10 must-read novels books like Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

Cover of Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

Beautiful World, Where Are You

By: Sally Rooney

3.53

Format: 337 pages, Paperback

*The Sunday Times and Global number one bestseller* *Winner of Novel of the Year at the An Post Ir…

"They looked at one another for a long moment, without speaking, and in the soil of that look many years were buried."

-Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

"Maybe certain kinds of pain, at certain formative stages in life, just impress themselves into a person's sense of self permanently."

-Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

"Maybe we're just born to love and worry about the people we know, and to go on loving and worrying even when there are more important things we should be doing."

-Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

"I’m sorry to say that I think it is too late to change the way we have turned out. The turning-out process has come to an end, and we are to a very great extent what we are."

-Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

If you liked the novels plot in Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney , here is a list of 10 books like this:

Cover of The Idiot by Elif Batuman

1. The Idiot

By: Elif Batuman

3.66

Format: 423 pages, Hardcover

A portrait of the artist as a young woman. A novel about not just discovering but inventing oneself… read more

Similar categories in Elif Batuman's The Idiot book and Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are You

  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • adult
  • audiobook
"For a while now, I have been conscious of a tension in my relationship with you,"

-Elif Batuman, The Idiot

"Lighting a match felt exciting and a little bit dangerous, and when the flame came into contact with the paper, it made a sound like the needle coming down on a record player—like the music was about…"

-Elif Batuman, The Idiot

"For the first time in my life, I couldn't think of anything I particularly wanted to study or to do. I still had the old idea of being a writer, but that was being, not doing. It didn't say what you …"

-Elif Batuman, The Idiot

"Suddenly it occurred to me that maybe the point of writing wasn't just to record something past but also to prolong the present, like in One Thousand and One Nights, to stretch out the time until the…"

-Elif Batuman, The Idiot

Cover of The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

2. The Bell Jar

By: Sylvia Plath

4.06

Format: 294 pages, Paperback

The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented… read more

Similar categories in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar book and Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are You

  • literary fiction
  • adult
  • fiction
  • novels
"I woke to the sound of rain."

-Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

"I wanted to be where nobody I knew could ever come."

-Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

"When they asked me what I wanted to be I said I didn't know."

-Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

"I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow."

-Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Cover of The Secret History by Donna Tartt

3. The Secret History

By: Donna Tartt

4.17

Format: 559 pages, Paperback

Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits a… read more

Similar categories in Donna Tartt's The Secret History book and Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are You

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • adult
"It's a terrible thing, what we did,"

-Donna Tartt, The Secret History

"How quickly he fell; how soon it was over."

-Donna Tartt, The Secret History

"Forgive me, for all the things I did but mostly for the ones I did not."

-Donna Tartt, The Secret History

"I suppose the shock of recognition is one of the nastiest shocks of all."

-Donna Tartt, The Secret History

4. A Little Life

By: Hanya Yanagihara

4.58

Format: None pages, Hardcover

When four classmates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they're… read more

Similar categories in Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life book and Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are You

Cover of Bunny by Mona Awad

5. Bunny

By: Mona Awad

3.50

Format: 305 pages, Paperback

We were just these innocent girls in the night trying to make something beautiful. We nearly died. … read more

Similar categories in Mona Awad's Bunny book and Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are You

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • adult
  • audiobook
"The pink pony inside me weeps softly."

-Mona Awad, Bunny

"Oh, Bunny, I love you. I love you, Bunny."

-Mona Awad, Bunny

"We think of it as art meets life, Bunny. We’re putting art into the world."

-Mona Awad, Bunny

"Because life is shorter than we are, she says, so why beat around the bush?"

-Mona Awad, Bunny

Cover of Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors

6. 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 Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are You

  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • adult
  • 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 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

7. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

By: Gabrielle Zevin

4.15

Format: 401 pages, Hardcover

In this exhilarating novel, two friends—often in love, but never lovers—come together as creative p… read more

Similar categories in Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow book and Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are You

  • romance
  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • adult
  • audiobook
"Friendship,"

-Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

"How I will miss the horses."

-Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

"You try again. You fail better."

-Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

"There are no ghosts, but up here"

-Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Cover of Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

8. 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 Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are You

  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • adult
  • 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 Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donoghue

9. 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 Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are You

  • romance
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • adult
  • ireland
  • irish literature
  • 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 My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

10. My Year of Rest and Relaxation

By: Ottessa Moshfegh

3.63

Format: 289 pages, Paperback

From one of our boldest, most celebrated new literary voices, a novel about a young woman’s efforts… read more

Similar categories in Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation book and Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are You

  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • adult
  • audiobook
"What next? I couldn't imagine."

-Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation

"I wasn't an insomniac, but I was miserable."

-Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation

"Life was repetitive, resonated at a low hum."

-Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation

"I just wanted to sleep all the time. I had a plan."

-Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation

Cover of Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

11. Crying in H Mart

By: Michelle Zauner

4.26

Format: 239 pages, Hardcover

The New York Times bestseller from the Grammy-nominated indie rockstar Japanese Breakfast, an unfli… read more

Similar categories in Michelle Zauner's Crying in H Mart book and Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are You

  • audiobook
  • adult
  • contemporary
"what procellous awesomeness does not in you abound"

-Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

"It felt wrong to talk to anyone, to smile or laugh or eat again knowing that she was dead."

-Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

"I could almost feel in the embrace that my concerns had been her concerns, my pain had been her pain."

-Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

"Maybe I was just terrified that I might be the closest thing she had to leaving a piece of herself behind."

-Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

Cover of Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #1) by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

12. Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #1)

By: Toshikazu Kawaguchi

3.69

Format: 213 pages, Paperback

What would you change if you could go back in time? In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a c… read more

Similar categories in Toshikazu Kawaguchi's Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #1) book and Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are You

  • audiobook
  • adult
  • fiction
  • contemporary
"Thank you, for the honor of having you."

-Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #1)

"Negativity is food for malady, one might say."

-Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #1)

"She wanted to do things without having to worry what others thought. She simply lived for her freedom."

-Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #1)

"With the coffee in front of her, she closed her eyes, and inhaled deeply. It was her moment of happiness."

-Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #1)

Cover of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

13. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

By: Ocean Vuong

4.04

Format: 246 pages, Hardcover

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when th… read more

Similar categories in Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous book and Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are You

  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • adult
  • audiobook
"It was beauty, I learned, that we risked ourselves for."

-Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

"To look at something is to fill your whole life with it, if only briefly."

-Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

"What were you before you met me?" "I think I was drowning" "And what are you now?" "Water"

-Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

"A page, turning, is a wing lifted with no twin, and therefore no flight. And yet we are moved."

-Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

Cover of Talking at Night by Claire Daverley

14. Talking at Night

By: Claire Daverley

3.96

Format: 400 pages, Hardcover

Will and Rosie meet as teenagers. They’re opposites in every way. She overthinks everything; he … read more

Similar categories in Claire Daverley's Talking at Night book and Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are You

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

15. 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 Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are You

  • romance
  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • adult
  • 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 Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors

16. Cleopatra and Frankenstein

By: Coco Mellors

3.74

Format: 384 pages, Hardcover

For readers of Modern Lovers and Conversations with Friends, an addictive, humorous, and poignant d… read more

Similar categories in Coco Mellors's Cleopatra and Frankenstein book and Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are You

  • romance
  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • adult
  • audiobook
"And you’re in love?"

-Coco Mellors, Cleopatra and Frankenstein

"People are like this too, you know,"

-Coco Mellors, Cleopatra and Frankenstein

"When the darkest part of you meets the darkest part of me, it creates light."

-Coco Mellors, Cleopatra and Frankenstein

"Cleo and Frank could not make each other happy, no matter how hard they’d tried."

-Coco Mellors, Cleopatra and Frankenstein

Cover of Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton

17. Everything I Know About Love

By: Dolly Alderton

4.00

Format: 368 pages, Hardcover

The wildly funny, occasionally heartbreaking internationally bestselling memoir about growing up, g… read more

Similar categories in Dolly Alderton's Everything I Know About Love book and Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are You

  • romance
  • audiobook
  • contemporary
"Nearly everything I know about love, I've learnt from my long-term friendships with women."

