s play. And it’s all true!