Down London Road

The Girl He Used to Know

Tracey Garvis Graves2019

Two former college sweethearts reconnect in Chicago ten years after a painful breakup. The story alternates between the past and the present day.

pace0·prose+1·bleak0

Madame Bovary

Gustave Flaubert1856

A doctor's wife in provincial France seeks escape from her mundane life through expensive tastes and extramarital affairs.

tender → tense

pace0·prose+3·bleak+1

Paradise Logic

Sophie Kemp2025

A young woman follows advice from a magazine to become a perfect partner. Her quest involves surreal jobs and messages from the beyond.

tender → epic

pace0·prose+3·bleak+1

Mad Mabel

Sally Hepworth2025

An eighty-one-year-old woman with a history of killing people tries to hide her past when a curious young girl moves into the neighborhood.

tender → dark

pace-1·prose+2·bleak0

Beautiful Stranger

Christina Lauren2013

A woman moves to New York and begins a series of public sexual encounters with a British businessman. They navigate their growing attachment.

pace0·prose+1·bleak-1

Wild Side

Elsie Silver2025

A woman enters a marriage of convenience with a man she dislikes to secure custody of her nephew. They live together in a small town.

tender → earnest, still contemporary romance

pace0·prose0·bleak-1

I'm In No Mood For Love

Rachel Gibson2006

Clare Wingate wakes up in a hotel room with her childhood crush after a wedding. They spend the following days navigating their history.

pace0·prose0·bleak-1

Victory at Prescott High

C.M. Stunich

A high school girl seeks revenge against the boys who bullied her while navigating a complex relationship with all of them at once.

tender → propulsive, still contemporary romance

pace+1·prose0·bleak0

Burn for Me

Ilona Andrews2014

A private investigator with the ability to tell truth from lies is hired to find a fire-user. She is forced to work with a dangerous billionaire.

tender → propulsive, still enemies to lovers

pace+1·prose+1·bleak0

Hounded

Kevin Hearne2011

A two-thousand-year-old Druid lives in modern Arizona and runs an occult bookshop. He must fight a vengeful Irish god who wants his sword.

tender → wry

pace+1·prose+1·bleak0

Gödel, Escher, Bach

Douglas R. Hofstadter1979

An exploration of how cognition emerges from hidden neurological patterns. It uses math, art, and music to explain self-referential systems.

tender → playful

pace-2·prose+3·bleak-1

Ulysses

James Joyce1914

Three characters wander through Dublin on a single day in 1904. Each chapter uses a different literary style to mimic thoughts and sensations.

tender → playful

pace-2·prose+3·bleak0

Absalom, Absalom!

William Faulkner1936

The rise and fall of Thomas Sutpen is recounted through multiple, conflicting memories. The prose uses extremely long, complex sentences.

tender → elegiac

pace-2·prose+3·bleak+2

Wuthering Heights

Emily Brontë1846

Two families on the Yorkshire moors deal with the arrival and subsequent revenge of an adopted orphan. The story is told through nested narrators.

tender → bleak

pace-1·prose+2·bleak+2

A Farewell to Arms

Ernest Hemingway1929

An American ambulance driver and a British nurse conduct a love affair during the Italian campaign of World War I.

tender → elegiac

pace-1·prose+1·bleak+2

Tess of the D’Urbervilles

Thomas Hardy

A country girl is sent to claim kinship with wealthy relatives. Her life is derailed by a sequence of social betrayals and rigid moral standards.

tender → elegiac

pace-1·prose+2·bleak+2