“If God wanted me to give you up, he wouldn’t have made me who I am.”
If you loved Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney, you’re probably looking for novels that capture that same mix of emotional depth, modern relationships, and introspective storytelling. Rooney’s fans appreciate her deft explorations of love, friendship, and identity, set against the backdrop of modern life – and thankfully, there are plenty of books like Beautiful World, Where Are You that hit those same notes. From character-driven contemporary fiction to literary novels that delve into the complexities of human connection, these recommendations are perfect for readers on the hunt for beautiful, thought-provoking reads. Whether you’re pulled toward quiet, introspective novels, or books about friendships, relationships, and the challenges of modern adulthood, join us today at What We Reading for the best novels similar to Beautiful World, Where Are You.
Beautiful World, Where Are You Summary
Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he would like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend Eileen is getting over a break-up and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood.
Alice, Felix, Eileen and Simon are all still young – but life is fast catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude one another, they worry about sex and friendship and the times they live in. Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?
Intermezzo – Sally Rooney
If you loved Beautiful World, Where Are You, you might want to give another one of Sally Rooney’s best books a go. Intermezzo follows the story of two completely different brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek. Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties; he is successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But, in the wake of his father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationship with two very different women – Sylvia, his first love, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.
Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as a socially awkward loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in his own early stages of bereavement, he meets an older woman named Margaret, and their lives soon become intertwined. Like Beautiful World, Where Are You, Intermezzo charts the lives of people on a journey to discover how much one life can hold inside itself before breaking.
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The End Of The Affair – Graham Greene
“This is a record of hate far more than of love,” writes Maurice Bendrix in the opening passages of The End of the Affair; and it is a strange hate indeed that compels him to set down the retrospective account of his adulterous affair with Sarah Miles.
Now, a year on from Sarah’s death, Bendrix seeks to exorcise the persistence of his passion by retracing its course from obsessive love to love-hate. At first, he believes he hates Sarah and her husband, Henry. Yet, as he delves deeper into his emotional outlook, Bendrix’s hatred morphs to the God he feels has broken his life, but whose existence at last comes to be recognised.
Outline – Rachel Cusk
A woman goes to Athens in the height of summer to teach a writing course. Though her own circumstances remain indistinct, she becomes the audience to a chain of narratives, as the people she meets tell her one after another the stories of their lives. The storytellers talk of their loves and ambitions, their anxieties, their perceptions of their daily lives. In the stifling heat and noise of the city, the sequence of voices begins to weave a complex human tapestry.
Outline is a novel similar to Beautiful World, Where Are You, about writing and talking, about self-effacement and self-expression, about the desire to create and the human art of self-portraiture in which that desire finds its universal form.
Trust Exercise – Susan Choi
In an American suburb in the early 1980s, students at a highly competitive performing arts high school struggle and thrive in a rarified bubble, ambitiously pursuing movement, music, Shakespeare, and their aching classes. When two freshmen, David and Sarah, fall headlong into love, their passion does not go unnoticed. The outside world of family life, economic status, and their future adult lives fails to penetrate this school’s walls – until it does, in a shocking spiral of events that catapults the action forward in time and flips the premise upside down.
As captivating and tender as it is surprising, Susan Choi’s Trust Exercise is one of the best books like Beautiful World, Where Are You for capturing the true capacities of adolescents and of the powers and responsibilities of adults.
Writers & Lovers – Lily King
Blindsided by her mother’s sudden death and wrecked by a recent love affair, Casey Peabody has arrived in Massachusetts in the summer of 1997 without a plan. Her mail consists of wedding invites and final notices. A former golf prodigy, she now waits tables in Harvard Square and rents a tiny, mouldy room at the side of a garage. At thirty-one, Casey is still clutching onto something nearly all of her old friends have let go of.
When she falls for two very different men at the same time, her world fractures even more. Casey’s fight to fulfil her creative ambitions and balance the conflicting demands of art and life is challenged in ways that push her to the brink. Like Beautiful World, Where Are You, Writers & Lovers is a transfixing novel that explores the terrifying and exhilarating leap between the end of one phase of life and the beginning of another.
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Talking At Night – Claire Daverley
Will and Rosie meet as teenagers. They’re opposites in every way. She overthinks everything; he is her twin brother’s wild and unpredictable friend. But over secret walks home and late-night phone calls, they become closer – destined to be one another’s great love story. Until one day, tragedy strikes, and their future together is shattered.
But as the years roll on, Will and Rosie can’t help but find their way back to each other. Time and time again, they come close to rekindling what might have been. What do you do when the one person you should forget is the one you just can’t let go?
Cleopatra & Frankenstein – Coco Mellors
Twenty-four-year-old British painter Cleo has escaped from England to New York and is still finding her place in the sleepless city when, a few months before her student visa ends, she meets Frank. Twenty years older and a self-made success, Frank’s life is full of the excesses Cleo’s lacks. He offers her the chance to be happy, the freedom to paint, and the opportunity to apply for the Green Card. But their impulsive marriage irreversibly changes both their lives and the lives of those closest to them in ways they never could have predicted.
Each compulsively readable chapter explores the lives of Cleo, Frank, and an unforgettable cast of their closest friends and family as they grow up and grow older. As hilarious as it is heartbreaking, entertaining as it is deeply moving, Cleopatra and Frankenstein is one of the best books by Coco Mellors, and a natural novel to read next after you’ve finished Beautiful World, Where Are You.
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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).
