4 Novels to Read after Watching Greta Gerwig’s Oscar-Nominated Little Women

January 14 2020
Share 4 Novels to Read after Watching Greta Gerwig’s Oscar-Nominated Little Women

The hype around Little Women has been hard to ignore, but in this case, it’s richly deserved because it’s exquisite. Director Greta Gerwig’s Academy Award–nominated film may be the latest in a long line of adaptations of Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel, but it offers a new lens through which to see the March girls, characters many of us have known and adored since childhood. While Jo’s story remains an undeniable highlight, her sisters’ joys and heartbreaks become equally relatable and moving to behold. Truth be told, I came away from the movie with what felt like a whole new understanding of each of them. Perhaps that’s why I feel like I can recommend what novel you should read next, based on the March sister you felt the greatest kinship with in the movie.

This post was originally published on GetLiterary.com.

All Your Perfects
by Colleen Hoover

Meg

The older I get, the more empathy I have for the eldest March sister, Meg, whose more traditional desires for a husband and a family can be seen as old-fashioned next to the artistic ambitions of Jo and even Amy. Yet love and marriage are an adventure of their own, and not for the faint of heart, which is why Meg fans should read Colleen Hoover’s All Your Perfects. An emotional novel that reminds us that “happily ever after” is only the beginning of any worthwhile romance, it’s the story of a couple (Quinn and Graham) fighting desperately to save their crumbling marriage, because despite all its problems, they love each other and the life they’ve built together too much to walk away from it. Sound familiar?

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All Your Perfects
Colleen Hoover

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of It Ends with Us—whose writing is “emotionally wrenching and utterly original” (Sara Shepard, New York Times bestselling author of the Pretty Little Liars series)—delivers a tour de force novel about a troubled marriage and the one old forgotten promise that might be able to save it.

Quinn and Graham’s perfect love is threatened by their imperfect marriage. The memories, mistakes, and secrets that they have built up over the years are now tearing them apart. The one thing that could save them might also be the very thing that pushes their marriage beyond the point of repair.

All Your Perfects is a profound novel about a damaged couple whose potential future hinges on promises made in the past. This is a heartbreaking page-turner that asks: Can a resounding love with a perfect beginning survive a lifetime between two imperfect people?

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4 Novels to Read after Watching Greta Gerwig’s Oscar-Nominated Little Women

By Heather Waters | January 14, 2020

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In Five Years
by Rebecca Serle

I admit I used to be one of those who felt Jo and Laurie really ought to have ended up together. Saoirse Ronan’s performance as Jo really drove home her reasons for rejecting Laurie’s proposal, however, and Laurie and Amy’s romance won me over. Still, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t subject to the same lingering “what if?” questions that haunted Jo herself. What if she could have pursued a successful writing career and found happiness with Laurie? (This musing brought to you by Ronan and Timothée Chalamet’s chemistry in the movie.) In Rebecca Serle’s gorgeous novel In Five Years, attorney Dannie Kohan finds herself facing a similar fork in the road. Newly engaged and on track for a highly successful career, she’s blindsided by an unsettling vision of her future that may just compel her to reconsider all her present-day choices....

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In Five Years
Rebecca Serle

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A Good Morning America, FabFitFun, and Marie Claire Book Club Pick

In Five Years is as clever as it is moving, the rare read-in-one-sitting novel you won’t forget.” —Chloe Benjamin, New York Times bestselling author of The Immortalists

Perfect for fans of Me Before You and One Day—a striking, powerful, and moving love story following an ambitious lawyer who experiences an astonishing vision that could change her life forever.

Where do you see yourself in five years?

Dannie Kohan lives her life by the numbers.

She is nothing like her lifelong best friend—the wild, whimsical, believes-in-fate Bella. Her meticulous planning seems to have paid off after she nails the most important job interview of her career and accepts her boyfriend’s marriage proposal in one fell swoop, falling asleep completely content.

But when she awakens, she’s suddenly in a different apartment, with a different ring on her finger, and beside a very different man. Dannie spends one hour exactly five years in the future before she wakes again in her own home on the brink of midnight—but it is one hour she cannot shake. In Five Years is an unforgettable love story, but it is not the one you’re expecting.

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Swimming for Sunlight
by Allie Larkin

Beth

Shy and chronically ill, Beth often gets short shrift in Little Women adaptations. Not so in the new movie, where her sweetness, generosity, and gift for music are on full display. Had she had the chance to fully recover from her battle with scarlet fever, I imagine she’d have been on a journey much like that of Katie Ellis in Swimming for Sunlight by Allie Larkin. Reeling from a divorce and suffering from anxiety, Katie and her beloved canine companion, Bark, move back to Florida to stay with the grandmother who raised her. Reconnecting with old friends and even her college love, Luca, puts Katie on a path to healing and reinvention that she needed more than she realized.

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Swimming for Sunlight
Allie Larkin

When recently divorced Katie Ellis and her rescue dog Bark move back in with Katie’s grandmother in Florida, she becomes swept up in a reunion of her grandmother’s troupe of underwater performers—finding hope and renewal in unexpected places, in this sweet novel perfect for fans of Kristan Higgins and Claire Cook.

Aspiring costume designer Katie gave up everything in her divorce to gain custody of her fearful, faithful rescue dog, Barkimedes. While she figures out what to do next, she heads back to Florida to live with her grandmother, Nan.

But Katie quickly learns there’s a lot she doesn’t know about Nan—like the fact that in her youth Nan was a mermaid performer in a roadside attraction show, swimming and dancing underwater with a close-knit cast of talented women. Although most of the mermaids have since lost touch, Katie helps Nan search for her old friends on Facebook, sparking hopes for a reunion show. Katie is up for making some fabulous costumes, but first, she has to contend with her crippling fear of water.

As Katie’s college love Luca, a documentary filmmaker, enters the fray, Katie struggles to balance her hopes with her anxiety, and begins to realize just how much Bark’s fears are connected to her own, in this thoughtful, charming novel about hope after loss and friendships that span generations.

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Little Broken Things
by Nicole Baart

Amy

Did anyone else get the distinct impression that Amy is, in fact, the fiercest, most resilient March sister? Who knew?! From her pragmatic view on marrying wealthy (“I believe we have some power over who we love”) to her unabashed pursuit of her best life (“I want to be great, or nothing”), Amy proved she’s a tough cookie. The same could be said of Quinn Cruz in the family-centric suspense novel Little Broken Things by Nicole Baart. After years of sporadic-at-best communication from her big sister, Quinn’s shocked when Nora not only sends a mysterious text but shows up in person to ask a big favor—that she look after Lucy, a scared little girl she’s never met or heard about before. Stranger yet, Quinn’s told she can’t say a word about Lucy’s existence to anyone, not even their mother. Nora’s clearly in trouble, and Quinn will do all she can to help her, no matter what revelations may follow...

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Little Broken Things
Nicole Baart

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