#readalike

If you liked A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan, try Our Hideous Progeny by CE McGill

they both include:

lady scientists struggling in a patriarchal system

in-depth explorations of life as a scientist in a pre-Industrial world

Books To Read if You Love “Everything Everywhere All At Once”

[via Penguin Random House]

If you can’t stop thinking about this year’s breakout hit, then let one of these novels take you on a wild ride! Get ready to immerse yourself in new worlds and alternate realities, and go deeper to explore your relationships and intergenerational traumas.

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu 

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig   

Bestiary by K-Ming Chang

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch   

The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson   

What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo   

All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai    

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami  

What We Lose by Zinzi Clemmons   

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong   

The Kitchen God’s Wife by Amy Tan   

Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights by Salman Rushdie

...

Natural Beauty is a sad girl in her 20s book about assimilation and acceptance while being a scathing commentary on beauty and wellness culture and it is handsdown my favourite thing I've read recently.

Tl;dr - If you love Bunny and hate Goop then it is 100% worth a try

Books for Fans of Normal People

a hit novel by Sally Rooney and popular Hulu show

Rich and Pretty by Rumaan Alam

This irresistible debut, set in contemporary New York, provides a sharp, insightful look into how the relationship between two best friends changes when they are no longer coming of age but learning how to live adult lives. As close as sisters for twenty years, Sarah and Lauren have been together through high school and college, first jobs and first loves, the uncertainties of their twenties and the realities of their thirties. Sarah, the only child of a prominent intellectual and a socialite, works at a charity and is methodically planning her wedding. Lauren—beautiful, independent, and unpredictable—is single and working in publishing, deflecting her parents’ worries and questions about her life and future by trying not to think about it herself. Each woman envies—and is horrified by—particular aspects of the other’s life, topics of conversation they avoid with masterful linguistic pirouettes. Once, Sarah and Lauren were inseparable; for a long a time now, they’ve been apart. Can two women who rarely see one other, selectively share secrets, and lead different lives still call themselves best friends? Is it their abiding connection—or just force of habit—that keeps them together? With impeccable style, biting humor, and a keen sense of detail, Rumaan Alam deftly explores how the attachments we form in childhood shift as we adapt to our adult lives—and how the bonds of friendship endure, even when our paths diverge.

The Girl He Used to Know by Tracey Garvis Graves

What if you had a second chance at first love?

Annika Rose likes being alone. She feels lost in social situations, saying the wrong thing or acting the wrong way. She just can't read people. She prefers the quiet solitude of books or playing chess to being around others. Apart from Jonathan. She liked being around him, but she hasn't seen him for ten years. Until now that is. And she's not sure he'll want to see her again after what happened all those years ago.

Annika Rose likes being alone. Except that, actually, she doesn't like being alone at all.

Miss You by Kate Eberlen

Tess and Gus are meant to be. They just haven't met properly yet. And perhaps they never will . . . Today is the first day of the rest of your life is the motto on a plate in the kitchen at home, and Tess can't get it out of her head, even though she's in Florence for a final, idyllic holiday before university. Her life is about to change forever - but not in the way she expects. Gus and his parents are also on holiday in Florence. Their lives have already changed suddenly and dramatically. Gus tries to be a dutiful son, but longs to escape and discover what sort of person he is going to be. For one day, the paths of an eighteen-year-old girl and boy criss-cross before they each return to England. Over the course of the next sixteen years, life and love will offer them very different challenges. Separated by distance and fate, there's no way the two of them are ever going to meet each other properly . . . or is there?

Trust Exercise by Susan Choi

My Hero Academia follows a teenager as he gains powers in a Shōnen anime. When superpowers are everywhere, so are superheroes and supervillains. Growing up without powers, he has obsessively studied the strengths and weaknesses of anyone he encounters with powers. By chance, he encounters his hero and goes through the process of learning how to use his gifted power in a super-school environment.

Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson also involves a world where many people have superpowers, unfortunately, they are all supervillains. Our main character is powerless and would like to stay that way. He has obsessively collected information on all supervillains after his father was killed by stealheart, the supervillain and dystopian leader of Newcago. Soon, he joins up with resistance group who want to take down the supers. It’s My Hero Academia if the League of Villians ruled the world with a small group of geeky quirk-less rebels trying to stop them. 

