What to Read Next If You Liked Paper Towns, The Goldfinch, Big Little Lies, In the Kingdom of Ice, or Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good
Paper Towns, by John Green, has practically everything you could want in a YA novel: a mystery, a revenge plot, an epic road trip, and unrequited love. I say “practically everything,” because what it lacks, of course, is a screaming case of Mad Cow Disease. For that, you’ll have to turn to Going Bovine, by Libba Bray, winner of the 2010 Michael L. Printz Award. It’s a hilarious, surreal coming-of-age story about a boy with a weird terminal illness who hits the road with a punk-rocker and a lawn gnome for one last hurrah.
The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt, is the year’s biggest bildungsroman, a character-focused mystery in the best Dickensian sense. Though it doesn’t have quite the sweep of Tartt’s Pulitzer Prize-winner, Carol Rifka Brunt’s Tell the Wolves I’m Home tells an equally moving story of love and loss, following the journey of 14-year-old June Elbus to come to grips with the death of her beloved uncle after learning he wasn’t entirely the man she thought she knew.
In Big Little Lies, Liane Moriarty explores the darker side of suburban life, following the intersecting lives of three women in a well-off community whose children all attend the same preschool, and all of whom have told lies both big and little to cover up some scandalous secrets (the women, not the kids…the kids don’t seem to be hiding anything nefarious). For another twisted take on parents suffering through a midlife crisis, Little Children, by Tom Perrotta, offers a master class in the subject, tracking the fallout from the affairs (and affairs) of a couple trapped in a hermetically sealed marriage within a hermetically sealed upper-class neighborhood.
In the Kingdom of Ice, by Hampton Sides, offers a thrilling, (literally) chilling, true-life account of an ill-fated 19th-century expedition to the North Pole. For a wickedly fictionalized take on a similar historical tragedy, grab a blanket and a copy of The Terror, by Dan Simmons. An arctic voyage to force the Northwest Passage goes from bad to worse when the HMS Terror is trapped in uncharted frozen waters and, already weak from scurvy and fatigue, the crew members discover they may not be alone on the ice.
After a nine-year wait, Jan Karon finally returns to the sleepy, fictional North Carolina community of Mitford in Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good, offering up another slice of downhome comfort food for her longtime fans. If you’re looking for another series of books that explores the ins and outs of small-town life, the late Donald Harington’s woefully under-read Stay More novels, which chronicle the history of a postage stamp of a town in the Ozarks, offer an invaluable literary experience, reminiscent of the best of John Irving. The series starts with 1970’s Lightning Bug.
Have you read Paper Towns, The Goldfinch, Little Big Lies, or In the Kingdom of Ice?