“Some people go away by packing their bags. Others run away by standing in the same place for too long.”
If Baby Reindeer left you looking for stories that are just as gripping, unsettling, and emotionally powerful, you’re not alone. Richard Gadd’s Netflix series hooked us with its striking depiction of stalking, obsession, trauma, addiction, and resilience, inspiring plenty of viewers to search out similar stories beyond the screen. Whether it’s psychological memoirs, true stories like Baby Reindeer, or dark nonfiction books that delve into the complexities of human behaviour, there are plenty of compelling reads to unearth. Today at What We Reading, we’re rounding up the best books to read like Baby Reindeer. From memoirs about stalking and toxic relationships to powerful accounts of trauma, recovery, and survival, these books offer the same emotional intensity and psychological depth that made the series such a hit. If you’re wondering what to read after watching Baby Reindeer, these picks are the perfect place to start.
Enduring Love – Ian McEwan
First up on our list of books like Baby Reindeer is Ian McEwan’s classic work, Enduring Love. Joe’s perfectly planned afternoon in the English countryside turns into a nightmare when he and his lover are involved in a freak ballooning accident, in which a boy is saved, but a man is killed. Meeting the eye of fellow rescuer Jed Parry turns out to be a very bad move. For Jed is instantly obsessed, making the first of many calls to Joe and Clarissa’s London flat that same night. Worse, Jed’s version of love comes to seem a distortion of Joe’s feelings for Clarissa.
Like Richard Gadd, Ian McEwan has won acclaim for being a poet of the arbitrary nightmare, his characters ineluctably swept up in others’ fantasies, skidding into deepening violence, and – worst of all – becoming strangers to those who love them.
In The Dream House – Carmen Maria Machado
For years, Carmen Maria Machado has struggled to articulate her experiences in an abusive same-sex relationship. In this extraordinarily candid and radically inventive memoir, Machado tackles a dark and difficult subject with startling wit, inventiveness, and inquiring spirit, as she uses a series of narrative tools – including some classic horror tropes – to create an entirely unique piece of work. If you’ve loved the original lens through which Baby Reindeer explored some of its heavier themes, In the Dream House is one of the best books to read next.
You – Caroline Kepnes
No list of books similar to Baby Reindeer would be complete without mentioning fellow Netflix sensation, You. When a beautiful, aspiring writer strides into the East Village bookstore where Joe Goldberg works, he does what anyone would do: he Googles the name on her credit card.
There is only one Guinevere Beck in New York City. She has a public Facebook account and Tweets incessantly, telling Joe all he needs to know: she is just Beck to her friends, she went to Brown University, she lives on Bank Street, and she’ll be at a bar in Brooklyn tonight. As Joe invisibly and obsessively takes control of Beck’s life, he orchestrates a series of events to ensure Beck finds herself in his waiting arms. Moving from stalker to boyfriend, Joe transforms himself into Beck’s perfect man, all while quietly removing the obstacles that stand in their way – even if that means murder.
Check Out The Best Books Like You
Hunger – Roxane Gay
In her phenomenal, popular essays and long-running Tumblr blog, Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and body, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. As a woman who describes her own body as “wildly undisciplined,” Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care. (Something some of our characters in Baby Reindeer would benefit from learning more about!)
With the bracing candour, vulnerability, and power that have made her one of the most admired writers of her generation, Roxane examines what it means to learn to take care of yourself: how to feed your hungers for delicious and satisfying food, a smaller and safer body, and a body that can love and be loved – in a time when the bigger you are, the smaller your world becomes.
Notes On A Scandal – Zoe Heller
School teacher Barbara Covett has led a solitary life until Sheba Hart, the new art teacher at St. George’s, befriends her. But even as their relationship blossoms, so too does another: Sheba has begun an illicit affair with an underage male student. When the scandal turns into a media circus, Barbara decides to write an account in her friend’s defence – and ends up revealing not only Sheba’s secrets, but also her own.
Check Out The Best Books About Obsession
Shuggie Bain – Douglas Stuart
Shuggie Bain tells the story of young Hugh “Shuggie” Bain, a sweet and isolated boy who spends his childhood in the 1980s in a run-down public housing estate in Glasgow. Margaret Thatcher’s policies had put husbands and sons out of work, and the city’s infamous drug epidemic is waiting in the wings.
Shuggie’s mother, Agnes, keeps her pride by looking good. But, under the surface, Agnes finds increasing solace in drink. Shuggie is soon left to fend for himself and his mother, and is desperate to fit in. Agnes is supportive; however, her addiction has the power to eclipse everyone she holds close – even her beloved son. A heartbreaking tale like Baby Reindeer about addiction, sexuality, and love, Shuggie Bain is a timeless depiction of a working-class family rarely seen in fiction.
Check Out The Best Books Like Shuggie Bain
Sorrow And Bliss – Meg Marson
Like Baby Reindeer, this novel is about a woman called Martha. She knows there is something wrong with her, but she doesn’t know what it is. Her husband Patrick thinks she is fine. He says that everyone has something; the thing is just to keep going.
Martha told Patrick before they got married that she didn’t want to have children. He said he didn’t mind either way because he has loved her since she was fourteen and making her happy is all that matters, although he does not seem able to do it. By the time Martha finds out what is wrong, it doesn’t really matter anymore. It is too late to get the only thing she has ever wanted. Or maybe it will turn out that you can stop loving someone and start again from nothing – if you can find something else to want.
