100 books like Paula

By Isabel Allende,

Here are 100 books that Paula fans have personally recommended if you like Paula. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Book cover of Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Tori Scott

From my list on books that are raw, honest, and vulnerable.

Why am I passionate about this?

I've penned 11 novels and numerous essays, and if there's one thread that ties them all together, it's rawness. I gravitate towards reading books and watching films where writers peel back the layers of their lives, exposing past wounds and delving into what they've learned from them. As an entrepreneur with a master's degree in marketing, I’ve found that this kind of vulnerability is not only compelling but essential in any form of storytelling. Whether I’m crafting a narrative for a new startup or reflecting on my own experiences for a novel, it’s this unfiltered honesty that resonates deeply with audiences. 

Tori's book list on books that are raw, honest, and vulnerable

Tori Scott Why did Tori love this book?

This isn’t your typical feel-good, “I found myself on a hike” memoir. Strayed is brutally candid about her flaws, mistakes, and the emotional wreckage she carried along the Pacific Crest Trail. It's like she brought you on this grueling journey to confront her demons, and somehow, you end up confronting your own.

Her vulnerability is so palpable that you can practically feel the blisters forming on your feet. It’s raw, it’s real, and it makes you want to hug your inner mess a little tighter.

By Cheryl Strayed,

Why should I read it?

30 authors picked Wild as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again.

At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the…


Book cover of Educated: A Memoir

Tori Scott

From my list on books that are raw, honest, and vulnerable.

Why am I passionate about this?

I've penned 11 novels and numerous essays, and if there's one thread that ties them all together, it's rawness. I gravitate towards reading books and watching films where writers peel back the layers of their lives, exposing past wounds and delving into what they've learned from them. As an entrepreneur with a master's degree in marketing, I’ve found that this kind of vulnerability is not only compelling but essential in any form of storytelling. Whether I’m crafting a narrative for a new startup or reflecting on my own experiences for a novel, it’s this unfiltered honesty that resonates deeply with audiences. 

Tori's book list on books that are raw, honest, and vulnerable

Tori Scott Why did Tori love this book?

Westover’s memoir is a fascinating exploration of the clash between ignorance and enlightenment, with a plot twist that involves her eventually realizing she was raised in a real-life survivalist cult. Her journey from a sheltered, isolated upbringing to earning a PhD is nothing short of extraordinary.

But what really hooked me was her biting wit and the way she grapples with the contradictions of loving a family that’s as endearing as they are exasperating. It’s like watching someone untangle a lifetime’s worth of emotional knots, one revelation at a time, and somehow finding humor in the most unexpected places.

By Tara Westover,

Why should I read it?

27 authors picked Educated as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

THE MULTI-MILLION COPY BESTSELLER

Selected as a book of the year by AMAZON, THE TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES, GUARDIAN, NEW YORK TIMES, ECONOMIST, NEW STATESMAN, VOGUE, IRISH TIMES, IRISH EXAMINER and RED MAGAZINE

'One of the best books I have ever read . . . unbelievably moving' Elizabeth Day
'An extraordinary story, beautifully told' Louise O'Neill
'A memoir to stand alongside the classics . . . compelling and joyous' Sunday Times

Tara Westover grew up preparing for the end of the world. She was never put in school, never taken to the doctor. She did not even have a birth certificate…


Book cover of No Friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison

J. Alison Rosenblitt Author Of The Beauty of Living: E. E. Cummings in the Great War

From my list on that write about injustice in different ways.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a biographer, and my biography of E.E. Cummings centers on his unjust imprisonment in France during the Great War in dangerously brutal conditions—cold, underfed, and subject to the sadism of the prison guards. It is hard to imagine anything more imperative than writing about injustice. But perhaps for that very reason, it is difficult to write without the consciousness of a deep inadequacy to the task. I feel therefore an enormous gratitude towards those writers, five of whom I have chosen here, whose honesty and courage in writing about injustice serves as an inspiration and a beacon. 

J.'s book list on that write about injustice in different ways

J. Alison Rosenblitt Why did J. love this book?

Cummings and his friend William Slater Brown were imprisoned in a detention center for foreign ‘undesirables,’ and to this day we are guilty of locking people up because they are stateless or nationals of another country. Behrouz Boochani’s No Friend but the Mountains, translated by Omid Tofighian, recounts his imprisonment along with fellow refugees on Manus Island. It is a visceral and vivid account, and it speaks in an unrefusable voice. I think it is an act of true human generosity that someone who has suffered so much at our collective hands would still choose to reach out and tell his own story; simply choosing to speak is an act of great hope and belief.

