#BookTwins If You Liked..The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold..You Might Like Silhouettes by @ELTenenbaum

Book Twins

“If you read … you’ll like …”

When you’ve read a book, do you sometimes find yourself thinking “oh, that really reminds me of *insert name of another book*”?

Welcome to a new feature, in which my team and I make reading suggestions based on your favourites, be they classics, or newer best sellers.  Our recommendations consider not just genre, but writing style, plot—and that ‘feel’ you can’t quite put your finger on.

This week’s choice is from team member Olga:

If you like…The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, then you might like Silhouettes by E.L. Tenenbaum.

The Lovely Bones is a novel that follows the experiences of a 14-year-old girl who was murdered and from heaven checks on her family and tries to keep in touch with them. There are thriller elements, as she also follows the investigation into her murder, but what readers remember most are the reflections about memory, family, and what life is all about.

In Silhouettes, Brooke, an 18-year-old girl, dies in a car crash and discovers that she is not quite gone. She is hanging around on Earth, but her friends and family cannot see her, only others like her. She was a popular girl, a great dancer, a good student, and came from a happy family. She meets Tyler, a boy from her school that she’d never noticed but who is in the same situation and they both try to make sense together of why they are still here, whatever ‘here’ is. He was neither popular, nor well-off, and his family situation was far from happy, but they discover they have more in common than they ever realised when they were alive.

The story, written in the first person, from Brooke’s perspective, is beautifully reflective, as she comes to understand that people might appear happy on the surface but most have experience hurt and loss, and she gains insight into what are the really important things in life. There are secrets we discover as we read and, despite the subject, the message is positive and hopeful. The novel is classified as Young Adult and it is a clean read, with no swearing or sex scenes, but I would recommend it to anybody looking for an inspiring and spiritual read that goes beyond specific religious beliefs. I would especially recommend it to readers who loved The Lovely Bones but were concerned about the most gruesome aspects of the plot.

AmazonUk | AmazonUS

Have you read The Lovely Bones?  Would you try Silhouettes?