There’s a particular kind of afternoon here in the Netherlands — the sky goes the colour of old pewter, the canal surface turns choppy, and the only sensible thing to do is make tea and reach for something that feels like a warm room. These are the books I keep coming back to for exactly that.
The list
1. The Thorn Birds — Colleen McCullough Sweeping, melodramatic in the best sense, and so absorbing you’ll forget it’s raining. An impossible love across decades. Bring tissues.
2. Persuasion — Jane Austen The quietest of Austen’s novels and, I think, the most devastating. Anne Elliot is one of literature’s great overlooked heroines. The letter in chapter twenty-three is everything.
3. Rebecca — Daphne du Maurier Not a romance exactly, but it belongs here. That atmosphere — rain, the sea, a house that breathes — pairs perfectly with a grey afternoon.
4. The Bronze Horseman — Paullina Simons Enormous. Emotionally exhausting. A wartime love story set in Leningrad that I describe to friends as “the best book I’ve never recovered from.”
5. Normal People — Sally Rooney Shorter than the others but just as much to feel. The prose is so clean it almost hurts. I reread the picnic scene at least once a year.
6. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society — Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows Letters, a small island, people bound together by books. Gentle and warm and exactly what you need.
7. Daisy Jones & The Six — Taylor Jenkins Reid The structure is unusual — told as oral history — but it works beautifully. A love story told sideways. You’ll finish it in one sitting.
8. The Shadow of the Wind — Carlos Ruiz Zafón Barcelona, a secret library, a mystery that unfolds over decades. More gothic than romantic, but the longing in it is unmistakable.
9. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine — Gail Honeyman This one will sneak up on you. It starts funny and ends with your heart in your hands. I don’t want to say more.
10. A Gentleman in Moscow — Amor Towles Not a love story in the traditional sense, but Count Rostov loves life with such warmth and precision that it feels like one. Savour this one slowly.
What would you add? I’m always looking for more.