Recommend me your best non literary reads

[Floofydawg]

I love a really good, well written book with a good story. Family dramas are good. Am a bit bored of thrillers. Don't mind chick lit as long as it's very well written and not cheesy. Here are my two favourite books from this year - looking for similar recommendations.

Just Got Real - Jane Fallon
The Herd - Emily Edwards

The second one was very thought provoking, with a subtle unexpected twist at the end.

Following. I struggle with a lot of easy reads as I want to like them for a way to switch off when my brain is too tired for something meaty, but they are often badly written/edited or far too formulaic.

Do you want something epic?

I can recommend The Glass Palace by Amitav Gosh.
Ok it's a historical novel based on real events but has everything you asked for.

A Discovery of Whitches by Deborah Hawks - so much better than the recent cheesy TV series

The Puzzle Women by Anna Ellroy, ok again very recent history but also about family...

Oh yes I loved the Glass Palace!

Will look up the others too

@SweetSakura If you like an easy to read adventure story City of Brass by
S.A Chakraborty is also great!
The author has definitely done some research into Persian/ Arabic mythology which gives the series an added edge if you are interested.

I've just finished Trust Me by Lesley Pearse. I thought it was brilliant.
Also took Greenwich park by Katherine Faulkner on holiday and enjoyed that too.

Harriet Evans

P. G. Wodehouse. I have been re-reading the Jeeves and Bertie novels with a sense of awe. Wodehouse wasn't a novelist, he was a poet – a comic poet. The shimmering beauty of his prose is beyond sublime. It's a funny thing, but Wodehouse, who most people would consider 'light' and non-literary, makes almost every so-called literary writer seem clunky, heavy and dull. I couldn't read him alongside D. H. Lawrence or Thomas Hardy or Ian McEwan, for example. They'd just fade in comparison.

More generally, if I want something light and non-taxing, Agatha Christie, Tolkien, Philip Pullman, Bill Bryson and Sherlock Holmes never fail me.