Books like I Couldn't Love You More — picked by fans

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. 

Hata, a Korean, adopted by a Japanese couple, serves the Japanese Army as a medic in World War II. His job is to care for enslaved Koreans who serve as “comfort women” to Japanese soldiers. His experiences are the material of nightmares. Years later he leads a deceptively quiet life in a small town in New Jersey with his Korean adoptive daughter. It is deceptively quiet because his unresolved war experiences, presented in flashbacks, haunt him. I admired the abrupt manner in which Chang-Rae Lee interrupted Hata’s uneventful life with horrific memories.

The author’s method felt like the triggering of those who have suffered trauma and continue to relive events as PTSD. This approach of interweaving past with present inspired my depiction of a young German woman living a quiet life on a primitive Icelandic farm, milking the cows and raking the hay, while being repeatedly interrupted by memories of… show more.

As I‘ve said, I love foreign-set thrillers, especially the ones set in England. And this was another book I devoured. 

Although the suspense and intrigue of the plot kept me glued to the pages, I had to put it down multiple times as I went through a range of emotions reading about black women and girls being let down, hurt, and preyed upon by the people meant to protect them.

I eagerly followed Eva’s journey, not just to find her birth mother and reclaim her identity, which was literally cut from her, but to expose the chilling truth of why four black women went missing, and the police didn’t look for them. 

This book was a sad reminder of how easily black women and girls fall through the cracks unnoticed.

Because of my own work as an adoption writer and advocate for open adoption records, I knew each of these writers from webinars, podcasts, conferences, and social media. Combining their varied backgrounds and experiences–Sara is an adoptee, Kelsey is a birth parent, and Lori is an adoptive parent–was thrilling to read.

I devoured each of the thoughtful interviews and the candid responses the authors compiled and presented. Like these authors, I believe that by working together with truth and transparency, it is possible to move adoption forward toward a healing place.

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.

The bloodthirsty roses, Isra the blind beauty, and Gem the intriguing beast. It was an intriguing combo that first made me pick up this book and start the beginning of this adventure. That isn't to say that this book is all sweetness, there are most definitely moments that had me seething with anger. The way the 'perfect' Smooth Skins treated the flawed one of their own kind, and the Monstrous struggling to survive outside the dome. But by far my most favorite part was how Gem and Isla bonded over gardening together. Yes, it was originally a lie so that Gem could gather information to help his own people, but it turned into some of the most character-building scenes that tied the whole story together in a rose-shaped bow.