Books like “The Vanishing Half”

What to read after “The Vanishing Half” by Brit Bennett: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

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1
All the Light We Cannot See
Anthony Doerr · 2014
Same genre: “Historical fiction” and “Literary fiction”
- Coming of Age
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.
2
Clown in a Cornfield
Adam Cesare · 2020
Similar setting: “Small Town Secrets”
- Small Town Secrets
- Coming of Age
After her mother's death, Quinn moves with her father to Kettle Springs, a Missouri town split between resentful adults and bored teenagers. At the Founder's Day party in a cornfield, the town mascot, Frendo the Clown, begins killing students, and Quinn has to work out who can be trusted.
3
Where the Crawdads Sing
Delia Owens · 2018
Same genre: “Literary fiction”
- 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.
4
The Silent Sister
Diane Chamberlain · 2014
Similar setting: “Small Town Secrets”
- 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.
5
A Good Girl's Guide to Murder
Holly Jackson · 2019
Similar setting: “Small Town Secrets”
- Small Town Secrets
- Coming of Age
For a school project, Pip reopens the closed case of Andie Bell, a local girl murdered five years ago, and her boyfriend Sal, who confessed and then died. As she records interviews with the people involved, the tidy story everyone accepted begins to come apart.
6
The Reformatory
Tananarive Due · 2023
Same genre: “Historical fiction”
- Small Town Secrets
- Coming of Age
Florida, 1950. Twelve-year-old Robert is sent to a brutal reform school after a scuffle with a white teenager. He can see ghosts, including the boys who died there, and the warden wants to use that ability. Outside, his sister works with a lawyer to bring him home.
7
My Heart Is a Chainsaw
Stephen Graham Jones · 2021
Similar setting: “Small Town Secrets”
- Small Town Secrets
- Coming of Age
Jade, a high-school senior obsessed with slasher films, is sure a killer has come to her small Idaho town. Nobody believes her, so she pins her hopes on a new classmate she thinks is destined to be the final girl who survives. Her theory is also a way of outlasting her own life.
8
A Flicker in the Dark
Stacy Willingham · 2022
Similar setting: “Small Town Secrets”
- 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.
9
The Killer Inside Me
Jim Thompson · 1952
Similar setting: “Small Town Secrets”
- Small Town Secrets
- Dual Identity
Deputy sheriff Lou Ford seems like an ordinary small-town man, but his mild manner hides a violence he has carried since childhood. When old secrets and a woman from his past resurface, his two selves begin to pull him toward more killing.
10
A Study in Scarlet Women
Sherry Thomas · 2016
Similar plot moves: “Dual Identity”
- Dual Identity
Too clever for Victorian society and blamed when three people die, Charlotte Holmes flees to London and takes the name Sherlock Holmes. With a kind widow, a police inspector and a man who loves her, she works the case while hiding who she really is.
11
Dark Places
Gillian Flynn · 2009
Similar setting: “Small Town Secrets”
- Small Town Secrets
Years after her mother and sisters were killed and her teenage brother was convicted, Libby Day is approached by a group of true-crime enthusiasts who believe he is innocent. Short of money, she agrees to ask questions, and the answers force her to revisit what she remembers of that night.
12
The Little Friend
Donna Tartt · 2002
Similar setting: “Small Town Secrets”
- Small Town Secrets
- Coming of Age
Years after a boy was found hanged in the family garden, his younger sister sets out to learn who killed him. Her amateur sleuthing among the town's odd characters pulls her from her grieving family into a dangerous, half-understood world.