If you liked
Books like Little Fires Everywhere
by Celeste Ng
Little Fires Everywhere is Celeste Ng's bestseller about a nomadic artist and her daughter arriving in 1990s Shaker Heights and the custody case that polarizes the planned community. The 2020 Hulu series with Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington brought it a second readership. If you finished it and needed another book in the same register, these are our picks.
The shortlist
What to read next
The Vanishing Halfby Brit Bennett
“The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett 2020 review. Identical twin sisters from a small light-skinned Black Louisiana town diverge in the 1960s: one returns with her daughter, the other passes for white in California. Bennett's second novel and one of the canonical 2020s American literary novels.”
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugoby Taylor Jenkins Reid
“The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid 2017 review. An aging Hollywood icon agrees to tell the true story of her career and her seven marriages, but only to an unknown journalist. The TikTok-era literary fiction novel that defined contemporary Hollywood-memoir-fiction.”
Normal Peopleby Sally Rooney
“Normal People by Sally Rooney 2018 review. Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small Sligo town, attend Trinity College Dublin together, and orbit each other across four years of intermittent intimacy. The literary-fiction novel that defined the Rooney moment.”
Tom Lakeby Ann Patchett
“Tom Lake by Ann Patchett 2023 review. A mother tells her three adult daughters about her brief romance with a future movie star while picking cherries during the COVID lockdown. Patchett's late-career literary commercial novel and the most-discussed Meryl Streep audiobook narration of 2023.”
Where the Crawdads Singby Delia Owens
“Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens 2018 review. Kya Clark raises herself in the North Carolina marshlands and becomes the suspect in a murder. The best-selling adult novel of 2019 and the 2022 Reese Witherspoon-produced film.”
Deacon King Kongby James McBride
“Deacon King Kong by James McBride 2020 review. An elderly deacon at a Brooklyn housing project shoots a local drug dealer in the face in September 1969. Oprah Book Club 2020 and the canonical contemporary American comic-literary novel.”
FAQ
Common questions about Little Fires Everywhere read-alikes
- What is the closest match for Little Fires Everywhere?
- The Vanishing Half. Both contemporary American novels about specific suburban-and-small-town communities holding particular ideas about who belongs together and what the cost of that is. Different specific subjects but the same patient sociological texture.
- I want more Celeste Ng.
- Everything I Never Told You (2014, the earlier novel) and Our Missing Hearts (2022, the dystopian follow-up) are the obvious next reads. Everything I Never Told You is the structural predecessor and the work most readers prefer.
- I want another novel about a community navigating a moral case.
- Deacon King Kong (James McBride's 1969 Brooklyn projects ensemble) and Beartown (Fredrik Backman's Swedish junior-hockey town) are the closest structural matches in our catalog. Both run the moral case across an entire community.
- I want a literary novel I can finish in a weekend.
- Normal People, Tom Lake, and Where the Crawdads Sing are the closest matches in our catalog at the equivalent reading pace.
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