20 must-read literary fiction books like Love Marriage by Monica Ali

Cover of Love Marriage by Monica Ali

Love Marriage

By: Monica Ali

3.90

Format: 432 pages, Hardcover

In present-day London, Yasmin Ghorami is twenty-six, in training to be a doctor (like her Indian-bo…

If you liked the literary fiction plot in Love Marriage by Monica Ali , here is a list of 20 books like this:

1. You Be Mother

By: Meg Mason

4.31

Format: 66 pages, ebook

What do you do, when you find the perfect family, and it's not yours? A charming, funny and irresis… read more

Similar categories in Meg Mason's You Be Mother book and Monica Ali's Love Marriage

Cover of You Are Here by David Nicholls

2. You Are Here

By: David Nicholls

4.08

Format: 368 pages, Hardcover

Sometimes you need to get lost to find your way . . . Michael is coming undone. Adrift after his… read more

Similar categories in David Nicholls's You Are Here book and Monica Ali's Love Marriage

  • romance
  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • british literature
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • audiobook
"It’s true I do have time and freedom and I love it, sometimes. But the notion that I should be “making the most of it"

-David Nicholls, You Are Here

"You were traumatised.’ ‘I wonder if people use that word too much.’ ‘It’s the right word for something traumatic.’ ‘But it wasn’t war. People get beaten up every Friday night.’ ‘And are traumatised b…"

-David Nicholls, You Are Here

"she went on a solo trip to Italy, role-playing a character in a Forster novel. In Florence, she read performatively in cafés and sat in the cool of exquisite churches, straining for some kind of spir…"

-David Nicholls, You Are Here

"Books saw her through the pupal stage of thirteen to sixteen, frowning at Kafka and Woolf, then tearing through John Irving and Maeve Binchy, widely read in the proper sense, making no distinction be…"

-David Nicholls, You Are Here

Cover of Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors

3. Blue Sisters

By: Coco Mellors

4.21

Format: 352 pages, Hardcover

Three estranged siblings return to their family home in New York after their beloved sister's death… read more

Similar categories in Coco Mellors's Blue Sisters book and Monica Ali's Love Marriage

  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • family
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • audiobook
"A sister is not a friend. Who can explain the urge to take a relationship as primal and complex as a sibling and reduce it to something as replaceable, as banal as a friend? Yet this status is used a…"

-Coco Mellors, Blue Sisters

Cover of Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

4. Yellowface

By: R.F. Kuang

3.77

Format: 336 pages, Hardcover

White lies. Dark humor. Deadly consequences… Bestselling sensation Juniper Song is not who she says… read more

Similar categories in R.F. Kuang's Yellowface book and Monica Ali's Love Marriage

  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • audiobook
"The truth is fluid, there is always another way to spin the story."

-R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

"They tell authors never to look at Goodreads, but nobody follows that advice—none of us can resist the urge to know how our work is being received."

-R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

"Writing is the closest thing we have to real magic. Writing is creating something out of nothing, is opening doors to other lands. Writing gives you power to shape your own world when the real one hu…"

-R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

Cover of The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

5. The Bee Sting

By: Paul Murray

3.96

Format: 656 pages, Hardcover

From the author of Skippy Dies comes Paul Murray's The Bee Sting, an irresistibly funny, wise, and … read more

Similar categories in Paul Murray's The Bee Sting book and Monica Ali's Love Marriage

  • literary fiction
  • family
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • audiobook
"It is for love. You are doing this for love."

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

"We all have problems. But often instead of accepting the truth about ourselves, we cover it up. We try to make ourselves the way we think we’re expected to be."

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

"Maybe every era has an atrocity woven into its fabric. Maybe every society is complicit in terrible things and only afterwards gets around to pretending they didn’t know. When the kids ask, tell them…"

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

"Maybe that’s how it will go – instead of one definitive cataclysm, a series of ‘anomalies’, each time lasting longer, with the stretches of what you call normal life becoming further and further apar…"

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

Cover of The Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donoghue

6. The Rachel Incident

By: Caroline O'Donoghue

4.09

Format: 304 pages, Hardcover

A brilliantly funny novel about friends, lovers, Ireland in chaos, and a young woman desperately tr… read more

Similar categories in Caroline O'Donoghue's The Rachel Incident book and Monica Ali's Love Marriage

  • romance
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • audiobook
"I was twenty and I needed two things: to be in love and to be taken seriously."

-Caroline O'Donoghue, The Rachel Incident

"He was a doctor and I was supposed to take what he said seriously; but he was a dentist and my dad so I didn’t."

-Caroline O'Donoghue, The Rachel Incident

"It's not that we weren't capable of warmth as a family. But we were regularly seduced by the concept of being wronged."

