Top 5 Books for People in Love

There are so many types of love, and whether you’re swimming in it or recovering from it, books can be a great way to celebrate our relationships. Here are my top 5 books for people who have ever been madly in love (or been kicked down by it!).

I Think I Love You by Allison Pearson, Knopf
Wales, 1974. Two thirteen-year-old girls, Petra and Sharon, are obsessed with David Cassidy. They tackle the Ultimate David Cassidy Quiz, a contest whose winners will be flown to America to meet Cassidy in person.

London, 1998. Petra is pushing forty, on the brink of divorce, and fighting with her own thirteen-year-old daughter when she discovers a dusty letter in her mother’s closet declaring her the winner of the contest she and Sharon had labored over with such hope and determination. More than twenty years later, twenty pounds heavier, bruised by grief and the disappointments of middle age, Petra reunites with Sharon for an all-expenses-paid trip to Las Vegas to meet their teen idol at last, and finds her life utterly transformed.

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain, Doubleday Canada
Ernest Hemingway wrote of his first wife, "I wish I had died before I loved anyone but her."

A lot of people know “Papa” Hemingway, but this enthralling novel will introduce you to Hemingway as a young man in love. Told from his first wife Hadley Richardson’s point of view, it will have you engrossed in the Paris life in the 1920s, and includes fascinating characters such as Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound and Gerald and Sara Murphy.

An Exclusive Love by Johanna Adorjan, Knopf Canada
Two people who have grown old together decide to take their own lives. He is terminally ill; she doesn't want to be without him. One Sunday in autumn 1991, they carry out their plan. Vera and István go to their deaths holding hands. It is the logical end of a love that shut out the entire rest of the world, even their own children.

Sixteen years after her grandparents' deaths, Johanna Adorján ignored the family rule of "That's something we don't talk about." She set out to look for the blind spots in the lives of her grandparents and in the process found out things that have more to do with herself than she had expected.

The End of the Alphabet by CS Richardson, Anchor Canada
Ambrose Zephyr and his wife Zappora Ashkenazi (“Zipper”) have achieved a happy and balanced life together. She is the yin to his yang. He is the only man she has loved without adjustment. The two live contentedly in a narrow London terrace full of books.  That contentment is thrown into turmoil on or about Ambrose’s fiftieth birthday, when they receive the news that he has contracted a mysterious illness that will most certainly lead to his death within the month. In panicked delirium, from beneath their bed Ambrose withdraws an oxblood suitcase containing the ephemera of his long-suppressed life’s ambition: to travel the world in a pilgrimage through the alphabet, from Amsterdam to Zanzibar.

The Sea Captain’s Wife by Beth Powning, Vintage Canada
Growing up on the Bay of Fundy, Azuba Galloway dreams of going to sea. She watches magnificent ships slowly making their way into Whelan’s Cove, the sense of exoticism bursting from their holds along with foreign goods.   As a young woman, Azuba marries a seasoned merchant sea captain, Nathaniel Bradstock. Unwilling to have him away at sea for most of their married life, and anxious to see far shores, she extracts a promise that he will take her with him.

When Nathaniel returns home he reluctantly he decides to take Azuba and their young daughter, Carrie, with him on his next voyage. Misery follows misfortune and Azuba feels alone in a male world, surrounded by the splendour and the terror of the open sea. The voyage tests not only her already precarious marriage, but everything Azuba believes in. 

Top 5 Books for People in Love

Books Are a Great Way To Celebrate Our Relationships