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Built on ISFDB, Wikipedia, Wikidata and Open Library. Curated reading orders carry their reasoning on the page; the rest follow publication order. Data sources & licenses

© Loreful · data: ISFDB · CC BY

More like Torn

anchored on:science fictiontime travelnorth americacontemporaryyoung adultcoming of age+2 more

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Mood

The mood the book leaves you in.

  • The reading experience is propelled by journeys, exploration, and physical risk; excitement and forward momentum dominate over dread or introspection.
  • Joy and loss are deliberately mixed; the resolution grants characters something real while taking something else away, leaving warmth and sorrow together.
  • The book demands work from the reader — dense prose, difficult structure, unfamiliar ideas, or morally uncomfortable material — as part of its intended effect.
  • Grim events, cruelty, or despair dominate the atmosphere, and the book does not soften them with comfort or comic relief.
  • The atmosphere is quietly unsettling — wrongness, unease, and the uncanny pervade the book without necessarily escalating into overt horror.
  • The book is built to move the reader; character feeling is foregrounded and major scenes aim at a strong emotional response.
  • Humor is a primary aim and the prose plays for laughs — comic situations, wit, or dialogue produce sustained comedy, not occasional levity.
  • The book insists that things can improve; effort and decency are shown to matter, and the arc bends toward better outcomes even through hardship.
  • The book teaches as it goes — real facts, history, science, or craft are conveyed in enough depth that learning is part of the reading experience.
  • The book is designed to uplift and motivate, presenting perseverance or achievement in a way that invites the reader to aspire or act.
  • The overall register is cheerful and easygoing; stakes are kept gentle and the book avoids dwelling on pain or dread.
  • Withheld information drives the experience; the book sustains enigmas and secrets the reader wants resolved, whatever its genre.
  • The book is contemplative and inward-looking, giving more weight to thought, memory, and meaning than to external events.
  • The book works as comfort reading — low tension, a soothing pace, and an atmosphere the reader can unwind in.
  • Grief, loss, or melancholy set the dominant register, and the book lets sorrow stand rather than resolving it into comfort.
  • Sustained suspense is the point; the book keeps the reader braced for what happens next through danger, pressure, or impending revelation.
  • Playful invention and charm define the register — fanciful conceits, light absurdity, and a narration that delights in its own oddity.

About

What the story runs on.

  • Stories in which extraterrestrial beings are central — as characters, cultures, or the object of the plot.
  • Stories structured as a quest — a journey undertaken to find, deliver, or destroy something of great import.
  • Stories in which staying alive against nature, catastrophe, or scarcity is the central problem.
  • Stories of lovers kept apart by law, family, faith, or station, where the obstacle to love is the plot.
  • Stories in which a friendship — its making, testing, or loss — is the emotional center.
  • Stories of growing up — a young protagonist crossing from childhood into adult knowledge and responsibility.
  • Stories about who a character truly is — self-discovery, doubled lives, and the search for a self.
  • Stories about mourning — living through the death of a loved one and what loss does to the survivors.
  • Stories in which a buried family truth — hidden parentage, crimes, or shames — surfaces and reorders the present.
  • Stories driven by maneuvering for power — factions, conspiracies, and statecraft conducted in shadow.
  • Stories in which war itself is the subject — combat, occupation, and what warfare does to soldiers and civilians.
  • Stories organized around investigating a killing — the case, the clues, and the pursuit of the killer, in any genre's clothing.

Shelf

Where it sits in the library.

