What to read after “The Girl Who Drank the Moon” by Kelly Barnhill: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.
In Bethel, a settlement ruled by a prophet's strict laws, Immanuelle Moore is an outcast because of her mother's forbidden union. A trip into the Darkwood where four witches were killed leaves her with her mother's diary and a growing sense of the lies at the heart of the town. To survive, she must confront what the Darkwood wants from her.
Marra, a shy convent-raised princess, learns that no one will save her sister from a cruel prince -- so she decides to do it herself. Three impossible tasks, a gravewitch, a reluctant fairy godmother and a demon-possessed chicken later, she sets out to stop a king.
A young man promises to retrieve a fallen star for the girl he loves and crosses a wall into the land of Faerie. There he finds the star is a woman pursued by witches and princes, and his errand becomes a journey of its own.
Angrboda is a witch burned three times for refusing to reveal the future. She hides in a forest and builds a quiet life until Loki finds her, and their children draw the eyes of the gods. A prophecy turns every small happiness into a countdown.
Cursed by a witch into an old woman's body, Sophie takes shelter in the moving castle of the vain wizard Howl. Amid a fire demon, a scarecrow and Howl's tangled contracts, she finds a home and a way to break her own spell.
A unicorn learns she may be the last of her kind and leaves her forest to search for the others. With a bumbling magician and a sharp-tongued woman she travels to a king's castle, where love and loss wait at the end of the road.
For years the invading Jure'lia have been beaten back, but the cost has drained the empire. Tormalin, an exiled Eboran, and Vintage, a scholar, are hunting the truth about the fell-witches when they find Noon, a woman carrying a power the Jure'lia have waited centuries to claim.
With the witch hunts still burning, Lou and Reid flee and try to gather allies against the church. They bargain with people they do not trust and hide a bond more dangerous than any enemy. As the threat grows, Lou senses that the darkness inside her is not as harmless as she believed.
Eli Monpress is a wizard and a thief who would rather have a larger bounty than a heavier purse. To raise it he kidnaps a king, which brings the Spirit Court's envoy Miranda Lyonette after him. Eli's easy charm hides a plan that puts more than his own bounty at stake.
Every ten years the wizard known as the Dragon takes one girl from Agnieszka's valley. When he chooses her instead of her best friend, she is carried to his tower, where she discovers a talent for magic, a growing bond with her cold teacher and the corrupted Wood that threatens them all.
Morrigan Crow is blamed for every misfortune and is marked to die on her eleventh birthday. Instead she is spirited away to the secret city of Nevermoor to compete for a place in an exclusive society, against rivals and a curse that still hunts her.
Sybel lives alone on Eld Mountain with the magical beasts she has called to her. A soldier, Coren of Sirle, brings her an infant to raise, then returns twelve years later to take the boy back. Sybel is drawn into a world of kings and revenge, where love and hatred become hard to separate.
Rincewind, a wizard who failed out of magic school, is saddled with guiding Twoflower, the Discworld's first tourist, on a chaotic tour. Their journey drags a naive optimist, a walking luggage chest and a very unwilling hero through one disaster after another.
Four friends once swore an oath to Her Majesty's Royal Coven, the secret department of witches protecting Britain. Decades on, one runs the coven and one has left it, and whispers of a prophecy and a young warlock of frightening power force them to choose between tradition and what is right.
Tress lives on an island where the seas are made of deadly spores. When the man she loves is taken by the Sorceress, she leaves her ordinary life, gathers an unlikely crew and sails toward the midnight sea to bring him home.
Witch sisters Emilia and Vittoria live secretly among humans, hiding from those who would kill them. When Vittoria is found murdered, Emilia swears to hunt down the killer, even using forbidden magic. Her search brings her to Wrath, a prince of Hell she cannot trust and cannot look away from.
Fat Charlie Nancy learns that the father he barely knew was the spider god Anansi, and that he has a brother he never met. Spider is charming, magical and trouble, and he turns Charlie's careful life upside down while Charlie tries to bury a past that will not stay buried.
Lou is a witch hiding in a city where the church hunts her kind. Reid is a captain of the witch hunters and a devoted servant of that church. When a reckless act binds them in a union neither wanted, both must choose between faith, duty and a feeling they were raised to despise.
Out of work and desperate, Evie Sage takes a job as assistant to the kingdom's most feared villain. Her boss is grumpy, the work is murder, and someone close to him is betraying him. Evie's sunny good cheer may be exactly what his gloomy fortress was missing.
Two orphaned brothers run away to Venice and fall in with a gang of street children led by the mysterious Thief Lord, who claims to be a master burglar. The children live in an abandoned cinema, stealing what they need and looking out for one another, until a strange commission and a magical carousel pull them into a bigger adventure than they expected.
Born to a sun god, Circe is banished to a lonely island for her forbidden magic. She hones her craft, meets travellers and monsters, and slowly chooses what kind of immortal she wants to be.
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.
In a northern village at the edge of the Russian wilderness, Vasya grows up hearing the old house spirits and fairy tales her stepmother forbids. When new winters bring a creeping evil, only Vasya, who can still see the spirits, can bargain with the forces threatening her home.
Mika Moon hides her magic and never lets herself grow close to anyone. When a strange house asks her to teach three young witches, she meets a prickly librarian, a house full of secrets and the possibility of a place that finally feels like home.
What should I read after “The Girl Who Drank the Moon”?
Start with “The Year of the Witching”, “Nettle & Bone”, “Stardust”: they are the closest to “The Girl Who Drank the Moon” in tropes and mood. Under each book in the list you will see what exactly it has in common.
How are similar books chosen?
We compare tropes (for “The Girl Who Drank the Moon” these are Cursed Village, Witches, Found Family), genre, plot, era and tone. It is not “readers also bought”; it is similarity in the content itself.
Are there recent books in this list?
Yes. Among the newer ones are “The Year of the Witching”, “Nettle & Bone”, “The Witch's Heart”. Switch the “Modern” filter to keep only books from 2000 onward.
