100 Books Like Normal People

I find Tom Ripley such a wonderful character—a con man who commits crimes under the guise of someone else, a male protagonist written by a lesbian.

I love the levels of deception the reader is pulled in, so is on the side of the criminal throughout, hoping for him not to get caught in his awful, amoral behaviour.

It is a masterful use of the narrative voice in crime fiction at its best.

Illusion. Women’s framing. Adrift in a world everyone thinks is perfect. Living the glamorous life others want. Being the thing men desire to have, to own, as long as the veneer holds. Dealing with mental illness that people explain away because all the tinsel is just dressing and sparkles, but if you lean on it, it parts, and you find yourself falling through the space.

Although ‘they’ say they care, they don’t, and no one wants to hear the truth, they only want pretend. Within the first five pages, we understand what’s going on inside her, that she has something to hide, and that she’s willing to lie about who she really is. In chapter one, we discover that her best friend, Doreen, doesn’t really know her name. We see the world through her eyes, interspaced with an actual conversation that calls the world a lie and her own framing… show more.

We see people act out and don’t ask why. We see people use broken coping that tumbles them back into a cycle of self-damaging trauma. We don’t look at our past to inform how our personal history frames our experiences, coping, and expectations–and limits our ability to heal if we don’t self-examine and change behavior to bring about an alternative outcome.

The lies we tell ourselves to explain our choices and hide from our truth are protective mechanisms that can feed the damage. The shame projected on the victim, the learned shields to hide the original trauma, and the self-loathing attached to the secret self, no matter the outer success, are grounded in research physiology and psychology.

Until we understand the causation of our own actions, we might not be able to bring about change and could be doomed to repeat destructive patterns. It's unexpected and a fast… show more.

I love this book because of Katniss Everdeen's depth. She’s not just another “kickass hottie”, she’s complex, with a powerful character arc driven by a deep sense of responsibility.

The book’s commentary on mental health and Katniss' parentification resonated with me personally. The story world of all the districts and President Snow's iron grip on them is well-drawn and has parallels to our own, too. 

I’d read the reviews, so I was prepared for a great book. I wasn’t prepared to be thrown out of my comfort zone—but in the best possible way.

Mandel made me sit with what it really means to lose everything and still create something beautiful. It’s not about saving the world; it’s about creating a new dream and making it your home. I loved how it celebrates art, memory, and the strange persistence of humanity even when everything else is gone.

This book reminded me that hope is often raw, painful, and ultimately necessary.

When I read this book as a young lawyer in reproductive rights in the 1990s, it resonated deeply with the daily bias that I witnessed against my clients. Decades later, a highlight of my book tour was being invited to do a talk with Professor Roberts at the Free Library of Philadelphia. Dorothy Roberts’ exploration of “race, reproduction and the meaning of liberty” is powerful.

Her writing clearly lays out how restrictions on abortion, parenting, and access to basic health care are shaped by and also perpetuate American racism. This book inspired me to work for equity and reproductive freedom for all, and hopefully, it will continue to do so for others, too. 

Like Anderson, Gertrude Stein had a sense of humor about gay Paree. Who else would write someone else’s autobiography?

I love her tone of detached amusement when describing the artistic titans of the Lost Generation. If you don’t get it, try the recipe for Alice B. Toklas brownies. 

This novel made me feel like a hungry young rock star. That’s no small accomplishment (let alone via such electric prose), but really, it didn’t feel like fiction. It felt like an intimate docudrama of a world-conquering British rock band whose music, somehow, magically, I already knew and loved.

That’s really what astounded me the most: the music and the musical protagonists were incredibly real. As a story of the rock-and-roll life, I think it’s up there with all the great memoirs, like Keith Richards’s Life. (Disclaimer: this is absolutely a standalone novel, but if you’ve read Mitchell’s earlier novels, namely Cloud Atlas and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, prepare for some astonishing easter eggs and callbacks.)

This is actually just the first book of Ferrante’s four Neapolitan novels, which tell a single riveting story of two girls, Lila and Lenù, from a depressed Naples neighborhood. Lenù is the narrator, taking us through fifty years of friendship and the latter half of the 20th century. (Her actual name is Elena, like the author—another doubling, especially since she writes under a pseudonym.)

I am a sucker for event: a lot happens and we get to know a huge cast of characters from the neighborhood. But our anchors are these two friends and rivals, vibrant and injured, striving to transcend their origins.

Nothing is accidental. Every word that you think is throwaway is part of the character build. Nothing is told. You have to link it. You have diverse characters without commentary. You have an understanding of motivation. You have illicit love. You have a challenging protagonist. What you think is true may not be true. You may glimpse real people, but you cannot say for sure. Unspoken truths. Secrets. Sex. Glamor.

Written from alternative viewpoints, it rounds out the real-life aspect that there is no truth because everyone’s truth is colored by their own bias. Again, it's unexpected and a fast read–and just like with my last recommendation–you don’t like her, then you do.