    • Fiction built on magic or other supernatural elements that have no scientific explanation.
    • Secondary-world fantasy at large scale, where the fate of nations or the world turns on the protagonists' struggle.
    • Fantasy set in a recognizably modern city or contemporary world where the supernatural intrudes on everyday life.
    • Fantasy that blends in horror's atmosphere and imagery, keeping a fantastical frame around grim or frightening material.
    • Action-driven fantasy following warriors or rogues with personal stakes against sorcerous threats, rather than world-spanning conflicts.
    • Fantasy set in a real historical period or a close analogue of one, with magic woven into the era.
    • Fantasy in which protagonists cross from the ordinary world into another world through a portal or similar passage.
    • Fiction that retells or reworks a traditional fairy tale in a new form or setting.
    • Fantasy drawing directly on myths, legends, and folklore, retelling them or building on their figures and logic.
    • Fantasy of ghosts, vampires, shapeshifters, psychics, and similar phenomena, usually set in an otherwise ordinary world.
    • Fiction mixing science-fictional trappings with overtly magical or impossible elements in one setting.
    • Low-stakes fantasy emphasizing comfort, community, and everyday pleasures over conflict and peril.
    • Speculative fiction of pervasive moral ambiguity, violence, and cynicism that rejects heroic conventions — fantasy and SF alike.
      • Fiction that extrapolates from science and technology — future societies, space travel, or speculative inventions — within at least nominally natural laws.
      • Science fiction of interstellar scope — starships, galactic polities, and adventure across star systems.
      • Science fiction committed to scientific rigor, where technical plausibility constrains the story.
      • Science fiction centered on armed forces and warfare, told largely from a military point of view.
      • Science fiction of networked, corporate-dominated near futures, pairing high technology with social decay.
      • Science fiction styled on nineteenth-century steam-powered technology, often in a Victorian or pseudo-Victorian setting.
      • Fiction depicting an oppressive or catastrophic society, presented as a warning.
      • Fiction set after civilization's collapse, following survivors in the ruins of the old world.
      • Fiction in which characters move between past and future, and the mechanics or consequences of that travel drive the plot.
      • Fiction exploring a world where a historical event went differently and history diverged from ours.
      • Science fiction about humanity's first encounter and communication with an alien intelligence.
      • Science fiction in which extraterrestrial forces attack or occupy Earth and humanity resists.
      • Fiction whose primary aim is to frighten or unsettle the reader through dread, menace, or the monstrous.
      • Horror of vast, indifferent, incomprehensible entities before which humanity is insignificant, in the Lovecraft tradition.
      • Horror of decaying houses, buried family secrets, and oppressive atmosphere in the Gothic literary tradition.
      • Horror centered on hauntings and the returning dead.
      • Horror located in the mind — paranoia, obsession, and unreliable perception rather than external monsters.
      • Horror built around the reanimated dead and survival amid their outbreaks.
      • Horror defined by explicit, transgressive gore that refuses to cut away from violence.
      • Speculative fiction of the strange and uncanny that resists both natural explanation and standard genre categories.
      • Fiction organized around solving a crime or puzzle, typically following an investigator toward the identification of a culprit.
      • A puzzle-first mystery that lays out clues so the culprit's identity can be deduced before the reveal.
      • Crime fiction of moral ambiguity, fatalism, and hard-edged style, set among the corrupt and the doomed.
      • A mystery following the realistic routines of police work — forensics, interviews, and case-building.
      • A gentle mystery with an amateur sleuth, a small community, and violence kept off the page.
      • A mystery set in a past era, where the investigation works within that period's methods and society.
      • Fast-paced fiction driven by imminent danger, pursuit, or high-stakes conspiracy, built to sustain tension.
      • A thriller of espionage — agents, tradecraft, and intelligence services in conflict.
      • A thriller centered on lawyers and the courtroom, where litigation carries the suspense.
      • A thriller driven by detailed contemporary or near-future technology, often military or scientific.
      • A thriller whose tension comes from mental states and manipulation between characters rather than external action.
      • Fiction whose central plot is a romantic relationship and its development toward an emotionally satisfying resolution.
      • Romance in which one or both partners are supernatural beings, blending fantasy elements into the love story.
      • A fantasy-romance hybrid in which the romantic arc and the fantasy plot carry equal weight.
      • Romance set in a past era, with courtship shaped by the period's society and manners.
      • Romance set in the present day, without supernatural or historical elements.
      • Fiction set in a real past period, where the historical setting materially shapes characters and events.
        • General and literary fiction emphasizing prose style, character interiority, or formal ambition over genre plot conventions.
        • Fiction in a realistic world where magical events occur and are treated as ordinary, in the tradition of Latin American literature.
        • Fiction that ridicules people, institutions, or society in order to criticize them.
        • Fiction of dreamlike, irrational imagery and logic that breaks from realistic representation.
        • Fiction that plays with narrative convention through metafiction, fragmentation, and self-reference.
        • Fiction propelled by journeys, exploration, and physical peril, where action and survival carry the plot.
        • Adventure fiction of ships and seafaring — naval engagements, voyages, and life at sea.
        • Fiction of the American frontier West — gunmen, ranchers, and lawmen, typically in the late nineteenth century.
        • Fiction centered on soldiers, campaigns, and the experience of warfare, historical or imagined.
          • Fiction written primarily to amuse, using comedic situations, wit, or parody as its organizing principle.
            • Multi-generational fiction following a family or dynasty across decades, with inheritance and kinship as the through-line.
              • Fiction whose world runs on explicit game mechanics — levels, stats, and skills that characters can see and exploit.
                • Fiction about costumed or superpowered heroes and their conflicts with comparable villains.

