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🧲 Books like this

Like Water for Chocolate

Laura Esquivel · back to the book

What’s in it

Tap a tag: ❤ = this matters to me · tap again ✕ = don’t care · again to reset. The list below updates each time.

24 books with the same feel

Include books by the same author
❤️

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

Aimee Bender · 345 pages

The wondrous Aimee Bender conjures the lush and moving story of a girl whose magical gift is really a devastating curse. On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein, a girl at the periphery of schoolyard games and her distracted parents' attention, bites into her mother's homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother's emotions in t

Magical RealismChef or BakerMultigenerational FamilyLyrical Prose
❤️

The House of the Spirits

Isabel Allende · 433 pages

"The unforgettable first novel that established Isabel Allende as one of the world's most gifted and imaginative storytellers. The House of the Spirits brings to life the triumphs and tragedies of three generations of the Trueba family. The patriarch Esteban is a volatile, proud man whose voracious pursuit of political power is tempered only by his love for his delicate wife, Clara, a woman with a

Magical RealismMultigenerational FamilyForbidden LoveLyrical Prose
❤️

Garden Spells

Sarah Addison Allen · 290 pages

A successful caterer in Bascomb, North Carolina, Claire has always remained tied to the legacy of the Waverley family, until her peaceful life is transformed by Tyler Hughes, an art teacher and new next-door neighbor, and by the return of her prodigal sister, Sydney.

Magical RealismMultigenerational FamilyChef or BakerLyrical Prose
❤️

The Marriage of Opposites

Alice Hoffman · 384 pages

"A forbidden love story set on the tropical island of St. Thomas about the extraordinary woman who gave birth to painter Camille Pissarro, the Father of Impressionism"--

Forbidden LoveMultigenerational FamilyMagical RealismLyrical Prose
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The Thorn Birds

Colleen McCullough · 573 pages

The Thorn Birds is a 1977 best-selling novel by Australian author Colleen McCullough. Set primarily on Drogheda – a fictional sheep station in the Australian Outback named after Drogheda, Ireland – the story focuses on the Cleary family and spans the years 1915 to 1969.

Multigenerational FamilyForbidden LoveChildhood SweetheartsLiterary Fiction
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The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender

Leslye Walton · 301 pages

Born with bird wings into a family cursed to be foolish in love, sixteen-year-old Ava delves into her family's past hoping to understand her unusual nature and learn to fit in with her peers, but she is ill-prepared for what she discovers. Born with the wings of a bird and eager to be accepted by her peers, 16-year old Ava ventures into the world, ill-prepared for what she discovers and naive to

Magical RealismMultigenerational FamilyLyrical ProseLiterary Fiction
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The Tiger's Wife

Tea Obreht · 360 pages

Remembering childhood stories her grandfather once told her, young physician Natalia becomes convinced that he spent his last days searching for "the deathless man," a vagabond who claimed to be immortal. As Natalia struggles to understand why her grandfather, a deeply rational man would go on such a farfetched journey, she stumbles across a clue that leads her to the extraordinary story of the ti

Magical RealismMultigenerational FamilyLyrical ProseLiterary Fiction
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One Hundred Years of Solitude

Gabriel Garcia Marquez · 422 pages

Tells the story of the Buendia family, set against the background of the evolution and eventual decadence of a small South American town.

Magical RealismForbidden LoveMultigenerational FamilyLyrical Prose
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Malas

Marcela Fuentes · 375 pages

Magical RealismMultigenerational FamilyLyrical ProseLiterary Fiction
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The Island of Eternal Love

Daina Chaviano · 336 pages

Magical RealismMultigenerational FamilyLyrical ProseLiterary Fiction
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Winter's Tale

Mark Helprin · 673 pages

Peter Lake--orphan, thief, mechanic extraordinaire--and Athansor, a flying Brooklyn milkhorse, establish a reign of love and justice in New York City in the year 2000.

