EyebrarianPrize winnersGet the app

Books › Five Feet Apart

Cover of Five Feet Apart

Five Feet Apart

Rachael Lippincott

304 pages

A high-stakes, tear-jerking romance about the agonizing distance between surviving and truly living.

Where to buyBooks like this

What it feels like

Reading this book feels like holding your breath. It is a brisk, emotionally charged experience that traps you in the sterile, claustrophobic world of a hospital, only to flood that space with the overwhelming warmth of first love. The narrative moves with an urgent, ticking-clock momentum, driven by accessible, dialogue-heavy prose that puts you directly inside the minds of two vulnerable teenagers. It balances the grim realities of chronic illness with a tender, earnest romance that makes every stolen glance feel monumental. The mood is deeply heart-wrenching yet stubbornly hopeful, asking profound questions about the necessity of human touch and the difference between merely surviving and actually living. It is a perfect, cathartic read for anyone who loves a high-stakes, tear-jerking romance where the emotional obstacles are a matter of life and death.

Mood
  • heart-wrenching
  • tender
  • claustrophobic
  • emotionally charged
Tone
  • earnest
  • urgent
  • bittersweet
  • romantic
  • vulnerable
Pace
brisk
Themes
the necessity of human touch · living versus surviving · chronic illness and mortality · finding control in chaos · first love
The writing
Accessible, dialogue-heavy, and emotionally direct, prioritizing authentic teenage voices over lyrical flourish.
The arc
Begins with guarded isolation and medical routine, swelling into a desperate, life-affirming connection before culminating in a bittersweet, tear-jerking sacrifice.
Who it's for
Readers who crave high-stakes, tear-jerking YA romance and love stories where the obstacles feel genuinely insurmountable.
Content notes
  • chronic illness
  • hospitalization
  • death of a friend
  • medical trauma
  • grief

About the book

In this novel that’s perfect for fans of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, two teens fall in love with just one minor complication—they can’t get within a few feet of each other without risking their lives.

Can you love someone you can never touch?

Stella Grant likes to be in control—even though her totally out of control lungs have sent her in and out of the hospital most of her life. At this point, what Stella needs to control most is keeping herself away from anyone or anything that might pass along an infection and jeopardize the possibility of a lung transplant. Six feet apart. No exceptions.

The only thing Will Newman wants to be in control of is getting out of this hospital. He couldn’t care less about his treatments, or a fancy new clinical drug trial. Soon, he’ll turn eighteen and then he’ll be able to unplug all these machines and actually go see the world, not just its hospitals.

Will’s exactly what Stella needs to stay away from. If he so much as breathes on Stella, she could lose her spot on the transplant list. Either one of them could die. The only way to stay alive is to stay apart. But suddenly six feet doesn’t feel like safety. It feels like punishment.

What if they could steal back just a little bit of the space their broken lungs have stolen from them? Would five feet apart really be so dangerous if it stops their hearts from breaking too?

Description from Open Library.

Books like Five Feet Apart

See why they match