“Gradually the waiting began to feel less like waiting and more like this was simply what life was: the distracting tasks undertaken while the thing you are waiting for continues not to happen.”
Sally Rooney’s 2017 novel Conversations with Friends is a sharp and tender story of two college students and the strange relationship they both form with a married couple. The story follows twenty-year-one-year old Frances and her best friend (and high school lover) Bobbi. After the pair attend a spoken word gig, they encounter Melissa, an older woman who invites them into her home, where they meet her handsome husband, Nick. Soon, Frances and Nick’s harmless flirting develops into something more serious, leading to her struggling with the balance between college, Bobbi and her new involvement with Nick and Melissa. If you love all things Sally Rooney, join us at What We Reading for the best books like Conversations with Friends! These stories are all as equally tender, witty and poignant as Frances’ story, exploring everything from love, and connection to the pleasures and dangers of growing up.
Beautiful World, Where Are You – Sally Rooney
If you loved Conversations with Friends, you might want to give another one of her best works a read. Her 2021 romance book, Beautiful World, Where Are You, follows the story of Alice, Felix, Eileen and Simon. Alice is a novelist, whereas Felix works in a warehouse. When the pair meet, she asks if he would like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, Eileen is struggling to get over a break-up when she begins flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood.
Alice, Felix, Eileen and Simon are all still young, but they all feel life slowly starting to catch up with them. They desire each other, delude each other and constantly worry about love, friendship and the world they live in. The question is: will they be able to find a way to believe in a beautiful world? A global bestseller delivered with Rooney’s distinctive style, Beautiful World, Where Are You is similar to Conversations with Friends with its exploration of friendships and the pitfalls of young adulthood.
Exciting Times – Naoise Dolan
Ava moved to Hong Kong in search of happiness, but things haven’t worked out so far. Since leaving Dublin, she has been teaching English to privileged children and avoiding her roommates in her cramped apartment. When Ava meets Julian, an eccentric British banker, he whisks her into a lavish lifestyle of a bigger apartment, more expensive clothes and, eventually, a full-on relationship. But, when he is called back to London, Ava stays put, unsure where things stand.
That’s when she meets Edith. A Hong Kong-born lawyer who is equally striking and ambitious, she is everything Ava wants to be. So, when Julian announces that he is returning home, she faces a pivotal decision: accept an easy life with him, or leap into the unknown with Edith? One of the best books like Conversations with Friends, Naoise Dolan’s Exciting Times matches Rooney’s blend of dry humour, political astuteness and the many uncertainties of modern life.
Topics Of Conversation – Miranda Popkey
Miranda Popkey is often compared to Sally Rooney, and books like Topics of Conversation are a great demonstration of the similarities between these two acclaimed authors. This 2020 feminist piece of literary fiction is constructed from a series of conversations, with each chapter named after the year and location it took place.
Whilst there isn’t much of a plot to speak of, this loose structuring allows Popkey to deftly demonstrate how even the most seemingly inconsequential of conversations can line up to produce something profound when stacked in the right order. Listed by TIME as a Best Book of the Year, Topics of Conversation covers everything from art, motherhood, sex, violence, anger, envy and guilt.
The Lesser Bohemians – Eimear McBride
When she arrives in London, an eighteen-year-old Irish girl begins her new life with hopes of achieving the sort of fame every young actor dreams of. Young, naive and unexotic, she initially struggles to fit in but, gradually, soon finds friendship and a place for herself in the United Kingdom’s bustling capital.
Then she meets an attractive older man. He’s an established veteran in the business, twenty years older than her, and the inevitable relationship the pair soon find themselves embarking on will change her forever. Eimer McBride’s The Lesser Bohemians is a captivating story of passion and innocence set against the bedsits of London in the 1990s. If you loved the dynamics between Nick and Frances, this is undoubtedly one of the best books like Conversations with Friends.
Saltwater – Jessica Andrews
Lucy is lost. Growing up in Sunderland, she has always wanted more from life. Whilst others were thinking of the Nissan factory or call centres, she was dreaming of Pete Doherty and the endless possibilities London had to offer. University would be her way out. However, once she gets there, she soon realises that the big city isn’t for her. No matter what she wears, what she eats or who she speaks to seems to be the right thing.
