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This book is narrated by a dog called Enzo, who is a ‘philosopher with a nearly human soul’. Enzo’s human is a race car driver called Denny Swift, and through him, he learns the lessons of life with all its twists and turns.
Author Stein was a racer...
The Art of Racing in the Rain: Garth Stein
This book makes the reader feel many emotions in a story about a boy with no emotions. Yunjae is our protagonist, who has a condition called Alexithymia. His pleasant enough life is destroyed when an attack on his caregivers leaves him alone in the w...
Almond: Won-Pyung Sohn
With a dystopian tilt, this book reminds us yet again why Kazuo Ishiguro won a Nobel Prize for literature. We meet a set of four friends at a boarding school set in the idyllic English countryside. They’re being taught about art, literature and more ...
Never Let Me Go: Kazuo Ishiguro
Beartown has a robust cast of characters and you get to read the story from all their perspectives in bits and pieces. The story is based in a small town in Sweden. Down on their luck, the townsfolk are struggling to get by, with declining tourism an...
Beartown: Fredrik Backman: 9781501160776
When this book was published in 2013, the hearts of readers around the world collectively broke. Especially in the South Asian community, but more on that later. The story begins in peaceful Afghanistan in 1975. Boys Amir and Hassan are friends – the...
The Kite Runner: Khaled Hosseini
Matt Haig’s book doesn’t really belong in a list of sad books. However, it is one that will likely make you shed a tear of joy or simply out of knowing that you’re not alone. In this memoir, he details his struggle with depression and how he overcame...
Reasons to Stay Alive: Matt Haig
The pages of Wave are filled with pain. Deraniyagala doesn’t hold back when she opens up about the tragic loss of the people she held the closest to her heart – all in one devastating day. December 26, 2004, a tsunami hit the southern coast of Sri La...
Wave: Sonali Deraniyagala: 9780345804310
Shuggie Bain is a profoundly moving depiction of a working-class family living in 1980s Glasgow, Scotland. The period was plagued by high unemployment and its consequences – poverty, violence, drugs, prostitution, and alcoholism.
Hugh ‘Shuggie’ Bain...
Shuggie Bain: Douglas Stuart
Beautiful Boy has been turned into a film with Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet, but we suggest first giving the book a read, along with the companion book Tweak. We get to read about a real father-and-son relationship as the son is struggling with...
Beautiful Boy: David Sheff
We’re introduced to four friends after they graduate from college. You watch their friendship evolve, their coming of age and growth over the decades. You fall in love with them, care about them – and then Yanagihara decides to rip your heart out fro...
A Little Life: Hanya Yanagihara
You may know John Boyne from the book (and subsequent film) that did a sneak attack and destroyed us all, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.
This one is the life story of a character named Cyril Avery, told from his childhood, born out of wedlock in th...
The Heart's Invisible Furies: John Boyne
I ended up crying multiple times.
Before the Coffee Gets Cold: Toshikazu Kawaguchi: 9781335430991
My head hurt from how much I cried from this book.
All the Bright Places: Jennifer Niven: 9780385755917