                Practical

                How long a commitment, whether it stands alone, and whether it has finished.

                Tap a chip to ask for it · tap again to rule it out · once more to clear. Numbers show what would be left.

                • Cover of The Missing
                  The Missing

                  series · 10 books · 2008

                  similar bycontemporaryidentityscience fictiontime travelnorth americacoming of ageyoung adult+2 more

                  The Missing is a series of young adult novels written by Margaret Peterson Haddix. It tells the story of famous children from history stolen from their place in time by futuristic time travelers and accidentally sent to the 21st century as babies. Jonah Skidmore is one of the stolen children, and he, along with his non-adopted sister Katherine, must help return the missing kids to their rightful places in history and fix time before it is destroyed. The first book in the series, Found, was published on April 22, 2008. The series continued with book titles Sent, Sabotaged, Torn, Caught, Risked, and Revealed. The eighth and final book, Redeemed, was released on September 8, 2015. There are also two ebook short stories, Sought and Rescued . Haddix originally intended the series to consist of only seven books. However, she stated that she had trouble closing out the series in seven books; leading to her decision to write Redeemed.

                • Cover of InterWorld
                  InterWorld

                  series · 3 books · 2007

                  similar byadventurouscontemporarycoming of ageyoung adultscience fictionfantasy+1 more

                  InterWorld follows Joey Harker, an ordinary teenager who discovers he can walk between parallel Earths and is recruited into a band of alternate versions of himself defending the multiverse from two rival forces, one of magic and one of science, that want to conquer every reality. Michael Reaves developed the story with Neil Gaiman, and Reaves's daughter Mallory Reaves co-wrote the two sequels. It's a fast-moving, portal-hopping adventure aimed at younger readers rather than a slow-burn epic.

                • Cover of The Door Into Summer
                  The Door Into Summer

                  Robert A. Heinlein · standalone novel · 1957

                  similar byadventurousnorth americascience fictiontime travel+1 more

                  From the first page of the Signet 6th printing: "An electronics engineer invents a wizard robot... only to find himself shanghaied by his ruthless partner and his gold-digging fiancee. The crafty pair forces him to submit to the "long sleep" - suspended animation for thirty years. But when he wakes up in the year 2000 A.D. the inventor makes a startling discovery. He learns that it is possible now to twist time forwards or backwards. And so he returns to the past bent on a mission... of revenge."

                • Cover of Flowers for Algernon
                  Flowers for Algernon

                  Daniel Keyes · standalone novel · 1966

                  similar bynorth americacontemporarycoming of ageidentityscience fiction

                  A man with a low IQ becomes the subject of an experimental medical procedure which raises his IQ well over genius level.

                • Cover of The Nsibidi Scripts
                  The Nsibidi Scripts

                  series · 3 books · 2011

                  similar byadventurouscontemporarycoming of ageidentityyoung adultfantasy+1 more

                  The Nsibidi Scripts follows Sunny Nwazue, a Nigerian-American albino girl living in Nigeria, as she discovers latent magical ability and is inducted into a hidden society of Leopard People with its own laws, dangers, and hierarchy. Nnedi Okorafor's trilogy, beginning with Akata Witch and continuing through Akata Warrior and Akata Woman, follows Sunny's training and growing responsibility as a free agent defending her world from supernatural threats.

                • Cover of Switchers
                  Switchers

                  series · 3 books · 1997

                  similar byadventurouscontemporarycoming of ageidentityyoung adultfantasy+1 more

                  Kate Thompson's Switchers trilogy follows Tess, a Dublin teenager who can shapeshift into any animal but will lose the power forever on her fifteenth birthday. In the opening book she and a fellow Switcher named Kevin race to stop ancient Arctic creatures from plunging the world into a new ice age, transforming into ever stranger shapes along the way. The two further volumes, Midnight's Choice and Wild Blood, continue their adventures on borrowed time, blending contemporary Irish settings with animal-shapeshifting fantasy for young readers.

                • Cover of Out of Time
                  Out of Time

                  John Marsden · standalone novel · 1990

                  similar byadventurouscontemporarycoming of ageyoung adulttime travelfantasy+2 more

                  James, a strange, silent boy, makes the acquaintance of old Mr. Woodford, a physicist who constructs a mysterious black box, but when the box comes into the boy's possession, it draws him into a magical and dangerous world, in and out of time.

