20 must-read fiction books like Acts of Desperation by Megan Nolan

If you liked the fiction plot in Acts of Desperation by Megan Nolan , here is a list of 20 books like this:

Similar categories in Ottessa Moshfegh's Eileen book and Megan Nolan's Acts of Desperation

Similar categories in Ros Schwartz's I Who Have Never Known Men book and Megan Nolan's Acts of Desperation

• literary fiction
• adult
• fiction
• novels

"Survival is never more than putting off the moment of death."

-Ros Schwartz, I Who Have Never Known Men

"I thought it was unfair, and then I understood that, alone and terrified, anger was my only weapon against the horror"

-Ros Schwartz, I Who Have Never Known Men

"Look at them. They’re pretending, they behave as though they still have some control over their lives and make momentous decisions about which vegetable to cook first."

-Ros Schwartz, I Who Have Never Known Men

"Only now, I tell myself that what I'd felt for her, the trust that slowly built up, the constant preference for her company and the joy each time I was reunited with her after an expedition were prob…"

-Ros Schwartz, I Who Have Never Known Men

Similar categories in Megan Nolan's Acts of Desperation book and Megan Nolan's Acts of Desperation

• romance
• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• adult
• ireland
• irish literature
• audiobook

"You always think your pain is the most painful. You always think it's uniquely awful."

-Megan Nolan, Acts of Desperation

"I didn't want her near me, because she was the only one able to see me for what I was, but I couldn't lose her for the very same reason."

-Megan Nolan, Acts of Desperation

"You can't complain about feeling bad, about being depressed, if you aren't trying to sleep, trying to eat, trying to care about yourself."

-Megan Nolan, Acts of Desperation

"I made mistakes like this all the time, seeking affirmation from the very worst people, so that what I must have been after deep down was confirmation of the fears instead of their dismissals"

-Megan Nolan, Acts of Desperation

Similar categories in Mona Awad's Rouge book and Megan Nolan's Acts of Desperation

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"If I had beauty, I decided then, I would never throw it away. I would never give it up."

-Mona Awad, Rouge

"I mean, we all have our dark days. Very dark days, sometimes. When our demons come out to play. No one lives entirely in the light, right?"

-Mona Awad, Rouge

"That I can’t protect you from my terrible places that I still go, can’t help but go because no one protected me, no one saved me, no one ever held out their hand and walked me away. But I’m trying to…"

-Mona Awad, Rouge

Similar categories in Maud Ventura's My Husband book and Megan Nolan's Acts of Desperation

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

"When it comes to love, I’ve learned nothing: I love too intensely and I’m consumed by my own love (analysis, jealousy, doubt)—so much that when I’m in love, I always end up slightly extinguished and …"

-Maud Ventura, My Husband

Similar categories in Mona Awad's Bunny book and Megan Nolan's Acts of Desperation

• 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

Similar categories in Eliza Clark's Penance book and Megan Nolan's Acts of Desperation

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"Do you know what happened to her already? Did you catch it in the papers? Are you local? Did you know her? Did you see it on the internet? Did some website the trawls local news for the worst details…"

-Eliza Clark, Penance

Similar categories in Chelsea G. Summers's A Certain Hunger book and Megan Nolan's Acts of Desperation

• literary fiction
• adult
• fiction
• contemporary

"Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac."

-Chelsea G. Summers, A Certain Hunger

"I enjoy a man who’s kissed with a yeasty beastliness."

-Chelsea G. Summers, A Certain Hunger

"Junk food was rebellion, rebellion was femininity, femininity was junk."

-Chelsea G. Summers, A Certain Hunger

"I knew from a young age that motherhood was a cage I never wanted to inhabit."

-Chelsea G. Summers, A Certain Hunger

Similar categories in Madelaine Lucas's Thirst for Salt book and Megan Nolan's Acts of Desperation

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

"As if it were possible to circumnavigate memory."

-Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

"I like you as you are, he said. Even if you're going to wear me out."

-Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

"As lovers learn, when love ends, you lose the future as well as the past."

-Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

"The trouble is that our dreams, like our memories, are not immune to revision."

-Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

Similar categories in Sheena Patel's I'm a Fan book and Megan Nolan's Acts of Desperation

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

"It is toxic. I am familiar"

-Sheena Patel, I'm a Fan

"Happiness or safety. Or isn't that the same thing?"

-Sheena Patel, I'm a Fan

"I never came with him. I never felt safe enough to."

-Sheena Patel, I'm a Fan

"The world is made for couples. Even the unhappy ones."

-Sheena Patel, I'm a Fan

Similar categories in Dizz Tate's Brutes book and Megan Nolan's Acts of Desperation

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"to be loved, was just to be watched"

-Dizz Tate, Brutes

"We feel chased. It doesn't matter if it's only by our own shadows."

-Dizz Tate, Brutes

"and now I think that to humiliate a woman is the only way some men know how to love one."

-Dizz Tate, Brutes

"To be loved was just to be watched, or in my case, to imagine you are loved is to imagine you are watched all the time."

