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🧲 Books like this

Mrs. Saint and the Defectives

Julie Lawson Timmer · back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

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❤️

Don't Let Me Go

Catherine Ryan Hyde · 432 pages

NeighborsElderly ProtagonistFound FamilySecret Past
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All the Lonely People

Mike Gayle · 430 pages

NeighborsSecret PastElderly ProtagonistFound Family
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Other Birds

Sarah Addison Allen · 320 pages

Between the real and the imaginary, there are stories that take flight in the most extraordinary ways. Right off the coast of South Carolina, on Mallow Island, The Dellawisp sits-a stunning old cobblestone building shaped like a horseshoe, and named after the tiny turquoise birds who, alongside its human tenants, inhabit an air of magical secrecy. When Zoey comes to claim her deceased mother

NeighborsFound FamilyWomen's FictionHeartwarming
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Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Fannie Flagg · 403 pages

Folksy and fresh, endearing and affecting, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is a now-classic novel about two women: Evelyn, who’s in the sad slump of middle age, and gray-headed Mrs. Threadgoode, who’s telling her life story. Her tale includes two more women—the irrepressibly daredevilish tomboy Idgie and her friend Ruth—who back in the thirties ran a little place in Whistle Stop, Ala

Elderly ProtagonistFound FamilyWomen's FictionHeartwarming
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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

Elderly ProtagonistSecret PastWomen's FictionContemporary Fiction
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A Man Called Ove

Fredrik Backman · 337 pages

A grumpy yet loveable man finds his solitary world turned on its head when a boisterous young family moves in next door. Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon, the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him the bitter neighbor from hell, but must Ove be bitter just b

NeighborsElderly ProtagonistFound FamilyContemporary Fiction
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The New Neighbor

Leah Stewart · 288 pages

"Ninety-year-old Margaret Riley is content hiding from the world. Stoic and independent, she rarely leaves the Tennessee mountaintop where she lives, finding comfort in the mystery novels that keep her company, that is, until she spots a woman who's moved into the long-empty house across the pond. Jennifer Young is also looking to hide. On the run from her old life, she and her four-year-old son M

NeighborsElderly ProtagonistSecret PastContemporary Fiction
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The One-in-a-Million Boy

Monica Wood · 336 pages

Guitarist Quinn Porter chases gigs on the road, largely absent to his twice-ex-wife Belle and their odd, Guinness recordsobsessed son. When the boy dies suddenly, Quinn seeks forgiveness by completing the requirements for his son's unfinished Boy Scout badge. For seven Saturdays he does yard work for Ona Vitkus, the wily 104-year-old Lithuanian immigrant the boy had visited weekly. Despite himself

Elderly ProtagonistFound FamilyWomen's FictionHeartwarming
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Mężczyzna imieniem Ove

Fredrick Backman · 352 pages

NeighborsFound FamilyElderly ProtagonistContemporary Fiction
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The Perfect Neighbors

Sarah Pekkanen · 410 pages

"The page-turning new novel from the internationally bestselling author known for her "conversational writing style and a knack for making readers care about her characters" (The Washington Post) takes us into the homes of an idyllic suburban neighborhood where we discover the burning secrets hiding just below the surface. Bucolic Newport Cove, where spontaneous block parties occur on balmy nights

NeighborsSecret PastWomen's FictionContemporary Fiction
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Every Last Cuckoo

Kate Maloy · 290 pages

Sarah Lucas imagined the rest of her days would be spent living peacefully in her rural Vermont home in the steadfast company of her husband. But now, with Charles's sudden passing, seventy-five-year-old Sarah is left inconsolably alone. As grief settles in, Sarah's mind lingers on her past: her imperfect but devoted fifty-year marriage to Charles; the years they spent raising their three very

Elderly ProtagonistFound FamilyWomen's FictionHeartwarming
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The Story of Arthur Truluv

Elizabeth Berg · 247 pages

"Truluv is a moving novel about three people who have lost the person they love most, and must find their way back to happiness. Arthur, a widower, meets Maddy, an angry and friendless teenage girl, while visiting his late wife at the cemetery, where he goes every day for lunch. Against all odds, the two strike up a friendship that pulls them out of a serious rut. They band together with Arthur's

Elderly ProtagonistFound FamilyWomen's FictionContemporary Fiction
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The Spirit of Covington