                • Cover of Citizen of the Galaxy
                  Citizen of the Galaxy

                  Robert A. Heinlein · standalone novel · 1957

                  similar byadventurouscoming of ageidentityscience fiction+1 more

                  On a planet far distant from Earth, a lame beggar buys a young boy slave who has forgotten his origins. The beggar is more than he seems, and gives the boy an extensive education while employing him as an observer of activity in their city. Years later, the beggar is captured by the government, and the youth must escape the planet.

                • Cover of Imperial Galaxy
                  Imperial Galaxy

                  series · 2 books · 2012

                  similar byadventurouscoming of ageidentityscience fictionyoung adult+1 more

                  Prince Khemri has spent his life as one of ten thousand princes bred and trained by a sprawling galactic empire, expecting eventual rule -- until he learns just how disposable princes actually are, and how routinely they're assassinated by their own siblings. Garth Nix's A Confusion of Princes follows Khemri through the empire's ruthless military, its secret intelligence service, and a deadly, decades-long competition to determine who might one day take the throne. It's a single, self-contained space opera rather than an ongoing series.

                • Cover of Boys of Blur
                  Boys of Blur

                  N. D. Wilson · standalone novel · 2014

                  similar byadventurousnorth americacontemporarycoming of ageyoung adultfantasy+1 more

                  Boys of Blur is a 2014 young adult novel by N. D. Wilson, published by Random House. It is set in the Florida Everglades, where boys play football and chase rabbits through burning sugarcane fields. According to Booklist, "Wilson brings the stuff of folklore to life in this novel, as elements of Beowulf, voodoo, and zombie mythos combine with the everyday to fantastic effect. The story moves at heart-pounding speeds, furthered by magic and mystery and rooted in ideas of familial bonds and self-discovery."

                • Cover of Misfit
                  Misfit

                  Jon Skovron · standalone novel · 2011

                  similar byadventurousnorth americacontemporarycoming of ageidentityyoung adult

                  Seattle sixteen-year-old Jael must negotiate normal life in Catholic school while learning to control the abilities she inherited from her mother, a demon, and protect those she loves from Belial, the Duke of Hell.

                • Cover of My Teacher Is an Alien
                  My Teacher Is an Alien

                  series · 4 books · 1989

                  similar byadventurouscontemporaryscience fiction+3 more

                  My Teacher Is an Alien is a four-book science fiction children's book series authored by Bruce Coville. The titles include:My Teacher Is an Alien (1989) My Teacher Fried My Brains (1991) My Teacher Glows in the Dark (1991) My Teacher Flunked the Planet (1992)

                • Cover of The Extraordinaries (TJ Klune)
                  The Extraordinaries (TJ Klune)

                  series · 3 books · 2020

                  similar bynorth americacontemporarycoming of ageidentityyoung adult+2 more

                  The Extraordinaries follows Nick Bell, a fanfiction-writing teenager with ADHD who is infatuated with his city's resident superhero, Shadow Star, and decides the only way to get noticed is to become extraordinary himself. TJ Klune's YA trilogy - The Extraordinaries, Flash Fire, and Heat Wave - plays with superhero and fan-fiction tropes as Nick's crush, his friendships, and his sense of who he is collide across the three books.

                • Cover of The Guardians of Time
                  The Guardians of Time

                  series · 4 books · 2002

                  similar byadventurouscontemporarytime travelyoung adultfantasy+1 more

                  Guardians of Time is a trilogy of novels written by Marianne Curley. The plot of the trilogy consists of the Guardians of Time, trying to protect the past, present, and future by traveling into the past to thwart their enemies, and the Order of Chaos, who are trying to change past events to give themselves more power.

                • Cover of Jumper
                  Jumper

                  series · 6 books · 1992

                  similar byadventurouscontemporaryscience fiction+4 more

                  Jumper follows David Rice, a teenager who discovers he can teleport anywhere he's been and uses the power to escape an abusive home, only to find that ability alone doesn't solve the harder problems of finding his absent mother, building an honest relationship, or staying off the radar of people who'd exploit him. Steven Gould's series continues across Reflex, Impulse, and Exo, later following his and his wife's daughter as a second-generation jumper. A 2008 film loosely adapted the first novel.

                • Cover of The Accidental Time Machine
                  The Accidental Time Machine

                  Joe Haldeman · standalone novel · 2007

                  similar byadventurouscontemporarynorth americascience fictiontime travel

                  "Grad-school dropout Matt Fuller is toiling as a lowly research assistant at MIT when, while measuring subtle quantum forces that relate to time changes in gravity and electromagnetic force, his calibrator turns into a time machine. With a dead-end job and a girlfriend who has left him for another man, Matt has nothing to lose taking a time machine trip himself - or so he thinks."

