14 Of The Best First Person Books To Read

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“I would always rather be happy than dignified.”

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There’s something incredibly intimate about reading a story told in the first person. Rather than watching a character from the outside, you experience the story through their eyes – their thoughts, fears, opinions, and secrets becoming part of the narrative. The best first person books can make you feel as though you’re sitting inside a character’s head, which is one reason the perspective works so well for everything from literary fiction and coming-of-age stories to mysteries and psychological thrillers. But first-person narration can take plenty of different forms. Some narrators are warm and relatable, while others are unreliable, morally questionable or hiding something from the reader. Today at What We Reading, we’ll look at some of the best first person books to read, exploring what makes each one memorable and how these authors use the perspective to pull readers deeper into the stories. 

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The Catcher In The Rye – J.D. Salinger

First up on our list of the best first person books is J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. It’s Christmas time, and Holden Caulfield has just been expelled from yet another school. Fleeing the crooks at Pencey Prep, he pinballs around New York City seeking solace in fleeting encounters. Holden passes through it like a ghost, thinking always of his kid sister Phoebe, the only person who really understands him, and his determination to escape the phonies and find a life of true meaning. 

Told through the perspective of Holden, The Catcher in the Rye is an all-time classic in coming-of-age literature – an elegy to teenage alienation, capturing the deeply human need for connection and the bewildering sense of loss as we leave childhood behind. 

Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë

Charlotte Brontë tells the story of orphaned Jane Eyre, who grows up in the home of her heartless aunt, enduring loneliness and cruelty. This troubled childhood strengthens Jane’s natural independence and spirit, which prove necessary when she finds employment as a governess to the young ward of Byronic, brooding Mr Rochester. 

As her feelings for Rochester develop, Jane gradually uncovers Thornfield Hall’s terrible secret, forcing her to make a choice. Should she stay with Rochester and live with the consequences, or follow her convictions – even if it means leaving the man she loves? A novel of intense power and intrigue, Jane Eyre dazzled readers with its passionate depiction of a woman’s search for equality and freedom. 

The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby spins the story of the mysteriously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan. It is the story of lavish parties on Long Island at a time when The New York Times noted, “gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession”; it is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s. 

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The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath

The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented and successful, but slowly going under – maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther’s breakdown with such intensity that Esther’s insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. 

Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment that has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic. 

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Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro

As a child, Kathy – now thirty-one – lived at Hailsham, a private school in the scenic English countryside where the children were sheltered from the outside world, brought up to believe that they were special and that their well-being was crucial. Kathy had long ago put this idyllic past behind her, but when two of her Hailsham friends come back into her life, she stops resisting the pull of memory. 

And so, as her friendship with Ruth is rekindled, and as the feelings that long ago fuelled her adolescent crush on Tommy begin to deepen into love, Kathy recalls their years at Hailsham. She describes happy scenes of boys and girls growing up together. But she describes other scenes as well: of discord and misunderstanding that hint at a dark secret behind Hailsham’s nurturing facade. With the dawning clarity of hindsight, the three friends are compelled to face the truth about their childhood – and about their lives now. 

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Check Out Our Never Let Me Go Book Review

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The Book Thief – Markus Zusak

It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will be busier still. By her brother’s graveside, Liesel’s life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger’s Handbook, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordion-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book burnings, the mayor’s wife’s library, wherever there are books to be found. 

But these are dangerous times. When Liesel’s foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel’s world is both opened up and closed down. In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time. 

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Mother Night – Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense. American Howard W. Campbell Jr., a spy during the Second World War, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal. But is he really guilty? In this brilliant first person book rife with true gallows humour, Vonnegut turns black and white into a chilling shade of grey with a verdict that will haunt us all. 

Sorry To Disrupt The Peace – Patrick Cottrell

Helen Moran is thirty-two years old and partially employed as a guardian of troubled young people in New York. She’s accepting a delivery from IKEA in her shared studio apartment when her uncle calls to break the news: Helen’s adoptive brother is dead. According to the internet, there are six possible reasons why her brother might have killed himself. But Helen knows better; she knows that six reasons are only shorthand for the abyss. 

Helen also knows that she alone is qualified to launch a serious investigation into his death, so she buys a one-way ticket to Milwaukee. There, she searches her childhood home and attempts to uncover why someone would choose to die. A bleakly comic tour de force that is by turns poignant, uncomfortably funny, and viscerally unsettling, this debut first person novel announces the singular voice of Patty Yumi Cottrell. 

The Rules Of Attraction – Bret Easton Ellis

Set at an affluent liberal arts college during the height of the Reagan eighties, The Rules of Attraction follows a handful of rowdy, spoiled, sexually promiscuous students with no plans for the future – or even the present. Three of them – Sean, Paul, and Lauren – become involved in a love triangle of sorts within a sequence of drug runs, “Dressed to Get Screwed” parties, and “End of the World” parties. 

As Bret Easton Ellis, bestselling author of American Psycho, trains his incisive gaze on the kids at the self-consciously bohemian Camden College, treating their sexual posturing and agonies with a mixture of acrid hilarity and compassion, he exposes the moral vacuum at the centre of their lives. 

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The Name Of The Wind – Patrick Rothfuss

Told in Kvothe’s own voice, this is the tale of the magically gifted young man who grows to be the most notorious wizard the world has ever seen. The intimate narrative of his childhood in a troupe of travelling players, his years spent as a near-feral orphan in a crime-ridden city, his daring yet successful bid to enter a legendary school of magic, and his life as a fugitive after the murder of a king form a gripping coming-of-age story unrivalled in recent literature.

A high-action story written with a poet’s hand, The Name of the Wind is a masterpiece that promises to transport readers into the body and mind of a wizard. 

The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. 

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister’s place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to death before – and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will need to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love. 

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The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini

The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father’s servant, The Kite Runner is a beautifully crafted novel set in a country that is in the process of being destroyed. It is about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption, and an exploration of the power of fathers over sons – their love, their sacrifices, their lies. 

A sweeping story of family, love, and friendship told against the devastating backdrop of the history of Afghanistan over the last thirty years, The Kite Runner is one of the best first person books that has become a beloved, one-of-a-kind classic. 

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Ice – Anna Kavan

In this haunting and surreal first person novel, the narrator and a man known as the warden search for an elusive girl in a frozen, seemingly post-nuclear apocalyptic world. The country has been invaded and is being governed by a secret organisation. There is destruction everywhere; great walls of ice overrun the world. 

Together with the narrator, the reader is swept into a hallucinatory quest for this strange and fragile creature with albino hair. Acclaimed upon its 1967 publication as the science fiction book of the year, this extraordinary and innovative novel still remains a classic to this day. 

The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time – Mark Haddon

Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals, and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the colour yellow. 

This is the improbable story of Christopher’s quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighbour, and makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and widely heralded novels of recent times.