Sword Art Online is a Shōnen anime where a teen gamer is one of the many people to get stuck in a VR game. If you die in the game, you die in real life as well. In this world, groups filled with magic and sword fighting aim to clear levels and challenges so they can all be free.

Arena by Holly Jennings follows a VR sports legend as she looks to find a balance between the virtual world and the real one. Fighting in teams, players battle to the death in a VR game for public consumption. The catch is anything they can do in the real world, they can also do in the virtual one. Rigorous team training paired with the hard party lifestyle lead to short careers for many players. Instead, she aims to survive and thrive in the industry with her team behind her as one the first female team leader in the game’s history. 

Soul Eater, a Shōnen (wow I swear this isn’t on purpose) anime explores the world of death. Or at least what happens when you die. One human weapon and one weapon meister come together to reap souls. The main characters are going to school to become certified in their field, learning how to work in the world and with each other in the process. 

Croak by Gina Damico follows one rage-filled teenage girl who comes to learn that she is a Grimm Reaper. When she is carted to a town of others with her profession, her anger lessens and her powers appear. Reapers work in teams of two, one reaps the soul and another contains the soul so they can be carted to the afterlife. The light tone and macabre idea go hand in hand with Soul Eater.

Psycho Pass is a crime-thriller that continues this Shōnen trend with a dystopian society and a government of thought police. From the perspective of an investigator new to the force, this system is explored and pushed to its fullest extent. 

1984 by George Orwell its impossible not to recognize the origin of thought police in literature. The dystopian novel explores a future where the government decides the emotions that someone should have and express, the history that someone should remember and promote, and the role someone should perform in society. While the book comes from the perspective of a citizen rather than an enforcer, you would be hardpressed to find a more relevant read. 

Kill La Kill *wipes forehead* is a Seinen anime where battles are used in a school setting as a way of granting prestige and strength. The main character wants to find her father’s killer as she collects life fibers used to improve her own battle gear. 

Read-Alike Friday: The Celebrants by Steven Rowley

Dele Weds Destiny by Tomi Obaro

Funmi, Enitan, and Zainab first meet at university in Nigeria and become friends for life despite their differences. Funmi is beautiful, brash, and determined; Enitan is homely and eager, seeking escape from her single mother's smothering and needy love; Zainab is elegant and reserved, raised by her father's first two wives after her mother's death in childbirth. Their friendship is complicated but enduring, and over the course of the novel, the reader learns about their loves and losses. How Funmi stole Zainab's boyfriend and became pregnant, only to have an abortion and lose the boyfriend to police violence. How Enitan was seduced by an American Peace Corps volunteer, the only one who ever really saw her, but is culturally so different from him--a Connecticut WASP--that raising their daughter together put them at odds. How Zainab fell in love with her teacher, a friend of her father's, and ruptured her relationship with her father to have him.

Now, some thirty years later, the three women are reunited for the first time, in Lagos. The occasion: Funmi's daughter, Destiny, is getting married. Enitan brings her American daughter, Remi. Zainab travels by bus, nervously leaving her ailing husband in the care of their son. Funmi, hosting the weekend with her wealthy husband, wants everything to go perfectly. But as the big day approaches, it becomes clear that something is not right. As the novel builds powerfully, the complexities of the mothers' friendship--and the private wisdom each has earned--come to bear on a riveting, heartrending moment of decision. 

The Most Likely Club by Elyssa Friedland

In 1997, grunge is king, Titanic is a blockbuster (and Blockbuster still exists), and Thursday nights are for Friends. In Bellport, Connecticut, four best friends and high school seniors are ready to light the world on fire. Melissa Levin, Priya Chowdury, Tara Taylor, and Suki Hammer are going places. Their yearbook superlatives confirm it: Most Likely to Win the White House, Cure Cancer, Open a Michelin-Starred Restaurant, and Join the Forbes 400.

Fast forward twenty-five years and nothing has gone according to plan as the women regroup at their dreaded high school reunion. When a forgotten classmate emerges at the reunion with a surprising announcement, the friends dig out the yearbook and rethink their younger selves. Is it too late to make their dreams come true? Fueled by nostalgia and one too many drinks, they form a pact to push through their middle-aged angst to bring their teenage aspirations to fruition, dubbing themselves the "Most Likely Girls."

Through the ensuing highs and lows, they are reminded of the enduring bonds of friendship, the ways our childhood dreams both sustain and surprise us -- and why it's deeply uncool to peak in high school.

You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi 

Feyi Adekola wants to learn how to be alive again.

