Beloved vs Sula: Which Should You Read?
Both live on shelves: 1000blackgirlbooks, Ohio, African American women, African Americans, Fiction
Beloved
Toni Morrison--author of Song of Solomon and Tar Baby--is a writer of remarkable powers: her novels, brilliantly acclaimed for their passion, their dazzling language and their lyric and emotional force, combine the…
1 film adaptation
vs
Sula
Two girls who grow up to become women. Two friends who become something worse than enemies. In this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison tells the story of Nel Wright and Sula Peace, who meet as children in the…
The verdict
- Ratings are close across the board — any is a safe pick by score.
- Sula is the quickest read — about 3 hours vs 6 for Beloved.
- Beloved has the widest readership — 511363 ratings behind its score.
- Sula runs the darker storyline; Beloved stays the lighter read.
How to choose
Scores by source
| Beloved | Sula | |
|---|---|---|
| Goodreads | 4.0 (511363) | 4.1 (134060) |
| Hardcover | 4.0 (1) | 4.0 (166) |
| Google Books | 3.0 (4) | 5.0 (1) |
| Apple Books | 4.5 (921) | 4.5 (469) |
Reception
| Beloved | Sula | |
|---|---|---|
| Ratings | 511363 | 134060 |
| Editions | 107 | 55 |
| Film adaptations | 1 | 1 |
| Want to read | 631826 | 199215 |
| Reading it now | — | 6053 |
| Written reviews | 30620 | 13241 |
| Wikipedia attention | 33155 | 11128 |
| Pages | 362 | 188 |