“Some men need to witness female anger to believe in that woman’s love. Some women need to get angry to experience that love.”
If you loved A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers, you’re probably drawn to darkly humorous, feminist fiction that isn’t scared to push boundaries. This novel’s unapologetic anti-heroine, biting satire, and morally complex narrative have captivated readers who crave stories about women who defy societal expectations whilst exploring desire, power, and obsession. But what if you’re ready for more books like A Certain Hunger? Whether you’re searching for novels with anti-heroine protagonists, dark feminist thrillers, or literary fiction that blends humour with darkness, there’s a growing list of titles out there that hit all those notes. Today at What We Reading, we’re curating the best books similar to A Certain Hunger, perfect for fans of morally complex female leads, satirical narratives, and stories that blend wit, suspense, and bold storytelling.
A Certain Hunger Summary
Food critic Dorothy Daniels loves what she does. Discerning, meticulous, and very, very smart, Dorothy’s mastery of the culinary arts means that she is more than able to whip up a more heavenly meal than any of the chefs she writes about. Dorothy enjoys sex just as much as she enjoys food. And whilst she’s yet to find a long-term partner, she happily indulges in her two great pleasures whilst frequently travelling between Manhattan and Italy.
Yet there is something within Dorothy that is different from everyone else, and, having suppressed it long enough, she starts to embrace what makes her uniquely, terrifyingly herself. From an idyllic farm-to-table upbringing to plunging an ice pick into a man’s neck, Chelsea Summers’ A Certain Hunger is a satire of early foodieism and a critique of how gender is defined, perfect for anyone who loves feminist thrillers, sad girl literature, and the sorts of villainous female leads who just can’t help but love to hate.
Eileen – Ottessa Moshfegh
Kicking off our list of books like A Certain Hunger is Ottessa Moshfegh’s bestselling thriller, Eileen. Trapped between her dead-end job as a secretary at a boy’s prison and the caretaker of her alcoholic father at home, Eileen tempers dreary days with perverse fantasies, shoplifting, and stalking a buff prison guard named Randy. However, when the bright and cheery Rebecca Saint John arrives on the scene as the new counsellor, Eileen is immediately captivated and proves unable to resist what appears to be a miraculously budding friendship.
Played out in the snowy landscape of coastal New England in the days leading up to Christmas, young Eileen’s story is told from the gimlet-eyed perspective of the now much older narrator. Creepy, mesmerising, and sublimely funny, Ottessa Moshfegh’s debut novel enthrals and shocks, perfect for anyone who devoured Chelsea Summers’ story.
Check Out The Best Books Like Eileen
Social Creature – Tara Isabella Burton
For readers of Gillian Flynn and Donna Tartt, Tara Isabella Burton’s Social Creature is a dark, propulsive, and addictive debut thriller splashed with all the glitz and glamour of New York City. Louise has nothing. Lavinia has everything. After a chance encounter, the two spiral into an intimate, intense, and possibly toxic friendship. Hailed as a Talented Mr Ripley for the digital age, this seductive story takes a classic tale of obsession and makes it irresistibly new.
Luster – Raven Leilani
Edie is just trying to survive. She’s messing up in her dead-end admin job in her all-white office, is sleeping with all the wrong men, and has failed at the only thing that meant anything to her, painting. No one appears to care about the fact that she doesn’t really know what she’s doing with her life beyond looking for her next hook-up.
And then she meets Eric, a white middle-aged archivist with a suburban family, including a wife who has sort-of-agreed to an open marriage and an adopted black daughter who doesn’t have a single person in her life who can show her how to do her hair. As if navigating the constantly shifting landscape of sexual and racial politics as a young black woman wasn’t already hard enough, with nowhere else left to go, Edie finds herself falling headfirst into Eric’s home and family. Razor-sharp and surprisingly tender like A Certain Hunger, Luster is a painfully funny debut about what it means to be young.
