Conversations with Friends
Sally Rooney
A Dublin student and her best friend get pulled into the home of an older photographer and her husband, in the author's first novel.
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Books like Normal People
Normal People follows Connell and Marianne, two teenagers from the same small Irish town whose bond survives school, university and years of drifting apart. These seven books bring more honest, character-led love stories.
Books to read next
Beautiful World, Where Are You
Sally Rooney
Two friends write each other long emails about love, work and the state of the world while their own relationships take shape, in Rooney's third novel.
One Day
David Nicholls
Emma and Dexter meet on graduation night in 1988, and the story checks in on them every year on the same day, in a funny, bittersweet love story.
Eleanor & Park
Rainbow Rowell
Two outsiders share comics and mixtapes on a school bus, in a first-love story with trouble at home.
Brooklyn
Colm Tóibín
A young woman leaves Ireland for Brooklyn in the early 1950s, falls in love and is pulled back home, in a quiet, finely observed novel.
Writers & Lovers
Lily King
A grieving waitress in 1997 Cambridge, Massachusetts, works on her novel while two very different men enter her life, in a funny, tender story.
Open Water
Caleb Azumah Nelson
Two young Black British artists, a photographer and a dancer, fall in love in London, in a lyrical debut that also faces racism and police violence.
How to choose
Normal People is about two people who keep finding each other, so choose by what you want more of. For the same author, Conversations with Friends is her debut, and Beautiful World, Where Are You trades two lovers for two friends and their emails. One Day is the closest in structure, checking in on a pair year by year. Brooklyn, Writers & Lovers and Open Water each bring a different era and setting, and Eleanor & Park is a younger first love. Several carry heavy content. Normal People includes domestic abuse, depression and suicide, Conversations with Friends touches on abuse and self-harm, Eleanor & Park includes bullying and abuse at home, Open Water includes racism and police violence, and the Rooney novels have sex scenes, so check content notes first.
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