-Caroline O'Donoghue, The Rachel Incident

"I thought of my parents as heads on Easter Island, and it took moving two miles away to realise they had been people all along."

-Caroline O'Donoghue, The Rachel Incident

Cover of The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell

7. The Marriage Portrait

By: Maggie O'Farrell

4.01

Format: 355 pages, Hardcover

An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here. The author of award-winning Hamnet… read more

Similar categories in Maggie O'Farrell's The Marriage Portrait book and Monica Ali's Love Marriage

  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • novels
  • audiobook
"May I keep this?"

-Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait

"Was there no hope? the tigress seemed to be asking her. Will I always remain here? Will I never return home?"

-Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait

"The animal was orange, burnished gold, fire made flesh; she was power and anger, she was vicious and exquisite;"

-Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait

"Is it possible for a woman to be so unsettled in spirit that a child will have no hope of taking root within her?"

-Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait

Cover of Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson

8. Shrines of Gaiety

By: Kate Atkinson

3.85

Format: 439 pages, Hardcover

London 1926. Roaring Twenties. Corruption. Seduction. Debts due. In a country still recovering … read more

Similar categories in Kate Atkinson's Shrines of Gaiety book and Monica Ali's Love Marriage

  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • british literature
  • fiction
  • audiobook
"The library had not been a career choice. After all, who would choose to be a librarian?"

-Kate Atkinson, Shrines of Gaiety

"His head was always in the clouds. 'I'm writing a novel,' he told her. As if that was something to crow about. As if there weren't enough novels in the world already."

-Kate Atkinson, Shrines of Gaiety

Cover of Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy

9. Soldier Sailor

By: Claire Kilroy

4.10

Format: 256 pages, ebook

Well, Sailor. Here we are once more, you and me in one another's arms. The Earth rotates beneath us… read more

Similar categories in Claire Kilroy's Soldier Sailor book and Monica Ali's Love Marriage

  • literary fiction
  • family
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • audiobook
"I laughed and then we were doing that thing again, our thing: laughing into one another's eyes. All that time I had thought I was jollying you along when all that time you were jollying along me."

-Claire Kilroy, Soldier Sailor

"I tell my husband about my childhood and he tells me about his but it isn't the same. We can never know each other as we were then. But I know you. I will see the child you were in the man you will b…"

-Claire Kilroy, Soldier Sailor

"Hated cling film. Hated it more than I hated kinetic sand. Defeated by something that lacked a third dimension. While I'd been off tinkering on the cerebral plane, the smart money has been mastering …"

-Claire Kilroy, Soldier Sailor

"I knelt down to pick up the hatchling to . . . . what? Give it back to its mother? Here is your dying chick? Just before I made contact with it, she dive-bombed me. The mother actually dive-bombed me…"

-Claire Kilroy, Soldier Sailor

Cover of Trespasses by Louise Kennedy

10. Trespasses

By: Louise Kennedy

4.00

Format: 304 pages, Hardcover

Set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, a shattering novel about a young woman caught between … read more

Similar categories in Louise Kennedy's Trespasses book and Monica Ali's Love Marriage

  • romance
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • audiobook
Cover of I’m Sorry You Feel That Way by Rebecca Wait

11. I’m Sorry You Feel That Way

By: Rebecca Wait

4.03

Format: 400 pages, Hardcover

From the author of the Waterstones Book of the Month Our Fathers comes a compelling domestic comedy… read more

Similar categories in Rebecca Wait's I’m Sorry You Feel That Way book and Monica Ali's Love Marriage

  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • family
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • audiobook
Cover of Good Material by Dolly Alderton

12. Good Material

By: Dolly Alderton

3.91

Format: 345 pages, Paperback

From the bestselling author of Ghosts and Everything I Know About Love: a story of heartbreak and f… read more

Similar categories in Dolly Alderton's Good Material book and Monica Ali's Love Marriage

  • romance
  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • audiobook
"Thirty-five is the youth of middle age."

-Dolly Alderton, Good Material

"Remember, a broken heart is a jester's greatest prop."

-Dolly Alderton, Good Material

"You know how to be along without being lonely. Do you know how rare that is?"

-Dolly Alderton, Good Material

"Why is it that London always seems the most alive and full of possibility on the nights when you've got no plans?"