The Glass Castle – Jeanette Walls
The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette’s brilliant and charismatic father captured his children’s imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn’t want the responsibility of raising a family.
The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered. The Glass Castle is a truly astonishing memoir permeated by the intense love of a peculiar but loyal family.
Check Out The Best Books Like The Glass Castle
Our Kind Of Cruelty – Araminta Hall
Mike Hayes fought his way out of a brutal childhood and into a quiet, if lonely life, before he met Verity Metcalf. V taught him about love, and in return, Mike has dedicated his life to making her happy. He’s found the perfect home, the perfect job; he’s sculpted himself into the physical ideal V has always wanted. He knows they’ll be blissfully happy together.
It doesn’t matter that she hasn’t been returning his emails or phone calls. It doesn’t matter that she says she’s marrying Angus. This is all just a part of the secret game they used to play. If Mike watches V closely, he’ll see the signs. If he keeps track of her every move, he’ll know just when to come to her rescue. Our Kind of Cruelty is a darkly twisted novel about desire and obsession, and the complicated lines between truth and perception, perfect if you loved Baby Reindeer.
The Center Cannot Hold – Elyn R. Saks
Saks was only eight years old and living an otherwise idyllic childhood in sunny 1960s Miami when the first symptoms of her schizophrenia manifested in the forms of obsessions and night terrors. But it wasn’t until she reached Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar that her first full-blown episode, complete with voices in her head and terrifying suicidal fantasies, forced her into a psychiatric hospital.
So began Saks’ long war with her own internal demons and the equally powerful forces of stigma. Today, she is a chaired professor of law who researches and writes about the rights of the mentally ill. In The Center Cannot Hold, Saks discusses the paranoia, the inability to tell imaginary friends from real ones, and the voices in her head insisting she do terrible things, as well as the many obstacles she overcame to become the woman she is today.
The Fact Of A Body – Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich
Before Alex Marzano-Lesnevich begins a summer job at a law firm in Louisiana, working to help defend men accused of murder, they think their position is clear. The child of two lawyers, they are staunchly anti-death penalty. But the moment convicted murderer Ricky Langley’s face flashes on the screen as they review old tapes – the moment they hear him speak of his crimes – they are overcome with the feeling of wanting him to die. Shocked by their reaction, they dig deeper and deeper into the case. Despite their vastly different circumstances, something in his story is unsettlingly familiar.
Crime, even the darkest and most unsayable acts, can happen to any one of us. As Alex pores over the facts of the murder, they find themself thrust into the complex narrative of Ricky’s childhood. And, by examining the details of Ricky’s case, they are forced to face their own story, to unearth long-buried family secrets, and reckon with a past that colours their view of Ricky’s crime.
I’m Thinking Of Ending Things – Iain Reid
In this smart and intense literary suspense novel, Iain Reid explores the depths of the human psyche, questioning consciousness, free will, the value of relationships, fear, and the limitations of solitude. Tense, gripping, and atmospheric, I’m Thinking of Ending Things pulls you in from the very first page, and never lets you go again.
Now a major Netflix hit like Baby Reindeer, this deeply scary and intensely unnerving novel follows a couple in the midst of a twisted unravelling of the darkest unease. You will be scared. But you won’t know why…
Running With Scissors – Augusten Burroughs
Running with Scissors is the true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of Anne Sexton) gave him away to be raised by her unorthodox psychiatrist who bore a striking resemblance to Santa Claus. So, at the age of twelve, Burroughs found himself amidst Victorian squalour living with the doctor’s bizarre family, and befriending a paedophile who resided in the backyard shed.
The story of an outlaw childhood where rules were unheard of, and the Christmas tree stayed up all year round, where Valium was consumed like candy, and if things got dull an electroshock-therapy machine could provide entertainment. The funny, harrowing and bestselling account of an ordinary boy’s survival under the most extraordinary circumstances.
Dreamland – Sarah Dessen
Ever since she started going out with Rogerson Biscoe, Caitlin seems to have fallen into a semiconscious dreamland where nothing is quite real. Rogerson is different from anyone Caitlin has ever known. He’s magnetic. Compelling. Dangerous.
Being with him makes Caitlin forget about everything else – her missing sister, her withdrawn mother, her lacklustre life. But what happens when being with Rogerson becomes a larger problem than being with him?
What Happened To Ruthy Ramirez – Claire Jiménez
The Ramirez women of Staten Island orbit around absence. When thirteen-year-old middle child Ruthy vanished after track practice without a trace, it left the family scarred and scrambling. One night, twelve years on, older sister spots a woman on her TV screen in Catfight, a raunchy reality show. She rushes to tell her younger sister, Nina. Could it be Ruthy, after all this time?
After seeing maybe-Ruthy on their screen, Jessica and Nina hatch a plan to drive to where the show is filmed in search of their long-lost sister. When their mother, Dolores, catches wind of their scheme, she insists on joining, along with her pot-stirring hooly roller best friend, Irene. What follows is a family road trip and reckoning that will force the Ramirez women to finally face the past and look toward a future – with or without Ruthy in it.
Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
