Books like “The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue”

What to read after “The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue” by V. E. Schwab: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

About “The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue”

Another favorite book?

Or start with a well-known book

1
The Night Circus
Erin Morgenstern · 2011
Similar atmosphere: “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.
2
The Time Traveler's Wife
Audrey Niffenegger · 2003
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “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.
3
The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender
Leslye Walton · 2014
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “Melancholic”
- Magical Realism
- 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.
4
A Monster Calls
Patrick Ness · 2011
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “Melancholic”
- Magical Realism
- Melancholic
Thirteen-year-old Conor is visited at night by a monster shaped like a yew tree, who promises to tell him three stories in exchange for a fourth, one Conor must tell himself. Meanwhile his mother is ill, and Conor struggles with grief, anger and guilt.
5
The Astonishing Color of After
Emily X.R. Pan · 2018
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “Melancholic”
- Magical Realism
- 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.
6
Practical Magic
Alice Hoffman · 1995
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism”
- Magical Realism
- Star-Crossed Lovers
Sisters Sally and Gillian Owens grow up in a small Massachusetts town under a family curse that poisons love. Sally swears off magic while Gillian chases trouble, until a dead boyfriend on Gillian's doorstep drags them both back into the spells they tried to leave behind.
7
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.
8
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.
9
Once Upon a Broken Heart
Stephanie Garber · 2021
Same genre: “Fantasy”
- Faustian Bargain
- Slow Burn
Evangeline Fox believes in true love until she learns that the boy she loves is about to marry her stepsister. Desperate, she makes a bargain with Jacks, a charming, dangerous young man known as a Fate. Their deal pulls her into a world of magic and curses, where every promise has a price and every wish can go wrong.
10
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston · 1937
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
- Star-Crossed Lovers
Janie Crawford tells her friend the story of her life: three marriages, a long search for love and independence, and the storm that changes everything. Set in the Black towns and farms of Florida, the novel follows her from a silent girl to a woman who speaks for herself.
11
The Lovely Bones
Alice Sebold · 2002
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “Melancholic”
- Magical Realism
- Melancholic
Fourteen-year-old Susie Salmon is murdered near her home and watches from her own heaven as her family and her killer's neighbours try to carry on. From that distance she follows her parents' grief, her sister growing up and a small town's slow reckoning with what happened.
12
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.