100 Books Like The Girl Who Fell from the Sky

Brit Bennett writes with a steady hand as she immerses us into the minds and lives of three people. Nadia and Aubrey are haunted to womanhood by maternal abandonment. They are friends as well as rivals for the affection of the same man. Luke would have made a mother out of Nadia had they chosen to parent, and he eventually makes a wife and mother of Aubrey. His mother is the first lady of the church that plays a prominent role in their lives. The mothers in Bennett's exceptional novel are hurt and betrayed by callous men and by each other. I rooted for each of them to persevere, but like many of my favorite novels, this is not a happily ever after for everyone type of story.

What sticks with me most about this beautiful book is the fiercely tender bond between Dana Lynn and her mother, Gwen. Right from the opening lines, I was all in on their emotionally complex mother-daughter relationship. In some ways, Dana Lynn and her mom are like sisters, the two of them keeping a whopping secret for Dana Lynn’s father, and yet, they are always aware of their position as mother and daughter.

Gwen grieves the ways her husband’s secret plunders their daughter’s innocence, even as Dana Lynn struggles to make peace with what their world would look like if the truth were out. As a reader, I mourned with them and rejoiced, too, that they had each other.

The Star Side of Bird Hill is about two sisters, one a preteen and the other on the verge of womanhood, sent from Brooklyn to Barbados to spend a summer with their grandmother. This temporary arrangement becomes permanent when their severely depressed mother kills herself. The children of Bird Hill are still friends in the making. Their grandmother is an unbending woman with strange ways, not the adored woman who raised them. Adapting to a new home takes time and reluctant willingness. I spent my earliest years with my grandparents on my mother’s side on the island of Anegada while my parents set up roots in NY before bringing me to a new home. This gave me an immediate connection to Naomi Jackson’s wonderful novel. Her skillful writing did the rest.

As a teenager, Sophie leaves behind all that she knows in Haiti to be reunited with her mother. In New York, she falls for a man closer in age to her mother than herself. Her mother rages against him, or any man deemed unsuitable. Desire to guard Sophie's purity drives a wedge between them. The patriarchy of Haiti has lingering effects, resulting in maternal protection that resembles cruelty. Sophie tries to make a marriage work out in different ways and for different reasons than the women (mother, aunt, grandmother) who raised her and formed her ideas of womanhood. Stories of family often center on the differing priorities and expectations of different generations. This aspect of the gracefully written Breath, Eyes, Memory is what drew me in and kept me hooked.

Finally, a campus novel with a female protagonist who’s also an undergraduate. Batuman does a wonderful job of immersing the reader in her main character’s point of view. And what a fascinating perspective she offers–I was so enthralled with her way of thinking and the amusing things she notices about the people and places around her!

The writing constantly surprised and engaged me while taking me along on the journey of Selin’s first year of college.  

I first listened to this book in audio and immediately bought the print copy. Good Me Bad Me has such a compelling voice that this is a book you will end up reading way past your bedtime. 

The story is told by a fifteen-year-old girl who has gone through so much trauma, your heart breaks…but then it twists, leaving you gasping for air because you can’t believe what just happened. I have read this story over and over again and it still haunts me to this day!

This novel-in-stories follows a quartet of friends—Dub, Rollo, Rye, and Gio—as they party, fight, love, and occasionally even consider leaving Rhode Island. Gio, the group’s storyteller, observes, comments, and guides the reader through a hard-edged world of race and class oppression. Guns and drugs flood Gio’s world, but these forces are offset by bonds of family, friends, and friends who become family. Never has the overlooked town of Pawtucket been so lovingly portrayed, and I’ll not soon forget Holmes’ mouthwatering descriptions of Portuguese Catholic feast days in East Providence. A keen observer of toxic masculinity, Holmes shows how misogyny holds this group of young men together while it also holds them back.

Although published long ago, it is remarkable how easy it is to become involved in this book and be charmed by its main character, Tom.

Orphans abound in 18th and 19th-century fiction. What happens to him in an upper-class environment is inevitably unfair and hypocritical, so when he gets on the road—whether as a result of desire or force—the fun truly begins.

Tom says at the beginning that his tale has the purpose of understanding “human nature”, and after spending time with him on his adventures, from the estate where he grows up to his romp in London, we have a sense of the good nature of human nature. Tom’s sense of life infuses his life on the road, offering a character to celebrate despite his flaws.

All of Johnson’s books are swoony and awesome, but I love that Jill works in the family business—just like Dakota and Leo do—fixing cars in her family’s auto shop. It’s not something you see a lot of girls doing in YA books, but it makes so much sense in her bigger struggle of being a “fixer” in her everyday life. I have no mechanical skills, but boy, do I relate to trying to fix things that were never really my problem to solve in the first place. Teens with complicated family dynamics will appreciate seeing themselves portrayed in an authentic, nuanced way. Johnson leaves the reader with a powerful but gentle message that when faced with impossible situations, sometimes you need to fix yourself first.      

This is such a gorgeous and immersive book. Emmeline’s love for both her father and the remote island they live on called up for me my adoration of my own father and the farm of my childhood. But what’s particularly glorious about this book is the way the author explores the way fragrance has the power to call up memories—and turns it into magic. The Scent Keeper has all the other essential elements of books that I love as well—beautiful writing, a touch of romance, flawed characters growing into themselves and a deeper understanding of the world, and, of course, a good mystery to solve.