It’s National Siblings Day! Which Sibling Story Should You Read Next?

Sam & Ilsa's Last Hurrah

This fun and funny tale is a sibling story at heart, featuring a set of twins who love to throw a good party (and get each other into a little bit of trouble). 

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Siblings Sam and Ilsa Kehlmann have spent most of their high school years throwing parties for their friends—and now they’ve prepared their final blowout, just before graduation.

The rules are simple: each twin gets to invite three guests, and the other twin doesn’t know who’s coming until the partiers show up at the door. With Sam and Ilsa, the sibling revelry is always tempered with a large dose of sibling rivalry, and tonight is no exception.

One night. One apartment. Eight people. What could possibly go wrong? Oh, we all know the answer is plenty. But plenty also goes right, as well…in rather surprising ways.

The Beauty That Remains

This powerful story is about learning to live after the loss of loved ones (in some cases a sibling) and discovering that life can still be beautiful even after heartache. It’s definitely a tearjerker! 

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Told from three diverse points of view, this story of life and love after loss is one Angie Thomas, author of The Hate U Give, calls a “stunning, heart-wrenching look at grief that will stay with you long after you put it down.”

We’ve lost everything…and found ourselves.

Music brought Autumn, Shay, and Logan together. Death might pull them apart.

Autumn always knew exactly who she was: a talented artist and a loyal friend. Shay was defined by two things: her bond with her twin sister, Sasha, and her love of music. And Logan has always turned to writing love songs when his real love life was a little less than perfect.

But when tragedy strikes each of them, somehow music is no longer enough. Now Logan is a guy who can’t stop watching vlogs of his dead ex-boyfriend. Shay is a music blogger who’s struggling to keep it together. And Autumn sends messages that she knows can never be answered.

Despite the odds, one band’s music will reunite them and prove that after grief, beauty thrives in the people left behind.

Americanized: Rebel Without a Green Card

Sara Saedi’s on-point memoir is about her experience growing up in America as an undocumented immigrant from the Middle East, and of course, about being a teenager with a beautiful older sister.

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“Very funny but never flippant, Saedi mixes ‘90s pop culture references, adolescent angst and Iranian history into an intimate, informative narrative that thoroughly defies current divisive view on immigration.”—The New York Times

At thirteen, bright-eyed, straight-A student Sara Saedi uncovered a terrible family secret: she was breaking the law simply by living in the United States. Only two years old when her parents fled Iran, she didn’t learn of her undocumented status until her older sister wanted to apply for an after-school job, but couldn’t because she didn’t have a Social Security number.

Fear of deportation kept Sara up at night, but it didn’t keep her from being a teenager. She desperately wanted a green card, along with clear skin, her own car, and a boyfriend.

Americanized follows Sara’s progress toward getting her green card, but that’s only a portion of her experiences as an Iranian-“American” teenager. From discovering that her parents secretly divorced to facilitate her mother’s green card application to learning how to tame her unibrow, Sara pivots gracefully from the terrifying prospect that she might be kicked out of the country at any time to the almost-as-terrifying possibility that she might be the only one of her friends without a date to the prom. This moving, often hilarious story is for anyone who has ever shared either fear.

What to Say Next

We love a novel with an amazing supporting cast, especially when an awesome big sister is involved. In this heartwarming tale, David struggles to find his place in the world and trusts his older, popular sister to help him navigate the seemingly impossible rules of high school. She treats him with respect, patience, and a little bit of the tough love we all need sometimes.

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From the New York Times bestselling author of Tell Me Three Things comes a story about two struggling teenagers who find an unexpected connection just when they need it most. Nicola Yoon, the bestselling author of Everything, Everything, calls it “charming, funny, and deeply affecting.”

Sometimes a new perspective is all that is needed to make sense of the world.

KIT: I don’t know why I decide not to sit with Annie and Violet at lunch. It feels like no one here gets what I’m going through. How could they?  I don’t even understand.

DAVID: In the 622 days I’ve attended Mapleview High, Kit Lowell is the first person to sit at my lunch table. I mean, I’ve never once sat with someone until now. “So your dad is dead,” I say to Kit, because this is a fact I’ve recently learned about her. 

