After
Much Ado About Nothing
William Shakespeare
- pace
- prose
- structure
- bleakness
5 of 6 directions open — nothing to recover from
More like it
Same playful register, still romantic comedy
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Dating-ish
Penny Reid2017
A journalist and a researcher attempt to remain friends while navigating an app-based dating experiment. It is a slow-burn romance.
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Love, Theoretically
Ali Hazelwood2023
A physicist who works as a professional fake date encounters the man who ruined her career prospects.
pace0·prose-1·bleak0
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The Worst Best Man
Mia Sosa2020
A wedding planner must work with the man who encouraged her groom to leave her at the altar. They compete for a major hotel contract.
pace0·prose-1·bleak0
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You Deserve Each Other
Sarah Hogle2020
An engaged couple who hate each other engage in emotional warfare to force the other to cancel the wedding. It is a comedy of mutual sabotage.
pace0·prose-1·bleak0
1 more ↓ ↑
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Leather & Lark
Brynne Weaver2024
A contract killer and a singer enter a marriage of convenience to solve their respective problems. They must work together despite hating each other.
pace0·prose-1·bleak0
Denser prose
- pace-1prose+1bleak+1
Middlemarch
George Eliot1800
Interconnected families in a 1830s English town navigate marriage, debt, and political change. The focus is on social realism and internal life.
playful → elegiac
pace-1·prose+1·bleak+1
- pace0prose+1bleak+2
Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov
A middle-aged professor documents his obsession with his twelve-year-old stepdaughter. He uses complex prose to justify his crimes.
playful → tense
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2 more ↓ ↑
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Madame Bovary
Gustave Flaubert1856
A doctor's wife in provincial France seeks escape from her mundane life through expensive tastes and extramarital affairs.
playful → tense
pace0·prose+1·bleak+2
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Paradise Logic
Sophie Kemp2025
A young woman follows advice from a magazine to become a perfect partner. Her quest involves surreal jobs and messages from the beyond.
playful → epic
pace0·prose+1·bleak+2
Faster
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Quantum Radio
A.G. Riddle2023
A scientist at CERN discovers a signal from a parallel universe. He must flee a conspiracy while exploring the implications of the data.
playful → propulsive
pace+1·prose-2·bleak+1
- pace+1prose-2bleak+1
Paper Princess
Erin Watt2016
An orphaned girl is taken in by a wealthy family with five hostile sons. She must navigate high school bullying and mansion politics.
playful → propulsive, still enemies to lovers
pace+1·prose-2·bleak+1
3 more ↓ ↑
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Savage Prince
Meghan March2018
A powerful man in the New Orleans underworld becomes obsessed with a woman and pursues her despite the danger of his lifestyle.
playful → propulsive, still enemies to lovers
pace+1·prose-2·bleak+1
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Dial A for Aunties
Jesse Q. Sutanto2021
A photographer accidentally kills her blind date. Her mother and aunties help hide the body during a massive luxury wedding.
Same playful register, still romantic comedy
pace+1·prose-2·bleak0
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The Professional: Part 2 (The Game Maker, #1b)
Kresley Cole
A Russian enforcer continues his pursuit of a graduate student across Europe. The focus is on their sexual power dynamic and his mafia duties.
playful → tense
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Slower
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Dhalgren
Samuel R. Delany1975
An amnesiac wanderer enters Bellona, a city cut off from the world where time and geography shift. He joins a gang and writes poetry.
playful → dreamlike
pace-2·prose+1·bleak+2
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Gödel, Escher, Bach
Douglas R. Hofstadter1979
An exploration of how cognition emerges from hidden neurological patterns. It uses math, art, and music to explain self-referential systems.
Same playful register
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3 more ↓ ↑
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Ulysses
James Joyce1914
Three characters wander through Dublin on a single day in 1904. Each chapter uses a different literary style to mimic thoughts and sensations.
Same playful register
pace-2·prose+1·bleak+1
- pace-2prose+1bleak+3
Absalom, Absalom!
William Faulkner1936
The rise and fall of Thomas Sutpen is recounted through multiple, conflicting memories. The prose uses extremely long, complex sentences.
playful → elegiac
pace-2·prose+1·bleak+3
- pace-2prose+1bleak+1
Either/Or
Søren Kierkegaard1992
A collection of papers presents two life philosophies: the aesthetic pursuit of pleasure and the ethical commitment to duty.
playful → meditative
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Heavier
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Wuthering Heights
Emily Brontë1846
Two families on the Yorkshire moors deal with the arrival and subsequent revenge of an adopted orphan. The story is told through nested narrators.
playful → bleak
pace-1·prose0·bleak+3
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A Farewell to Arms
Ernest Hemingway1929
An American ambulance driver and a British nurse conduct a love affair during the Italian campaign of World War I.
playful → elegiac
pace-1·prose-1·bleak+3
3 more ↓ ↑
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Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Thomas Hardy
A country girl is sent to claim kinship with wealthy relatives. Her life is derailed by a sequence of social betrayals and rigid moral standards.
playful → elegiac
pace-1·prose0·bleak+3
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Brokeback Mountain
Annie Proulx1997
Two ranch hands begin a secret sexual and emotional relationship in 1963 Wyoming. The story follows their occasional meetings over twenty years.
playful → elegiac
pace-1·prose0·bleak+3
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Bright Side
Kim Holden2014
An optimistic college student moves to Minnesota for a fresh start while hiding a terminal diagnosis from her best friend.
playful → tender
pace0·prose-1·bleak+3
