Chris Lynch has written other novels that focus on troubled family relationships, including the "Blue-Eyed Son" Trilogy, composed of Mick, Blood Relations, and Dog Eat Dog, which features two brawling teenage brothers and their dysfunctional family. Another unusually structured Lynch novel that deals with family dysfunction—as well as thwarted romance—is Whitechurch.

Issues relating to abuse, neglect, and dysfunctional families are explored in many young adult novels. When She Was Good by Norma Fox Mazer is a first-person account of a teenage girl trying to create a life for herself after her abusive older sister dies.

Four children must make it on their own owing to their mother's neglect in Heather Quarles's A Door Near Here. Raina faces overwhelming odds in White Horse by Cynthia D. Grant, as does the protagonist of the Newbery Honor Book What Jamie Saw by Carolyn...