Finished One Day? These are the books you need to read next

Sobbing over the Netflix adaptation of David Nicholls’ heartbreaking novel? Katie Rosseinsky recommends the books to try after saying goodbye to Dexter and Emma

Moving: try these books if you fell hard for One Day (Netflix)

So you’ve had your heart broken into thousands of sharp, tiny pieces by Netflix’s adaptation of One Day. Then you’ve picked up the novel by David Nicholls (for the first time or the fiftieth time) and had the same thing happen again. Rinse and repeat. 

You’re probably feeling bereft, like there’s no way that another literary love story will ever compare with what Dexter and Emma had. But time is an excellent healer, and once you’ve stopped sobbing into your sofa cushions, you might well find yourself looking for, say, another clever, modern romance with good jokes. Or another story that perfectly captures what it’s like to feel a bit adrift in your twenties. Or just something that’ll make you ugly cry again. 

When you think you’re emotionally ready, here are a handful of books – from coming-of-age tales to cleverly constructed romantic dramas – which will fill the One Day shaped hole in your heart. A word of advice: maybe don’t ditch the box of tissues just yet.

Standard Deviation by Katherine Heiney

Standard Deviation is the hilarious but moving tale of a very odd couple (4th Estate)

One of the joys of reading a David Nicholls novel is that he’s actually laugh-out-loud funny. As in, you’re likely to audibly snort, rather than just mentally register the punchline  (which is worth bearing in mind if you’re reading in a public place). One author who can match him for successful joke-per-page rate is Katherine Heiny. She has a sharp ear for the ways in which people accidentally undercut the stories they tell about themselves but, like Nicholls, she’s also a very empathetic writer. Start with her debut novel Standard Deviation, which tells the story of odd couple Graham and Audra, and Graham’s ex-wife Elspeth.

Sweet Sorrow by David Nicholls

A teenage boy falls for his fellow actor in this nostalgic gem (Sceptre)

One Day is Nicholls’ best-known novel, but his back catalogue is full of gems, populated with funny, flawed characters who you’ll love spending time with. Sweet Sorrow, his most recent release, is a little more meditative and melancholy than One Day. Set in the Nineties and suffused with period nostalgia, it tells the story of Charlie, a teenager who fills his interminable post-GCSE summer holidays by joining an am-dram group. Their production of choice is Romeo and Juliet, and off-stage romance inevitably follows. Once you’ve finished it, you won’t have too long to wait until his next novel You Are Here is released in April.

The Versions of Us by Laura Barnett

Laura Barnett’s novel explores how a chance meeting can change everything (W&N)

If you’re the sort of person who finds themself stewing over could-have-beens and paths not taken (fictional or otherwise), add Laura Barnett’s The Versions of Us to your to-read pile. It’s basically Sliding Doors meets One Day. Eva and Jim are undergraduates at Cambridge in the late Fifties, who are brought together thanks to a fluke of timing involving a punctured bike tyre. But that’s just one of three different versions of their story. In the first timeline, they fall in love; in the second, there’s no puncture and therefore no meet-cute. As for the third? They get together – but everything goes wrong. 

Normal People by Sally Rooney

Connell and Marianne are another compelling will they, won’t they couple (Faber)

Netflix’s One Day adaptation has become the most talked about TV love story since the BBC’s Normal People had us all weeping during lockdown.  Sally Rooney’s protagonists Connell and Marianne are another couple that really should be together but can’t seem to make it work, spending years circling in and out of each other’s lives. When they first meet at high school, Connell is the golden boy, popular and good-looking, while standoffish Marianne is his opposite; during their university years, though, the dynamic shifts, with Connell feeling out of his depth. Rooney’s love(ish) story is rigorously schmaltz-free, and hits you all the harder for it.

Expectation by Anna Hope

A novel of platonic friendships and drifting in your thirties (Black Swan)

Anna Hope’s novel, a real word-of-mouth success story upon its release a few years back, tells the story of three long-time friends who spend their twenties living blissfully in each other’s pockets in an east London flat – then find themselves drifting apart from one another in their thirties. At the same time, the gap between the lives they imagined and the reality each of them is trapped in grows wider and wider. In her portrait of aspiring-maybe-failing actress Lissa, Hope really captures what it’s like to feel out of step with those pals who (on the surface at least) seem to have adulthood all figured out. 

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

An absorbing study of how friendships evolve over the years (Vintage)

This mega-bestseller from Gabrielle Zevin is a boy-meets-girl story in which the relationship stays strictly platonic, and is all the more moving for that. It begins with a chance encounter: years after they first met in hospital as children, Sam and Sadie run into one another at a train station. As kids, they bonded over their shared love of video games; as adults, they became creative partners, working on a string of ever more ambitious programming projects. You certainly don’t have to be a gaming nut to be totally won over by this absorbing study of how a friendship evolves over time. 

Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld

A pop culture literate romance from Curtis Sittenfeld (Penguin)

Curtis Sittenfeld’s clever, witty books are suffused with popular culture from highbrow to lowbrow. Who else could get away with re-telling Pride and Prejudice through the prism of dating shows like The Bachelor (as she does in Eligible)? Or writing an alternative history in which Hillary Clinton never married Bill (in Rodham)? Her latest novel Romantic Comedy is, well, a pretty delightful example of that genre. Inspired by real life (cough, Pete Davidson, cough), she imagines what happens when a female TV writer for a late-night show gets together with an improbably handsome celebrity guest. 

Ordinary People by Diana Evans

Diana Evans explores what happens when a relationship becomes comfortable or even stale (Vintage)

If many of the books on this list explore the first flushes of love against the confusion of your early twenties, Diana Evans’ Ordinary People picks the story up a little further into the future: when both parties are approaching middle-age, and the relationship has become familiar, comfortable, even a little stale. Melissa and Michael seem to live a picture-perfect existence with their two kids and new house in South London, while Stephanie and Damian are ensconced in the suburbs, but seem to be tiring of it (and each other). Evans’ character studies are pitch-perfect.