79 books like Second Place

This novel is a masterclass in unreliable narration. It follows Will, a young man estranged from his family and religion, as he attends college and falls in love with Phoebe.

As Will takes over and narrates his recollections of their relationship, Phoebe’s friendship with a man named John Leal, and her inculcation into a religious cult, he becomes increasingly untrustworthy. Will rails against John Leal, his lies, and the damage he has done to Phoebe, revealing his complicity in toxic masculinity and his own harmful actions.

Kwon renders her characters as entirely believable, frightening people, in lyrical and considered prose.

This might be one of my favourite books of all time.

Riley’s prose is exquisite – pared back, yet lyrical – and her dialogue is unmatched. Neve has married Edwyn, an older and more financially stable man. As Neve thinks about all the decisions and circumstances that led to her marriage – including trying to escape her bully of a father and her intense and naïve mother – Riley deftly and subtly details cycles of abuse and neglect.

Edwyn has terrible moods, which Neve excuses, and for which she blames herself. Riley truly understands and captures the psychology of loving and making excuses for an abusive partner or family member. 

When I Hit You is a shattering and visceral account of a woman’s short-lived but harrowing abusive marriage, her family’s determination that she stay in that marriage, and her family’s way of understanding her ordeal once she has escaped.

Kandasamy writes with brutal detail of the husband’s total control of the narrator, who tries again and again to understand her experiences – and escape from them – through her writing. It is a powerful novel about resilience, courage, and determination, which, despite its subject matter, avoids sensationalism.

Anya and Luke like to listen to true crime podcasts together, but they refuse to share much else: Anya tries to hide her body hair, her family, how she escaped from Sarajevo, and her concern that Luke will leave her.

Luke is stoical, difficult to read, and Anya feels isolated from his wealthy, middle-class English family. When they get engaged, it seems as though Anya might finally be able to settle, but the declaration of commitment only sets off a series of events, estrangements, and secrets that will unravel Anya’s world.

With the tension and pacing of a thriller, and the introspection of a woman who has only known precarity, Sudjic’s novel is terrifying and gripping. 

Divorce is a devastating experience, especially where ending a marriage is viewed as a separation, not only from your spouse, but from your church as well. In God, the Devil and Divorce, Linda M. Kurth shares her personal divorce journey in spite of the opposition of her community of faith to escape the pain of an abusive marriage. She emerges triumphantly as a trailblazer for Christian women enduring spousal abuse, offering hope and reassuring them that life goes on—and happily. 

Evan Stark’s book introduced me to the concept of  ‘coercive control’.

It is a continued and malevolent pattern of domination and entrapment that makes family violence a human rights crime. He also noted that the perpetrator, often a man, uses gendered stereotypes to control the woman, to convince her that it is she who is at fault.

Evan Stark’s insights helped me connect the gendered cultural practices of money with family violence. When these cultural ways of dealing with money were used for entrapment and abuse, money as a medium of care became a medium of coercive control.

I loved this book by Dr. Carnes because he presents an in-depth study of toxic relationships, why they form, who is most susceptible, and how they become so powerful.

The book kept my interest with how Dr. Carnes gave a clear explanation of the bond that compels people to tolerate the intolerable.

I also respected how the author provides practical steps to identify compulsive attachment patterns and ultimately to change or end them for good.

Aside from my research on rewards management, pro-social organizational behavior, and employee substance misuse, I’ve focused a lot of my attention on workplace incivility. 

Bob Sutton’s book was one of the factors leading me to look at this topic.  We’ve all encountered incivility at work and all know – at least implicitly – how it impacts us. Sutton’s book was one of the first to make sense – at least for me – of such behavior, not only by identify the “dirty dozen” (12 highly prevalent manifestations of workplace incivility), but also by detailing how damaging such behavior can be to individuals and the organizations employing them.

Aside from giving me insight into the prevalence and nature of employee MIS-management, this book was the start of a personal journey to discover some of the less obvious (but potentially more robust) implications of such problematic organizational behavior.

When I was in my emotionally abusive marriage, I didn’t fully realize I was being abused. I finally called the National Domestic Violence Hotline, and they recommended this book. It does an excellent job of explaining what verbal/ emotional abuse is, and how to recognize it. Reading this book set me on the path to finally getting the help I needed and getting free from my abuser.

Once I read two books in this genre I was hooked, hooked on finding out more, hooked on realising there were people in the world like me that had been through the worst within their childhood. It was my little secret way of facing my own demons knowing I wasn’t alone. I lived in fear of my truth, yet Constance tells her truth of physical and emotional abuse as well as living through a loveless childhood flawlessly. I couldn’t put it down and read it in three days.