The best feel good books about freeing yourself from your past

Malibu Rising was the first book I read by Taylor Jenkins Reid. As soon as I finished, I read three more of her novels. All of them made me feel great. Hers are stories you can lose yourself in and come out feeling refreshed and optimistic.

Malibu Rising centers around the adult Riva siblings, children whose parents stopped parenting long before the kids were equipped to care for themselves. Particularly impacted is Nina, the oldest, who has spent her life making choices that prioritize the well-being of everyone except herself. 

This is a book about dealing with old wounds, the kind that hide under the surface of successful lives. It’s a story that takes us on multiple journeys of self-discovery and healing. For me, a book doesn’t get more “feel good” than that.

If you’ve ever been trapped in a loop of regret, certain you’ve done (and are doing) everything “wrong,” The Midnight Library might be a lovely read for you.

It begins on a somber note, with a woman crumbling under the weight of regret. The darkness in the first line—in the first twenty-five or so pages, actually—nearly derailed me. But if you can manage past those, you’ll find that this is a story about facing the darkness and finding a way through.

One of the many beauties of this novel is that it so deftly illustrates our propensity for selective memory—specifically, to remember and focus only on what we perceive as our faults.

Matt Haig’s writing is witty and smooth. For me, the hope and possibility that spring from this imaginative tale are pure magic.

The Vanishing Half masterfully illustrates that how, when, and to-what-degree we let go of the past are sacred choices that each individual must make for themself.

Brit Bennett’s beautiful writing brings her characters and their worlds to such vivid life that you feel like you’re there. I grew up in a small Texas town, close to the Louisiana border, so the setting spoke dearly to me. But the story is told through a lens that is very different from my own experience. 

One of the elements that can make a story feel amazing is its ability to help us expand—to see things differently and understand how perspectives different from our own are formed. The best books help us grow, and The Vanishing Half did that for me.

Bryan Washington’s story and characters are so riveting that I fell into the first page and didn’t want to come back out until I knew what had happened.

This is another book that for me was a huge expansion, providing windows into worlds I had not experienced—an opening to so many new perspectives.

This novel brims with complexity and seemingly impossible emotional knots, yet these characters find ways through. Washington beautifully illustrates that coming to peace with your past doesn’t mean you have to understand everything; that forward momentum can exist along with gaps and uncertainty; and that the how and when of understanding—of coming to terms with what happened and what we witnessed—is a unique journey for each of us.

One of the things that makes me feel great when I’m reading is when I find myself laughing out loud. Christie Tate’s witty memoir, Group, offers that in spades.

Yet this is a story of recovery and of escaping the invisible poisons that plague so many of us who come from what appears on the surface to be a “very nice” life. Mostly, it’s a story about kindness—about a group of people able and willing to acknowledge another person’s very real pain even if its source is not immediately apparent.  
If you’ve ever faced those slipperiest of accusations—What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I just be happy?—this might be a profound book for you.