8 Great Books About Death For Young Adults

A young adult novel about life and death and moving on doesn’t sound all that original at first, but Green’s treatment of adolescents is different. He makes his characters complex and intelligent and impulsive as every teenager truly is. He does not treat his characters as they might treat themselves, over-important or that which should be pitied. Nor does he treat them as so many adults might, with disdain for their rashness and lack of experience. The author makes his story accessible and realistic to teens and adults alike because there seems to be true in the conflicting emotions his characters go through.

A novel of life and death and the people caught in between, The Fault in Our Stars is John Green at his best. You laugh, you cry, and then you come back for more. The Fault in Our Stars is a love story, one of the most genuine and moving ones in recent American fiction, but it’s also an existential tragedy of tremendous intelligence and courage and sadness.

This is the perfect book for a young adult who is dealing with loss. Instead of explaining what death and grief are, it gently holds the hand of the reader by providing inspiration through uplifting quotations and accompanying thoughts. It is an easy-to-read, open-anywhere, encouraging-guide for dealing with grief and loss.

Eva Kor was just a ten-year-old girl when she endured torture at the hands of Joseph Mengele. Unlike many others, including her family members who were killed in Auschwitz, Eva managed to walk out alive with all senses intact and forgave those responsible for such abuse despite never forgiving them during actual captivity because anger can be used as fuel towards war while forgiveness breeds peace.

The Beautiful Forevers Behind The Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Eileen Boo tells readers everything from its inception; where she was born and raised (Mumbai), her family history- both biological as well those assigned through marriage over generations past like father/son or mother-daughter combinations, all ending up living abroad for one reason or another before retiring back home.

Abandoned by her mother in a poor Sweet Valley neighborhood, Daisy falls in with a troupe of street-smart teens who offer her both the family and freedom she desperately craves. Their leader is Avia, a mysterious older teen who teaches Daisy both to survive and about the importance of family loyalty. But when tragedy strikes and sends Avia down the deadly path of revenge, Daisy must prove her loyalty in one truly unforgettable act.

2020 Bronze eLit Award Winner. This book highlights the amazing complexity and power of the mind-body. In 2009 Barbara Morello-O’Donnell, a successful architectural rendering artist, contracted the deadly H1N1 flu virus. In a coma, in total renal failure, and needing a heart transplant, it was not expected that she would survive. To complicate matters, she threw a major stroke, which in the unlikely event of survival would have meant that Barbara would be a blind vegetable. Isolated in a coma that trapped her in the cocoon of her own consciousness, Barbara experiences a different world, where every external sensation is transformed into a part of her own struggle for survival. Knowing at some level in her psyche that she is at death’s door, Barb embarks on a spiritual journey that seems to lead beyond the living. Along the way she meets a cast of characters, most of whom are symbolic of the real people in her life. But there are two encounters that are not with people of this world and they would change her life forever.

This short novel is dark and vivid, full of conflicting emotions: love, fear, anger, joy. Anyone who has experienced the death of a loved one and the false connection that comes with it will know exactly how the narrator feels as she struggles with feelings of resentment and rejection. Sara Pinborough explained what it is like to see or feel death as a mortal – or when they are on the verge of dying – when they want to come back or go away completely. The narrator has written this book beautifully, making it both hard to read and even harder to put down.