100 books like The Last Book Party

A friend of mine recommended this book before it became well-known—and the moment I saw the cover, I knew I had to own it!

Turquoise-blue water, a jagged Italian coastline, pastel-colored buildings set against a cliff, and oh—that typeface that screams late 1950s/early 1960s! Such enticing visuals! Of course, with such a setup, I might have been expecting too much—but the story didn’t disappoint me.

Its initial chapters are set in a small, down-on-its-luck hotel in a remote Italian village where a young starlet with a compelling secret comes to stay. Spanning time periods and continents, the novel has an epic feel.

But it’s that romantic setting that has stayed with me forever and fueled my ongoing love of the Italian coast! 

Lucinda Riley had me before I even opened this book, as I loved the concept: Maia and her sisters, each adopted separately as babies by their enigmatic billionaire father, return upon his death to their childhood home: a castle on the coast of Switzerland’s Lake Geneva.

There, they discover that their father left clues about each sister’s origins. Maia, the eldest, an introverted beauty in her early thirties, learns that her roots are in Brazil, so she sets out to discover more.

I love this novel for its exotic locations, complicated mysteries, star-crossed lovers, and main character who finds her true self by searching her past.

The book is chock full of romance, passion, and history – my favorite ingredients! No surprise, I’m making my way through the whole eight-book series!

Have your tissues ready!

Alexis, a present-day heroine, travels to her mother’s childhood home in Greece, intent upon learning the family’s hidden story. Arriving there, she spies the island of Spinalonga, once an actual leper colony. Hislop then switches time periods, taking the reader to the mid-twentieth century, when leprosy and war tore families apart.

I found Hislop’s writing gentle yet wrenching, and I was heartbroken by scenes between mothers and children who had to separate forever due to illness. But I was moved, too, by the strength, resilience, and capacity for love shown by many of the characters.

I enjoy novels that are based on history, with protagonists who are tested to their very limits. I won’t soon forget this book, and I bet you won’t either!

Full disclosure—I’m a former New Yorker who adores the Big Apple.

So how could I not include a book set on the vibrant, unpredictable island of Manhattan? Anna Quindlen has long been one of my go-to writers, and this is my favorite of her novels – sophisticated, subtle, and thought-provoking.

It revolves around a series of characters—some earnest, some quirky, but all flawed—who live in an apartment building rocked by a disturbing act of violence. I love this book because of all the questions it raises about family, loyalty, and community—and I love the way the building becomes a kind of island itself.

To me, Quindlen is a top-notch chronicler of contemporary motherhood, marriage, and family—and with this story, she is at her best.

Like pretty much every Taylor Swift song, this book made me feel big emotions.

Over the course of one summer in Italy, the main character, Elio, falls in love with a visiting scholar named Oliver. It’s a gay love story filled with all the tension, heat, and anguish that accompanies first love.

It brought me back to my own experiences of falling in love for the first time when every exchange and every gesture felt latent with meaning. 

This tale of Arturo Bandini, a young would-be writer living on the edge in 1930s Los Angeles, is the book that Charles Bukowski discovered in a local library and was purportedly his inspiration for becoming a writer himself. Like Henry Chinaski in Buk’s autobiographical works, Bandini is a stand-in for Fante, and his personal disasters are mined for their comic gold. He falls in love with a waitress named Camilla, only to watch her fall in love with another man and eventually suffer a nervous breakdown. In the end, Bandini realizes he can't help Camilla and must focus on his writing instead—a conclusion that I, as a young writer, totally identified with.

A true storyteller, Orwell invites us into a world of harrowing poverty in which individuals rage against a changing modern society.

An excellently crafted novel; you can almost smell and touch the grime littered throughout this novel. What struck me most was the seamless plot and intriguing characters.

Extremely well-written, fast-paced, gripping, and full of twists and turns, this is a must-read. The finale is quite unexpected. A real old-fashioned page-turner you will probably read more than once in your lifetime.

It’s been years since I first read this book, but I still remember how I felt when I turned the last page, stunned by the voice and the way Jones used horror and humor to explore such tender parts of being alive. I was obsessed with the language, but also the imagery and the characters, vicious yet vulnerable.

Jones has (rightfully!) become even more popular through his Indian Lake trilogy, but I always shove this book into my friends’ hands at the first opportunity because I think about it easily once a week, and I think it’s beautiful and also very fun.

I loved the honesty of Charlie’s narration and how no subject was off-limits. While it might feel a bit overwhelming that Charlie deals with homophobia, suicide, rape, PTSD, mental illness, and child abuse, I thought Charlie’s acknowledgment of these social issues was realistic.

I often feel like these and other human problems are on my mind in a way that restricts my outer actions and that most other people don’t think about things like these as frequently as I do. Charlie made me feel understood. 

I love that our heroine Chloe had a backbone and was able to put our hero Eli in his place and not take his crap. I also like how their road trip adventure to bring Chloe to an important ballet audition starts off with Eli blackmailing her into bringing him, and his dog, along. Eli was another flawed male lead I loved, there were moments where he’s so close to being adorable and perfect, but then he’d be clueless and frustrate Chloe—and me! I really enjoyed that Chloe was ready to forge forward on her own and Eli had to whip himself into shape to earn her!!