-Dolly Alderton, Everything I Know About Love

"No matter how uncertain and unpredictable life gets, some people really do walk next to you for ever."

-Dolly Alderton, Everything I Know About Love

"She knows where to find everything in me and I know where all her stuff is too. She is, in short, my best friend."

-Dolly Alderton, Everything I Know About Love

"I don't need any words or looks or comments from a man to believe I'm visible; to believe I'm here. don't need to run away from discomfort and into a male eyeliner. That's not where I come alive."

-Dolly Alderton, Everything I Know About Love

Cover of Ghosts by Dolly Alderton

18. Ghosts

By: Dolly Alderton

3.88

Format: 352 pages, Hardcover

Nina Dean has arrived at her early thirties as a successful food writer with loving friends and fam… read more

Similar categories in Dolly Alderton's Ghosts book and Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are You

  • romance
  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • adult
  • audiobook
"But I think maybe every job is a waste of an English degree."

-Dolly Alderton, Ghosts

"I think the memory of your childhood home is impossible to destroy."

-Dolly Alderton, Ghosts

"Jethro's flat was in a warehouse that, even from the outside, looked very pleased with its own conversion."

-Dolly Alderton, Ghosts

"The contents of supermarket baskets are surely evidence that none of us are coping with adulthood all that well."

-Dolly Alderton, Ghosts

Cover of Writers & Lovers by Lily King

19. Writers & Lovers

By: Lily King

4.01

Format: 320 pages, Hardcover

Following the breakout success of her critically acclaimed and award-winning novel Euphoria, Lily K… read more

Similar categories in Lily King's Writers & Lovers book and Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are You

  • romance
  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • adult
  • audiobook
"That reverberation for me is what is most important about literature"

-Lily King, Writers & Lovers

"It's a particular kind of pleasure, of intimacy, loving a book with someone."

-Lily King, Writers & Lovers

"They say women have intuition, but men can smell a competitor across state lines."

-Lily King, Writers & Lovers

"God, you poets are full of shit. You have no idea what half the words you worship mean."

-Lily King, Writers & Lovers

Cover of Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan

20. Exciting Times

By: Naoise Dolan

3.23

Format: 243 pages, Hardcover

An intimate, bracingly intelligent debut novel about a millennial Irish expat who becomes entangled… read more

Similar categories in Naoise Dolan's Exciting Times book and Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are You

  • romance
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • adult
  • ireland
  • irish literature
  • audiobook
"Eunice Fong said: “Miss, are you sick?"

-Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times

"My wanting to cry was a reflection mainly of my social conscience"

-Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times

"It's normal to miss your family,' he said. I said that was why I didn't"

-Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times

"I wondered which other phrases he´d plucked. I felt like a bird he kept for quills."

-Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times

Cover of Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

21. Beautiful World, Where Are You

By: Sally Rooney

3.53

Format: 337 pages, Paperback

*The Sunday Times and Global number one bestseller* *Winner of Novel of the Year at the An Post Ir… read more

Similar categories in Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are You book and Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are You

  • romance
  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • adult
  • ireland
  • irish literature
  • audiobook
"They looked at one another for a long moment, without speaking, and in the soil of that look many years were buried."

-Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

"Maybe certain kinds of pain, at certain formative stages in life, just impress themselves into a person's sense of self permanently."

-Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

"Maybe we're just born to love and worry about the people we know, and to go on loving and worrying even when there are more important things we should be doing."

-Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

"I’m sorry to say that I think it is too late to change the way we have turned out. The turning-out process has come to an end, and we are to a very great extent what we are."

-Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

18 Top fiction books like Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

Transform Your Habits

The Idiot

Elif Batuman

3.66

Transform Your Habits

The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath

4.06

Transform Your Habits

The Secret History

Donna Tartt

4.17

Transform Your Habits

Bunny

Mona Awad

3.50

View all the books

21 must-read fiction books like Talking at Night by Claire Daverley

Transform Your Habits

One Day

David Nicholls

5.00

Transform Your Habits

You Are Here

David Nicholls

4.08

Transform Your Habits

In Memoriam

Alice Winn

4.53

Transform Your Habits

Blue Sisters

Coco Mellors

4.21

View all the books

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