By Behrouz Boochani,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked No Friend but the Mountains as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Award-winning International Bestselling Story of One Man's Six Year Detention in Australia

'A powerfully vivid account of the experiences of a refugee: desperation, brutality, suffering, and all observed with an eye that seems to see everything and told in a voice that's equal to the task.' - Phillip Pullman

In 2013, Kurdish journalist Behrouz Boochani sought asylum in Australia but was instead illegally imprisoned in the country's most notorious detention centre on Manus Island. This book is the result.

Boochani spent nearly five years typing passages of this book one text at a time from a secret mobile phone…


Book cover of An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination

Monica Starkman Author Of The End of Miracles: A Novel

From my list on miscarriage and pregnancy loss.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a psychiatrist-novelist. As a psychiatrist, I’ve seen many patients struggling with infertility and miscarriage. As a novelist, I became intrigued with the idea of having false pregnancy (pseudocyesis) be a key element in a character’s life. My primary goal was to create an engrossing good read. I also wanted to show the psychological trauma of infertility/miscarriage. Another goal was to portray psychiatric patients, the psychiatrists who treat them, and psychiatry in a realistic way. I’m so gratified by the reader reviews: “gripping”...“spell-binding”...“rich, satisfying read”...“a page-turner”...“Illuminating”.  

Monica's book list on miscarriage and pregnancy loss

Monica Starkman Why did Monica love this book?

This extraordinary book combines a lived experience with the powerful writing of an accomplished author.  Unexpectedly, in her mid-thirties, she finds a man to love and a baby is on the way. But then, the agony:  the baby dies in utero in the ninth month. She tackles head-on the deepest feelings and questions this brings. I like the way she unsparingly describes her experience and her grief, and then how she processes this and finds a way to move on. 

By Elizabeth McCracken,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"This is the happiest story in the world with the saddest ending," writes Elizabeth McCracken in her powerful, inspiring memoir. A prize-winning, successful novelist in her 30s, McCracken was happy to be an itinerant writer and self-proclaimed spinster. But suddenly she fell in love, got married, and two years ago was living in a remote part of France, working on her novel, and waiting for the birth of her first child.

This book is about what happened next. In her ninth month of pregnancy, she learned that her baby boy had died. How do you deal with and recover from…


Book cover of Wave

Melanie Bishop Author Of My So-Called Ruined Life

From my list on inhabiting unthinkable loss.

Why am I passionate about this?

When my father died in 1998, bladder cancer, I was 41 years old and privileged to be his primary caregiver for five weeks. My first major loss and it was as though a mack truck had been driven through my chest. Ten years later, my mother died, after nine years of dementia, which is like losing someone twice. That was a more ravaging grief. Twelve years later, my nephew died, a month away from his 36th birthday. And in 2022, one close friend of mine took his own life and another died of cancer at age 57. Grief is the subject I gravitate toward in the books I read and the essays I write. 

Melanie's book list on inhabiting unthinkable loss

Melanie Bishop Why did Melanie love this book?

This book is about the most horrifying loss imaginable: the author loses her parents, her husband, and her two young sons all at once, in the tsunami in the Indian Ocean, the day after Christmas, 2004. She and her family were spending the holiday in Sri Lanka when the wave hit and overtook the jeep in which they were attempting to flee. I can’t come up with a better justification for suicide than this—she’s lost everyone; she wonders why she was spared, just to suffer these losses every minute of every hour of every day. The book is both a horror story and a testament to human strength. I assure you, you won’t be able to put it down. 

By Sonali Deraniyagala,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Wave as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Winner of the PEN/Ackerley Prize 2014

The book opens and we are inside the wave: thirty feet high, moving at twenty-five mph, racing two miles inland. And from there into the depths of the author's despair: how to live now that her life has been undone?

