Books like Before I Fall
What should you read after Lauren Oliver’s novel? It depends on what you loved most about it.
- Lauren Oliver
- 2010
- Young adult
What did you love about it?
Choosing one reorders everything below.
Best books to read after Before I Fall
Ranked overall. Pick what you loved above to re-rank them.
Best overall matchThe Fault in Our Stars
John Green
Green writes teenagers who know exactly how little time they have and say clever things about it anyway — the same mixture of doomed and funny Oliver runs for seven days.
- A death that reframes everything
- Knowing the ending from page one
- Earning a redemption
- Illness, not a time loop
Great matchEleanor & Park
Rainbow Rowell
For the ordinary cruelty of a school corridor, observed very closely: who sits where on the bus, who gets picked on, and what it costs anybody to intervene.
- High-school cruelty examined
- Friendship you outgrow
- A love story at the centre
Great matchIt's Kind of a Funny Story
Ned Vizzini
A boy steps off the treadmill of high-school achievement for five days and reassesses everything. Same compressed timeframe, same reckoning, much more humour.
- Earning a redemption
- High-school cruelty examined
- The same day seven times
- Psychiatric ward setting
Worth a look — with a warningThirteen Reasons Why
Jay Asher
The closest structural cousin here: a death that has already happened, and a survivor walked back through the small cruelties that led to it, one per chapter.
- A death that reframes everything
- High-school cruelty examined
- Knowing the ending from page one
- Suicide depicted and debated
Great matchLooking for Alaska
John Green
Split into before and after by a single event, with a group of friends forced to reread their own behaviour. Oliver's reckoning, run as a countdown rather than a loop.
- A death that reframes everything
- Friendship you outgrow
- Earning a redemption
- Boarding school, no repetition
Great matchThe Perks of Being a Wallflower
Stephen Chbosky
The view from the other side of the cafeteria: the kid your narrator would have walked straight past. Chbosky is generous about who deserves the attention.
- High-school cruelty examined
- A mean girl as narrator
- Gentle, drifting pace
Worth a look — with a warningAll the Bright Places
Jennifer Niven
Two teenagers counting down toward something they can both see coming, written with the same insistence that a small ordinary day matters enormously.
- Knowing the ending from page one
- A death that reframes everything
- Suicide central to the plot
Great matchWe Were Liars
E. Lockhart
A privileged girl piecing together the summer she cannot remember — the same slow, awful discovery that you were not the person you had decided you were.
- A mean girl as narrator
- A death that reframes everything
- Knowing the ending from page one
- Clipped, poetic style
Worth a look — with a warningRoom
Emma Donoghue
Included for its handling of repetition — a life of identical days described from inside one — though in every other respect it is a completely different book.
- The same day seven times
- Earning a redemption
- Abduction premise, disturbing
Great matchThe Time Traveler's Wife
Audrey Niffenegger
Loving somebody while knowing precisely how it ends. Niffenegger's time mechanics do what Oliver's loop does: dread and tenderness inside the same sentence.
- Knowing the ending from page one
- The same day seven times
- Adult romance, explicit
Great matchThe Book Thief
Markus Zusak
A narrator who tells you who dies well before it happens and then makes you love them anyway. Exactly the bargain Oliver strikes with you on page one.
- Knowing the ending from page one
- A death that reframes everything
- Wartime Germany, 550 pages
Best for the view from afterThe Lovely Bones
Alice Sebold
Narrated by a dead girl watching the people she left behind, which is roughly where Sam ends up — the same question of what you would fix if you could only look.
- A death that reframes everything
- High-school cruelty examined
- Earning a redemption
- A murder and its investigation
Great matchEverything, Everything
Nicola Yoon
A girl living the same day indefinitely by medical necessity, who has to break the pattern before she can find out what her life actually is.
- The same day seven times
- Earning a redemption
- Romance-driven YA throughout
What should you read after Before I Fall?
Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver works on several levels at once, and which book you should read next depends on which of those levels got you. For most readers the closest match is The Fault in Our Stars by John Green — green writes teenagers who know exactly how little time they have and say clever things about it anyway — the same mixture of doomed and funny Oliver runs for seven days.
If what stayed with you was high-school cruelty examined, read Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell instead: for the ordinary cruelty of a school corridor, observed very closely: who sits where on the bus, who gets picked on, and what it costs anybody to intervene. It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini is the other strong option — a boy steps off the treadmill of high-school achievement for five days and reassesses everything. Same compressed timeframe, same reckoning, much more humour.
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