-Dizz Tate, Brutes

Similar categories in Lottie Hazell's Piglet book and Megan Nolan's Acts of Desperation

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

"She picked up salted butter, thick Greek yoghurt, and cream. The menu was not modest. Her basket was already heavy with Charlotte potatoes, fresh herbs, and a Duchy chicken. It was too hot for a roas…"

-Lottie Hazell, Piglet

"She picked up salted butter, thick Greek yoghurt, and cream. The menu was not modest. Her basket was already heavy with Charlotte potatoes, fresh herbs, and a Duchy chicken. It was too hot for a roas…"

-Lottie Hazell, Piglet

"She opened the capers, green and freckled as amphibians, and with a teaspoon eased them from their brine. The olives were next, and she pushed pits from the aubergine-dark fruits, dropping their fles…"

-Lottie Hazell, Piglet

"On the platter before her there was a bowl of beef bourguignon, the sauce dark with merlot; the corner of dauphinoise potatoes, gruyère-crusted top browned, bubbled with heat; there was a small plate…"

-Lottie Hazell, Piglet

Similar categories in Jen Beagin's Big Swiss book and Megan Nolan's Acts of Desperation

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

"¿Habla más de un idioma?"

-Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

"You bullied other bullies,"

-Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

"she’d always been less of a shit-talker and more of a shit-thinker"

-Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

"At least I know where the hell I am and what’s happening. Which way is north?"

-Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

Similar categories in Coco Mellors's Cleopatra and Frankenstein book and Megan Nolan's Acts of Desperation

• 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

Similar categories in Eliza Clark's Boy Parts book and Megan Nolan's Acts of Desperation

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"Was it my idea to have him hurt me, or did he just let me think it was?"

-Eliza Clark, Boy Parts

"My mam always used to tell me that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. And Eddie from Tesco is a fly, but he's got a taste for vinegar. It's like vinegar is all he's ever had from peop…"

-Eliza Clark, Boy Parts

"You want to think you're not like other women, but you are, you know. You're still... that's still how the rest of the world, how men are going to see you. Like, I know you hate labels, but you like.…"

-Eliza Clark, Boy Parts

"Do you like it rough? I think so. I think I must. Men are rough, aren't they? Have I always had a taste for rough stuff, or did I acquire that? In the back of Lesley's car, on the floor of a friend's…"

-Eliza Clark, Boy Parts

Similar categories in Melissa Broder's Milk Fed book and Megan Nolan's Acts of Desperation

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

"This interplay between hope and reality was also a part of the mourning."

-Melissa Broder, Milk Fed

"There are emanations of god we can’t even see. What’s important is that you feel it."

-Melissa Broder, Milk Fed

"Life was a lot less bleak when you were staring straight down the barrel of a burrito."

-Melissa Broder, Milk Fed

"I wanted a love contingent on nothing finite. I wanted a love without end. Everyone was always saying you had to give it to yourself. Self-love, self-love."

-Melissa Broder, Milk Fed

Similar categories in Lillian Fishman's Acts of Service book and Megan Nolan's Acts of Desperation

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

"We love what disturbs us if it chooses us and tell us how we matter."

-Lillian Fishman, Acts of Service

"How can a body be safe when it's only a body? How can we expect that no stranger will be tempted to torch an empty house?"

-Lillian Fishman, Acts of Service

"Somehow, [...] I grew up talking about sex as this thing women should have however they wanted. Sexual freedom as this great sort of penacle beyond morality, or anything provincial. So I am supposed …"

-Lillian Fishman, Acts of Service

Similar categories in Sarah Rose Etter's Ripe book and Megan Nolan's Acts of Desperation

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

"The open office floor plan is a form of strangulation."

-Sarah Rose Etter, Ripe

"Maybe there must always be two of us—our real selves and the ones we create to survive in the world as it is."

-Sarah Rose Etter, Ripe

"When you're young, every part of life seems big and monumental. Once older you can see it for what it is: smaller pieces of a larger game you have no choice but to play."

-Sarah Rose Etter, Ripe

"If the brain is elastic and memory is faulty, maybe all of these stories are wrong. Maybe it happened a different way altogether. Maybe I was happy and I just forget that now."

-Sarah Rose Etter, Ripe

Similar categories in Naoise Dolan's The Happy Couple book and Megan Nolan's Acts of Desperation

• romance
• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• ireland
• irish literature
• audiobook

"She'd learned by that point that she couldn't fix people. All she needed to know, really, in any human transaction, was wether it was right for her; wether it fit. That was why she'd dumped Luke when…"

-Naoise Dolan, The Happy Couple

"Celine believed things for exactly as long as she wanted to. Being smart, being logical, didn't help her. It just enabled her baroque self-deceit. Phoebe took the simpler route of putting no consider…"

-Naoise Dolan, The Happy Couple

Similar categories in Halle Butler's The New Me book and Megan Nolan's Acts of Desperation

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

Similar categories in Lisa Taddeo's Animal book and Megan Nolan's Acts of Desperation

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"Let me tell you something, he said, looking into my eyes like an asshole."

-Lisa Taddeo, Animal

"When someone suffocates you with what they believe is love, even as you feel your air supply being cut off, you at least feel embraced."

-Lisa Taddeo, Animal

"The men noticed I'd stopped playing. Men are never okay when you stop. I had the fear of angering a man. Of not being an amenable woman. I had the fear of being murdered."

-Lisa Taddeo, Animal

"He looked a little wounded, and I realized that true power came from not caring about anyone. That was the last time I would sleep with a man. I was through with the gender."

-Lisa Taddeo, Animal