Read-a-likes: what to read next based on your recent favourite
Our read-a-like list for some of the buzziest books.
Can't get a recent read off your mind? Did you really love a book's characters, take on the world or just its general vibes? And have you found yourself wanting more?
Here we share some brilliant recommendations based on your favourites.
Books like Normal People by Sally Rooney
Can two people from very different backgrounds make a relationship work? While fans of Normal People may have spent the whole story wondering if Marianne and Connell will make it through the book together, Cecilia Rabess's fearless debut, Everything's Fine, takes this one step further by asking of its romantic leads not just will they, but should they?
Meanwhile, Lily King's Writer & Lovers draws a dramatic love triangle that is perhaps more akin to Sally Rooney's Conversations with Friends, but like Normal People, beautifully captures feelings of romantic yearning.
Books like Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
Readers have fallen in love with Lesson in Chemistry's heroine Elizabeth Zot; she is no-nonsense, bold and unafraid to break the status quo, just like The Women's Frankie McGrath. When the twenty-year-old nursing student decides that women can be heroes too, she joins the Army Nurses Corps and heads to Vietnam to prove herself right, and society wrong.
And if you enjoyed Elizabeth's scientific, data-driven approach to work and life, we suggest The Theory of (Not Quite) Everything featuring maths genius, Art. When his twin sister falls for someone, he's determined to prove that even love is a numbers game, and in this case they don't add up.
‘Stuns with sacrifice. Uplifts with heroism.’
Bonnie Garmus on The Women
Books like Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
Delia Owen's Where the Crawdads Sing captured readers with its vivid descriptions of North Carolina's marshes.
Two books that will also transport you to epic landscapes are Kristin Hannah's The Great Alone and Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John. In the former, we join thirteen-year-old Leni in Alaska, and in the latter we are transported to the island of Antigua with the titular Annie John. Both, like Where the Crawdads Sing, are coming-of-age stories of young girls finding their place in the world.
‘A master storyteller. ’
Delia Owens on The Great Alone
Books like Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
Few books capture the realities of (maybe more than) friendship as profoundly as Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. Sometimes heartwarming, sometimes hard to like, Sadie and Sam are completely their own people.
If you want to meet more indelible characters we recommend Hanya Yanagihara and August Thompson. In Yanagihara's A Little Life there are Willem, JB, Malcolm and Jude. As Jude's unspeakable childhood is revealed over four decades and 752 pages, we cry because we really do care. In Thompson's Anyone's Ghost, we spend twenty years with Theron and Jake as they get high, drift apart, and are brought hurtling back together. These books will break your heart, put it back together and probably break it again.
Books like How to Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie
If you loved How to Kill Your Family you're probably a fan of dark comedy, and Mother for Dinner is just that. While the Seltzers may not want to kill each other, they do want to eat each other – yes, you read that right. But some of the siblings are fighting back against this unusual family tradition as they question what is morally right and wrong.
For those who prefer their thrillers with less cannibalism and more old-fashioned murder, Darling Girls has brilliant plot twists and impeccable comic timing, much like How to Kill Your Family. When sisters Jessica, Norah and Alicia discover a body under the home they grew up in, they quickly learn their childhood wasn't as idyllic as they thought . . .
Books like The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
I see your green dress, and raise you an orange one: meet The Final Act of Juliette Willoughby. Like The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Ellery Lloyd's book features a compulsive multiple-timeline mystery. Get ready to span 1938 to the present day and journey across Paris, Cambridge and Dubai.
If it was the glitz and glamour of the golden age of Hollywood that drew you in, let us introduce you to Daisy Hemmings. Like Evelyn, Daisy is actress. When she decides it's time to write her autobiography, she chooses James Tate to help her. James is a ghost-writer and his job is to tell other people's stories for them. He's good at it, and why wouldn't he be? He's spent years pretending to be someone else . . .
‘A step up for fans of Taylor Jenkins Reid.’
The Bookseller on The Secret Life of Daisy Hemmings
Books like Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
Who gets to tell our stories? This is the central question in Kuang's Yellowface and Elaine Hsieh Chou's Disorientation. In the latter, Ingrid Yang is desperate to finish her PhD dissertation on the much-lauded poet Xiao-Wen Chou and never read about ‘Chinese-y’ things again. Then, she accidentally stumbles upon a strange note in the Chou archives – a note that will lead to an explosive secret. . .
Yellowface also comments on racial prejudices in the publishing industry, which are also interrogated in Raven Lelani's Luster, whose protagonist, Edie, is the only black woman in her office. Then she meets Eric, a white middle-aged archivist, and starts living with his suburban family. As thought-provoking as they are page-turning, these are books that ask difficult and important questions.
Books like The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller
Long-kept family secrets are the focus of Miranda Cowley Heller's The Paper Palace. Homecoming and Cloudstreet explore similar themes. In both instances we are transported to Australia; in Homecoming it's the Adelaide Hills as the Turner Family Tragedy of 1959 is unraveled, while in Cloudstreet we meet two families – the Pickles and the Lambs – in this twenty-year-long drama.
These novels all create a sense of the home as being a precious, but sometimes troubling and claustrophobic place.
Books like The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
Before Richard Osman, there was Minna Lindgren and The Lavender Ladies Detective Agency series. Also set in a retirement home, these cosy crime books follow Siiri and Irma, best friends and the queen bees of Sunset Grove, a retirement community for those still young at heart. But a suspicious death quickly turns their comfortable world upside down.
Also pre-dating The Thursday Murder Club series is A Little Local Murder. In this classic detective story, Robert Barnard is as incisive as Osman in his unexpected twists and character portrayals, yet keeps his crime very much cosy.
Books like Atomic Habits by James Clear
So you've read Atomic Habits and conquered 'Habit Stacking' and the 'Two Minute Rule'. Now, why not sort out your finances with The Psychology of Money? In this essential read, Morgan Housel shares nineteen short stories exploring the strange ways people think about money and teaches you how to make better sense of one of life's most important topics.
Or help yourself understand your brain even better with Braintenance, neuroscientist and communicator Dr Julia Ravey's research-led self-help book. Using the latest developments in science and psychology you will learn how to direct your focus, boost belief, and beat procrastination – and why you should forget motivation.
The Psychology of Money
Morgan Housel
Books like Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton
Dolly Alderton has shown that love means so much more than just romantic love, a mantra shared by Marianne Power. In Love Me! she puts the spotlight on self-love and sisterhood to answer the question: can you have a life full of love without marriage and kids? Similarly to Dolly, we follow Marianne's journey through honest, intimate and hilarious anecdotes.
Meanwhile, Nina Stibbe's latest book, Went to London, Took the Dog, shows us that it's never too late to embrace change. From the beloved writer of Love, Nina, this is the story of how one woman started again at sixty. Join Nina as she heads back to London after twenty years away for what she calls ‘a year-long sabbatical’.
