Books like “The Astonishing Color of After”

What to read after “The Astonishing Color of After” by Emily X.R. Pan: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

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1
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.
2
A Monster Calls
Patrick Ness · 2011
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “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.
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
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.
5
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.
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
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.
8
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Stephen Chbosky · 1999
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
- Coming of Age
Through letters to a stranger, shy teenager Charlie describes his first year of high school. He is taken in by a group of older friends who introduce him to music, love and heartbreak, even as he struggles with grief and memories he cannot fully face.
9
The Lovely Bones
Alice Sebold · 2002
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “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.
10
Practical Magic
Alice Hoffman · 1995
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism”
- Magical Realism
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.
11
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.
12
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.