100 books like My Sister's Keeper

This novel follows Ayoola, a beautiful murderer, and her put-upon sister, Korede, who helps clean up her crime scenes. Korede is loyal to a fault, willing to help cover up her sister’s crimes, but what makes the relationship feel authentic and lived-in is the way petty resentment boils around minor slights and the perpetual issue of the sisters’ disparate beauty. 7

The book is a slender, efficient, and funny look at the psychology of sisterhood that happens to take the form of a thriller.

As everyone knows at this point, anything Michael Lewis writes will be enormous fun to read, while being about something really important—something he’ll make you care about even if you didn’t when you started the book.

In this case, the subject is people who bet on the direction of mortgages (and thus, house prices), and how those who bet on a huge plunge were right. This book has an amazing cast of characters, all richly drawn: some are smart, some are not so smart; some are excellent schmoozers, some can barely tolerate human interaction; some care a lot about money, some care more about being right, especially if everyone else is wrong.

Each book I've recommended cries out to be made into a movie. This one actually was.

This book is the one I’ve recommended the most to friends, family, and clients. In fact, I had a sales team I was coaching read it as an exercise, and it completely transformed their way of working!

I live for distinctions, and Dweck’s distinction between growth mindset and fixed mindset is so simple, so obvious, and yet so profound it transformed the way I endeavor to take risks, show up in life, be in relationships, and parent my children. I thought I understood what these mindsets were just by the names of them, but the subtleties and the nuance blew me away. The implications are deep! Dweck makes the invisible visible about why we thrive and why we suffer in certain aspects of our lives, clearly mapping our suffering and freedom to either being focused on inherent worth or process.

I love that she uses multiple categories (sports, business, relationships,… show more.

This is a great book for those interested in promoting change. I like how the book combines stories, examples, and engaging information to present practical strategies that have been used to accomplish change when it seemed difficult to achieve. 

Reading this book made me realize small actions can have significant long-term effects when taken consistently and repeatedly. It opened my eyes to the fact that sometimes complex problems require simple solutions. 

I love historical fiction, especially when authors throw in a touch of crime. So, that’s what first drew me to this book.

What kept me reading and what made me rank this novel so highly is the gradual unlayering of the main character as the story progresses. Sure, Kya is a victim and a survivor, but she is so much more, and she is capable of more than I could have anticipated. As in some of my other favorite novels, it’s that loyalty to human nature, the understanding that circumstances can make good choices wrong and poor choices right, that pulled me in.

If I had known the ending when I started the book, I might not have believed it possible, but Delia Owens made it work.

I love Kazuo Ishiguro’s work and this is my favourite book of his.

Never Let Me Go is the fictional story of a childhood that initially seems acceptable, despite the early indications that something strange is going on. As the story proceeds, however, it becomes clear that this is a horrific world, one in which children are being grown for their organs.

But the power of the story for me is not the revelation itself but the way in which it is revealed, layer by layer, as the characters become older and more knowing. That experience of becoming aware that all is not right with your world, and then trying to come to terms with that, is something I can resonate with.

I first read this book as a teenager but didn’t appreciate Louisa May Alcott’s gift for storytelling until years later, when I reread it. 

This time, I didn’t want the story to end because I’d fallen in love with the four March sisters Jo, Beth, Meg, and Amy. I laughed. I cried. Though fictional characters and separated by hundreds of years, the March sisters felt real to me, and I was a little bereft at the end of their story. 

Along with universal themes of love, betrayal, anger, lust, revenge, and death, Little Women deftly portrays each sister’s struggles and aspirations and explores the conflicts each sister has between personal ambition, familial responsibility, and wanting to embrace the unknown.  

For one brief moment, I wished I had more than one sister…and then I came to my senses.

This is an uplifting family drama about technology that could – and possibly is (if we think about AI and smartphones) – already happening.

It’s a social comment about a brain surgery that improves the functions of thinking. The implant proves so popular, it begins to bias society to favour those who have the implant and sideline those who don’t. The story is told from the viewpoints of a lesbian couple and their two children, demonstrating how easily divided we can be, enough to threaten the breakdown of society. 

It’s a wonderful story with very real characters, commenting on mega technology and exploitative commercial enterprise yet is also at its heart, about the importance of the family unit.

I adore Jennifer Weiner’s witty, conversational writing style and relatable, three-dimensional characters. With In Her Shoes, Weiner captures the essence of two completely different sisters who are barely on speaking terms. She does it deftly, her characters nuanced and believable, exposing their many flaws and frailties. 

I love this book because it helped me see my own sister in a new light. In the book, the sisters’ actions are so realistic (verbal brutality, sniping, home truths) that I felt guilty about how I’d treated my sister over the years. And yes, I rang her several times whilst reading it, and I bought her a copy the following week. Highly recommended.

First, I found the writing in this book phenomenal, especially the dialogue. I feel like each bit of dialogue revealed something new about the character or pulled me deeper into the plot. It’s witty and dark. Honest would be a good word to describe it.

The characters felt so human to me–simultaneously loveable and deplorable, true to human nature. But it was the twist midway through the novel that really drew me in—the shift in reality. It changed the book for me, molding it into something unique, something I’d never read before.

It’s a novel I come back to time and time again, especially when I need inspiration.