Books like “The Little Friend”

What to read after “The Little Friend” by Donna Tartt: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

About “The Little Friend”

Another favorite book?

Or start with a well-known book

1
Sharp Objects
Gillian Flynn · 2006
Similar atmosphere: “Southern Gothic”
- Southern Gothic
- Small Town Secrets
Reporter Camille Preaker returns to her small hometown to cover the murders of two girls. She must face her mother and half-sister, and her own memories, while the pressure of the assignment pushes her back toward the habits she has tried to leave behind.
2
Dead Until Dark
Charlaine Harris · 2001
Similar atmosphere: “Southern Gothic”
- Southern Gothic
- Small Town Secrets
Sookie Stackhouse, a telepathic waitress in Bon Temps, Louisiana, has given up on dating until a vampire named Bill Compton walks into the bar. As the town's first vampire resident, Bill draws suspicion, and when women close to Sookie are murdered, she must use her gift to find the killer.
3
To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee · 1960
Similar atmosphere: “Southern Gothic”
A girl grows up in a sleepy Alabama town where her father, a lawyer, defends a Black man falsely accused of a crime. Through her eyes we watch the town's prejudice, the trial, and a reclusive neighbour's secret. A classic about childhood, race and courage.
4
The Wife Upstairs
Rachel Hawkins · 2021
Similar atmosphere: “Southern Gothic”
- Southern Gothic
A broke dog-walker in a gated Alabama neighborhood charms a recent widower whose wife drowned in a boating accident. As she settles into his grand house and hears more about the woman who came before her, the story she is being told keeps failing to add up.
5
The Dry
Jane Harper · 2016
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
- Small Town Secrets
A federal agent returns to the drought-stricken town he left twenty years ago, for the funeral of a childhood friend believed to have killed his family. Old questions about the death that drove him away surface again while he helps the local police look into a new one.
6
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires
Grady Hendrix · 2020
Similar atmosphere: “Southern Gothic”
- Southern Gothic
- Small Town Secrets
Patricia, a suburban housewife in 1990s Charleston, joins a true-crime book club that becomes the only excitement in her week. When a new neighbour is suspected of preying on local children, the women try to convince a town that would rather not listen, and then take matters into their own hands.
7
Sing, Unburied, Sing
Jesmyn Ward · 2017
Similar atmosphere: “Southern Gothic” 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 House Next Door
Anne Rivers Siddons · 1978
Similar atmosphere: “Southern Gothic”
- Southern Gothic
- Small Town Secrets
A new house is built beside the Kennedys in their quiet Atlanta neighbourhood. Over two years the families who move in are destroyed by scandal and violence, and even visitors are touched. Colquitt begins to believe the house itself is malevolent, and decides to warn the world.
9
The Silent Sister
Diane Chamberlain · 2014
Same genre: “Mystery fiction”
- Small Town Secrets
After her father's death, Riley returns to their North Carolina house to settle his estate. Sorting through his papers, she finds evidence that her older sister, long believed to have killed herself as a teenager, may be alive and living under another name.
10
A Flicker in the Dark
Stacy Willingham · 2022
Same genre: “Mystery fiction”
- Small Town Secrets
As a child she helped put her father away for killing girls. Twenty years later she is a therapist about to marry, when young women in her town begin to disappear again and the old case follows her into the present.
11
Where the Crawdads Sing
Delia Owens · 2018
Similar setting: “Small Town Secrets”
- Small Town Secrets
- Coming of Age
Abandoned by her family as a child, Kya grows up alone in a North Carolina marsh, shunned by the nearby town as the Marsh Girl. She teaches herself to survive on the land and inches toward love, until a local man is found dead and she becomes the chief suspect.
12
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.