Books like “The Song of Achilles”

What to read after “The Song of Achilles” by Madeline Miller: 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 Bronze Horseman
Paullina Simons · 2000
Similar setting: “War Fiction”
In Leningrad in 1941, as the German army tightens its siege, Tatiana meets Alexander, a young officer with a secret. Their love is forbidden by her family and by the war, but through hunger, loss and the frozen winter they hold on to each other and to the hope of survival.
2
Kaikeyi
Vaishnavi Patel · 2022
From the same world: “Mythology Retelling”
- Mythology Retelling
Born a princess and cast aside by her father, Kaikeyi claims a place at court and wins the love of a king. When war threatens her sons' future, she uses the boons she was granted to change the fate of a kingdom.
3
A Thousand Ships
Natalie Haynes · 2019
From the same world: “Mythology Retelling”
- Mythology Retelling
- War Fiction
The Trojan War told through its women: queens, captives, mothers and goddesses who wait, grieve and endure while the men fight and die. From the Greek camp to the burning city, their voices answer the old story that left them out.
4
Lavinia
Ursula K. Le Guin · 2008
From the same world: “Mythology Retelling”
- Mythology Retelling
- War Fiction
Lavinia grows up in Latium, a king's daughter who has no voice in her own story. A prophecy names a stranger from Troy as her husband, and when Aeneas arrives their union sets off a war. Years later she tells her own version of the life the epic left unspoken.
5
Divine Rivals
Rebecca Ross · 2023
Same genre: “Historical fantasy”
With the gods at war, two young journalists compete for the same columnist post at a dying newspaper. Iris hides her family's troubles, and Roman, her rival, seems to have everything. When anonymous letters begin to pass between them, neither suspects who is writing on the other side.
6
Seduce Me at Sunrise
Lisa Kleypas · 2008
Similar plot moves: “Friends to Lovers” and “Slow Burn”
- Friends to Lovers
- Slow Burn
Win Hathaway has loved Kev Merripen, the brooding Romany boy taken in by her family, since childhood, and has spent years recovering from illness for his sake. Kev believes he is too dangerous to deserve her, and keeps his distance even as she decides to make him hers.
7
Gild
Raven Kennedy · 2020
From the same world: “Mythology Retelling”
- Mythology Retelling
- Slow Burn
Auren has been King Midas's gilded favourite for years, kept in a golden cage and told she is safe there. Cruelty and control shape every part of her life, and she believes she has no other choice. Then a new king arrives at the castle, and the cracks in her golden world begin to widen.
8
The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea
Axie Oh · 2022
From the same world: “Mythology Retelling”
- Mythology Retelling
- Slow Burn
Mina takes her brother's place as the sacrifice meant to calm the Sea God, and wakes in the realm of spirits. There she searches for the god, hoping to save her village and the boy who has waited for her.
9
Katherine
Anya Seton · 1954
Same genre: “Romance”
- Star-Crossed Lovers
- Slow Burn
In fourteenth-century England, Katherine Swynford becomes a lady-in-waiting and falls in love with John of Gaunt, a royal duke bound by marriage and politics. Their long, often forbidden attachment survives plague, war and the disapproval of a court that cannot forgive a scandal.
10
Ariadne
Jennifer Saint · 2021
From the same world: “Mythology Retelling”
- Mythology Retelling
Princess Ariadne helps Theseus escape the labyrinth, then is abandoned on a shore where Dionysus finds her. She must decide how much of her story to give away to a god, and what freedom is worth.
11
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Taylor Jenkins Reid · 2017
Same genre: “Romance”
- Star-Crossed Lovers
- Slow Burn
A young magazine reporter is chosen to write the life story of a fading film star, Evelyn Hugo. Over days of interviews Evelyn reveals seven marriages, a long-hidden love and the cost of the fame she built.
12
All the Light We Cannot See
Anthony Doerr · 2014
Similar setting: “War Fiction”
- War Fiction
During the German occupation of France, a blind girl and her father flee Paris for the walled city of Saint-Malo, carrying a valuable jewel. In Germany, an orphan with a gift for radio repairs is drawn into the war machine. Their separate paths move slowly toward the same besieged town in August 1944.