Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas

Searching For Moore

Julie A. Richman

Two former high school sweethearts reconnect via social media after twenty-four years apart. They attempt to reconcile their past and present.

pace0·prose0·bleak-1

Madame Bovary

Gustave Flaubert1856

A doctor's wife in provincial France seeks escape from her mundane life through expensive tastes and extramarital affairs.

earnest → tense

pace0·prose+3·bleak0

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.

earnest → epic

pace0·prose+3·bleak0

Mad Mabel

Sally Hepworth2025

An eighty-one-year-old woman with a history of killing people tries to hide her past when a curious young girl moves into the neighborhood.

earnest → dark

pace-1·prose+2·bleak-1

Beach Read

Emily Henry2020

Two rival authors living in neighboring beach houses challenge each other to write in the other's genre over the summer.

earnest → warm, still contemporary romance

pace0·prose+1·bleak-2

The Bride Test

Helen Hoang2019

An autistic man's mother recruits a woman from Vietnam to marry him. The two navigate sensory needs and cultural barriers in California.

earnest → warm, still contemporary romance

pace0·prose+1·bleak-2

Meet Me at the Lake

Carley Fortune2023

Fern Brookbanks returns to her mother's lakeside resort and encounters the man she spent one day with ten years ago. They navigate their shared past.

earnest → tender, still contemporary romance

pace0·prose+1·bleak-2

Victory at Prescott High

C.M. Stunich

A high school girl seeks revenge against the boys who bullied her while navigating a complex relationship with all of them at once.

earnest → propulsive, still contemporary romance

pace+1·prose0·bleak-1

Burn for Me

Ilona Andrews2014

A private investigator with the ability to tell truth from lies is hired to find a fire-user. She is forced to work with a dangerous billionaire.

earnest → propulsive

pace+1·prose+1·bleak-1

Hounded

Kevin Hearne2011

A two-thousand-year-old Druid lives in modern Arizona and runs an occult bookshop. He must fight a vengeful Irish god who wants his sword.

earnest → wry

pace+1·prose+1·bleak-1

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.

earnest → playful

pace-2·prose+3·bleak-1

Absalom, Absalom!

William Faulkner1936

The rise and fall of Thomas Sutpen is recounted through multiple, conflicting memories. The prose uses extremely long, complex sentences.

earnest → elegiac

pace-2·prose+3·bleak+1

Either/Or

Søren Kierkegaard1992

A collection of papers presents two life philosophies: the aesthetic pursuit of pleasure and the ethical commitment to duty.

earnest → meditative

pace-2·prose+3·bleak-1

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.

earnest → bleak

pace-1·prose+2·bleak+1

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.

earnest → elegiac

pace-1·prose+1·bleak+1

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.

earnest → elegiac

pace-1·prose+2·bleak+1