*This post will be updated with books as I become aware of them, so keep checking back!
In July 2016, I lost my only sibling in a car crash. As no one is probably surprised, much of how I’ve handled this is by reading, both to better understand my situation and what I was and have been feeling and to escape. A few weeks after he died, I attended an event at the Arlington Public Library at which author Hannah Barnaby spoke about her new book, Some of the Parts, which features the story of a girl whose brother dies in a car crash and how she works through the grief she experiences. Barnaby spoke of her own sibling loss and I was grateful that she took the time to speak with me after, waited while I purchased a book, signed it, and spoke with me a while longer despite others waiting to meet her. A few weeks later she got in touch on Twitter to check in on me. We’re a strange little club, those of us who have lost a sibling.
I only just recently started reading Some of the Parts, not having felt ready until now. And even now, I keep another book — A Separate Peace, something old and familiar and in my favorite niche genre of books ever — by my bedside so I can choose not to read Barnaby’s novel if I’m not feeling up to it in the moment. But it occurred to me others might find comfort in reading stories that reflect their own. So I went to work putting together this list.
Most of these books were selected by doing simple keyword and subject header searches on the library catalogs for Arlington Public Library and Alexandria Public Library, both in Virginia. I de-selected any books that seemed to sensationalize the topic — things like mystery thrillers or procedural novels. There’s a time and a place for those, but they didn’t fit the concept of this list. Incidentally, there were few adult novels who took the subject “seriously.” Those that do appear on the list below are starred. Everything else you see below is typically categorized as young adult. Because the loss of a young child is, in my mind, very different from the loss of a teen or an adult sibling, I did not include juvenile reading materials (though they certainly exist).
Various kinds of relationships and deaths are represented in the list below. Some are about the loss of a brother, others of a sister (I haven’t yet seen any loss of non-binary siblings or otherwise-identifying siblings; please comment if you know of some!). Some are about the loss of an older sibling, others of a younger sibling. Some characters have other siblings, others are left as only children. Some are twins, some are not. There are far too many dimensions to note all of them, so I’ve linked to Goodreads pages for you to view summaries, most of which indicate a good amount of this information. The list is in no particular order. While I considered it, I did not do research on the authors of the books to determine whether or not they have lost a sibling (and I do think it can make a difference).
If you’ve lost a sibling and want to find commonness in literature or if you simply want to better understand what it’s like to lose a sibling, I hope this list will help you find what it is you’re looking for.

Image courtesy of Photo Pin
Love Letters to the Dead by Ava Dellaira
Some of the Parts by Hannah Barnaby
Eleanor by Jason Gurley*
You Were Here by Cori McCarthy
The Telling by Alexandra Sirowy
The Sister Pact by Stacie Ramey
The Last Time We Say Goodbye by Cynthia Hand
Untwine by Edwidge Danticat
The Way Back from Broken by Amber Keyser
Breakaway by Katarina M. Spears
The Good Sister by Jamie Kain
Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night by Barbara J. Taylor*
After Iris by Natasha Farrant
My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece by Annabel Pitcher
Waiting by Carol Lynch Williams
All Rivers Flow to the Sea by Alison McGhee*
Dangerous Neighbors by Beth Kephart
The Sky Is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson
Lost for Words by Alice Kuipers
Give Up the Ghost by Megan Crewe
The Anatomy of Wings by Karen Foxlee
Saving Zoë by Alyson Noël
Choices by Deborah Lynn Jacobs
The Other Shepards by Adele Griffin
For This Life Only by Stacey Kade
Phantom Limbs by Paula Garner
Pieces by Chris Lynch
Dr. Radway’s Sasparilla Resolvent by Beth Kephart
Personal Effects by E. M. Kokie
Gemini Summer by Iain Lawrence
The Art of Not Breathing by Sarah Alexander
Displacement by Thalia Chaltas
Then I Met My Sister by Christine Hurley Deriso
The Secrets We Keep by Trisha Leaver
Dead Little Mean Girl by Eva Darrows (step-siblings)
The Sun and Other Stars by Brigid Pasulka
The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud by Ben Sherwood*
Coaltown Jesus by Ronald Koertge
No One You Know by Michelle Richmond
Sister by Rosamund Lupton
Dear Zoe by Philip Beard*
Optimists Die First by Susin Nielsen-Fernlund
The Second Sister by Marie Bostwick*
The New Normal by Ashley Little
A Map of the Known World by Lisa Ann Sandell
Someone Else’s Summer by Rachel Bateman
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