Magical RealismForbidden LoveLyrical ProseLiterary Fiction
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Wuthering Heights

Emily Brontë · 318 pages

Forbidden LoveMultigenerational FamilyLyrical ProseChildhood Sweethearts
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Gingerbread

Helen Oyeyemi · 372 pages

Magical RealismMultigenerational FamilyChef or BakerLiterary Fiction
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Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

Anne Tyler · 314 pages

Chef or BakerMultigenerational FamilyLiterary FictionToxic Family Dynamics
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The Taste of Apple Seeds

Katharina Hagena · 280 pages

"When Iris unexpectedly inherits her grandmother's house in the country, she also inherits the painful memories that live there. Iris gives herself a one-week stay at the old house, after which she'll make a decision: keep it, or sell it. The choice is not so simple, though, for her grandmother's cottage is an enchanting place where currant jam tastes of tears, sparks fly from fingertips, love's e

Multigenerational FamilyMagical RealismLyrical ProseLiterary Fiction
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The Shell Seekers

Rosamunde Pilcher · 582 pages

The Shell Seekers is a novel of connection: of one family, and of the passions and heartbreak that have held them together for three generations. The Shell Seekers is filled with real people--mothers and daughters, husband and lovers--inspired with real values. The Shell Seekers centers on Penelope Keeling--a woman you'll always remember in world you'll never forget. The Shell Seekers is a magical

Multigenerational FamilyForbidden LoveLyrical ProseLiterary Fiction
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The Threads of the Heart

Carole Martinez

Magical RealismMultigenerational FamilyLyrical ProseLiterary Fiction
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The Mistress of Spices

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni · 338 pages

Magical, tantalizing, and sensual, The Mistress of Spices is the story of Tilo, a young woman born in another time, in a faraway place, who is trained in the ancient art of spices and ordained as a mistress charged with special powers. Once fully initiated in a rite of fire, the now immortal Tilo--in the gnarled and arthritic body of an old woman--travels through time to Oakland, California, wher

Magical RealismForbidden LoveLyrical ProseLiterary Fiction
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If I Told You Once

Judy Budnitz · 300 pages

"In her novel about mothers, daugthers, and love, Judy Budnitz gives the traditional folktale an electrifying twist as she follows four generations of women from an Eastern European village to the tenements of an American city."--BOOK JACKET. "Illana, eager to escape her formidable mother's all-consuming love, embarks on an epic journey to the New World and is met along the way by evil, magic, an

Magical RealismMultigenerational FamilyLyrical ProseLiterary Fiction
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The Book of Speculation

Erika Swyler · 376 pages

"Simon Watson, a young librarian on the verge of losing his job, lives alone on the Long Island Sound in his family home--a house, perched on the edge of a bluff, that is slowly crumbling toward the sea. His parents are long dead, his mother having drowned in the water his house overlooks. His younger sister, Enola, works for a traveling carnival reading tarot cards, and seldom calls. On a day in

Magical RealismMultigenerational FamilyLyrical ProseLiterary Fiction
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The Hummingbird's Daughter

Luis Alberto Urrea · 512 pages

This historical novel is based on Urrea's real great-aunt Teresita, who had healing powers and was acclaimed as a saint. Urrea has researched historical accounts and family records for years to get an accurate story.

Magical RealismMultigenerational FamilyLyrical ProseLiterary Fiction
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The Red Tent

Anita Diamant · 321 pages

Her name is Dinah. In the Bible, her life is only hinted at in a brief and violent detour within the more familiar chapters of the Book of Genesis that are about her father, Jacob, and his dozen sons. Told in Dinah's voice, this novel reveals the traditions and turmoils of ancient womanhood--the world of the red tent. It begins with the story of her mothers--Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah--the f

Multigenerational FamilyLyrical ProseForbidden LoveLiterary Fiction
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Chocolat

Joanne Harris · 319 pages

A tantalising novel about the ultimate luxury and sin: that dark mistress, chocolate.Try me...Test me...Taste me.When an exotic stranger, Vianne Rocher, arrives in the French village of Lansquenet and opens a chocolate boutique directly opposite the church, Father Reynaud identifies her as a serious danger to his flock – especially as it is the beginning of Lent, the traditional season of self-den

Magical RealismChef or BakerLiterary FictionFemale Lead
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Midnight's Children

Salman Rushdie · 548 pages

Magical RealismMultigenerational FamilyLyrical ProseLiterary Fiction

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