Please come and recommend a book

Lucinda Riley the 7 sisters series. Can’t wait for the final book to be released.
Colleen hoover Regretting you & heart bones.

I've just discovered Rosamunde Pilcher (I know, I know) and could not put down The Shell Seekers. It is a family saga and it fits your criteria of 'gripping and compelling with a real good story but that isn't hard to get into'. It's sad in parts but I wouldn't say depressing/harrowing. I was absorbed to the point of sitting up way too late in bed reading it. I definitely felt sad when I'd finished it.

I also loved The Secret History but did not like The Goldfinch (haven’t attempted The Little Friend). Other favourites that haven’t already been mentioned:

The Historian
Gillespie and I
Piranisi
American Gods

For something short and crisp, I would recommend award-winning dystopian novelette “Folding Beijing”. It imagines a Beijing (well, it can be almost every big city in the world really) which can be folded by a mechanical structure and separates upper, middle and working classes into three segregated spaces. You can easily read it in one Sunday afternoon and English translation is beautifully done and made free to all by sci-fi publisher Uncanny Magazine online.

www.flyingsesame.com/folding-beijing-fantasy-or-reality/

I really enjoyed Frog Music by Emma Donoghue.

Jilly Cooper - well written and entertaining. Good fun!

Frank and Stans Bucket list - really enjoyed this book

The Heatwave - Kate Riodan - absorbing story

I really loved this as well.

I agree with PP about loving the Secret History and absolutely hating anything else Tartt ever wrote!!

I’d recommend the Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman, just finished it and it’s good fun, very gripping and heartwarming in the right places

All the light we cannot see, by Anthony Doer.

It gripped me, and is a real page turner. It has short sections/chapters, which alternates between the two protagonists - a blind French girl and a German boy in occupied France.

Anything by Susan Hill. She's very good. Always a page turner but not in a 'trashy' way. I always look forward to reading her.

I enjoyed Room too, as mentioned above. But don't think I could hack reading it in the current lockdown situation
Liked watching the film after reading.

Birdcage walk
The miniaturist

I've just read My Sister the Serial Killer.. it's funny and gripping and not too long. Recommend it.

The blue castle by LM Montgomery is my favourite, it's a joy.

I've just read American Wife and loved it. Really compelling story and well written but easy to get into. Features some very posh Americans so slight Secret History vibe there...

My favourite book ever is also Secret History and I also didn’t get on with her other books. In case we have the same taste my other absolute favourites are:
Morvern Callar
All of Dorothy Sayers
Rivers of London
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
Station 11

YY to Circe - I loved it.

If you want something lighthearted Georgette Heyer - I think The Grand Sophie is the best

I think Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty fits your brief. It's engaging, a good read but not too heavy or depressing.

I second The Heart's Invisible Furies. Best book I read last year by far.

Also recommend Miracle Creek by Angie Kim

Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver - funny and moving

Yy to Bel Canto and Cazalet Chronicles

Shuggie Bain is brilliant but grim and heartbreaking so if you're feeling fragile I would leave it for now.

The Observations by Jane Harris is good fun with a quirky narrative voice.

And I'm not sure I would call James Herriot's All Creatures Great and Small books compelling but I've found them cheerful and easy to read when times are tough.

Not sure if they would be considered depressing but I don't find them depressing but I am a crime drama / novel fan

Blood Orange by Harriet Tyce. A real page turner. Any of Susan Hill's Simon Serrailler crime novels.

Also The Guest List or The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley.

I have recently discovered the Chief Inspector Gamache books by Louise Penny. They are really helping me get through this lockdown.

After You'd Gone, Maggie O'Farrell's first one, is brilliant. V moving.

Bel Canto by Anne Patchett is a gorgeous book - it's about a hostage situation somewhere in South America with opera singers among the hostages. It's both exciting and romantic and also quite literary, but it's definitely not difficult to get into.

Helen Dunmore's The Siege is totally absorbing, about the siege of Leningrad - just as grueling as it sounds but very likeable.

All of the Cazalet novels by Elizabeth Jane Howard are amazing. The Light Years is the first one.

Deborah Harkness's Discovery of Witches series is totally gripping with romance and the supernatural and scholarship. It's a bit like a much cleverer Twilight, but much better than that makes it sound.