books with really good love stories

that *aren't* romance novels

Last week at Sundance everyone was talking about movies. Obviously. But there was one film in particular that kept coming up in conversation, not because it was excellent or terrible but because of the out-there plot. The main storyline of this movie is that a woman falls in love with a chair. That’s how it was always described—a woman falls in love with a chair. No other context, that was enough to elicit reactions, eye-rolls from anyone not from LA or New York, intrigued eyebrow raises from everyone else.

Upon actually reading reviews of the movie, which is called By Design, it’s clear that the story is even weirder; Juliette Lewis touches said chair out of adoration and her soul is sucked inside of it. I want to see it just to understand how the director (Amanda Kramer, known for weird and abstract filmmaking) pulled this off, whether there’s an internal monologue, does the chair simply start speaking, I’m intrigued.

Boy meets girl. Girl meets girl. Woman meets chair. Classic love stories.

Love stories aren’t seasonal, of course, but you may want to partake in some Valentine’s-celebratory reading. I enjoy a good rom-com novel every once in a while, but I don’t like to read them too often because they always conclude with a happy ending. I hate knowing what’s going to happen before the end of the book, and it’s a key element of the genre and avid readers expect and demand it. Lucky for us, there are so many books outside of romance that feature heart-wrenching, toe-tingling, eye-watering love stories!!

In her first novel, Cleopatra and Frankenstein, Coco Mellors writes about a doomed love story between an impressionable young aspiring artist and a charismatic yet flawed older man. In Blue Sisters, she tells the story of three sisters and how they navigate their separate lives after the tragic loss of their fourth sister. The dialogue and subtle nuances in the sisters’ relationships is biting and harshly realistic. Coco gets it! Cassandra At The Wedding by Dorothy Baker is also about sisters, this time a pair of twins who couldn’t be more unalike. Cassandra returns to their childhood home with the intent of ruining her sister’s wedding to a total bore, and from there chaos ensues. This was the It Girl novel of 2022, catch up girlies!!!

If you somehow haven’t yet read Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, now’s the time. It follows two friends over twenty years, and how they create art together through their video game programming company and grow together and apart through highs and lows of life. Everything I Know About Love is a memoir by Dolly Alderton that begins with the trials and tribulations of her dating life in her twenties in London but turns into a love letter to her female friendships.

Rabbit Cake by Annie Hartnett tells the story of two sisters and their father figuring out how to keep living after the tragic death of their mother. It’s funny and quirky and heartwarming and about grief in an accessible and not overly sad way. Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong is a stylistically cool novel about a 30-year-old woman who moves back home after breaking off an engagement, only to realize her parents are in worse states than she thought.

I’ve proselytized about Deep Creek by Pam Houston before, and let’s just say especially now it’ll make you want to buy a large piece of land next to a remote mountain and build a life around it. Alternatively, The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom is a memoir about multiple generations and one house in a neglected part of New Orleans, and how it changed throughout 100 years of her family.

Must love dogs!!! Never Leave the Dogs Behind by Brianna Madia is a memoir by the social media influencer who lived in a van with her husband and their three dogs—until it became just Madia and four dogs in a van, and how she got through the hardest years of her life because of those dogs. Welcome to the God Damn Ice Cube by Blair Braverman is Braverman’s memoir about becoming a dog musher, going to mushing school in Norway and eventually moving to northern Wisconsin following a life led by Alaskan huskies.

Thanks for reading! All links are affiliate links, fyi ;)!