Books like The Secret Life of Bees
What should you read after Sue Monk Kidd’s novel? It depends on what you loved most about it.
- Sue Monk Kidd
- 2001
- Historical fiction
What did you love about it?
Choosing one reorders everything below.
Best books to read after The Secret Life of Bees
Ranked overall. Pick what you loved above to re-rank them.
Best overall matchThe Color Purple
Alice Walker
Women who make a family out of each other in the same South, told from inside rather than beside it. Harder, truer, and one of the great American novels.
- Women who take you in
- The sixties South
- Racism seen by a white child
- Sexual violence and incest
Great matchThe Help
Kathryn Stockett
Sixties Mississippi, domestic workers, and a young white woman convinced she is helping. The most direct companion read, with all the same debates attached.
- The sixties South
- Racism seen by a white child
- Women who take you in
- Criticised for its white lens
Great matchTo Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee
A Southern childhood, a household run by a Black woman nobody credits, and a girl learning what her town is. The book Lily's narration is descended from.
- Racism seen by a white child
- The sixties South
- A summer that changes everything
- Courtroom drama structure
Best for the writingTheir Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston
Janie telling her own life to a friend on the porch, in prose that makes most of this list look thin. Read it for what Kidd's South sounds like from within.
- Women who take you in
- The sixties South
- 1930s Florida dialect
Great matchThe Joy Luck Club
Amy Tan
Four mothers, four daughters and everything unspoken between them. Same central wound as Lily's, worked through from the mothers' side too.
- Looking for a dead mother
- Women who take you in
- Chinese-American, not Southern
Great matchFried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Fannie Flagg
Alabama, two women running a cafe, and a friendship the town declines to name. The warmest book here and just as good on Southern cruelty.
- Women who take you in
- The sixties South
- Warmth after grief
- Two timelines, larger cast
Great matchThe Bean Trees
Barbara Kingsolver
A young woman leaves home with a child she didn't plan on and builds a household of women around her. Kingsolver's version of Lily's summer.
- Women who take you in
- Warmth after grief
- Arizona, not the South
Worth a look — with a warningBeloved
Toni Morrison
Morrison on mothers, daughters and what slavery did to both. It is the most important book on this list and the least like a comfort read.
- Looking for a dead mother
- Warmth after grief
- Infanticide and rape
Great matchThe Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Mary Ann Shaffer
A woman taken in by a village of eccentrics after a war, in letters. Different country, identical warmth: strangers deciding you belong to them.
- Women who take you in
- Warmth after grief
- The sixties South
- Post-war Guernsey, not Carolina
Great matchThe House on Mango Street
Sandra Cisneros
A girl watching the women of her street and deciding what she will not become, in short prose poems. Nothing else here is this concentrated.
- A summer that changes everything
- Women who take you in
- Chicago barrio setting
Great matchThe Language of Flowers
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
A girl out of foster care who speaks through flowers and is slowly taken in by a woman who feeds her. Beekeeping swapped for botany, mothering intact.
- Beekeeping and ritual
- Women who take you in
- Looking for a dead mother
- Set in contemporary California
Worth a look — with a warningThe Kitchen House
Kathleen Grissom
An Irish orphan raised among enslaved workers on a Virginia plantation, with divided loyalties. It goes where Kidd's book only gestures.
- Racism seen by a white child
- The sixties South
- Rape and brutal violence
Worth a look — with a warningThe Alchemist
Paulo Coelho
Here because it shares a shelf of gentle, spiritual bestsellers rather than any real similarity — a parable about following signs, with no South and no mothers.
- Warmth after grief
- A summer that changes everything
- Fable, not a novel
What should you read after The Secret Life of Bees?
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd 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 Color Purple by Alice Walker — women who make a family out of each other in the same South, told from inside rather than beside it. Harder, truer, and one of the great American novels.
If what stayed with you was the sixties south, read The Help by Kathryn Stockett instead: sixties Mississippi, domestic workers, and a young white woman convinced she is helping. The most direct companion read, with all the same debates attached. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is the other strong option — a Southern childhood, a household run by a Black woman nobody credits, and a girl learning what her town is. The book Lily's narration is descended from.
Loved something else?
Start from any book and we’ll build the list around your reasons.
Find my next book →NextBook is a participant in the Amazon Associates Program. We earn from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you. It doesn’t affect which books we recommend or how we rank them.
More “what to read next” lists
- Books like 1984
- Books like 2312
- Books like A Clockwork Orange
- Books like A Darker Shade of Magic
- Books like A Gentleman in Moscow
- Books like A Little Life
- Books like A Man Called Ove
- Books like A Memory Called Empire
- Books like A Wrinkle in Time
- Books like All Systems Red
- Books like All the Bright Places
- Books like Altered Carbon