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After

The Simple Wild

K.A. Tucker2018

6 of 6 directions open

More like it

Same warm register, still contemporary romance

1 more ↓

  • Seven Days in June

    Tia Williams2021

    Two successful Black authors who shared a week-long romance as teenagers reconnect at a literary event in Brooklyn twenty years later.

    pace0·prose0·bleak0

Denser prose

3 more ↓

  • Madame Bovary

    Gustave Flaubert1856

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

    warm → tense

    pace0·prose+2·bleak+1

  • 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.

    warm → epic

    pace0·prose+2·bleak+1

  • 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.

    warm → dark

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak0

To recover

3 more ↓

  • Make Me Yours

    Melanie Harlow2023

    A woman moves back to her small hometown and falls for her long-time friend, a single father and local sheriff.

    warm → tender, still contemporary romance

    pace0·prose-1·bleak-1

  • The Will

    Kristen Ashley

    A woman inherits a house and a family legacy in a small town. She enters a relationship with the man appointed as her protector in the will.

    Same warm register, still contemporary romance

    pace-1·prose-1·bleak-1

  • When You're Ready

    J.L. Berg

    A widow moving back to her hometown with her daughter encounters a man from her past. They navigate grief while rekindling a relationship.

    warm → tender, still contemporary romance

    pace-1·prose-1·bleak-1

Faster

3 more ↓

  • 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.

    warm → propulsive, still contemporary romance

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak0

  • 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.

    warm → propulsive

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak0

  • 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.

    warm → propulsive, still enemies to lovers

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak0

Slower

3 more ↓

  • 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.

    warm → playful

    pace-2·prose+2·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.

    warm → playful

    pace-2·prose+2·bleak0

  • Absalom, Absalom!

    William Faulkner1936

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

    warm → elegiac

    pace-2·prose+2·bleak+2

Heavier

3 more ↓

  • 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.

    warm → bleak

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak+2

  • 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.

    warm → elegiac

    pace-1·prose0·bleak+2

  • 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.

    warm → elegiac

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak+2