100 Books Like The Mirror

As a person with strong ties to biology, I love that in this book, vampires and werewolves are no more magical or supernatural (and therefore also no more immortal) than any human; they just came from different branches down the evolutionary tree.

What I really liked were the dialogues–the sarcasm, verbal power games, and dry humor. And the character development, where an isolated person learns that opening up and accepting friendship and the feeling of belonging requires courage because it also makes one more vulnerable.

I’ve always wanted to write a book about an underwater town. Sea Change is as close as I’ve come, though there are no actual residential structures beneath the waves in my story.

But in The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea there is a whole, vibrant, beautifully-detailed underwater city, where various kinds of beings carry on with the business of their lives—working; eating; socializing with friends; making love, and making war. Nobody has gills or underwater breathing gear, but you come to this place after jumping into the sea, and schools of brightly colored fish swim through the air, while whales float like clouds in the sky above.  

Aside from people, spirits, and sea animals of various kinds, there are the magnificent sea dragons. They have scales of a vibrant, dazzling blue and move freely through the (underwater) air—buoyant, joyous. They have whiskered mouths, and eyes so large and dark… show more.

I was a huge fan of the original The Parent Trap movie as a kid, and this adult book version is absolutely addicting.

With a coastal Florida setting, it was perfect to read on a beach vacation. The main characters are loads of fun, and the two book boyfriends are charming in very different ways. 

I loved how the author took multiple “minor characters” in the Bible and connected their stories, causing me to take a closer look at these lesser-known individuals.

In this book, Angela Hunt identifies the Lydia mentioned in Acts 16 as the same person called Euodia in Philippians 4 and presents a compelling argument as to why in her Author’s Note. The slave girl Paul liberates from a demon in Acts 16 is also given a prominent role as Euodia attempts to rescue her from a cruel master who seeks to restore her “gift.”

I enjoyed the quick pace and ever-changing setting as Euodia travels throughout Macedonia. Rich cultural details coupled with a marriage of convenience that blossoms into more made this a satisfying adventure!

I was surprised I loved Just for the Summer so much. I’d never read Abby Jimenez before, but I was delightfully surprised. How could you not love that both Justin and Emma have a love curse hanging over their heads? The person they date goes on to find their one true love. So why not date each other and break the curse? The premise is not only original, but the situations she brings to this are hilarious. Like the Toilet King billboard. I now need a Toilet King T-shirt.

The characters are charming, loving people—people I wanted to see have their happily ever after. The secondary characters are just as lovable and realistic. I loved this book, though, because of the realism of their predicaments. They lived through problems that weren’t sugar-coated.

This Christian fiction novel holds a special place in my heart because I didn’t really know who Melody Carlson wrote this book for.

Christy Miller was written for teens and young adults. Where Yesterday Lives was written for Young Adults. But what Christian family drama has characters that are 16, 37, and 72?! Okay, maybe grandma is 71, but the point of the matter is that it’s told from multiple POVs across three different generations.

As of writing this, I’m 28 and I loved it. Why? It’s about a family. A true-to-life family, with true-to-life problems. Girls get taken out of school and pulled away from their boyfriends in real life. Sometimes moms and dads get divorced. And sadly, sometimes grandma or grandpa may start forgetting things they should remember.

This story made me laugh, cry, and feel so grateful that even in our mess, God still loves us. If… show more.

I love a good legal thriller, especially one that focuses on character. The intern of the title is young and hungry, eager and ambitious. But she’s got a secret, one that would cause her to lose her job if the judge she’s working for found out about it. Not that the judge doesn’t have her own secrets.

Told from both the intern and judge’s points of view, I was on the edge of my seat, waiting to see who would discover the other’s secrets first.

I find it hard to resist stories about female gangsters. Heather Webb scoured the pages of history to tell the story of a gang of kick-ass bad girls called the Forty Elephants led by the infamous ‘Diamond Annie’ in London in 1925. 

What I loved about the story was that while Annie was fighting for respect in London’s male-dominated crime world, the first female detective at Scotland Yard assigned to bring them to justice was fighting for respect in the law enforcement profession.

Intelligent, unapologetic, and fearless women are my kind of girls, and Annie and her gang demonstrate true sisterhood as they rise to become Britain’s first female crime syndicate.

I fell off the Ewan McEwan wagon for several years. 

Why? His sentences are gorgeous and impeccable but sometimes his plots seemed glitchy to me or his research was too in your face. But, Lessons! It’s one of those books that has so much of the world in it, while at the same time the characters are deep, vivid, flawed (yes, indeed), and the scenes intense and unforgettable. 

The clarity of his thinking and his understanding of politics, the eras we’ve lived through, the confusion of emotions we suffer from, and the way people fail each other as well as show up—I clutch this book to my heart.  

I loved Maame not only because it is the perfect concoction of tender and funny, but because the Google searches formatted within the story were like the perfect cherry on top of the perfectly assembled turtle sundae.

I found myself looking forward to every time the main character Google-searched her next new-adulthood obstacle—like friendship, grief, dating, and caregiving.

It was visually stimulating, and hilarious, and a fun edition to the story.