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Riot Recommendation

60+ of Your Favorite Books About Siblings

Kelly Jensen

Editor

Kelly is a former librarian and a long-time blogger at STACKED. She's the editor/author of (DON'T) CALL ME CRAZY: 33 VOICES START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH and the editor/author of HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD. Her next book, BODY TALK, will publish in Fall 2020. Follow her on Instagram @heykellyjensen.

This Riot Recommendation is sponsored by Whiskey and Charlie by Annabel Smith.

whiskey and charlieFirst they were family.

Then they were strangers.

Now they are lost.

Whiskey and Charlie might have come from the same family, but they’d tell you two completely different stories about growing up. Whiskey is everything Charlie is not – bold, daring, carefree – and Charlie blames his twin brother for always stealing the limelight, always getting everything, always pushing Charlie back.

When they were just boys, the secret language they whispered back and forth over their crackly walkie-talkies connected them, in a way. The two-way alphabet (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta) became their code, their lifeline. But as the brothers grew up, they grew apart. By the time the twins reach adulthood, they barely even speak to each other.

When Charlie hears that Whiskey has been in a terrible accident and has slipped into a coma, he can’t make sense of it. Who is he without Whiskey? As days and weeks slip by and the chances of Whiskey recovering grow ever more slim, Charlie is forced to consider that he may never get to say all the things he wants to say.

____________________

Your siblings can be your best friends, your worst enemies, and/or some incomprehensible combination of both. They see you in the most mundane, most boring moments of your everyday childhood life, and in your most triumphant or most catastrophic. They often have an identical upbringing (though not always), but can turn out to be someone with whom you have little to nothing in common. To sum up: sibling relationships are complicated, which make them the perfect subject for fiction.

We asked you to share your favorite books about siblings, and you answered! Here are more than 60 of your favorites. You’ve got plenty of awesome reading to dig into here. Some of these books are about those sibling relationships and others simply feature a great — or not-so-great — siblingship:

Among Others by Jo Walton

Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild

Beauty by Robin McKinley

Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary

The Bride’s Necklace by Kat Martin

The Brothers Lionheart by Astrid Lindgren

The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy

Deep series by Debi Gliori

Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie by Jordan Sonnenblick

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Fall On Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald

Feed by Mira Grant

A Fist Full of Sky by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

The Girls by Lori Lansens

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

The Great Glass Sea by Josh Weil

The Guest List by Fern Michaels

Homecoming by Cynthia Voigt

Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving

The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb

I Love I Hate I Miss My Sister by Amelie Sarn

I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson

Imaginary Girls by Nova Ren Suma

In Her Shoes by Jennifer Weiner

Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O’Farrell

Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson

The Kane Chronicles by Rick Riordan

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult

Naked by David Sedaris

One Crazy Summer and sequels by Rita Williams-Garcia

Opposite of Me by Sarrah Pekkanen

The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton

The Pain and The Great One by Judy Blume

Peace Like A River by Leif Enge

The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall

The Piper’s Son by Melina Marchetta

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman

The Rolling Stones by Robert Heinlein

Rules by Cynthia Lord

Rushed to the Altar by Jane Feather

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater

Sister Salty, Sister Sweet by Shannon Kring Biro and Natalie Kring

Sisters by Raina Telgemeier

Spider Sisters by John Trent

Super Fudge by Judy Blume

Sweet Valley High series by Francine Pascal

The Things a Brother Knows by Dana Reinhart

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Tuesdays at the Castle by Jessica Day George

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown

Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle