Books like Escape from St Hell

Escape from St Hell by Lewis Hancox reads as honest, humorous. These 12 books share its genome — matched by how they actually read, not just their shelf label.

What Escape from St Hell is like to read

A warm, funny graphic memoir that charts one young trans man's transition with candor and cringe-comedy in equal measure. The panels move quickly through milestones — body, family, friends — with an inviting, self-deprecating voice. Best for: readers who loved Welcome to St. Hell or want an honest, hopeful trans coming-of-age in graphic-memoir form.

Gender Queer

Maia Kobabe · 2019

An intimate, candid graphic memoir that moves in vignettes through the author's journey to understanding eir nonbinary and asexual identity.

complete storydeep cut

Welcome to St. Hell

Lewis Hancox · 2022

A graphic memoir that revisits a trans teen's adolescence with humor and warmth, the adult Lewis in dialogue with his younger self.

YAcomplete storydeep cut

Honor girl

Maggie Thrash · 2015

An intimate, aching account of a first same-sex crush unfolding over a single summer at an all-girls camp, told with teenage immediacy and emotional rawness.

YAcomplete storydeep cut

Good Talk

Mira Jacob · 2018

Reading this feels like sitting in on candid, sometimes painful family conversations rendered in intimate comic-panel form — funny, tender, and unflinching about race and identity.

complete storydeep cut

My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness

Kabi Nagata · 2016

A raw, confessional autobiographical manga that alternates painful self-examination with wry self-deprecation, using simple expressive art to render loneliness, sexuality, and mental illness with disarming honesty.

complete storydeep cut

Tomboy

Liz Prince · 2014

Same graphic feel

The Best We Could Do

Thi Bui · 2017

An intimate graphic memoir that braids a family's flight from postwar Vietnam with the narrator's own reckoning with motherhood and inheritance — poetic prose paired with expressiv

complete storydeep cut

Times I Knew I Was Gay

Eleanor Crewes · 2020

Same memoir feel

The Complete Persepolis

Marjane Satrapi · 2023

A definitive collected journey through Satrapi's formative years across revolutionary Iran and European exile, rendered in her signature plain-spoken, visually stark graphic style

deep cut

Una entre muchas

Una · 2015

Same graphic feel

Real Friends

Shannon Hale · 2017

A warm, honest graphic memoir about the churn of grade-school friendships and cliques, told with a young narrator's earnest vulnerability and the emotional immediacy comics bring to childhood memory.

younger readerscomplete storydeep cut

The Fire Never Goes Out

N.D. Stevenson · 2019

A visually and emotionally raw graphic memoir that traces an artist's internal and external growth through the challenges of adolescence and young adulthood.

deep cut

About Escape from St Hell — what the genome says

Is Escape from St Hell a complete story or a cliffhanger?

The main arc resolves, with wider series threads left open.

Who is Escape from St Hell for?

readers who loved Welcome to St. Hell or want an honest, hopeful trans coming-of-age in graphic-memoir form

Find your next read by its genome

Tell Novelome one book you love — get recommendations tuned to your taste, including the ones other sites never surface.

Start free →

More readalikes: Books like THE LET THEM THEORY · Books like EXTREME OWNERSHIP · Books like WINGS OF STARLIGHT · Books like DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU THINK, EXPANDED EDITION · Books like I WILL TEACH YOU TO BE RICH, SECOND EDITION · Books like FAKE SKATING · Books like THE CREATIVE ACT · Books like IF ONLY I HAD TOLD HER