Check Out These Books With Unhinged Main Characters
Penance – Eliza Clark
It’s been almost a decade since the horrifying murder of sixteen-year-old Joan Wilson, a crime that rocked Crow-on-Sea, and the events of that horrifying night are now being published for the first time. That story is Penance, a dizzying feat of masterful storytelling where Eliza Clark manoeuvres us through accounts from the residents of this small seaside town.
Placing us readers in the capable hands of journalist Alec Z. Carelli, Clark allows him to construct what he claims to be the “definitive account” of the murder – and what led up to it. Built on hours of interviews with witnesses and family members, painstaking historical research, and, most notably, correspondence with the killers themselves, the result is a riveting snapshot of lives rocked by tragedy, and a town left in turmoil. The only question that remains is: how much of it is true?
Check Out These Thriller Books That Read Like True Crime
A Tiny Upward Shove – Melissa Chadburn
Marina Salles’ life does not end the day she wakes up dead. Instead, in the span of a single moment, she’s transformed into the stuff of myth, the stuff of her grandmother’s old Filipino stories – an aswang. She spent her life on the margins, knowing very little about her own life, let alone the lives of others; she was shot like a pinball through a childhood of loss, a veteran of Child Protective Services and a survivor, but always reacting, watching from a distance.
Death brings her into the hearts and minds of those she has known – even her killer – as she is able to access their memories and to see anew the meaning of her own. In the course of these pages, she traces back through her life, finally able to see what led these lost souls to this crushingly inevitable conclusion.
Her Body And Other Parties – Carmen Maria Machado
In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, horror and comedy, fantasy and fabulism in a way that anyone who loved A Certain Hunger is sure to love. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape a startling narrative that maps the realities of women’s lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.
A wife refuses her husband’s entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recalls her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. One woman’s surgery-induced weight loss results in a horrifying, unwanted houseguest. Earthly and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious, Her Body and Other Parties swings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment.
The New Me – Halle Butler
Thirty-year-old Millie just can’t seem to put it together. Misanthropic and morose, she spends her days killing time at a thankless temp job until she can return home to her empty apartment. She oscillates wildly between self-recrimination and mild delusion, fixating on all the little ways she might change her life. Then she watches TV until she drops off to sleep, kickstarting the whole process again.
When the possibility of a full-time job arises, it seems to bring the better life she’s always envisioned. But with it also comes the paralysing realisation of just how hollow that vision has become. One of the most darkly hilarious, and devastating books like A Certain Hunger, The New Me is a dizzying descent into the mind of a young woman trapped in the funhouse that is American consumer culture.
Antkind – Charlie Kaufman
B. Rosenberger Rosenberg, neurotic and underappreciated film critic, happens upon a hitherto unseen film made by an enigmatic outsider – a film he’s convinced will turn his fortunes around. His hands now on possibly the greatest film ever made, B. knows that it is his mission to show it to the rest of humanity. The only problem? The film is destroyed, leaving him the sole witness to its genius.
All that’s left of the work is a single frame from which B. must somehow attempt to recall the film that might just be the last great hope of civilisation. Thus begins a mind-boggling journey through the hilarious nightmarescape of a psyche. Charlie Kaufman’s Antkind is a richly layered meditation on art, time, memory, identity, comedy, and the very nature of existence itself. It’s one of the best books to read after A Certain Hunger if you’re looking for another dark, surreal, and satirical take.
Acts Of Desperation – Megan Nolan
In the first scene of Megan Nolan’s provocative novel, Acts of Desperation, our unnamed narrator meets a magnetic writer named Ciaran and falls, against her better judgment, completely in his power. After a brief, all-consuming affair, he abruptly rejects her, sending her into a tailspin of jealous obsession and longing. If he ever comes back to her, she resolves to hang onto him and his love at all costs, even if it destroys her.
Part breathless confession, part lucid critique, Acts of Desperation is a great book similar to A Certain Hunger that interrogates the nature of fantasy, desire, and power, challenging us to reckon honestly with our insatiability.
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).
