“When the darkest part of you meets the darkest part of me, it creates light.”
If you found yourself entranced by Coco Mellors’ Cleopatra and Frankenstein, from the raw emotion, the messy romance, the beautifully broken characters, you’re not alone. This sharp and stylish debut novel resonated with readers who love deep literary fiction that explores relationships, identity, and self-destruction. Whether it was the New York City backdrop, the flawed and fascinating characters, or the emotionally charged storytelling that coaxed you in, there are other books that offer a similar experience. Join us today at What We Reading as we curate the best books like Cleopatra and Frankenstein, novels with moody atmospheres, introspective narratives, and romance that feels both tender and devastating. These stories all explore love, loneliness, mental health, and the fine gray areas in between.
Cleopatra And Frankenstein Summary
In Cleopatra and Frankenstein, Coco Mellors introduces a sharp and emotionally rich debut about two individuals colliding at the wrong, or perhaps the most pivotal, moment of their lives. When twenty-four-year-old British painter Cleo impulsively marries Frank, an enigmatic but emotionally complicated advertising executive twenty years her senior, their whirlwind romance begins with the thrills of possibility.
Yet, as the months unfold, cracks begin to show beneath their opulent New York City life. Their marriage becomes a catalyst, not only for Cleo and Frank’s unravelling, but also for the lives of those around them, including friends, siblings, and lovers caught in the ripples of their decisions. With raw honesty and lyrical prose, Mellors explores mental health, addiction, loneliness, and the hunger for connection in a fast-paced and often chaotic world. Witty, tender, and devastating, Cleopatra and Frankenstein is a story about what happens when love isn’t enough to save us.
Beautiful World, Where Are You – Sally Rooney
First up on our list of books like Cleopatra and Frankenstein is Sally Rooney’s bestselling novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You. The story follows Alice, a novelist, who meets Felix, a warehouse worker, and asks if he would like to join her on a trip to Rome. In Dublin, her best friend, Eileen, is getting over a breakup 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 starting to catch up with them. They desire each each, they delude one another, they worry about sex and friendship and the times they live in. Will they ever find a way to believe in a beautiful world?
Happy Hour – Marlowe Granados
Isa Eply is twenty-one years old, but already well aware that the purpose of life is the pursuit of pleasure. She arrives in New York from the UK for a summer of adventure with her best friend, Gala Novak. In her diary, Isa describes a sweltering summer in the glittering city that never sleeps. Money soon begins to stretch, however, with the strains testing their friendship as they attempt to convert their growing social capital into something more lasting.
Through it all, Isa’s bold, beguiling voice captures the precise thrill of cultivating a life of glamour and intrigue as she balances paying her dues with skipping out on the bill. With the same bite and verve as Cleopatra and Frankenstein, Marlowe Granados’ Happy Hour is a dazzling debut that captures a summer of striving across the streets of New York City.
Eileen – Ottessa Moshfegh
Eileen is a dark, character-driven novel that is sure to strike a chord with anyone who loves Cleopatra and Frankenstein on the back of its depiction of flawed protagonists, emotional isolation, and psychological complexity. The novel is set in a dreary New England town in the 1960s, and centres around Eileen Dunlop, a lonely, repressed young woman trapped in a joyless life. Working at a boys’ prison and caring for her alcoholic father, Eileen lives in her imagination, conjuring disturbing thoughts and obsessive fantasies.
Everything changes when Rebecca, a glamorous and mysterious new coworker, arrives. Their friendship quickly balloons into something intense and unsettling, pulling Eileen into a dangerous plot that offers her a disturbing chance of escaping.
Check Out The Best Books Like Eileen
The Paper Palace – Miranda Cowley Heller
It is a perfect July morning, and Elle, a happily-married fifty-year-old mother of three, awakens at “The Paper Palace” – the family summer home her family has visited every summer of her life. But this morning is different. Last night, Elle and her oldest friend, Jonas, snuck out the back door into the darkness and slept with each other while their spouses chatted inside.
Now, over the next twenty-four hours, Elle will have to choose between the life she has made for herself with her genuinely beloved husband, Peter, and the life she had always imagined for herself with Jonas. As Miranda Cowley Heller traces the experiences that have led Elle to this day, readers are treated to a book similar to Cleopatra and Frankenstein that is both tender and heartbreaking as it explores the legacies of abuse, the crimes of families.
Check Out The Best Books Like The Paper Palace
Acts Of Service – Lillian Fishman
If sex is a truth-teller, Eve, a young queer woman in Brooklyn, is looking for answers. On an evening when she is feeling particularly impulsive, she posts some nude photos of herself online. This is how Eve meets Olivia. And, through Olivia, she meets the charismatic Nathan. The three soon begin a relationship that disturbs Eve as much as it delights her.
In the way the only great fiction can, Lillian Fishman’s provocative debut novel, Acts of Service, asks us to face our ideas about sex and sexuality. At once juicy and intellectually challenging, sacred and profane, this tale of a twentysomething New Yorker pursuing her own sexual freedoms is sure to resonate with anyone who loved reading Cleopatra and Frankenstein.
Exciting Times – Naoise Dolan
Ava is a twenty-two-year-old Irish expat who teaches English to wealthy children in Hong Kong, drifting through life with ironic detachment. When she meets Julian, a cold but alluring banker, she enters into a transactional relationship that begins to blur the lines between love, dependence, and control. But when Julian leaves for London and Ava grows closer to Edith, a kind, confident lawyer, she’s forced to confront the emotional messiness she’s been avoiding.
Told in crisp, observational prose, Exciting Times is a book similar to Cleopatra and Frankenstein on the back of its exploration into class, queerness, self-sabotage, and the ambiguity of modern relationships. Dolan’s writing is sharp and witty, perfectly capturing the intellectual and emotional confusion that comes part and parcel with young adulthood.
The Pisces – Melissa Broder
Lucy has been writing her dissertation about Sappho for thirteen years when she and Jamie break up. After she hits rock bottom in Phoenix, her LA-based sister insists Lucy housesit for the summer. Her only tasks are caring for a sweet diabetic dog and trying to learn to care for herself. Annika’s home is a gorgeous glass cube atop Venice Beach, yet Lucy is unable to find peace from her misery and anxiety. But, everything changes when Lucy becomes entranced by an eerily attractive swimmer one night whilst sitting alone on the beach.
Whip-smart, neurotically funny, sexy, and unflinchingly fearless, The Pisces is one of the best books like Cleopatra and Frankenstein about what happens when you think love will save you but are afraid it may also kill you.
Animals – Emma Jane Unsworth
Laura and Tyler are two young women who have been tearing up the city streets for a decade, leaving behind them a trail of angry drug dealers and spent men. Now Laura is engaged to be married and her teetotal classical pianist fiancé, Jim, is away overseas. Tyler wants to keep the party going, but Laura is caught between the constant temptations provided by her best friend and the prospect of a calmer life with Jim. As the wedding draws closer, the duo’s limits are tested, along with their friendship.
Another one of the best books like Cleopatra and Frankenstein, Emma Jane Unsworth’s Animals is hilarious, honest, raw, and thoroughly moving. It’s a tale about deciding when it’s time to grow up, and recognising what you have to leave behind when you do.
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).
