Fans pick 100 books like Let's Meet on Platform 8

A brilliant thought-provoking and thoroughly entertaining book, Jemima is a young lady who is in need of a number of life changes. 

She’s overweight, treated like a skivvy by her flatmates, and belittled by her colleagues.

She does embark on big changes in her life, and when she achieves the goals that she sets for herself, realises that it doesn’t matter how much you change the outside of your body, it’s what’s on the inside that counts.

A definite life lesson and we should also just be kind, because we never know what is happening in someone’s life. 

This book taught me that ultimately it’s up to you to make yourself happy and that we all have a right to be happy. 

I always say that this was the book that changed my life. It’s about a lady who reads a feature in a magazine about clutter clearing and starts doing it in her house, then realises that it’s her life that needs a huge overhaul, not just her house.

I wrote to the author after reading it and we’ve become firm friends with her being a huge inspiration to me in both my publishing and author journey. I would like to think that my books have similar messages, through a romantic comedy setting and plot. 

Belinda Jones is truly skilled at writing books that pick you up on a grey, damp, miserable day and transports you to the destination of another country where you truly get to experience their culture too. 

This was one of the first books that made me realise how you truly can travel the world through books. I always felt like I’d had a great holiday after reading these books and would recommend them to anyone who can’t physically get away. 

Books really are portable magic. This also made me want to write in a similar way where my readers want to go to my locations. 

Melody Bittersweet is a ghostbusting medium and she is the funniest, most brilliant character I have ever read.

I totally adore her and want her to be my best mate. The author made me laugh so many times when reading this book, and then at times, quickly flipped my laughter to tears when talking about the sensitivity of losing loved ones.

Also, the relationship between the main character and her love interest was hot, hot, hot! This book is everything a book should be, absolutely hilarious, totally entertaining, and spookily sexy and once you start it you won’t be able to put it down!

I read the whole book with a big fat grin on my face. Just brilliant! 

Lady Chatterley is a young woman who marries into the upper class and is just as bored as Emma Bovary. But unlike Madame Bovary, she takes up with a guy who values her equally, and a lot of great sex commences, explicit enough to get the book banned as obscene until 1960 in Britain.

The twist here is that Lady Chatterley’s lover is the gamekeeper on their estate, who teaches Lady Chatterley how to value nature and love. The emphasis is not on romance so much as fabulous sex, which Lawrence pretty much equates with love.

I like that Lady Chatterley is a modern, independent woman who finds what she needs and breaks with her former life, as Emma Bovary could not. I must say I envy Lady Chatterley, as I never found my own devoted gamekeeper.

I found Gary and Mona Shriver’s true story a captivating read. They share their personal journeys of weathering and surviving Gary’s extramarital affair. Couples suffering from the impact of infidelity often feel isolated and alone. It helps to read a realistic yet successful story about a marriage similarly impacted by the trauma of infidelity. They are Christians and so this book is especially helpful for believers. I often recommend this book to both partners. I have found that faithful spouses really appreciate the book and hope their partners will grow to better understand their pain as a result of reading it.

Adultery takes a look at romantic relationships without judgment when a wife gets bored with the monotony of her life and decides to explore things outside of her marriage in search of the affection she was missing from her husband.

This novel taught me the importance of communication and understanding. Although the main character committed adultery to realize what was missing in her life, she came out on the other side with valuable lessons.

For instance, having it all doesn’t mean you will be happy, but you can create happiness with what you have. The husband demonstrates true love to his wife when he decides to forgive her indiscretions and give her another chance. Check out this novel to witness true love and compassion despite one’s poor choices.

Karen Kingsbury was the second author who made me fall in love with Christian fiction. I read the redemption series all at once and fell in love with how this author drew me into each book and into the lives of the characters. Ashley quickly became my favorite of the Baxter children, and (only God) would she and I experience some of the same events in life at the same time. I was able to grieve and heal and feel the emotions that I needed to release from my own life and the pain I was experiencing through the pages of the books. I still, to this day, read anything that Karen Kingsbury writes because her writing feels so divinely inspired.

The title story of this collection is a miracle of human relations, ecstatic prose cut to perfection, and the multivalent understandings that arise when we give ourselves freely, openly, and yes brokenly to the will to love. There is nothing so sweet as the kind of development and shaping of humanity found in  Davis’ short stories. An author whose work has appeared in Best American Short Stories and won a Pushcart Prize, Davis is an author who has not received the kind of national following she deserves.

This is the heartbreaker, the one you need tissues for. Effi Briest was written by Theodor Fontane in 1894/5 and is a German classic. It’s also really good. When we first meet Effi she is a young, naïve girl about to be married off in the way of wealthy families to a suitable husband. The Baron she is given to might be suitable but he is also old and dull and Effi makes the fatal mistake of letting her head be turned by a dangerous man. Fontane’s writing is so spare and so knowing that you end up as angry with the hand poor Effie has been dealt and the hypocritical world she lives in as you are broken-hearted for her. Don’t miss this one, it really will stay with you.