20 must-read adult books like The Mutual Friend by Carter Bays

If you liked the adult plot in The Mutual Friend by Carter Bays , here is a list of 20 books like this:

Similar categories in Tom Perrotta's Tracy Flick Can't Win book and Carter Bays's The Mutual Friend

• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• humor
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"But it wasn't really about her looks; there was just this current running between us, a really strong connection. Her absence always felt abrupt and unfair when we parted at the end of the day, like …"

-Tom Perrotta, Tracy Flick Can't Win

"I try not to think too much about those days now - let the past be past. The truth is, we're all prisoners of our historical context. Anybody who says morality is absolute, that right and wrong don't…"

-Tom Perrotta, Tracy Flick Can't Win

Similar categories in Jenny Jackson's Pineapple Street book and Carter Bays's The Mutual Friend

• romance
• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• new york
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"But you know foundations shouldn't have to be the answer. The real problems are tax laws, anti-labor policies, and the slow expansion of the welfare state," Chip said. Everyone turned and looked at h…"

-Jenny Jackson, Pineapple Street

Similar categories in Curtis Sittenfeld's Romantic Comedy book and Carter Bays's The Mutual Friend

• romance
• adult fiction
• humor
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"Just to be clear,"

-Curtis Sittenfeld, Romantic Comedy

"Aren't we all performing the role of ourselves?"

-Curtis Sittenfeld, Romantic Comedy

"I don't write from a point of clarity. I write out of confusion."

-Curtis Sittenfeld, Romantic Comedy

"Isn't the goal to live with out demons, not to expect them to go away?"

-Curtis Sittenfeld, Romantic Comedy

Similar categories in Steven Rowley's The Celebrants book and Carter Bays's The Mutual Friend

• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• humor
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"My purpose, in this life, has been to love and spend it with you."

-Steven Rowley, The Celebrants

"You only live once. That was the truth of it. But if you do it right, and he felt that he had, once is more than enough"

-Steven Rowley, The Celebrants

Similar categories in Laurie Frankel's Family Family book and Carter Bays's The Mutual Friend

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

"When people thought of mothers, they smelled cookies baking and chocolate melting. But actual mothers got shit for giving their kids too much sugar. When people thought of mothers, they thought soft …"

-Laurie Frankel, Family Family

Similar categories in Kiley Reid's Come and Get It book and Carter Bays's The Mutual Friend

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

"Kennedy hadn't considered it before, that to write something beautiful you just do it regular, and then you pull out a red pen."

-Kiley Reid, Come and Get It

"Washing her sheets was another thing she'd failed to do. She washed her clothes—every weekend—but when it came to the bedsheets, she'd get stressed out or she'd forget. And then there was too much ti…"

-Kiley Reid, Come and Get It

"Okay, sometimes—just being honest— Millie can be . . . a little ghetto." On the word little, Tyler held two fingers an inch apart. "Nooo. Don't say that. Ah love Millie." "But I'm not saying it like …"

-Kiley Reid, Come and Get It

Similar categories in Lynn Steger Strong's Flight book and Carter Bays's The Mutual Friend

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

"You must be active in your own life. You must engage. Interact in order to create."

-Lynn Steger Strong, Flight

"[T]hey'll all celebrate and toast each other, toast the small ways they can still care for and love one another, no matter how awful at it all of them are."

-Lynn Steger Strong, Flight

"When we're young we think we'll just choose the lives we'll have, the people we're becoming, but so much of it just happens. You can live a whole life without choosing anything at all."

-Lynn Steger Strong, Flight

"...she's the only person in the world who ever saw me the way she saw me, who loved me like that, who remembered me as all the things I'd ever been and also thought of me as all the things she still …"

-Lynn Steger Strong, Flight

Similar categories in Abbi Waxman's Adult Assembly Required book and Carter Bays's The Mutual Friend

• romance
• adult fiction
• humor
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"that child only needs the slightest encouragement to go rogue"

-Abbi Waxman, Adult Assembly Required

"but the thing with Target is there is always something...ideal."

-Abbi Waxman, Adult Assembly Required

"Catching and holding the attention of an eight-year-old on Halloween is like trying to catch a hummingbird with a piece of dental floss. It's theoretically possible, but not very likely."

-Abbi Waxman, Adult Assembly Required

"Polly was so forthright she blew right past Lauraʻs defenses and made them feel unnecessary. Laura didnʻt really understand the mechanics of it; one minute she was completely alone and feeling like c…"

-Abbi Waxman, Adult Assembly Required

Similar categories in Linda Holmes's Flying Solo book and Carter Bays's The Mutual Friend

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

"You don't have to be single to be independent. And you don't have to be married to be loved."

-Linda Holmes, Flying Solo

Similar categories in Rebecca Makkai's I Have Some Questions for You book and Carter Bays's The Mutual Friend

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

Similar categories in Sloane Crosley's Cult Classic book and Carter Bays's The Mutual Friend

• romance
• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• audiobook

"You know who gets to drink coffee at fuck-you hours, I thought? The French."

-Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic

Similar categories in Eleanor Brown's Any Other Family book and Carter Bays's The Mutual Friend

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"Whether it was fate that made them family or the dumb luck of the universe, they are here now, and they are going to go forward together."

-Eleanor Brown, Any Other Family

"It's an amazing thing, she thinks, that we marry a person because we claim to love them so much, and then punish them by making them tolerate all our worst qualities."

