Fans pick 68 books like Bitten

Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre follows the format of a romance novel: a governess falls in love with her employer, they overcome impediments, and they live happily ever after. Add a madwoman in the attic, Thornfield Hall in flames, and Mr. Rochester’s voice calling to Jane across the winds, and you have an unforgettable romance novel.

I admire Jane immensely. Her journey from being a suffering student at Lowood School to an independent woman is as relevant as ever. Through every experience, she asserts her autonomy but never wavers in her moral compass.

In Brontë’s world, love involves every fiber of one’s being, not just emotions or desire. Mr. Rochester is a complex, conflicted man who proves himself worthy of Jane’s love. For me, they have set the standard of the romantic heroine and hero. 

Three worlds in one book! There’s the not-so-important world of the Ancelstierre, roughly Edwardian or early-20th-Century-ish, and there’s the Old Kingdom, basically medieval, where Charter Magic wars with Free Magic (and how well Nix thinks through the workings of his forms of magic).

But the third world is the one that takes the cake! An underworld of the dead, with its different levels, gates, and sills. Sabriel discovers her own special inheritance and powers—OK, that’s standard fantasy fare, except that Sabriel’s powers are those of an abhorsen. It’s the Abhorsen’s role to make sure that the dead stay dead, and journey on down into the deeper levels of death. Of course, the dead who keep coming back are the ones who drive the narrative!

One of a series that can be read in any order. I found this spine-chilling as it is so easy to put yourself in the place of the characters. I could feel, and live, their fear and desperation. This is not a ghost story. I found it easy to imagine a group of ne’re do wells indulging in these rituals and bringing terror to themselves and others. Not a book I could put down.

More magic and another enchanting new world to explore. Again I found I could dissolve into the story and be there with the characters. You are taken on adventures through this strange land where magic creeps from every stone. Start with a young girl who must face trials, partake in battles and defeat those who would enslave her people. She inherits the Kystrel a magical pendant with which she can both give and take. The first of three books which I could not put down.

This was the first ‘grown-up’ book I ever read. I was seven. I can still remember the green Penguin Books cover and the smell of old paper that accompanied it. I immediately became captivated by Sherlock Holmes and this mystery on the lonely moors. I still get goosebumps when I read that line, “Mr Holmes, they were the footprints of an enormous hound!” Yikes! 

I love Holmes’s brilliance and his friendship with ‘my friend and colleague, Dr Watson.’ I love his wry sense of humor, his untidy habits, and his Victorian manners. I’m a grandmother now, and I still love Holmes and this book as much as I did when I was a child. 

If you like small town settings with big old houses and hints of a ghost, intrigue, and simmering romance, you’ll love Storms of the Heart.

The story’s female main character, Emerson Lane, finds herself right in the middle of a raging thunderstorm at night on her way to her Uncle Wayne’s house in Twin Creeks, where she lived when her parents died in a car crash. She’s on a mission to reconnect with her uncle after leaving abruptly years ago to live in New York City. Trouble is waiting for her in the name of Sheriff Max Lomax, who she left behind.

Max has his own problems, but he is secretly but begrudgingly thrilled to see her, but questions whether this time she’ll stay. I liked the interesting characters in this story and the pleasant descriptions of Emerson’s hometown. The writing was so nice it felt like I could just… show more.

Sophie Bellamy has lived an exciting life as an international lawyer working to protect human rights. But it came at the cost of having little time to be with her children as they grew up.

Her childhood memories of times spent at Willow Lake in Avalon bring her back to the small town where she hopes to make up for the time she spent abroad. Sophie was determined to repair her relationships with her children, but a twist in the story brings a happy surprise when she meets veterinarian Noah Shephard.

Their immediate attraction is at first unwanted, but prompts her life to take another turn. I like to piece together stories so I loved the unexpected twists.

The romance in this is story is lovely, and is mixed with intrigue and hope in the darkest hours. I like stories I can snuggle up with, and this story gave that… show more.

While this nonfiction book is strictly speaking not a romance, there is so much love flowing in this story that it shines a light like any romance novel I’ve read.

The author shares her struggles with starting a family. She lays out onto the page the pain and suffering of trying to have a baby, as well as the hope and joy along the way. It’s a very touching, personal account. Things work out differently than expected when she delivers her son, Rory, and learns he has a disability.

Her life turns out differently than expected and she must adjust, but through it all she discovers the joy that is always available to those who choose to embrace it.

Whenever I’m asked to recommend a werewolf novel, I kick myself again for waiting so long to get around to McCammon’s take on the lycanthrope. This book isn’t just my favorite werewolf novel; it’s one of my favorite novels. Holy cow! It’s got everything! If you could fuse James Bond and Indiana Jones together, then turn that into a werewolf with roots in the Russian royalty, you’d have our hero, Michael Gallatin.

McCammon has always kind of lived in the shadow of Stephen King, but honestly, he’s ten times the writer, and his endings don’t suck. This book pulled me in, and I could not wait to return to it when silly things like the day job pulled me away. I really liked that McCammon gave us Gallitan’s back story and made the pack that turned him into a sympathetic group.

There were some loose ends, but those were resolved… show more.

As research, I read a lot of books about werewolves. Some were bad, some were decent, and some were too academic. This one was, in the words of Goldilocks, just right. I loved that it was written in a language anyone could understand and that it wasn’t focused on just one geographic location or culture.

Douglas presents everything from Greek mythology to Norse, Japanese, American Indian, and others. He keeps his personal commentary to a minimum and presents the reader with much information. I see this book as a primer for understanding just about everything about the shapeshifter in legend and literature. If the fiction author has done his/her job well, the shapeshifter will have roots in something Douglas has told us about.