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If you loved
Books like A complicated kindness
A darkly hilarious and deeply tender portrait of a teenage girl using sarcasm as a shield against the crushing weight of her fractured family and insular religious town. These 12 books are the closest matches in mood, pace and themes, with what each one shares with A complicated kindness.
- claustrophobic
- bittersweet
- lonely
- darkly comic
- 01
All My Puny Sorrows
Miriam Toews
A devastating and intimate exploration of sisterhood, mental illness, and the agonizing limits of love.
- 02
The flying Troutmans
Miriam Toews · 2008
An intimate and emotionally heavy exploration of familial duty and the sudden, urgent pull of a family in crisis.
- 03
Lullabies for Little Criminals
Heather O'neill · 2006
A heartbreakingly poetic descent into a gritty underworld, guided by the fiercely resilient voice of a child growing up too fast.
- 04
My Name is Lucy Barton
Elizabeth Strout
A quiet, deeply intimate exploration of the unbridgeable gaps and enduring tethers between a mother and daughter.
- 05
Do not say we have nothing
Madeleine Thien
A sweeping, melancholic excavation of a fractured family's past, where art and inherited trauma echo across generations.
- 06
What girls are made of
Elana K. Arnold
A raw, blood-and-bone exploration of teenage girlhood that tears down the myth of unconditional love.
- 07
Disobedience
Naomi Alderman
A sharp, intimate exploration of the collision between queer desire, personal freedom, and the suffocating embrace of a devout community.
- 08
The Shunning
Beverly Lewis
A quiet, heartfelt exploration of faith, family secrets, and the painful unraveling of a sheltered life.
- 09
Winter's Bone
Daniel Woodrell · 2006
A chilling, lyrical descent into a harsh rural underworld, driven by a teenage girl's fierce will to survive.
- 10
Her mother's hope
Francine Rivers
A sweeping, emotionally resonant journey through the sacrifices, misunderstandings, and enduring love that bind generations of women.
- 11
Unless
Carol Shields · 2002
An astute, piercingly sad, yet tender exploration of a mother's comfortable life shattered by her daughter's sudden retreat into silence.
- 12
The Amish nanny
Patricia Davids
A gentle, heartwarming journey of two quiet souls building a family out of unexpected circumstances.
