Contemporary fiction · Similar reads
Books like Ugly Love
The best books like Ugly Love are It Ends with Us, Conversations with Friends, and Normal People. Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover is about grief, emotional unavailability, self-protection. If that's what drew you in, here are 12 books that share its DNA — each summarized on Superbook, and ready to chat with in the app.
- It Ends with Us
01
Colleen Hoover · Contemporary fiction
Lily Bloom moves to Boston after her father's death and opens the flower shop she always dreamed of.
A kindred contemporary fiction read.
Read the summary → - Conversations with Friends
02
Sally Rooney · Literary fiction
Conversations with Friends is told by Frances, a twenty-one-year-old Dublin student who performs spoken-word poetry with her best friend and ex-girlfriend Bobbi.
A kindred contemporary fiction read.
Read the summary → - Normal People
03
Sally Rooney · Literary fiction
Normal People follows Connell and Marianne from their small-town Irish secondary school through their years at Trinity College Dublin.
A kindred contemporary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A General Theory of Love
04
Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon · Psychology
A General Theory of Love is a 2000 book by three psychiatrists at the University of California, San Francisco — Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon — who set out to explain love scientifically without stripping it of its significance.
A kindred contemporary fiction read.
Read the summary → - Beach Read
05
Emily Henry · Contemporary fiction
January Andrews is a romance novelist who has completely lost faith in love after discovering her late father had a secret mistress for years.
Both dig into grief.
Read the summary → - A Fatal Grace
06
Louise Penny · Mystery
A Fatal Grace is the second novel in Louise Penny's Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series, set in the fictional Quebec village of Three Pines.
Both dig into grief.
Read the summary → - A Grief Observed
- A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
08
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Dave Eggers · Memoir
Dave Eggers's debut memoir about losing both parents to cancer within five weeks and raising his younger brother Toph while trying to start a literary magazine in San Francisco in the mid-1990s arrived in 2000 with unusual self-consciousness about its own nature.
Both dig into grief.
Read the summary → - A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
09
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
Ishmael Beah · Memoir
Ishmael Beah was twelve years old when the Sierra Leone civil war reached his village and he was separated from his family.
Both dig into trauma.
Read the summary → - Adult Children of Alcoholics
10
Janet G. Woititz · Psychology
Adult Children of Alcoholics is Janet Woititz's clinical guide to the lasting psychological patterns that develop in children raised in alcoholic families.
Both dig into trauma.
Read the summary → - Can't Hurt Me
11
David Goggins · Memoir
Can't Hurt Me is David Goggins's memoir of escaping an abusive childhood, failing military entrance requirements, becoming a Navy SEAL, and then becoming one of the most accomplished endurance athletes in the world — not through talent or privilege but through a deliberate, painful process of forcing himself past every limit he had.
Both dig into trauma.
Read the summary → - Crying in H Mart
12
Michelle Zauner · Memoir
Crying in H Mart is Michelle Zauner's memoir of her mother's death from cancer and the loss it made her confront: not just of a parent but of the Korean half of her identity.
Both dig into grief.
Read the summary →
Books like Ugly Love: quick answers
What are the best books like Ugly Love?
The best books like Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover are It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover, Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney, Normal People by Sally Rooney, A General Theory of Love by Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon, Beach Read by Emily Henry, plus 7 more below. Each was chosen for themes it shares with Ugly Love, such as grief, emotional unavailability, self-protection.
What should I read after Ugly Love?
A natural next read after Ugly Love is It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover. A kindred contemporary fiction read. Other strong choices are Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney, Normal People by Sally Rooney, A General Theory of Love by Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon.
What books are similar to Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover?
Ugly Love centers on grief, emotional unavailability, self-protection. Books with a similar feel include It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover, Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney, Normal People by Sally Rooney, A General Theory of Love by Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon, Beach Read by Emily Henry, A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny — all free to read and chat with on Superbook.
