Normal People, a new TV series that is now streaming on Hulu and based on the book of the same name by Sally Rooney, is a wondrous and wise coming-of-age love story that explores the subtleties of class, the electricity of first love, and the complex entanglements of family and friendship.
If you’re as excited to watch as we are, you’ll definitely want to add Normal People and these read-alikes to your TBR pile!
Normal People by Sally Rooney
From the celebrated author of Conversations with Friends comes the story of mutual fascination, friendship and love. It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find that they can’t.
Connell and Marianne grew up in the same small town, but the similarities end there. At school, Connell is popular and well liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation—awkward but electrifying—something life changing begins.
A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. And as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.
Available in Hardcover, Trade Paperback, eBook, Audio, and Large Print Editions.
Now Also Available in Spanish: Gente normal.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Click for a Discussion Guide.
Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.
Click to Watch the TV Trailer.
The Margot Affair by Sanaë Lemoine
The secret daughter of a French politician and a famous actress drops the startling revelation that will shatter her family in this beguiling novel of intrigue and betrayal.
Margot Louve is a secret: the child of a longstanding affair between an influential French politician with presidential ambitions and a prominent stage actress. This hidden family exists in stolen moments in a small Parisian apartment on the Left Bank.
It is a house of cards that Margot—fueled by a longing to be seen and heard—decides to tumble. The summer of her seventeenth birthday, she meets the man who will set her plan in motion: a well-regarded journalist whose trust seems surprisingly easy to gain. But as Margot is drawn into an adult world she struggles to comprehend, she learns how one impulsive decision can threaten a family’s love with ruin, shattering the lives of those around her in ways she could never have imagined.
Exposing the seams between private lives and public faces, The Margot Affair is a novel of deceit, desire, and transgression—and the exhilarating knife-edge upon which the danger of telling the truth outweighs the cost of keeping secrets.
Available in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.
Single, Carefree, Mellow by Katherine Heiny
A sharply humorous and endlessly entertaining story collection about young women in the dizzy, chaotic, confusing grips of love–and its aftermath.
For the commitment-averse women in the eleven sublime stories of Single, Carefree, Mellow, falling in love is never easy and always inconvenient. Maya is in love with both her boyfriend and her boss. Sadie’s lover calls her as he drives to meet his wife at marriage counseling. Nina is more worried that the Presbyterian minister living above her garage will hear her kids swearing than that he will find out she’s sleeping with her running partner.
The women grapple with love amidst everything from unwelcome houseguests to disastrous birthday parties as Katherine Heiny spins a story that is superbly accomplished, endlessly entertaining, and laugh-out-loud funny.
Available in Trade Paperback, eBook, and Audio Editions.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Click for a Discussion Guide.
Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.
White Fur by Jardine Libaire
Combining the electricity of Less Than Zero with the timeless intensity of Romeo and Juliet, this searing, gorgeously written novel perfectly captures the ferocity of young love.
When Elise Perez meets Jamey Hyde on a desolate winter afternoon, fate implodes, and neither of their lives will ever be the same. Although they are next-door neighbors in New Haven, they come from different worlds. Elise grew up in a housing project without a father and didn’t graduate from high school; Jamey is a junior at Yale, heir to a private investment bank fortune and beholden to high family expectations. Nevertheless, the attraction is instant, and what starts out as sexual obsession turns into something greater, stranger, and impossible to ignore.
The couple moves to Manhattan in search of a new life, and White Fur follows them as they wander through Newport mansions and East Village dives, WASP-establishment yacht clubs and the grimy streets below Canal Street, fighting the forces determined to keep them apart.
Available in Trade Paperback, eBook, and Audio Editions.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Click for a Discussion Guide.
Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.
You Think It, I’ll Say It: Stories by Curtis Sittenfeld
“I really loved all the characters in this book. They’re so complex and interesting, and in every story, you’ll find them going through these pivotal moments in their lives.”—Reese Witherspoon (Reese’s Book Club x Hello Sunshine Book Pick)
A suburban mother of two fantasizes about the downfall of an old friend whose wholesome lifestyle empire may or may not be built on a lie. A high-powered lawyer honeymooning with her husband is caught off guard by the appearance of the girl who tormented her in high school. A shy Ivy League student learns the truth about a classmate’s seemingly enviable life.
Curtis Sittenfeld has established a reputation as a sharp chronicler of the modern age who humanizes her subjects even as she skewers them. Throughout the ten stories in You Think It, I’ll Say It, Sittenfeld upends assumptions about class, relationships, and gender roles in a nation that feels both adrift and viscerally divided.
With moving insight and uncanny precision, Curtis Sittenfeld pinpoints the questionable decisions, missed connections, and sometimes extraordinary coincidences that make up a life.
Available in Trade Paperback, eBook, Audio, and Large Print Editions.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.
Hex by Rebecca Dinerstein Knight
A breathtaking and hypnotic novel about poison, antidotes, and obsessive love.
Nell Barber, an expelled PhD candidate in biological science, is exploring the fine line between poison and antidote, working alone to set a speed record for the detoxification of poisonous plants. Her mentor, Dr. Joan Kallas, is the hero of Nell’s heart. Nell frequently finds herself standing in the doorway to Joan’s office despite herself, mesmerized by Joan’s elegance, success, and spiritual force.
Surrounded by Nell’s ex, her best friend, her best friend’s boyfriend, and Joan’s buffoonish husband, the two scientists are tangled together at the center of a web of illicit relationships, grudges, and obsessions. All six are burdened by desire and ambition, and as they collide on the university campus, their attractions set in motion a domino effect of affairs and heartbreak.
Meanwhile, Nell slowly fills her empty apartment with poisonous plants to study, and she begins to keep a series of notebooks, all dedicated to Joan. She logs her research and how she spends her days, but the notebooks ultimately become a painstaking map of love.
Available in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.
Belladonna by Anbara Salam
A hypnotizing coming-of-age novel set in 1950s Italy that stares into the heart of longing and at the friendships that have the power to save and destroy us.
Isabella is beautiful, inscrutable, and popular. Her best friend, Bridget, keeps quietly to the fringes of their Connecticut Catholic school, watching everything and everyone, but most especially Isabella.
In 1957, when the girls graduate, they land coveted spots at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Pentila in northern Italy, a prestigious art history school on the grounds of a silent convent. There, free of her claustrophobic home and the town that will always see her and her Egyptian mother as outsiders, Bridget discovers she can reinvent herself as anyone she desires… perhaps even someone Isabella could desire in return.
But as that glittering year goes on, Bridget begins to suspect Isabella is keeping a secret from her, one that will change the course of their lives forever.
Coming in June!
Available in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.
The Perfect YA Listen:
Testimony from Your Perfect Girl by Kaui Hart Hemmings; Read by Amy Landon
A compulsively readable story that celebrates the awkward complexity of teenage relationships—with their families, and with each other, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Descendants.
Annie Tripp has everything she needs—Italian sweaters, vintage chandelier earrings, and elite ice skating lessons—but all that changes when her father is accused of scamming hundreds of people out of their investments. Annie knows her dad wasn’t at fault, but she and her brother are exiled to their estranged aunt and uncle’s house in a run-down part of Breckenridge—until the trial blows over.
Life with her new family isn’t quite up to Annie’s usual standard of living, but surprisingly, pretending to be someone else offers a freedom she’s never known. As Annie starts to make real friends for the first time, she realizes she has more in common with her aunt and uncle than she ever wanted to know. As the family’s lies begin to crumble and truths demand consequences, Annie must decide which secrets need to see the light of day . . . and which are worth keeping.
Available in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Watch the Trailer for Hulu’s Normal People
