Mood

Bittersweet

Happy and sad holding hands — books that make you smile through the lump in your throat and mean both at once.

70
books
7
stacks

Books and stacks that feel Bittersweet

8 books

Romance for people who don't read romance

Romance with a second engine — a structure, a mystery, a voice — pulling you through the pages. For readers who bounce off the genre, not off love.

Cover of The Time Traveler's Wife Cover of One Day (Movie Tie-in Edition) Cover of Normal People Cover of The Rosie Project Cover of Possession
Drayfus 0 saves
12 books

Stories that bend time

Past meeting future, second chances at lost moments, lives lived out of order. Books that play with time itself — and use the trick to say something true.

Cover of Recursion Cover of First Fifteen Lives of Harry August Cover of Doomsday Book Cover of Kindred Cover of The Time Traveler's Wife
Drayfus 0 saves
7 books

Novels that break you on a long flight

Thirty thousand feet up, nowhere to hide, and a book that decides this is the moment to take you apart. Stories with enough emotional weight to undo a stranger in seat 24B.

Cover of A Fine Balance Cover of Atonement Cover of Never Let Me Go Cover of Little Life (NHB Modern Plays) : (stage Version) Cover of When Breath Becomes Air
Drayfus 0 saves
8 books

Great books that became great films

The rare cases where the adaptation didn't betray the page — it stood beside it. Read first, watch after, and argue about which one got it right.

Cover of The Shining Cover of The Silence of the Lambs Cover of The Princess Bride Cover of No Country for Old Men Cover of The Remains of the Day
Drayfus 0 saves
7 books

Alien comes to earth and pretends to be human?

Stranger in a strange land

Cover of Stranger in a Strange Land Cover of Project Hail Mary Cover of Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet Cover of The Galaxy, and the Ground Within Cover of Humans
Drayfus 0 saves
10 books

Narrators you can't trust for a second

Someone's telling you this story, and someone's also lying to you — possibly the same person. Books where the voice in your ear has its own agenda.

Cover of The Girl on the Train Cover of Gone Girl Cover of The Sense of an Ending Cover of You Cover of Lolita
Drayfus 0 saves
8 books

Crimes that aren't the usual kind

No standard-issue detective, no body in the library — these break the mold the genre is buried in. Crime stories that come at the dark stuff sideways.

Cover of The Devotion of Suspect X Cover of In Cold Blood Cover of My Sister, the Serial Killer Cover of A Clockwork Orange Cover of American Psycho
Drayfus 0 saves