Sonali Deraniyagala tells her story - the loss of her two boys, her husband, and her parents - without artifice or sentimentality. In the stark language of unfathomable sorrow, anger, and guilt: she struggles through the first months following the tragedy -- someone always at her side to prevent her from harming herself, her…


Book cover of The Disappearance

Monica Wesolowska Author Of Holding Silvan: A Brief Life

From my list on maternal grief and universal love.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a member of an unfortunate tribe, the tribe of grieving mothers who write. Upon learning that my newborn son was profoundly brain-damaged, I kept a diary. Writing those pages helped me make sense of his prognosis and figure out how to care for him before he died. Later, my diary helped me write my memoir Holding Silvan: A Brief Life which went on to be named a “Best Book” of the year by both Library Journal and the Boston Globe. Today, I write and work with other writers trying to craft their own stories of loss. Each experience of grief is unique. The five memoirs I’m recommending give voice to a variety of maternal losses — from stillbirth to murder. While each of these memoirs is powerful in its own way, the love in them is universal.

Monica's book list on maternal grief and universal love

Monica Wesolowska Why did Monica love this book?

Upon receiving the news that her two young daughters had been killed by a drunk driver, Genevieve Jurgensen didn’t think she could go on, let alone ever write about her loss. Fortunately for us, she eventually found a way to tell this story. Through letters to a friend, she draws us in, circling the pain of that terrible day, musing about the mysterious ways in which loss can coexist with a happy, ongoing life. With its raw and intimate feel, the book is a profoundly moving testimony to the complicated process of healing.

By Geneviève Jurgensen, Adriana Hunter (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Disappearance as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

What do you do, how do you live, when both of your daughters are killed on the same afternoon?

On April 30, 1980, Genevieve Jurgensen found herself facing that question when she lost her four- and seven-year-old daughters to a drunk driver. Here she presents her search for an answer.

Book cover of Rest in Power: The Enduring Life of Trayvon Martin

Monica Wesolowska Author Of Holding Silvan: A Brief Life

From my list on maternal grief and universal love.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a member of an unfortunate tribe, the tribe of grieving mothers who write. Upon learning that my newborn son was profoundly brain-damaged, I kept a diary. Writing those pages helped me make sense of his prognosis and figure out how to care for him before he died. Later, my diary helped me write my memoir Holding Silvan: A Brief Life which went on to be named a “Best Book” of the year by both Library Journal and the Boston Globe. Today, I write and work with other writers trying to craft their own stories of loss. Each experience of grief is unique. The five memoirs I’m recommending give voice to a variety of maternal losses — from stillbirth to murder. While each of these memoirs is powerful in its own way, the love in them is universal.

Monica's book list on maternal grief and universal love

Monica Wesolowska Why did Monica love this book?

Before their son died, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin never imagined speaking publicly or starting a movement. It was only after Trayvon, a seventeen-year-old Black boy walking home from the store, was shot and killed by a white man who claimed he felt threatened, that they realized they would have to fight for justice. No parent should know the loss of a child like this, but as the subtitle puts it, this is a “parents’ story of love, injustice, and the birth of a movement” and we have Fulton and Martin to thank for turning their grief into a call to action for us all.

By Sybrina Fulton, Tracy Martin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Rest in Power as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

On February 26th 2012 seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin was walking home with a bag of Skittles and a can of juice when a fatal encounter with a gun-wielding neighbourhood watchman ended his young life. In a matter of weeks, Trayvon Martin's name would be spoken by President Obama, honored by professional athletes, and passionately discussed all
over traditional and social media. Trayvon's parents, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, driven by their intense love for their lost son, launched a nationwide campaign for justice that would change the USA and the world.

Five years after his tragic death, Travyon Martin has become…


Book cover of I Confess: Revelations in Exile

Robin de Crespigny Author Of The People Smuggler: The true story of Ali Al Jenabi the Oskar Schindler of Asia

From my list on refugee odysseys to freedom.

Why am I passionate about this?

I began writing Ali’s incredible international odyssey as a film, but once I discovered the epic breadth of his journey, I decided on a book first. For 3 years I worked intensely with Ali. Not only was it a passionate and personal epic tale about love and loss, overcoming insurmountable odds, endurance and survival, but it hit a chord with readers from all walks of life, bringing understand to why people fled their countries, and help to change attitudes on refugees from fear to compassion. After three years on the road with the book I have now completed the screenplay.

Robin's book list on refugee odysseys to freedom

Robin de Crespigny Why did Robin love this book?

Kooshyar Karimi wrote this stunning memoir so beautifully it blew me away. Now a Sydney-based doctor and writer, he grew up as a Jew in Muslim Iran, hiding his origins from a brutal regime, always with a humorous eye. 