Joan Medlicott · 352 pages

Elderly ProtagonistFound FamilyWomen's FictionHeartwarming
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Francesca's Kitchen

Peter Pezzelli · 340 pages

Elderly ProtagonistFound FamilyWomen's FictionContemporary Fiction
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The Good House

Ann Leary · 292 pages

"The Good House tells the story of Hildy Good, who lives in a small town on Boston's North Shore. Hildy is a successful real-estate broker, good neighbor, mother, and grandmother. She's also a raging alcoholic. Hildy's family held an intervention for her about a year before this story takes place--"if they invite you over for dinner, and it's not a major holiday," she advises "run for your life"--

NeighborsElderly ProtagonistWomen's FictionContemporary Fiction
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The Last Anniversary

Liane Moriarty · 388 pages

Sophie Honeywell always wondered if Thomas Gordon was the one she let get away. He was the perfect boyfriend, but on the day he was to propose, she broke his heart. A year later he married his travel agent, while Sophie has been mortifyingly single ever since. Now Thomas is back in her life because Sophie has unexpectedly inherited his aunt Connie's house on Scribbly Gum Island-home of the famousl

NeighborsWomen's FictionSecret PastContemporary Fiction
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The New Year's Quilt

Jennifer Chiaverini · 231 pages

A seasonally themed Elm's Creek Quilts tale finds master quilter Sylvia Bergstrom Compson tackling a new quilt for her reluctant daughter-in-law that depicts holiday memories of Elm Creek Manor.

Elderly ProtagonistWomen's FictionHeartwarmingContemporary Fiction
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The Girl Next Door

Elizabeth Noble · 331 pages

The bittersweet story of friendship and love in an apartment building on New York's Upper East Side.

NeighborsWomen's FictionHeartwarmingContemporary Fiction
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Broken for You

Stephanie Kallos · 371 pages

"When we meet septuagenarian Margaret Hughes, she is living alone in a mansion in Seattle with only a massive collection of valuable antiques for company. Enter Wanda Schultz, a young woman with a broken heart who has come west to search for her wayward boyfriend. Both women are guarding dark secrets and have spent many years building up protective armor against the outside world. But as the two b

Elderly ProtagonistFound FamilyWomen's FictionHeartwarming
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The Mill River Recluse

Darcie Chan · 400 pages

From the outside, Mill River looks like any sleepy little Vermont town where everyone knows everyone and people never need to lock their doors. There are newcomers for whom this appeals, from police officer Kyle Hansen and his daughter Rowen, who are starting over after heartache, to Claudia Simon, the schoolteacher who is determined to reinvent herself. But on closer inspection, there are those i

Elderly ProtagonistWomen's FictionSecret PastHeartwarming
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My Life Next Door

Huntley Fitzpatrick · 432 pages

When Samantha, the seventeen-year-old daugher of a wealthy, perfectionistic, Republican state senator, falls in love with the boy next door, whose family is large, boisterous, and just making ends meet, she discovers a different way to live, but when her mother is involved in a hit-and-run accident Sam must make some difficult choices.

NeighborsFound FamilyContemporary FictionHeartwarming
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The Christmas Pearl

Dorothea Benton Frank · 157 pages

Theodora is the matriarch of a family that has grown into a bunch of truculent knuckleheads. While she's finally gotten them all together in South Carolina to celebrate, this Christmas looks nothing like the extravagant, homey holidays of her childhood.What happened to the days when Christmas meant tables groaning with home-cooked goodies, over-the-top decorations, and long chats in front of the f

Elderly ProtagonistWomen's FictionHeartwarmingContemporary Fiction
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Remarkably Bright Creatures

Shelby Van Pelt · 368 pages

After Tova Sullivan's husband died, she began working the night cleaner shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium. Ever since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat over thirty years ago keeping busy has helped her cope. One night she meets Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium who sees everything, but wouldn't dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his hum

Elderly ProtagonistFound FamilyContemporary FictionHeartwarming
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Orphan Train

Christina Baker Kline · 400 pages

Close to aging out of the foster care system, Molly Ayer takes a position helping an elderly woman named Vivian and discovers that they are more alike than different as she helps Vivian solve a mystery from her past. When 17-year-old Molly Ayer is sent to perform community service at elderly Vivian Daly's home in order to avoid juvenile hall, she discovers the two are very much alike, despite the

Elderly ProtagonistSecret PastFound FamilyWomen's Fiction

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