Books like “The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender”

What to read after “The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender” by Leslye Walton: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

About “The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender”

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1
The Astonishing Color of After
Emily X.R. Pan · 2018
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “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.
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
Speak
Laurie Halse Anderson · 1999
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
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.
4
Thirteen Reasons Why
Jay Asher · 2007
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
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
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.
7
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.
8
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.
9
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel García Márquez · 1967
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “Melancholic”
- Magical Realism
- Melancholic
The Buendía family founds the town of Macondo and repeats its own history across seven generations, through civil wars, doomed loves and strange miracles. A manuscript of prophecies waits all the while to reveal how their story ends.
10
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.
11
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.
12
The Night Circus
Erin Morgenstern · 2011
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism”
- 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.