Books like “A Monster Calls”

What to read after “A Monster Calls” by Patrick Ness: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

About “A Monster Calls”

Another favorite book?

Or start with a well-known book

1
The Astonishing Color of After
Emily X.R. Pan · 2018
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “Melancholic”
After her mother's death, Leigh travels to Taiwan to meet grandparents she has never known, convinced her mother has returned as a red bird. Grief, a family silence and a friendship she left behind come together as she learns what she can and cannot hold on to.
2
The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender
Leslye Walton · 2014
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “Melancholic”
Born with wings she cannot fly, Ava grows up in a Seattle house where the women carry a long history of love that ends badly. As she longs to be an ordinary girl, her family's sorrows keep shaping everyone around her.
3
Before the Coffee Gets Cold
Toshikazu Kawaguchi · 2015
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “Melancholic”
- Magical Realism
- Melancholic
In a small Tokyo cafe, one seat lets a visitor travel to the past. There are rules: you cannot change the present, you must not leave the seat, and you must return before the coffee goes cold. Four customers sit down, each hoping to say what was left unsaid.
4
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
V. E. Schwab · 2020
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “Melancholic”
- Magical Realism
- Melancholic
In 1714 France, Addie LaRue makes a desperate deal to live forever and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. For three hundred years she drifts through history unseen, until in a New York bookshop a young man tells her that he remembers her.
5
The Cat Who Saved Books
Sosuke Natsukawa · 2017
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism”
- Magical Realism
- Coming of Age
A grieving schoolboy meets a talking tabby who leads him through a labyrinth of libraries to rescue books from careless owners. Each strange trial nudges him back toward the world and the people he has shut out.
6
The Midnight Library
Matt Haig · 2020
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “Melancholic”
- Magical Realism
- Melancholic
Stuck between life and death, Nora Seed finds a library whose shelves hold all the lives she might have lived if she had chosen differently. She tries them one by one, measuring her regrets against what she actually wants from being alive.
7
Sing, Unburied, Sing
Jesmyn Ward · 2017
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “Melancholic”
Thirteen-year-old Jojo rides in the back of a truck as his mother drives across Mississippi to collect his white father from prison. The journey stirs up family history and two restless ghosts, drawing Jojo toward a harder understanding of his mother and his own name.
8
The Night Circus
Erin Morgenstern · 2011
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism”
- Magical Realism
A black-and-white circus arrives without warning and opens only at night. Behind its rivalry of illusions stand two young magicians, Celia and Marco, bound by a contest neither chose. As they fall in love, the circus and everyone in it becomes the stakes.
9
Thirteen Reasons Why
Jay Asher · 2007
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
- Coming of Age
Clay Jensen receives a box of tapes recorded by Hannah Baker, a classmate who has taken her own life. As he follows her voice around town, she explains the thirteen reasons behind her decision, and Clay learns his own place in her story.
10
Speak
Laurie Halse Anderson · 1999
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
- Coming of Age
Melinda begins high school as an outcast after calling the police at a summer party, and barely speaks. Through art class and small moments she slowly confronts what happened to her that night and finds the words to name it.
11
Steppenwolf
Hermann Hesse · 1927
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “Melancholic”
- Magical Realism
- Melancholic
A middle-aged loner who feels half man and half wolf drifts through a city he despises, until a chance encounter leads him to a strange magic theatre. There he confronts the many selves inside him. A novel about alienation, desire and finding one's way back to life.
12
The Time Traveler's Wife
Audrey Niffenegger · 2003
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “Melancholic”
- Magical Realism
- Melancholic
Henry has a genetic condition that pulls him through time without warning, so his life with the artist Clare never runs in the usual order. They meet again and again at different ages, and their love must hold through long absences and a future neither of them can change.