-Dolly Alderton, Good Material

Cover of Green Dot by Madeleine Gray

13. Green Dot

By: Madeleine Gray

3.71

Format: 320 pages, Hardcover

An irresistible and messy love story about the terrible allure of wanting something that promises n… read more

Similar categories in Madeleine Gray's Green Dot book and Monica Ali's Love Marriage

  • romance
  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • audiobook
Cover of Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey

14. Really Good, Actually

By: Monica Heisey

3.16

Format: 370 pages, Hardcover

A hilarious and painfully relatable debut novel about one woman’s messy search for joy and meaning … read more

Similar categories in Monica Heisey's Really Good, Actually book and Monica Ali's Love Marriage

  • romance
  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • audiobook
"You’ll like dating, everyone eats ass now."

-Monica Heisey, Really Good, Actually

"The truth is, if you start your eating disorder even slightly overweight, no one will notice until things are very much at the ‘what if two meals a day were soup’ stage."

-Monica Heisey, Really Good, Actually

"It seemed impossible that I was supposed to keep loving - even revering - my body as it decomposed in slow motion. Why not give in and have low self-esteem? Maybe I could slay in that way instead."

-Monica Heisey, Really Good, Actually

Cover of The List by Yomi Adegoke

15. The List

By: Yomi Adegoke

3.05

Format: 336 pages, Hardcover

Ola Olajide, a celebrated journalist at Womxxxn magazine, is set to marry the love of her life in o… read more

Similar categories in Yomi Adegoke's The List book and Monica Ali's Love Marriage

  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • audiobook
"...but she refused for love to be something that she endured. Something that took from her and made her smaller."

-Yomi Adegoke, The List

Cover of People Person by Candice Carty-Williams

16. People Person

By: Candice Carty-Williams

3.70

Format: 336 pages, Hardcover

Dimple Pennington knew of her half siblings, but she didn't really know them. Five people who don't… read more

Similar categories in Candice Carty-Williams's People Person book and Monica Ali's Love Marriage

  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • british literature
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • family
  • novels
  • audiobook
Cover of Love Marriage by Monica Ali

17. Love Marriage

By: Monica Ali

3.90

Format: 432 pages, Hardcover

In present-day London, Yasmin Ghorami is twenty-six, in training to be a doctor (like her Indian-bo… read more

Similar categories in Monica Ali's Love Marriage book and Monica Ali's Love Marriage

  • romance
  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • british literature
  • india
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • family
  • novels
  • audiobook
Cover of Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin

18. Wandering Souls

By: Cecile Pin

4.15

Format: 240 pages, Hardcover

A luminous, boldly imagined debut novel about three Vietnamese siblings who seek refuge in the UK, … read more

Similar categories in Cecile Pin's Wandering Souls book and Monica Ali's Love Marriage

  • audiobook
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
"We tell ourselves stories in order to live. We tell ourselves stories in order to heal."

-Cecile Pin, Wandering Souls

"I didn't know that my culture had fashioned the shape of my mourning; I didn't know that my grief could be improper."

-Cecile Pin, Wandering Souls

Cover of Best of Friends by Kamila Shamsie

19. Best of Friends

By: Kamila Shamsie

3.46

Format: 320 pages, Hardcover

From the acclaimed author of Home Fire comes the moving and surprising story of a lifelong friendsh… read more

Similar categories in Kamila Shamsie's Best of Friends book and Monica Ali's Love Marriage

  • audiobook
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
"Perhaps friendship was not only about what you said to each other, but also about what you didn't"

-Kamila Shamsie, Best of Friends

Cover of The Work by Bri Lee

20. The Work

By: Bri Lee

3.43

Format: 386 pages, Paperback

Lally has invested everything into her gallery in Manhattan and the sacrifices are finally paying o… read more

Similar categories in Bri Lee's The Work book and Monica Ali's Love Marriage

  • romance
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • audiobook
Cover of Between You and Me by Joanna Horton

21. Between You and Me

By: Joanna Horton

3.72

Format: 341 pages, Kindle Edition

Between You and Me is a riveting portrayal of female friendship, and the frayed boundary between lo… read more

Similar categories in Joanna Horton's Between You and Me book and Monica Ali's Love Marriage

  • romance
  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • audiobook

6 Best family books like Love Marriage by Monica Ali

Transform Your Habits

Blue Sisters

Coco Mellors

4.21

Transform Your Habits

The Bee Sting

Paul Murray

3.96

Transform Your Habits

Soldier Sailor

Claire Kilroy

4.10

Transform Your Habits

I’m Sorry You Feel That Way

Rebecca Wait

4.03

View all the books

20 Best fiction books like Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson

Transform Your Habits

Trust

Hernan Diaz

3.83

Transform Your Habits

Old God's Time

Sebastian Barry

3.85

Transform Your Habits

Homecoming

Kate Morton

4.07

Transform Your Habits

Tom Lake

Ann Patchett

3.99

View all the books

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