The purpose of this work is to analyse and compare six contemporary Croatian novels that have appeared in the last two decades. The novels that will be discussed are Hotel Zagorje (Ivana Simić Bodrožić, 2010), Sloboština Barbie (Maša Kolanović, 2008), Črna mati zemla (Kristian Novak, 2013), Bilo jednom na Divljem istoku(Franjo Nagulov, 2020), Sinovi, kćeri (Ivana Bodrožić, 2020) and Moja dota (Nora Verde, 2021). The attention in the deliberations is directed towards the circumstances of growing up of the main characters. The novels are divided in three groups regarding the relationship between the phenomenology of growing up and other problematic aspects presented in the thematic horizon of Croatian contemporary novel. This is the reason that novels are in observation and analysing connected in a kind of complementary pairs that make up two novels of related thematic preoccupation. The childhood issue is observed comparatively through three thematic lines - the theme of war and social exclusion. Or in other words through the relationship of growing up and war, growing up and death and growing up and exclusion the protagonists are observed on the psycho social level and in the social context. With all this, stylish and language features of the novels which significantly influenced the shaping of the characters themselves are analysed. Despite the fact that the main accent is on the main characters of the novel, the analysis also considers some minor characters who play important roles in the profiling of the main characters, their actions, state and character.