Recommendations!

[Ansumpasty]

Does anyone have any recommendations for a well written novel with a love story intertwined? So not a beach romance type read, but something a bit more literary?
Just finished The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah and really enjoyed it. Added bonus is set somewhere besides the uk, to gain an insight into other cultures!

Thank you

Emma Bull’s Freedom and Necessity has a wonderful love story at the heart of it. It’s billed as fantasy, and it sort of is, but it’s actually a dense historical novel dealing with the Chartist movement, written as a series of letters. It’s a lovely book.

One of my favourite books is Laurie King’s Folly. It is a kind of love story, but it is really about a woman coming to terms with her past, so she can have a future.

Thanks!

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. Remains my all-time favourite novel.

@LifeInAHamsteeWheel

I’ve read that one, loved it :)

I really liked A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xialou Guo. It is narrated by a Chinese woman who comes to the UK to study English, and tells the story as her English gradually improves.

Oooh ooh and I also loved The Rose Grower by Michelle de Kretser. It's about an aristocratic family in revolutionary France, and it reminded me a lot of Sense and Sensibility.

I've just finished the nightingale by kirstin Hannah. I really enjoyed it and there
Was a Love story entwined in the horror of war. Really recommend.

@blueberry2310

I read that before The Great Alone, also loved it. I actually preferred The Great Alone (same author), so recommend if you haven’t read it!

Have you read Tin Man? Beautiful book with a love story that's a bit different running through it.

Have you read the Tattooist of Auschwitz? That fulfils your brief too, I finished it in a day I was so hooked!

I am reading Tin Man right now and I finished the Tattooist of Auschwitz before Xmas! I have Cilka’s Journey to read from the library

I read The History of Love by Nicole Krauss quite some time ago, I can't remember the plot but I know that I really enjoyed it!

Have you read The God of Small Things? It's the melancholy side of love, rather than some great love story, and deals with filial love as as well as romantic. But I love it and the writing is beautiful.

Talking of Indian love stories, if you fancy a huge heft of a book, A Suitable Boy also meets the bill. It is massive and I think that puts a lot of people off, but it is so readable and worth getting sucked into. It's often billed as more of a family saga, but the central premise is a young woman having to choose a husband from multiple suitors whilst resisting the influence of her mother and brother, who both have string ideas about how she should live her life. In fact I'm tempted to reread it before the BBC adaptation later this year.

I recommended dual cultivation novel because this novel story so nice.

My Dear I Wanted To Tell You by Louisa Young includes a touching love story but also incorporates WWI experiences, early reconstructive surgery, the art world .. it is much better than the chick-lit type of cover would suggest.