100 books like London, With Love

I fell in love with Lizzy and Ciaran as they tried to find their way back to each other after over a decade of not speaking. I loved the glamour of the Cannes film festival, which was a backdrop to the very real, human, unglamorous resentments they were harbouring, and I was gripped by the sense of time running out as the festival progressed.

The flashbacks to their time in France when they first met were gripping, and I was swept away by these two completely believable characters but was also caught up in the sizzle between them, and it’s such a funny, heartfelt book too. 

I loved the premise of this funny, charming romcom, where two babies are born on New Year’s Eve, one minute apart in the same hospital. Minnie is a feisty, lovable heroine, and when she meets Quinn again when they’re both thirty, the dynamic sets the pages on fire.

I loved how the book was sprinkled with star-crossed lovers, fate, and the sense of magic and things being meant to be.

The surrounding cast of characters is also brilliant, and I felt like I knew them all by the end. It’s so heartwarming and romantic, and a book that’s dusted with stardust. 

I found this book so emotional: a book that deals with such difficult subjects and has heartbreak in it but is so uplifting, too.

Scarlet is killed in an accident and has to watch the people she loves deal with the aftermath. I thought Evie’s grief was so real, and I was desperate for her to find happiness again after losing her best friend. I am always drawn to a love story that seems impossible, and this one had me on the edge of my seat as Nate is drawn to Evie, but their happy ever after seems so out of reach.

I cried a lot but finished it full of joy and with a renewed desire to live life to the fullest. 

I am a huge fan of an epic love story that spans years, and this book is one of the best I’ve read!

I laughed, cried, and swooned at the battle of wits between Becca and Charlie, and even though the book starts with such sadness, it is full of fun moments, sparkling dialogue, and real heart and emotion.

I loved being taken on such an intense, delicious rollercoaster ride of a romcom, and I want to press this book into everyone’s hands. It’s my favourite kind of will-they-won’t-they, and it’s such a satisfying, beautiful read. 

I loved the main character, the beautifully named Saffron Everleigh. She’s a woman in 1923 London, trying to make her way in academia at a time when women weren’t usually allowed in the doors.

Her scientific interests and studies in botany come in handy when she attends a dinner party for the school, and a professor’s wife drops to the floor, poisoned by an unknown substance. Working with the equally passionate, ahem, Alexander Ashton, a fellow researcher, Saffron must investigate the murder or wind up next on the murderer's list. There are two more books in this series, so we are lucky to spend more time with our plucky heroine.

I recommend this book because, to me, it is unique–I’ve never read a book like it. It’s an interesting plot, end-of-the-world stuff, with some very unlikeable, low-life characters. It’s set in a very dark version of London that I know and love, in a pub environment similar to the one that I grew up in.

There is murder on the cards throughout the story, but the author still manages to squeeze in some humor. It’s just a different style of writing that I think people should give a try.

To me, this slim novel is perfect, and perfectly constructed.

The narrator spends it obsessing over a single question–why did my sister marry an older, wealthy, boring man?–and doesn’t figure out the answer till the end. And in retrospect, it’s obvious. Meanwhile she also mulls over the options for young women circa the early 1960s in an England that’s transforming dramatically: Do I marry? Stay single? Let my life drift?

My parents bought the Penguin paperback when we lived in London in the late 1960s for a year, when the city was really swinging. I began reading it at 10 and was transfixed by the glimpse it offered into adulthood, and I have re-read the same paperback many times since.

This is one of my favorite books of all time! Kadish adeptly intertwines the story of Ester in 1660s London with that of two modern academics, the soon-to-retire Helen and the grad student Aaron. As they research a treasure trove of papers they have received, they slowly learn of Ester’s astonishing story.

Academic success is not all that is at stake in the lives of Helen and Aaron, and we carefully follow their trials, too. Kadish wrote an article for the Paris Review in 2018 called “Writing the Lives of Forgotten Women,” which I often think of when creating my own characters.

Dickens was a great intuitive psychologist, and The Tale of Two Cities shows some brilliant insights into human behavior during and after revolutions. The wonderful dreams of French society being built on justice and fairness came crashing down after the revolution. This is because people driven by opportunism and pathological hatred took over society. These ‘revolutionaries’ had an intense desire for vengeance and violent retribution–as well as gaining power for themselves. 

This is a feature of revolutions that we see again and again after the collapse of the old regime: unprincipled opportunists jumping to power. The direction of change becomes more radical. Inevitably, a lot of innocent people became victims during this post-revolution period, as did many innocent French people during what became known as the period of ‘Terror,’ when the guillotine rapidly killed thousands and thousands.

Dickens shows that in this terrifying post-revolution period, some individuals make great sacrifices… show more.

This was the first Martina Cole novel I read, and it literally changed my life. Not only does it allow you to get inside the sick and twisted head of a serial killer, but you also get a real insight into the dark and murky criminal underworld. It’s a brutal, violent story, but it really reflects that world. 

The fact that a woman wrote it really did profoundly change something in (young, naive, 15-year-old) me. It opened my eyes to a completely new spin on the crime thriller genre for me, not only for reading but also for when I first began my career as an author.