I need some books that will make me fall in love with reading

[Strider55]

I'm in a reading rut and really want a book (ideally the start of a series) that will make me want to read instead of waste my time scrolling on YouTube.

Books/authors I love:
Jane Austen
Harry Potter
Have read all the Strike series except the latest because I want to get the physical copy of the book
Jane Casey "Maeve Kerrigan" series - read them all and obsessed
Mitch Albom
Cecelia Ahern
LOTR

Things I don't like:
Romantic fantasy (I read the first two in the ACOTAR because my work colleagues raved about it but it just felt like teenage fanfiction to me)
Anything "spicy", not my cup of tea at all!
Jane Eyre
Wuthering Heights
Just tried "Binding Thirteen" on the suggestion of a colleague who was raving about it and again just couldn't get into it

Any suggestions very gratefully received (and even better if they are cheap/free on Kindle unlimited 😁)

Oh yes American dirt was brilliant. I enjoyed that much more than I expected.

Rivers of London series if you like Potter AND Strike.

My user name is a clue! Yes it’s a long book, but so what, just read it a little at a time. The audible version is great too. I’m an ex English teacher, read Literature at Uni, have a diverse and eclectic taste in books, anything from Jilly Cooper, to the Brontes,
am absolutely not a book snob, will read any thing with a good plot. And Middlemarch is the best of the lot.

Seconding Lucinda Riley Seven Sisters series.

Also The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese.

Game of thrones series

dark tower series

felix castor novels (Carey someone I can't remember)

Phillipa Gregory’s Boleyn stuff might be up your alley if you like history.

Following…

Daphne du Maurier - particularly Rebecca and Jamaica Inn.

Witch Light by Susan Fletcher is beautiful

Duck Feet by Ely Percy

Based on you liking LOTR and the huge amount of world building, epic story telling and foundational fantasy that exists there and also Jane Austin my recommendation is the trilogy that begins with Daughter of the Empire by Janny Wurts and Raymond E. Feist

It's set in a fantasy universe based on medieval Japanese culture. Its about a noble woman who becomes the head of her vast household in a deeply patriarchal and rigid society, who struggles to save her people after her father and brother were murdered and her search for truth and justice. She bends and weaponisises the rules of her society out of her desperation while appearing to obey them. It is my all time favourite book series. The story is huge in scope. The writing is excellent. There is politics, intrigue, war, love, grief, romance, mystery, adventure, magicians.

The Edwardians - Vita Sackville West
Nightingale Wood and Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
Precious Bane - Mary Webb
Invitation To The Waltz and The Weather In The Streets - Rosamond Lehmann
I Capture The Castle - Dodie Smith
Thank Heaven Fasting and The Way Things Are - E M Delafield
Life Among The Savages - Shirley Jackson
The Enchanted April and The Caravanners - Elizabeth von Arnim
The Greengage Summer - Rumer Godden

Not sequels apart from the Rosamond Lehmann books but all smashers that are on my permanent (exempt from culling) bookshelves. And YY to Agatha Christie, I loved the "holiday camp" feeling/atmosphere of Evil Under The Sun

ACOTAR is basically teenage fan fiction, the author was 16 when she wrote it! Before you give up on that fabulous genre, I would urge you to try the Throne of Glass series. It’s the grown up version of ACOTAR and so beautifully written.

But if you want other recs:
The Tenderness of Wolves
We are all completely besides ourselves
Rules of Civility
A Gentleman in Moscow
The Goldfinch

If you want an excellent series - look up The Cazalet Chronicles, by Elizabeth Jane Howard - It’s five books, each with its own title which need to be read in the right order. You get to know the characters so well that it’s a joy to find them again in the next book and at a different stage in life. I read all of them one after the other and really loved them! Kept me going for a good while.

The Wolf Den trilogy! Especially if you read and liked the Song of Achilles or Circe.

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro.

My friends by Fredrik Backman. Or anything by Fredrik Backman. He writes characters so brilliantly

I would second the Shardlake series and anything by Hilary Mantel - I wasn't a fan of anything historical previously but these converted me.

I totally agree with Throne of Glass. I wouldn't give up on Sarah J Maas before you've tried reading that series and you don't need to have read ACOTAR.

Not a series but I really enjoyed The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. It's about a young woman in 18th century France that sells her soul for immortality but words her deal badly so things are very difficult. It tracks her from the 1700s in rural France to modern day New York and I really enjoyed it.

I second this. I’ve just finished Small Pleasures and it will linger in my head and heart for a long time

This is such a brilliant list!
Have you read the Furrowed Middlebrow blog? I’m slowly working my way through the top 100

She’s my favourite author too. I’m just finishing my 2nd reread of all her books and love them!

In Memoriam by Alice Winn and The Nightingale by Kristan Hannah. One based in WW1 and one in WW2, both completely different but both utterly brilliant for different reasons. I’ve never read books based in the WW times however both of these have made me want to look for more. Emotional, horrifying but couldn’t put any down!

The Kate Atkinson Jackson Brodie books (starting with Case Histories) might appeal if you've enjoyed Strike. The latest one wasn't up to much but the first few are great.

Stephen Leathers Spider Shepherd series is brilliant.

You may like Uprooted by Naomi Novik or Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett. They are both romantic fantasy, but not Romantasy like ACOTAR (there's a big difference!).