These are sorted by how hard they hit, gentlest first. The last few are not gentle at all.
Content notes are included where a book deals with something heavier than ordinary grief, because "it made me cry" and "it was distressing to read" are different experiences and you deserve to know which one you are choosing.
Sarah J. Maas · 626 pages · 2016
The book the entire fandom is actually talking about: recovery, a different court, and a bargain that turns out to mean something else.
M. L. Rio · 354 pages · 2017
Seven fourth-year Shakespeare students who have stopped being able to tell rehearsal from real life. One of them dies. One of them goes to prison.
R. F. Kuang · 527 pages · 2018
Starts as a scrappy war-college underdog story and turns into something considerably harder to read, drawing on the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Heads up: Graphic war violence, genocide, self-harm and drug addiction.
T. J. Klune · 394 pages · 2020
A by-the-book caseworker is sent to inspect an orphanage for magical children, one of whom is the Antichrist and mostly wants to be a bellhop.
Fredrik Backman · 341 pages · 2019
A failed bank robbery turns into a hostage situation at an apartment viewing, and the hostages are worse at this than the robber.
Abby Jimenez · 400 pages · 2022
A Minneapolis ER doctor from a dynasty of doctors falls for a small-town carpenter who is also the mayor, and the problem is not chemistry, it is her family.
Emily Henry · 400 pages · 2024
Her fiance left her for his childhood best friend. She moves in with that best friend's ex-boyfriend. They start posting photos together, purely out of spite.
Alix E. Harrow · 416 pages · 2019
A girl kept as a curiosity in a collector's house finds a book about doors between worlds, and slowly works out that it is about her. A book-within-a-book, done properly.
Tomi Adeyemi · 544 pages · 2018
Magic was killed in one night and a girl with white hair has eleven days to bring it back. West African-inspired, told across four voices, and genuinely angry about power.
Emily St. John Mandel · 352 pages · 2014
A travelling Shakespeare company crossing the Great Lakes twenty years after a flu killed most people. About what is worth keeping, not about surviving.