18 books like Before We Were Yours

What to read after Before We Were Yours — books similar to it, matched on shared themes.

The Four Winds Kristin Hannah · 2021 · ★ 4.3 · 536p · ≈ 17h · Moderate Texas, 1921. A time of abundance. The Great War is over, the bounty of the land is plentiful, and America is on the brink of a new and optimistic era. But for Elsa Wolcott, deemed too old to marry in a time when marriage is a woman’s only option, the future seems bleak. Until the night she meets Rafe Martinelli and decides to change the direction of her life. With her reputation in ruin, there is… Shares: Community pick

The Idiot Elif Batuman · 1969 · ★ 3.6 · 419p · ≈ 13h · Moderate Embarking on her freshman year at Harvard in the early tech days of the 1990s, a young artist and daughter of Turkish immigrants begins a correspondence with an older mathematics student from Hungary while struggling with her changing sense of self, first love and a daunting career prospect. Shares: Contemporary Women, Literary

Back When We Were Grownups Anne Tyler · 2001 · ★ 3.6 · 302p · ≈ 10h · Moderate Een 53-jarige vrouw zit in een midlife-crisis en blikt terug op de tijd dat ze als 19-jarige trouwde met een weduwnaar met drie dochters, een groot huis en een bedrijf. Shares: Novela hogareña, Domestic fiction

That Churchill Woman Stephanie Barron · 1920 · 408p · ≈ 13h · Challenging The Paris Wife meets PBS’s Victoria in this enthralling novel of the life and loves of one of history’s most remarkable women: Winston Churchill’s scandalous American mother, Jennie Jerome. Wealthy, privileged, and fiercely independent New Yorker Jennie Jerome took Victorian England by storm when she landed on its shores. As Lady Randolph Churchill, she gave birth to a man who defined the… Shares: Contemporary Women, Historical

Conversations With Friends Sally Rooney · 2017 · ★ 3.7 · 315p · ≈ 10h · Moderate Frances is a coolheaded and darkly observant young woman, vaguely pursuing a career in writing while studying in Dublin. Her best friend is the beautiful and endlessly self-possessed Bobbi. At a local poetry performance one night, they meet a well-known photographer, and as the girls are then gradually drawn into her world, Frances is reluctantly impressed by the older woman’s sophisticated home… Shares: Contemporary Women, Literary

Kindred Octavia E. Butler · 1979 · ★ 4.3 · 272p · ≈ 9h · Moderate Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more… Shares: Contemporary Women, Historical

Luckiest Girl Alive Jessica Knoll · 2001 · ★ 3.5 · 374p · ≈ 12h · Moderate "A young woman strives to create the perfect life--husband, home, career--until a violent incident from her past threatens to unravel everything and expose her most shocking secret of all"-- Shares: Contemporary Women, Literary

Into the Water Paula Hawkins · 2017 · ★ 3.6 · 391p · ≈ 13h · Moderate 363 pages ; 22 cm Shares: Contemporary Women, Literary

Bring Up the Bodies Hilary Mantel · 2012 · ★ 4.3 · 432p · ≈ 14h · Moderate Bring Up the Bodies is a historical novel by Hilary Mantel; sequel to the award-winning Wolf Hall; and part of a trilogy charting the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell, the powerful minister in the court of King Henry VIII. It won the 2012 Man Booker Prize and the 2012 Costa Book of the Year. The final novel in the trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, was published in March 2020. Shares: Literary, Historical

The Condition Jennifer Haigh · 2008 · ★ 3.5 · 390p · ≈ 13h · Moderate Unaware of the long-standing grievances harbored by their divorced parents, three adult siblings embark on a tumultuous summer when the oldest, a successful Manhattan doctor, investigates his sister's chromosomal disorder against his mother's wishes. Shares: Historical, Domestic fiction, Brothers and sisters

The visitors Sally Beauman · 2014 · ★ 3.7 · 536p · ≈ 17h · Moderate "Built around Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter's discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings, this evocative novel from New York Times-bestselling author Sally Beauman blends fact and fiction to recreate a lost world that's still fiercely enthralling and relevant today"-- Shares: Literary, Historical

All the Light We Cannot See Anthony Doerr · 2014 · ★ 4.3 · 544p · ≈ 18h · Moderate From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, a stunningly ambitious and beautiful novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are… Shares: Literary, Historical

El amante japonés Isabel Allende · 2000 · ★ 3.9 · 345p · ≈ 11h · Moderate La novela se desarrolla en la ciudad de San Francisco, en una residencia de ancianos, en el año 2010, aunque gran parte de la historia evoca años anteriores y países distintos. Aborda temas como el amor, el desarraigo, los prejuicios raciales, la familia y la eutanasia. ---------- "From New York Times and internationally bestselling author Isabel Allende, an exquisitely crafted love story and… Shares: Literary, Historical

Homegoing Yaa Gyasi · 2016 · ★ 4.5 · 320p · ≈ 10h · Moderate Homegoing is the debut historical fiction novel by Ghanaian-American author Yaa Gyasi, published in 2016. Each chapter in the novel follows a different descendant of an Asante woman named Maame, starting with her two daughters, who are half-sisters, separated by circumstance: Effia marries James Collins, the British governor in charge of Cape Coast Castle, while her half-sister Esi is held… Shares: Literary, Historical

Baker Towers Jennifer Haigh · 2005 · ★ 3.8 · 336p · ≈ 11h · Moderate E-Book Extras: ONE: An Interview with Jennifer Haigh; TWO: Reading Group Guide. A stunning follow-up to her bestselling debut, Mrs. Kimble, Jennifer Haigh returns with Baker Towers, a compelling story of love and loss in a western Pennsylvania mining town in the years after World War II. Bakerton is a company town built on coal, a town of church festivals and ethnic neighborhoods, hunters'… Shares: Domestic fiction, Brothers and sisters

The Chaperone Laura Moriarty · 2012 · ★ 4.0 · 419p · ≈ 13h · Moderate "A novel about the friendship between an adolescent, pre-movie-star Louise Brooks, and the 36-year-old woman who chaperones her to New York City for a summer, in 1922, and how it changes both their lives"-- Shares: Literary, Historical

The Stone Diaries Carol Shields · 1993 · ★ 3.9 · 361p · ≈ 12h · Moderate This is the poignant story of Daisy Goodwill, twentieth-century pilgrim, from her calamitous birth in Canada to her death in a Florida nursing home nearly ninety years later. Struggling to find her place in the world, she listens and observes, becoming a witness to her own life and death in this rich tale that reflects and illuminates our own unsettled era. ~from the back cover Shares: Literary, Domestic fiction

Only Time Will Tell Jeffrey Archer · 2011 · ★ 4.5 · 400p · ≈ 13h · Moderate "From the popular author of Kane and Abel and A Prisoner of Birth comes the story of one family across generations, across oceans, from heartbreak to triumph. The epic tale of Harry Clifton's life begins in 1920, with the words, "I was told that my father was killed in the war." A dock worker in Bristol, Harry never knew his father, but he learns about life on the docks from his uncle who expects… Shares: Historical, Domestic fiction

About the book Before We Were Yours →