If I Were Building Your TBR From Scratch, These Are the Books I’d Start With

There is no shortage of book recommendations on the internet. If anything, the harder part is figuring out which books are actually worth making room for on an already very full TBR.

So I started thinking about what I would recommend if we wiped the slate clean.

If you handed me an empty reading list and asked me to start filling it, these are the books I’d put on it.

Not because they all fit neatly into one genre or because every one is the kind of book that shows up on every must-read list. Quite the opposite. I wanted this list to feel like a really good reading life: sweeping family stories, complicated women, historical fiction, romance, friendship, suspense, a little fantasy, nonfiction, and books that simply make you want to keep turning the pages.

I shared eight of these over on Instagram, but I couldn’t possibly stop there. Here are all 18.

IF YOU WANT A LOVE STORY

Our Perfect Storm

Frankie and George have been best friends since childhood, but their relationship is more complicated than ever when Frankie is unexpectedly left just before her wedding. George convinces her to take the honeymoon with him, giving them one week in Tofino to repair their friendship while confronting secrets and feelings they’ve buried for years.

Dolly All the Time

Dolly returns to her Rhode Island hometown for the summer to help save her family home when she crosses paths with Stewart, the handsome heir to a prominent local family. A pretend relationship soon turns into something much more real, forcing fiercely independent Dolly to consider whether she’s finally ready to let someone else in.

Start at the End

Audrey and Fraser fall deeply in love and begin imagining a future together until one tragic moment changes everything. Start at the End is an emotional story about second chances, guilt, the paths not taken, and finding a way forward when life doesn’t follow the story you imagined.

Heart the Lover

Years after an intense college friendship with Sam and Yash changed the course of her life, a successful writer is unexpectedly confronted with her past. Heart the Lover explores first love, friendship, the choices we make when we’re young, and the relationships that continue to shape us decades later.

IF COMPLICATED FAMILIES ARE YOUR FAVORITE KIND OF FICTION

The Bright Years

The Bright Years follows four generations of a Texas family shaped by hidden truths, addiction, loss, and the things we inherit from those who came before us. When a secret son searches for his birth family, old wounds resurface in a tender story about imperfect families, forgiveness, and love.

Westerly

Spanning postwar Ireland and 1990s Maine, Westerly follows a family whose carefully constructed life begins to unravel when long-buried secrets resurface. It’s a multigenerational story of motherhood, sisterhood, identity, and the choices that can shape a family for decades.

This Is Not About Us

After the death of their beloved sister, Sylvia and Helen become estranged over a seemingly small misunderstanding that stretches into years of silence. This Is Not About Us follows their family across generations in a warm, sharply observed story about sisterhood, family expectations, growing older, and the complicated love that keeps families connected.

Kin

Set in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, Kin follows childhood best friends Vernice and Annie as their lives take them down very different paths. It’s an emotional story of friendship, sisterhood, mothers and daughters, and the complexities of being a woman in the American South.

The Supper Club Saints

When Cass returns to her small Wisconsin hometown after living in a cult-like “Mommune,” her arrival disrupts the fragile peace within her family. Told across past and present, The Supper Club Saints follows the women of the Simon family as they navigate motherhood, infertility, forgiveness, and what it really means to be a “good” mother.

IF YOU WANT SOMETHING YOU’LL KEEP THINKING ABOUT

The Calamity Club

Set in Depression-era Mississippi, The Calamity Club follows Meg, Birdie, and Charlie, three unlikely allies determined to take control of their lives. Together they form a fierce sisterhood in a story filled with humor, resilience, friendship, and women refusing to accept the futures chosen for them.

The Shampoo Effect

When Caroline falls for Van, she’s drawn into his tight-knit circle of lifelong friends in a picturesque Massachusetts coastal town. But an unexpected pregnancy disrupts the group and exposes long-held secrets in a messy, funny story about friendship, love, parenthood, and growing up in midlife.

So Old, So Young

Over twenty years and five parties, six college friends navigate careers, marriages, children, loss, and the inevitable changes of growing older. So Old, So Young is a funny and moving story about friendship, love, and what happens to the relationships we once thought would never change.

Run for Your Life, Callie Kingman

After sacrificing her own ambitions for her husband’s career, empty nester Callie finds herself facing divorce, an aging mother, and an uncertain future. A health scare pushes her to rediscover the woman she once was and build a new life on her own terms.

Nesting

When Ciara realizes her home is no longer safe, she takes her two young daughters and leaves her controlling husband to start over. Nesting is a powerful story of emotional abuse, motherhood, resilience, and one woman’s fight to rebuild a life on her own terms.

IF YOU NEED SOMETHING THAT WILL KEEP YOU TURNING PAGES

Mad Mabel

Eighty-one-year-old Elsie has spent decades hiding a past filled with suspicious deaths, until a curious young neighbor threatens to uncover her secrets. Told across past and present, Mad Mabel is a darkly funny mystery about murder, redemption, and why no one suspects little girls or old ladies.

Paper Cut

Twenty years after escaping a California cult and becoming a true-crime sensation, Lucy’s carefully constructed story is threatened when a filmmaker revisits her infamous case. Returning to the desert forces her to confront old secrets in a suspenseful story about cults, true-crime fame, and how far someone will go to protect their version of the past.

Dire Bound

Desperate to rescue her kidnapped sister, Meryn enters the deadly Bonding Trials, where elite warriors form powerful connections with massive direwolves. Bound to a wolf who refuses to communicate and surrounded by dangerous rivals and hidden secrets, she must survive long enough to cross the border and find her sister.

IF YOU WANT SOMETHING REAL

Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage

When Belle Burden’s husband of twenty years unexpectedly ends their marriage, the life she thought she understood changes overnight. Strangers is a deeply personal memoir about revisiting a marriage through the lens of betrayal, finding your voice, and rebuilding a life after heartbreak.

WHERE I’D START

If 18 books feels less like “starting a TBR” and more like I’ve just created an entirely new problem for you, I understand.

Start with the kind of story you’re craving right now.

Want family secrets and generations of complicated relationships? Try The Bright Years or Westerly. Want a love story? Pick up Dolly All the Time or Our Perfect Storm. Need something that will keep you turning pages? Go with Mad Mabel or Paper Cut. And if you want friendship, resilience, and characters you won’t soon forget, The Calamity Club would be one of my first choices.

A good TBR doesn’t need to be filled with whatever everyone else is reading. It should be filled with books that make you want to read.

These 18 are a very good place to start.