62 Books Like The Infinity Between Us

Bree is a fantastic female character, defined by her kindness, taking a break in a small town after the violent death of her father. In her search for peace, she is drawn to Archer, the village mute and recluse.

This story is heartbreakingly sweet, and Bree’s openness is something fresh and uplifting. It shines a spotlight on realistic emotional healing through both characters, forcing the reader to question judgments we often make as a society around disability. 

After Ever Happy is a poignant and well-written book about family betrayals, and the possibility of healing from those deep wounds. A reader going through some difficulties with her parents will appreciate the strong bond between Hardin and his mother, and will grieve along with him when he learns later in life that his father isn’t really his father, and that bond is broken. Anna Todd’s descriptions of scenes pull you in, letting you live through her characters’ lives right beside them. That’s not always easy, and some truly terrible things happen to Hardin and his mother, but learning how they deal with it all, and with each other, was a powerful experience for me.

I am always interested in stories about women surviving and overcoming abuse, and Easy depicts that sort of violence in a careful and mature manner, but never downplays the seriousness of it all. Tammara Webber doesn’t avoid the issue, but she doesn’t let it be a book of darkness and despair, either. Jacqueline is a great character, complicated and maybe even messy, who faces a lot of difficult choices. The storyline is mostly about her own search for hope and love. Maybe even forgiveness. There’s plenty of sweet and sometimes steamy romance, too!

I love books that inspire me and remind me that there is a way to overcome every hardship, if we will just keep our heads up and make the right choices. Tess Wakefield makes me remember too, that no matter what, there is always someone who will want to help, in the best way they know how. Her main characters, Cassie and Luke, do all the right things for all the wrong reasons, or maybe all the wrong things, for all the right reasons. They do suffer the consequences of those choices, but they learn a lot about themselves along the way. My favorite thing about Purple Hearts is how it teaches us that life is short and that we shouldn’t live with regrets. 

Even though Jewett wrote the stories in this book in the late 1800s, there is a timeless feeling to her prose that reverberates today.

I love Jewett’s attention to and reverence for the natural beauty that surrounds the fictional town of Dunnet Landing. Her descriptions of the Maine coastline—a blend of craggy rocks, forest, meadows, and sea—are visceral, sensory, and alluring. Jewett also nicely captures the hardworking, humorous, quietly resilient spirit of the year-round residents of Dunnet Landing, with a particularly keen and kind eye toward her female characters.

Her care for the everyday rituals of life, the small moments that make up an existence, are lovingly rendered and evocative. There’s a reason this is a Maine classic. 

Addiction, grief, generational trauma… all these things exist in Talty’s work. But his prose lifts all that heaviness and makes it not only bearable, but often strangely beautiful.

His characters are raw and real, and his skill with dialogue is enviable. I love the way the book is structured as a collection of linked stories, each one informing and contributing to the rest. The book is set on the Penobscot reservation in Maine, an area often overlooked both in literature and reality.

Talty is a natural storyteller, and his voice rings with wisdom, dry humor, and honesty, giving readers rare insight into this community. 

I love this book because it is not afraid to look at deep sadness and disappointment in an honest and complex way. This novel is a collection of short stories that all take place in a coastal Main town and are connected by the large presence of Olive.

Olive is intelligent, acerbic, and abrasive. She is anything but easy. I appreciate the compassion Strout gives her imperfect characters as they struggle with their messy lives. I grew to care more for Olive as I traveled her rocky path with her, even as she was often the one to throw down the rocks before her.

This is a quiet book, which I read in a quiet way. It brought me comfort in its illumination of uncomfortable things. 

Reading a book by Barbara Ross is like taking an actual trip to a charming coastal Maine town.

Loaded with lobster, seafood dishes, and desserts with blueberries in almost every chapter; my mouth was watering for the east coast. The interesting plot line on a lobster boat held my interest and led me to investigate the other books in the series as well. 

No one wrote better than E. B. White, and no one captured the essence of daily life on the home front better than White in this collection of essays. “This is my country and my night,” he wrote from his farm in Maine, “this is the blacked-out ending to the day, the way they end a skit in a revue.” Yet White acknowledged that it was nearly impossible for him or anyone else to truly convey all the ways that the war was changing ordinary Americans. “You write something that sounds informative, throwing the words around in the usual manner, then the thing explodes in your hands, and you look down at your hands,” he explained. “As though you had crushed a light bulb and were bleeding slightly.”

The fascinating thing about this book is the overall lack of a plot.

It pairs McCloskey’s crisp pen-and-ink drawings with simple prose to evoke the bucolic feeling of life on the coast of Maine. Although not as universally known as McCloskey’s Make Way for Ducklings or Blueberries for Sal, this entry can bring one to a calm place and let them breathe for a while.