It is such a powerful story of survival, torture, and spying, plus forced deceptions and betrayal of others for helping desperate female rape victims. The struggle for redemption and eventual escape make his journey an unforgettable one.  

By Kooshyar Karimi,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked I Confess as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Whilst many stories have come out of Iran in the last few decades, nothing matches the grittiness of this portrayal of life in the crumbling alleyways and damp cellars of an Iranian slum district--the extreme poverty and desperation, and the regular betrayals and compromises, even within families, in the fight for survival. Born on the back seat of a police car in the subzero temperatures of a bleak and icy winter's night, Karimi summons extraordinary and unwavering dedication throughout his childhood to break free of this hopeless existence, culminating in the achievement of his dream to become a surgeon. But…


Book cover of Good Muslim Boy

Robin de Crespigny Author Of The People Smuggler: The true story of Ali Al Jenabi the Oskar Schindler of Asia

From my list on refugee odysseys to freedom.

Why am I passionate about this?

I began writing Ali’s incredible international odyssey as a film, but once I discovered the epic breadth of his journey, I decided on a book first. For 3 years I worked intensely with Ali. Not only was it a passionate and personal epic tale about love and loss, overcoming insurmountable odds, endurance and survival, but it hit a chord with readers from all walks of life, bringing understand to why people fled their countries, and help to change attitudes on refugees from fear to compassion. After three years on the road with the book I have now completed the screenplay.

Robin's book list on refugee odysseys to freedom

Robin de Crespigny Why did Robin love this book?

This wonderfully written true story is told as a wild madcap, can’t put it down, tragic comedy, which is incredibly funny but carries with it an underbelly of loss and heartbreak. 

As he struggles to straddle the demands of his Iraqi-Iranian cultural mix as a refugee in Australia, Osamah makes some disastrous choices, that lead him down a complex maze to the truth of where his own heart lies.

By Osamah Sami,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Good Muslim Boy as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Good Muslim Boy tells the story of Osamah Sami's journey from Iran during the Iraq war to the suburbs of Australia and his quest to fit into his new life whilst trying to stay a good Muslim boy. In turns comic and tragic, Osamah's story explores the universal truths of growing up, falling in love, marriage, family and following one's dream; whilst also telling the immigrant's story of straddling two cultures and the difficult expectations of family and faith versus fitting in. Osamah begins by recounting his youth under Islamic rule in Iran: the mischievous antics that he and his…


Book cover of The Deceptions

Robin de Crespigny Author Of The People Smuggler: The true story of Ali Al Jenabi the Oskar Schindler of Asia

From my list on refugee odysseys to freedom.

Why am I passionate about this?

I began writing Ali’s incredible international odyssey as a film, but once I discovered the epic breadth of his journey, I decided on a book first. For 3 years I worked intensely with Ali. Not only was it a passionate and personal epic tale about love and loss, overcoming insurmountable odds, endurance and survival, but it hit a chord with readers from all walks of life, bringing understand to why people fled their countries, and help to change attitudes on refugees from fear to compassion. After three years on the road with the book I have now completed the screenplay.

Robin's book list on refugee odysseys to freedom

Robin de Crespigny Why did Robin love this book?

With its roots in truth, this powerful novel brings us face to face with the insanity of war and how humans deal with the heartbreak of being torn from their homes, horrific deprivation, and betrayal. 

Cleverly structured and beautifully written with tenderly articulated characters, it presents a fresh eye on the Holocaust and its consequences, and had me continually asking myself how I would have endured, and what choices I would have found myself making, in that situation.

By Suzanne Leal,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Deceptions as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Moving from wartime Europe to modern day Australia, The Deceptions is a powerful story of old transgressions, unexpected revelations and the legacy of lives built on lies and deceit.

Prague, 1943. Taken from her home in Prague, Hana Lederova finds herself imprisoned in the Jewish ghetto of Theresienstadt, where she is forced to endure appalling deprivation and the imminent threat of transportation to the east. When she attracts the attention of the Czech gendarme who becomes her guard, Hana reluctantly accepts his advances, hoping for the protection she so desperately needs.

Sydney, 2010. Manipulated into a liaison with her married…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in family, Chile, and comas?

Family 3,947 books
Chile 38 books
Comas 27 books