97 Books Like I Couldn't Love You More

This book provided me with a new perspective of the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster that occurred when I was a teenager, as well as an inside view of the Soviet regime’s oppression during that time. The characters were real – hardworking, resilient, passionate, and imperfect.

This is not a thrilling page-turner or a happily-ever-after story. It’s a sad, terrifying, slow-burn of a book. It’s also beautiful, thought-provoking, and ultimately hopeful, with evocative prose and descriptive storytelling that haunted my thoughts long after I turned the final page. It remains on my bookshelf as one of my all-time favorites, awaiting a second read.

This is really three novels in one—three distinct stories of three generations of strong women spanning the 20th century in South America—and I loved them all. While each woman lived in different times and found strength through different means, they shared the common bonds of womanhood and motherhood and of stories about small miracles passed down for generations. 

De Robertis weaves an engaging saga with captivating, poetic prose that immerses the reader in a different time and place. I could taste the bitter mate tea, feel the humid air along the La Rambla river, and see the haze of cigarette smoke in a backroom bar. I return to it often, just to read a page or two, like returning for another sip from a fine wine.

This quiet, picturesque, heartbreaking story took my breath away. The writing is lyrical and lush, and the characters are profoundly human. I felt their grief, the weight of their secrets, the yearning to find happiness in the aftermath of a war too terrible to grasp. 

If you enjoy stories that explore the human condition from multiple points of view, you will love Hay’s novel set among the rocky cliffs of coastal Australia. Her expert use of literary tools like metaphor, foreshadowing, imagery, and symbolism secured the novel’s place among my all-time favorites. Have a box of tissues handy, for there will be tears of both grief and happiness.

I was most impressed by this author’s ability to show me the innermost thoughts, fears, hopes, and dreams of two main characters who lacked basic communication skills. Lynnie is developmentally disabled. Homan is deaf. Yet, each had a distinct voice and was a fully developed individual.

Their allegoric journeys spanned four decades, and I rooted for them from the opening page until I closed the book at the end. The author carried me along, back and forth, over and under, in an effortless braid of the two stories, introducing many colorful secondary characters along the way. While I had to suspend disbelief a bit to go along for the ride, it was well worth the trip.  

This is a peculiar and marvelous book about birth families, adopted families, and “found” families, and how each of these can be equally screwed up.

Starting in Ireland in the 1940s, the story is peppered with sharp, clever dialog and vivid, fully-human characters. I love how the narrator struggles with his own heart for decades, unable to decide what he wants, who he loves, what’s right, what’s wrong, etc.—in other words, all the stuff I haven’t figured out yet myself. 

Coincidence also plays a huge role in this book, basically making an ass of everyone, which I find oddly comforting since it reminds me that part of being human is having very little control over my own life. Painfully funny and brilliant from cover to cover. 

First off, Ito is just a masterful storyteller. If she had to write about restocking shelves at a grocery store, Ito would make it riveting and hilarious. So, just reading her writing is a highly engaging joy. Second, this story is epic. This is Ito’s story of finding her birth mother and the challenges, joys, and heartbreak of that reunion as she herself became a mother.

What I love most about Ito’s story is that she effortlessly threads the needle of being real and raw yet funny and relatable at the same time. Whether you are a mom, dad, childless, adopted, or not, you will enjoy this journey.

I’d be remiss if I shared books from Canada with you and didn’t point you towards some of the amazing writing coming out of Saskatoon, Treaty 6 Territory, and the Homeland of the Métis. Lisa-Bird Wilson's newest book is a beautiful novel about an Indigenous woman’s search for identity after her adoption. Living in Saskatchewan as Canada wrestles with truth and reconciliation, books like Probably Ruby give me a path to understanding and learning. The voice of this novel is searing and gorgeous, filled with heart and light, and I believe anyone who reads it will feel changed by the experience.

This recommendation returns to one of my most passionate interests—that of adopted children and the families they are placed in. Beatty is a poet and this is reflected in her memoir—it is not the usual chronological narrative as most memoirs are. She breaks the myth of the “special” or “chosen baby” to tell her truth of the lives of adopted children. Beatty exposes, through vignettes and her poetry, her meetings with her birth mother, her adopted family, her attempts to know who she is and where she came from. She breaks open the belief that you can “create” a perfect family using children from other birth mothers, when all her life, she feels, is a lie and she has no grounding in the world. This memoir is her quest to find out who she is.

I love this book because, beyond the fabulous, richly layered story, it takes what should be unlikeable characters and makes you root for them. April Epner is flawed—brittle, sarcastic and closed off at times—but I love her.

As a reader, I can understand why she is the way she is, and that’s the key to making her sympathetic and likable. The payoff is so satisfying when April makes a deep emotional connection and opens up. Bernice Graverman, April’s newfound biological mom, is tacky, loud and over the top, and yet, I was rooting for her. She has a tough shell, but there’s a touching hidden vulnerability.

One more thing I loved about this book…I lived in Quincy, MA (outside of Boston), where this story is set, for five years—it perfectly captures what life was like there in the nineties.

I used to work as an oncology RN so I generally avoid cancer stories, but this author is a friend so I gave the book a chance, and wow am I glad I did. This story manages to capture the crushing reality of cancer for both the patient and the people who love her, but it’s also funny and mysterious and romantic, with plenty of meaningful things to say about grief. It takes insight and compassion to balance all those elements without ever being disrespectful to or flippant about terminal illness. I powered through this gorgeous book (the cover is even more incredible in person!) in one sitting and finished the story feeling hopeful and inspired.