Hi friends! Today, I’d like to offer you a few more book recommendations in the form of “if you liked this book, then you might like this other book.” I love when folks on Booktube, Bookstagram, and Goodreads include comparisons to other books in their reviews! It’s one of my favorite ways to find new reads! So, I started a bookish series here on the blog to do just that for YOU. (Here’s part 1! Here’s part 2!)
In each post, I recommend books that are similar to very popular books that are more well-known. Let’s get into it, shall we?!
If you liked Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford,
you might like Wunderland by Jennifer Cody Epstein
If Jamie Ford’s creation of a dual perspective that bounced between 1980’s America and WWII was a compelling feature for you, you should check out Wunderland which travels between similar timelines. Wunderland is a really interesting exploration of Berlin in the early to mid 30’s and the lasting effects Nazi Germany would have on the lives of our main characters when we revisit them in the late 80’s. This is the type of historical fiction that will really make you stop and think. There were even a few chapters that could almost be read as stand-alone short stories, they were that impactful in and of themselves.
Synopsis:
Things had never been easy between Ava Fisher and her estranged mother Ilse. Too many questions hovered between them: Who was Ava’s father? Where had Ilse been during the war? Why had she left her only child in a German orphanage during the war’s final months? But now Ilse’s ashes have arrived from Germany, and with them, a trove of unsent letters addressed to someone else unknown to Ava: Renate Bauer, a childhood friend. As her mother’s letters unfurl a dark past, Ava spirals deep into the shocking history of a woman she never truly knew.
If you liked Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple, you might like What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty
If you enjoyed reading Maria Semple’s zany contemporary novel about a daughter trying to solve the mystery of her missing mom, you should check out Liane Moriarty’s zany contemporary novel about a mom trying to solve the mystery of her missing memories. What Alice Forgot is a wonderful reflection on how our pasts shape us and it will keep you on your toes until the bitter(sweet) end.
Synopsis:
Alice Love is twenty-nine, crazy about her husband, and pregnant with her first child. So imagine Alice’s surprise when she comes to on the floor of a gym and is whisked off to the hospital where she discovers the honeymoon is truly over — she’s getting divorced, she has three kids and she’s actually 39 years old. Alice must reconstruct the events of a lost decade, and find out whether it’s possible to reconstruct her life at the same time.
If you liked Wild by Cheryl Strayed,
you might like Grandma Gatewood’s Walk by Ben Montgomery
If Wild made you realize a need for your TBR to include a few more female road narratives, Grandma Gatewood’s Walk is for you. Just like Wild, it follows a woman on the move and on her own — thru-hiking one of America’s long distance trails. Grandma Gatewood, as reporters called her, became the first woman to hike the entire Appalachian Trail alone, as well as the first person—man or woman—to walk it twice and three times. She paved the way for quest seeking women all over, including Cheryl Strayed.
Synopsis:
Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than two hundred dollars. The next anybody heard from her, this genteel, farm-reared, 67-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail. And in September 1955, having survived a rattlesnake strike, two hurricanes, and a run-in with gangsters from Harlem, she stood atop Maine’s Mount Katahdin. There she sang the first verse of “America, the Beautiful” and proclaimed, “I said I’ll do it, and I’ve done it.”
If you liked Every Day by David Levithan,
you might like Until We Meet Again by Renee Collins
Both of these books contain everything you might expect from a young adult romance, but with some fantastical, science fiction elements thrown in for good measure. In Every Day we follow “A” who wakes up each morning in a new body… but still manages to fall in love. In Until We Meet Again we follow two teens from different centuries… who still manage to fall in love.
Synopsis:
Cassandra craves drama and adventure, so the last thing she wants is to spend her summer marooned with her mother and stepfather in a snooty Massachusetts shore town. But when a dreamy stranger shows up on their private beach claiming it’s his own—and that the year is 1925—she is swept into a mystery a hundred years in the making.
I hope you enjoyed these new recommendations and I’m excited to bring you more posts in this series in the future! Do you have any book recommendations for me based on the eight books above? POP ‘EM BELOW!! xoxo
Finding delight. 