When an unlikely friendship is sparked between relatively popular Kit Lowell and socially isolated David Drucker, everyone is surprised, most of all Kit and David.  Kit appreciates David’s blunt honesty—in fact, she finds it bizarrely refreshing. David welcomes Kit’s attention and her inquisitive nature. When she asks for his help figuring out the how and why of her dad’s tragic car accident, David is all in. But neither of them can predict what they’ll find. Can their friendship survive the truth?

Every Day

Speaking of big sisters, can Jolene from Every Day and Another Day just be everyone’s big sister? She’s cool, she has a car, and even though she teases, she’s there when it really counts. 

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Every day a different body. Every day a different life. Every day in love with the same girl.

There’s never any warning about where it will be or who it will be. A has made peace with that, even established guidelines by which to live: Never get too attached. Avoid being noticed. Do not interfere. It’s all fine until the morning that A wakes up in the body of Justin and meets Justin’s girlfriend, Rhiannon. From that moment, the rules by which A has been living no longer apply. Because finally A has found someone he wants to be with—day in, day out, day after day. But can Rhiannon love someone who is destined to change every day?

Words in Deep Blue

This is the love story of all love stories, including a brother-sister side story that gives us so many feels. Rachel is trying to cope with the loss of her brother, but can’t bring herself to tell her former crush and best friend Henry that he died. Within the walls of a family owned bookshop, she finds her way back to Henry and finds a way to tell the truth. 

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A beautiful love story for fans of Jandy Nelson and Nicola Yoon: two teens find their way back to each other in a bookstore full of secrets and crushes, grief and hope—and letters hidden between the pages.

 Years ago, Rachel had a crush on Henry Jones. The day before she moved away, she tucked a love letter into his favorite book in his family’s bookshop. She waited. But Henry never came.

Now Rachel has returned to the city—and to the bookshop—to work alongside the boy she’d rather not see, if at all possible, for the rest of her life. But Rachel needs the distraction. Her brother drowned months ago, and she can’t feel anything anymore.

As Henry and Rachel work side by side—surrounded by books, watching love stories unfold, exchanging letters between the pages—they find hope in each other. Because life may be uncontrollable, even unbearable sometimes. But it’s possible that words, and love, and second chances are enough.

And I Darken

Don’t mess with the sibling duo in And I Darken by Kiersten White! Lada is the fierce older sister and Radu is her gentle younger brother. Despite their differences in personality, they have a special sibling bond—even when certain forces try to pull them apart. 

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NO ONE EXPECTS A PRINCESS TO BE BRUTAL. And Lada Dragwlya likes it that way. Ever since she and her gentle younger brother, Radu, were wrenched from their homeland of Wallachia and abandoned by their father to be raised in the Ottoman courts, Lada has known that being ruthless is the key to survival. She and Radu are doomed to act as pawns in a vicious game, an unseen sword hovering over their every move. For the lineage that makes them special also makes them targets.

Lada despises the Ottomans and bides her time, planning her vengeance for the day when she can return to Wallachia and claim her birthright. Radu longs only for a place where he feels safe. And when they meet Mehmed, the defiant and lonely son of the sultan, who’s expected to rule a nation, Radu feels that he’s made a true friend—and Lada wonders if she’s finally found someone worthy of her passion.

But Mehmed is heir to the very empire that Lada has sworn to fight against—and that Radu now considers home. Together, Lada, Radu, and Mehmed form a toxic triangle that strains the bonds of love and loyalty to the breaking point.

From New York Times bestselling author Kiersten White comes the first book in a dark, sweeping new series in which heads will roll, bodies will be impaled… and hearts will be broken.

The Third Twin

In this psychological thriller, identical twins become identical suspects when the sister they made up as children becomes a murder suspect. 

IT STARTED AS A JOKE.

When they were little, Lexi and her identical twin, Ava, made up a third sister, Alicia. If something broke? Alicia did it. Alicia was always to blame for everything.

NOW THE GAME IS ALL GROWN UP.

The girls are seniors, and they use Alicia as their cover to go out with guys who they’d never, ever be with in real life. But sometimes games just aren’t worth playing. A boy has turned up dead, and DNA evidence and surveillance photos point to only one suspect—Alicia. The girl who doesn’t exist.

IDENTICAL TWINS. IDENTICAL DNA. IDENTICAL SUSPECTS.

Ava insists that if they keep following the rules for being Alicia, everything will be fine. But Lexi isn’t so sure. She must find the truth before another boy is murdered.

BECAUSE EITHER AVA IS A KILLER… OR ALICIA IS REAL.