And so Lucy packs all of her things and moves again, this time to her deceased grandfather’s stone cottage in the rugged and rural part of Donegal. There, she sets about piecing together the chapters of her life in an effort to confront where she has come from, and where she is going. Similar to Conversations with Friends, Jessica Andrews’ Saltwater is a story about growing up, where we come from and the aimless periods in limbo we find ourselves in.
Little Rabbit – Alyssa Songsiridej
When the unnamed narrator of Alyssa Songsiridej’s 2022 book Little Rabbit first meets the choreographer at an artists’ residency in Maine, there isn’t the spark most have come to expect from romance stories. She thinks he is loud and domineering, whilst he views her as overly serious and guarded. But, when their paths cross again and he invites her to attend a performance by his dance company, she is compelled to attend. What follows as a result of this interaction is a summer of this narrator exploring both him and herself, following the choreographer from his home in the Berkshires to his apartment in New York.
However, back in Boston, her roommate Annie’s scepticism about these weekend romps away soon starts to tug at her own doubts. What does it mean when a young artist pairs with an older mentor? Or when a queer young woman gets involved with an older man? Like Conversations with Friends, Little Rabbit is a coming-of-age tale that explores artistic drive, lust, punishments and how losing and finding oneself do not have to be exclusive moments.
Almost Adults – Ali Pantony
Looking for more coming-of-age books like Conversations with Friends? Ali Pantony’s Almost Adults needs to be on your TBR list!
Pantony’s debut novel follows Mackie, Edele, Alex and Nat (aka. The MEAN Girls). The four of them are navigating the many joys of adulthood – getting things together, breaking up and making up, moving out and moving on. Like Rooney’s work, all four of these friends are incredibly relatable and Almost Adults wonderfully captures the feeling of believing new adulthood was meant to be the start of your ‘best life’, and what happens when that is yet to materialise.
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Ordinary People (Ordinary People #1) – Diana Evans
Set in South London in 2008, Diana Evans’ Ordinary People is the story of two couples who find themselves on the brink of reckoning, caught between acceptance and revolution. Melissa has a new baby and doesn’t want to let it change her. But, surrounded by the crooked walls of her Victorian terrace, she begins to feel herself disappear. Michael still loves Melissa, but can’t get close enough to stay faithful to her. In the suburbs, Stephanie is happy with Damian and their three children. But, the death of Damian’s father soon throws him into crisis. Or could it be something, or someone, else?
Similar to Conversations with Friends, these two couples are forced to question whether they may all be in the wrong place and whether any of them are prepared to take a new leap into life. Ordinary People is an intimate and immersive portrait of identity, friendship love and the very moments in life that make or break us.
Sweet Home – Wendy Erskine
A lonely woman becomes fascinated with her niqab-wearing neighbour. A lonely rock icon ends his days on the street where he was born. A husband and wife duo become enmeshed in the lives of the young couple they’ve hired to do their gardening and cleaning.
Set in contemporary East Belfast, Wendy Erskine’s Sweet Home is a collection of eleven acutely observed short stories, all of which are tinged with sorrow, regret, desire and yearning. Like Conversations with Friends, Erskine blends dry humour with clear-eyed compassion as she presents her assortment of compelling characters struggling to stay in control in a cruel and confusing world, and whose interactions reveal a lot about human connections.
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Cleopatra And Frankenstein – Coco Mellors
Twenty-four-year-old British painter Cleo has escaped from England to New York. She is still struggling to find her place in the city that never sleeps when, with a few months left on her student visa, she meets Frank. Twenty years older than her and a self-made success, he offers her the chance to apply for a green card, the freedom to paint and the chance to be happy. But, their impulsive marriage brings with it an array of irreversible changes to both their lives and the lives of those closest to them in ways they could have never imagined.
Every chapter in Coco Mellor’s Cleopatra and Frankenstein follows the lives of Cleo, Frank and their cast of friends and family as they grow up and grow older. As hilarious as it is heartbreaking, Cleopatra and Frankenstein is one of the best books like Conversations with Friends for anyone looking for another read that tackles dysfunctional relationships through a cast of utterly compelling and absorbing characters.
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Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