-Eleanor Brown, Any Other Family

"There is a strange trick to adoptive motherhood, she has found, a necessary blindness to the bifurcation of your child's life. if you spend all your time thinking about the life your child might have…"

-Eleanor Brown, Any Other Family

"Now Tabitha is forced to truly consider the mechanics of things, to look at events as chance rather than luck, as coincidence rather than fate. Because there are so many families who would love to ad…"

-Eleanor Brown, Any Other Family

Similar categories in Clare Pooley's Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting book and Carter Bays's The Mutual Friend

• romance
• adult fiction
• humor
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"Ljubav je najveći rizik od svih, no život bez nje je besmislen."

-Clare Pooley, Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

"Postoje neki problemi koje zaista ne možeš riješiti. Samo moraš naći način da s njima živiš."

-Clare Pooley, Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

"Katkad ti sudbina jednostavno pokaže kojim putem da ideš i nemaš drugu opciju nego poći. A ako je ovo tvoja sudbina, dogodit će se. Samo čekaj. Ni u kom slučaju nije gotovo dok nije gotovo."

-Clare Pooley, Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

"But sometimes when you put two very different people together, a kind of magic, an alchemy, occurs. Bea said I was like eggs and sugar, and she was flour and butter, and when you mixed us together, w…"

-Clare Pooley, Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

Similar categories in Amy Poeppel's The Sweet Spot book and Carter Bays's The Mutual Friend

• romance
• adult fiction
• new york
• humor
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"The mistake people make when life hits them with some unexpected, and often unprepared-for, catastrophe is that they think they can just return to life the way it was before. They try to rebuild exac…"

-Amy Poeppel, The Sweet Spot

Similar categories in Jennifer Close's Marrying the Ketchups book and Carter Bays's The Mutual Friend

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

"A reminder of how many people there were in the world. A reminder that sometimes the right person shows up just when you need him to."

-Jennifer Close, Marrying the Ketchups

"Gretchen walked by and saw Kendall and another waitress dipping fries in Armando's garlic aioli and shoveling them into their mouths. This was the number-one hangover food for the staff at Sullivan's…"

-Jennifer Close, Marrying the Ketchups

"Mistakes were made all over the place, all around her, all the time, and she couldn't live her whole life with the sole purpose of not messing up. She didn't know if it would be a mistake or not, she…"

-Jennifer Close, Marrying the Ketchups

"Along with the regular brunch selections of eggs Benedict and Belgian waffles, they planned to serve individual portions of Poof in custard dishes. They also had a whole section for different kinds o…"

-Jennifer Close, Marrying the Ketchups

Similar categories in Kevin Wilson's Now Is Not the Time to Panic book and Carter Bays's The Mutual Friend

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

"I wondered if this was a sign that, whatever happened this summer, I'd be the one with a scar."

-Kevin Wilson, Now Is Not the Time to Panic

"To be a teenager, it takes very little to think that someone else might actually know who you are, even as you spend all your time thinking that no one understands you. It's such a lovely feeling."

-Kevin Wilson, Now Is Not the Time to Panic

"I want to be an artist," he told me, like we were both admitting that we weren't human. We didn't understand how normal this was, to be young, to believe that you were destined to make beautiful thin…"

-Kevin Wilson, Now Is Not the Time to Panic

"You want to put up posters in Graceland?" I asked. I thought that if there was one place in the entire world where devotees would kill you for desecrating the sanctity of a holy space, it would be th…"

-Kevin Wilson, Now Is Not the Time to Panic

Similar categories in Natalie Sue's I Hope This Finds You Well book and Carter Bays's The Mutual Friend

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

"All the shit inside me hardens."

-Natalie Sue, I Hope This Finds You Well

"Shit. This is already a toothpaste-out-of-the-tube situation."

-Natalie Sue, I Hope This Finds You Well

"You can't legally brag about your son since you named him "Carl"."

-Natalie Sue, I Hope This Finds You Well

"He nods and names everyone he passes like the damn president of Clown Town."

-Natalie Sue, I Hope This Finds You Well

Similar categories in Annabel Monaghan's Nora Goes Off Script book and Carter Bays's The Mutual Friend

• romance
• adult fiction
• humor
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"To write is to re-create something as you'd like it to be."

-Annabel Monaghan, Nora Goes Off Script

" Maybe he really likes me , I think in my tiniest thinking voice."

-Annabel Monaghan, Nora Goes Off Script

"What if this is my new normal—showing people my heart and having them applaud it?"

-Annabel Monaghan, Nora Goes Off Script

"There's nothing more shameful than this retrospective knowing, because it reminds you how blind you can be to things that don't jibe with the reality you're trying to believe in."

-Annabel Monaghan, Nora Goes Off Script

Similar categories in Emma Straub's This Time Tomorrow book and Carter Bays's The Mutual Friend

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

"This time tomorrow, where will we be?"

-Emma Straub, This Time Tomorrow

"Forward, that was the idea. Until the future, whatever it was going to be."

-Emma Straub, This Time Tomorrow

"It's not about the time. It's about how you spend it. Where you put your energy."

-Emma Straub, This Time Tomorrow

"Happy endings were too much for some people, false and cheap, but hope - hope was honest. Hope was good."

-Emma Straub, This Time Tomorrow

Similar categories in Catherine Newman's We All Want Impossible Things book and Carter Bays's The Mutual Friend

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

"In the end there’s more beauty in the imperfection."

-Catherine Newman, We All Want Impossible Things

Similar categories in Carter Bays's The Mutual Friend book and Carter Bays's The Mutual Friend

• romance
• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• new york
• audiobook
• humor
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• technology