Books like The Mortal Instruments
What should you read after Cassandra Clare’s novel? It depends on what you loved most about it.
- Cassandra Clare
- 2007
- Urban fantasy
What did you love about it?
Choosing one reorders everything below.
Best books to read after The Mortal Instruments
Ranked overall. Pick what you loved above to re-rank them.
Best overall matchVampire Academy
Richelle Mead
The other great mid-2000s series about a girl, a supernatural school and a bond she can't walk away from. Once you start there are six waiting.
- A long series to disappear into
- Snarky banter
- An ordinary girl who turns out not to be
- Vampires and boarding school
Where the series actually startsCity of Bones
Cassandra Clare
The first Mortal Instruments volume itself — begin here if you have only met Clary through the film or the television version, because the reading order matters.
- A hidden world under New York
- An ordinary girl who turns out not to be
- A long series to disappear into
- The same series, not a new one
Best for more ShadowhuntersThe Infernal Devices
Cassandra Clare
Clare's Victorian prequel trilogy, and the one most readers end up preferring: the same mythology, a better triangle, three books that actually finish.
- A love triangle with a horrible complication
- Demon-hunting with runes and blades
- A hidden world under New York
- Historical setting and manners
Worth a look — with a warningHush, Hush
Peak 2009 paranormal romance: fallen angels, a dangerous boy, a girl who cannot leave him alone. Nostalgic if that era was yours, dated if it wasn't.
- A love triangle with a horrible complication
- A long series to disappear into
- A hidden world under New York
- The love interest is genuinely alarming
Great matchThrone of Glass
Sarah J. Maas
An assassin with a hidden past, a castle full of secrets and seven books of escalation. The obvious next binge if you want scale rather than city streets.
- A long series to disappear into
- Secret parentage and betrayal
- An ordinary girl who turns out not to be
- Secondary world, no New York
Worth a look — with a warningShatter Me
Tahereh Mafi
A girl whose touch kills, a triangle between a soldier and a tyrant, and a prose style people either adore or bounce straight off.
- A love triangle with a horrible complication
- An ordinary girl who turns out not to be
- Snarky banter
- Heavily stylised, struck-through prose
Best for the banterSix of Crows
Leigh Bardugo
A heist crew of damaged teenagers in a canal city, every one of them funny and none of them nice. The dialogue Clare's readers came for, sharpened.
- Snarky banter
- Found family of misfit warriors
- Demon-hunting with runes and blades
- No chosen-one arc
Great matchRed Queen
Victoria Aveyard
An ordinary girl discovers a power that shouldn't exist and is dropped into a court that wants to use her. A familiar shape, briskly executed.
- An ordinary girl who turns out not to be
- Secret parentage and betrayal
- A long series to disappear into
- A dystopian court, not a modern city
Worth a look — with a warningA Court of Thorns and Roses
Sarah J. Maas
The series most Mortal Instruments readers graduate to: the same appetite for beautiful dangerous men and a heroine remade, with the heat turned right up.
- A long series to disappear into
- A love triangle with a horrible complication
- An ordinary girl who turns out not to be
- Explicit adult content
Best for the world under oursHis Dark Materials
Philip Pullman
The grown-up ancestor of the hidden-world idea: angels, a knife, a girl who matters, and an argument with heaven that Clare's mythology quietly borrows from.
- A hidden world under New York
- An ordinary girl who turns out not to be
- Demon-hunting with runes and blades
- Middle-grade opening, philosophical later
Worth a look — with a warningNevernight
Jay Kristoff
A school for assassins, a girl avenging her father, and a narrator with footnotes. Considerably nastier than Clare, and it would like you to know that.
- Secret parentage and betrayal
- Demon-hunting with runes and blades
- Snarky banter
- Graphic violence and sex
What should you read after The Mortal Instruments?
The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare 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 Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead — the other great mid-2000s series about a girl, a supernatural school and a bond she can't walk away from. Once you start there are six waiting.
If what stayed with you was a hidden world under new york, read City of Bones by Cassandra Clare instead: the first Mortal Instruments volume itself — begin here if you have only met Clary through the film or the television version, because the reading order matters. The Infernal Devices by Cassandra Clare is the other strong option — clare's Victorian prequel trilogy, and the one most readers end up preferring: the same mythology, a better triangle, three books that actually finish.
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