                • Cover of Be More Chill
                  Be More Chill

                  Ned Vizzini · standalone novel · 2004

                  similar bynorth americacontemporarycoming of ageidentityscience fictionyoung adult+1 more

                  Be More Chill is a novel written by American author Ned Vizzini and published on June 1, 2004. It follows unpopular high school student and social outcast Jeremy Heere, who is considered a loser by his peers. Deeply unsatisfied with his poor reputation and lack of romantic and sexual progress with his crush Christine, Jeremy obtains a SQUIP, a supercomputer in the form of a pill that travels to his brain upon ingestion and radically transforms Jeremy’s behavior and social status by giving him advice on how to be cool. The book was received positively for its amusing premise, plot, and humor. It has been adapted into a popular stage musical and a graphic novel.

                • K
                  Kairos

                  series · 11 books · 1962

                  completed

                  similar byscience fictionyoung adult+5 more

                  The Time Quintet is a science fantasy series of five young adult novels written by American author Madeleine L'Engle and made up of A Wrinkle in Time (1962), A Wind in the Door (1973), A Swiftly Tilting Planet (1978), Many Waters (1986), and An Acceptable Time (1989).

                • Cover of His Dark Materials
                  His Dark Materials

                  series · 8 books · 1995

                  part of His Dark Materials Universe

                  similar byadventurouscoming of ageyoung adultfantasy+2 more

                  His Dark Materials is a trilogy of fantasy novels by Philip Pullman consisting of Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife (1997), and The Amber Spyglass (2000). It follows the coming of age of two children, Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry, as they wander through a series of parallel universes. The novels have won a number of awards, including the Carnegie Medal in 1995 for Northern Lights and the 2001 Whitbread Book of the Year for The Amber Spyglass. In 2003, the trilogy was ranked third on the BBC's The Big Read poll.

                • Cover of Summerland
                  Summerland

                  Michael Chabon · standalone novel · 2002

                  similar byadventurouscontemporarycoming of ageyoung adultfantasy+1 more

                  Summerland is a 2002 fantasy young adult novel by American writer Michael Chabon. It is about young children who save the world from destruction by playing baseball, the central theme and symbol throughout the novel. Summerland weaves elements of a World Series, parallel-universe road trip, and a hero's odyssey. The book received mixed reviews; The New York Times called it "bewilderingly busy" and likened it to "the novelization of an animated action film".

                • Cover of Trollhunters
                  Trollhunters

                  Guillermo Del Toro & Daniel Kraus · standalone novel · 2015

                  similar byadventurousnorth americacontemporarycoming of ageyoung adultfantasy

                  Everything changes for San Bernardino teenage suburbanite Jim Sturges when a 45-year old mystery resurfaces, threatening the lives of everyone in his seemingly sleepy town. Soon Jim has to team up with a band of unlikely (and some un-human) heroes to battle the monsters he never knew existed.

                • Cover of Friday
                  Friday

                  Robert A. Heinlein · standalone novel · 1982

                  similar byadventurousnorth americaidentityscience fiction

                  Friday is a 1982 science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein. It is the story of a female "artificial person", the eponymous Friday, genetically engineered to be stronger, faster, smarter, and generally better than normal humans. Artificial humans are widely resented, and much of the story deals with Friday's struggle both against prejudice and to conceal her enhanced attributes from other humans. The story is set in a Balkanized 21st century, in which the nations of the North American continent have been split up into a number of smaller states.

                • Cover of The Indian in the Cupboard
                  The Indian in the Cupboard

                  series · 5 books · 1980

                  completed

                  similar byadventurouscontemporarycoming of agefantasy+2 more

                  Lynne Reid Banks' Indian in the Cupboard series begins with the 1980 children's novel in which a boy discovers that an old cupboard can bring his plastic toy figures to life. The low-fantasy series, which inspired a 1995 film adaptation, continues across Return of the Indian, The Secret of the Indian, The Mystery of the Cupboard, and The Key to the Indian.

                • Cover of The Star Beast
                  The Star Beast

                  Robert A. Heinlein · standalone novel · 1954

                  similar byadventurouscoming of agenorth americascience fictionyoung adult

                  A talking alien pet has grown to the size of a small dinosaur. She repeatedly gets her teenage owner in trouble whenever she leaves the backyard, but he continues to care for her, as did his father and grandfather before him. When an alien delegation lands on Earth and demands custody, he fights to protect her.