It’s been five years since the accident that killed the love of her life and she’s almost a new person now—an artist with her own studio, and sharing a brownstone apartment with her ride-or-die best friend, Joy, who insists it’s time for Feyi to ease back into the dating scene. Feyi isn’t ready for anything serious, but a steamy encounter at a rooftop party cascades into a whirlwind summer she could have never imagined: a luxury trip to a tropical island, decadent meals in the glamorous home of a celebrity chef, and a major curator who wants to launch her art career.

She’s even started dating the perfect guy, but their new relationship might be sabotaged before it has a chance by the dangerous thrill Feyi feels every time she locks eyes with the one person in the house who is most definitely off-limits. This new life she asked for just got a lot more complicated, and Feyi must begin her search for real answers. Who is she ready to become? Can she release her past and honor her grief while still embracing her future? And, of course, there’s the biggest question of all—how far is she willing to go for a second chance at love?

Late in the Day by Tessa Hadley 

Alexandr and Christine and Zachary and Lydia have been friends since they first met in their twenties. Thirty years later, Alex and Christine are spending a leisurely summer’s evening at home when they receive a call from a distraught Lydia: she is at the hospital. Zach is dead.

Read-Alike Friday: In the Lives of Puppets by T.J. Klune

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers

Centuries before, robots of Panga gained self-awareness, laid down their tools, wandered, en masse into the wilderness, never to be seen again. They faded into myth and urban legend.

Now the life of the tea monk who tells this story is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They will need to ask it a lot. Chambers' series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?

This is the first volume in the “Monk and Robot” series. 

Borne by Jeff VanderMeer

In a ruined, nameless city of the future, a woman named Rachel, who makes her living as a scavenger, finds a creature she names “Borne” entangled in the fur of Mord, a gigantic, despotic bear. Mord once prowled the corridors of the biotech organization known as the Company, which lies at the outskirts of the city, until he was experimented on, grew large, learned to fly and broke free. Driven insane by his torture at the Company, Mord terrorizes the city even as he provides sustenance for scavengers like Rachel.

At first, Borne looks like nothing at all—just a green lump that might be a Company discard. The Company, although severely damaged, is rumoured to still make creatures and send them to distant places that have not yet suffered Collapse. Borne somehow reminds Rachel of the island nation of her birth, now long lost to rising seas. She feels an attachment she resents; attachments are traps, and in this world any weakness can kill you. Yet when she takes Borne to her subterranean sanctuary, the Balcony Cliffs, Rachel convinces her lover, Wick, not to render Borne down to raw genetic material for the drugs he sells—she cannot break that bond.

Against his better judgment, out of affection for Rachel or perhaps some other impulse, Wick respects her decision. Rachel, meanwhile, despite her loyalty to Wick, knows he has kept secrets from her. Searching his apartment, she finds a burnt, unreadable journal titled “Mord,” a cryptic reference to the Magician (a rival drug dealer) and evidence that Wick has planned the layout of the Balcony Cliffs to match the blueprint of the Company building. What is he hiding? Why won’t he tell her about what happened when he worked for the Company?

This is the first volume in the “Borne” series. 

Anthropocene Rag by Alexander C. Irvine 

In the future United States, our own history has faded into myth and traveling across the country means navigating wastelands and ever-changing landscapes.

The country teems with monsters and artificial intelligences try to unpack their own becoming by recreating myths and legends of their human creators. Prospector Ed, an emergent AI who wants to understand the people who made him, assembles a ragtag team to reach the mythical Monument City.

In this nanotech Western, Alex Irvine infuses American mythmaking with terrifying questions about the future and who we will become.

Wanderers by Chuck Wendig

Shana wakes up one morning to discover her little sister in the grip of a strange malady. She appears to be sleepwalking. She cannot talk and cannot be woken up. And she is heading with inexorable determination to a destination that only she knows. But Shana and her sister are not alone. Soon they are joined by a flock of sleepwalkers from across America, on the same mysterious journey. And like Shana, there are other "shepherds" who follow the flock to protect their friends and family on the long dark road ahead.

For as the sleepwalking phenomenon awakens terror and violence in America, the real danger may not be the epidemic but the fear of it. With society collapsing all around them--and an ultraviolent militia threatening to exterminate them--the fate of the sleepwalkers depends on unraveling the mystery behind the epidemic. The terrifying secret will either tear the nation apart--or bring the survivors together to remake a shattered world.