Books like The Boyfriend: 78 fan favorites

I loved this taut, gripping who-dun-it mystery genre of book because the setting and characters are scenes right out of life—real, everyday people. I can relate to this because it’s reality and could really happen!

Love triangles, suspicion, and told in a unique way—this story was a masterful exploration into the human psyche. I love books where the predicament or dream of the character makes me squirm. Whether to be admired or pitied, the characters’ flaws are no less real than our own. They could be our very own neighbors. Or they could be us. 

A story of someone going missing is always something that affects me viscerally. I was drawn into the intrigue of a woman who is apparently happily married one minute, and then blood stains are found on the floor of the couple’s kitchen the next.

I loved this book because it was a who-dun-it with great descriptive scenes. It was well-written and left me hungry for it when I was forced to put it down to do my chores. A taut, gripping saga about real-life people in real settings is always something I find fascinating.

I loved this book because its true-to-life setting created a situation that I could actually see happening—of course, on my worst day! The curious study in contrast between the characters' dialogue and their unseen motives left desperate cliffhangers with each chapter, leaving me dangling along with them.

The intrigue left me wanting more and the book just “called” me even though I was busy with other things.

I loved this story about a protagonist who is living her worst nightmare, and we’re along for the unpredictable twists and turns of her life.

The story is everything you’d expect for a well-conceived psychological drama where true-to-life characters come alive and live the nightmare you’re glad isn’t your own. It held my attention and wouldn’t let go!

This novel is an invigorating thrill ride along the streets of “Old Brooklyn” in a modern-day setting. As a former New Yorker who once listed Brooklyn as a hangout, it is rather easy to empathize with Sydney Green while she witnesses her cherished neighborhood being overtaken by invader investors perusing the streets in the guise of tourists. Something strikes her as peculiar when For Sale signs continue popping up at the existing homes with long-time neighbors suspiciously relocating to the suburbs. 

Ironically, Sydney encounters an unlikely helpmate in the form of someone whom she considers one of the intruders; Theo, a new neighbor. There’s a mutual distrust between them but it is not enough to override their suspicions about the things that are taking place. Is it overly accentuated paranoia or a genuine fear that compels the unlikely pair of sleuths to discover what is actually happening? Will their homes… show more.

I was honored to read an early draft of this novel by fellow human and Jerseyite, Val Emmich, and was immediately taken with the voice of Joan, a 10-year-old girl with a special condition that gives her the ability to remember everything, but is afraid of being forgotten. To remedy that, she wants to win a prestigious songwriting contest by writing a song that makes people both want to dance and cry (two of the strongest feelings in her opinion). So she strikes a deal with Gavin, an adult songwriter who she believes can help her make that happen. Jersey City is the primary setting for this novel, a city that along with its many other charms, offers spectacular views of the New York City skyline. 

I picked up Transmutation when it was very difficult for any book to hold my interest—during the constant low-level depression that colored the seemingly endless extended lockdown in Sydney in 2021. It held me spellbound. I had an inkling it would: I adored DiFrancesco’s earlier work, Psychopomps, which I read in 2019. The stories of Transmutation are electric and warm and sad. Like the other stories and novels on this list, they never fully answered my questions, never wrapped anything up in a neat bow. They left me immensely satisfied.

Elliott came out to his fans with this beautiful novel charting the life and times of Seaton Ross, a protagonist in the author’s image. Despite the terrible series of obstacles placed in Seaton’s way, from overbearing or absent family, deeply closeted and self-centred lovers to furious fag hags, he manages to escape Australia—just as Elliott did—without developing a lasting hatred in his exile. Rendered with the author’s signature wit (he took a leaf from E. M. Forster), the homophobia of Australia’s working classes becomes a source of this novel’s pathos, so that when Seaton encounters the most shocking consequences a gay man can face, we are ill-prepared. A wry, sexy, heartfelt swan song from the Australian who made it big in the American broadcasting industry.

Eben Venter, though born in the heart of the South African ‘platteland’ (the South African equivalent of ‘fly-over country’), has spent much of his adult life in Australia, and the novel poignantly straddles the two locales: the constricting conservatism of the protagonist’s farm background, and the bewildering freedoms and opportunities of a more cosmopolitan setting. Here that conflict is heartbreakingly acted out and in a grim sense resolved in the main character’s losing battle against AIDS, and his death-bed reconciliation with his hitherto unbending father. Venter gives us a harrowing account of what it is like to die of a disease that wastes your body, blinds you, and makes you mad before killing you. It is all the more remarkable that the experience is registered from the inside, as it were, in a subjective stream of consciousness. The poignancy of the novel is intensified for me by knowing that the… show more.

I don’t often read books more than once, but this one I have, and I know I will read it again. The woman whose life is revealed this time is 70-year-old Nora Porteous. She has returned to her native Brisbane, Australia after having escaped it by marriage to Sydney, and having escaped that marriage to London. She now reflects wryly on how she developed throughout those years of hardship and joy as she also experiences the changes in the neighbourhood she ran from decades before. As we move through both her memories of the past and her experience of the present, the details that help us to understand her are extraordinary: ‘The man is unlocking the door. I have had to talk and smile too much in his car, and as I wait I consciously rest my face.’