What to Read Next, Based On Your Favorite Song from Evermore

Buckle up, we're getting existential and a little sad.

Nov 12, 2025

If August is for folklore, then November is for evermore. I had originally meant to post this way earlier but… it was a lot harder to come up with 17 more distinct book recommendations that fit specific scenarios and hadn’t already been recommended on my folklore post.

I pondered and researched and pondered some more and finally have come up with a list that I feel pretty good about, if I do say so myself. So here are 17 book recs for each song on evermore.

willow

Adelaide by Genevieve Wheeler

For this one, I really leaned into the vibes of loving someone who is absolutely going to ruin your life. They keep you at arm’s length, yet you’d jump through hoops for them. Rinse and repeat.

Synopsis

For twenty-six-year-old Adelaide Williams, an American living in London, meeting Rory Hughes was like a lightning bolt out of the blue: this charming Englishman was The One she wasn’t even looking for.

Does he respond to texts? Honor his commitments? Make advance plans? Sometimes, rarely, and no, not at all. But when he shines his light on her, the world makes sense, and Adelaide is convinced that, in his heart, he’s fallen just as deeply as she has. Then, when Rory is rocked by an unexpected tragedy, Adelaide does everything in her power to hold him together—even if it means losing herself in the process.

champagne problems

Dream State by Eric Puchner

Did you feel an intense amount of catharsis the first time you heard the words “She would have made such a lovely bride, what a shame she’s fucked in the head,” or are you well-adjusted?

Synopsis

Cece is in love. She has arrived early at her future in-laws’ lake house in Salish, Montana, to finish planning her wedding to Charlie, a young doctor with a brilliant life ahead of him. Charlie has asked Garrett, his best friend from college, to officiate the ceremony, though Cece can’t imagine anyone more ill-suited for the task—an airport baggage handler haunted by a tragedy from his and Charlie’s shared past. But as Cece spends time with Garrett, his gruff mask slips, and she grows increasingly uncertain about her future. And why does Garrett, after meeting Cece, begin to feel, well, human again? As a contagious stomach flu threatens to scuttle the wedding, and Charlie and Garrett’s friendship is put to the ultimate test, Cece must decide between the life she’s dreamed of and a life she’s never imagined.

gold rush

Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny

Gold Rush perfectly encapsulates the feeling of falling in love with someone you know you have to share – be it someone with a robust dating history, or someone who’s in the public eye for whatever reason.

Synopsis

Jane falls in love with Duncan easily. He is charming, good-natured, and handsome but unfortunately, he has also slept with nearly every woman in his small Michigan town. Jane sees Duncan’s old girlfriends everywhere—at restaurants, at the grocery store, even three towns away.

While Jane may be able to come to terms with dating the world’s most prolific seducer of women, she wishes she did not have to share him quite so widely. His ex-wife, Aggie, a woman with shiny hair and pale milkmaid skin, still has Duncan mow her lawn. His coworker, Jimmy, comes and goes from Duncan’s apartment at the most inopportune times. Sometimes Jane wonders if a relationship can even work with three people in it—never mind four. Five if you count Aggie’s eccentric husband, Gary. Not to mention all the other residents of Boyne City, who freely share with Jane their opinions of her choices.

But any notion Jane had of love and marriage changes with one terrible car crash. Soon Jane’s life is permanently intertwined with Duncan’s, Aggie’s, and Jimmy’s, and Jane knows she will never have Duncan to herself. But could it be possible that a deeper kind of happiness is right in front of Jane’s eyes?

‘tis the damn season

Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell

I’ve realized recently that I have a real soft spot for the trope of a “second chance romance” – aka, two people who were once together, broke up, and are now reunited and realize they are still, in fact, in love. And then I realized that it’s because that’s literally what happened to me. I dated my high school sweetheart for nearly three years, we broke up during my first year in college, then got back together nearly two years later and now we’ve been married for five years. I LIVED IT. Anyways…

Synopsis

Shiloh Butler was supposed to get out of north Omaha. She used to sit out on the front porch with her best friend, Cary, and plot their escape. Shiloh was going to be an actress, and Cary was laser-focused on the Navy. Sharp, stoic, golden-eyed Cary… thin as a stick of gum and poor as dirt. He was probably the most decent person Shiloh has ever known. She hasn’t spoken to him in fourteen years.

When Shiloh gets an invitation to a high school friend’s wedding, Cary is the first and only thing on her mind. She desperately wants to see him again, but she doesn’t know if she can bear being seen by him. What would Cary think of Shiloh at thirty-three? A divorced mom living in the same house she grew up in. Someone who works behind a desk, not onstage.

Would Cary even want to see Shiloh after all this time? After everything? The answer, it turns out, is yes.

tolerate it

The Dinner Party by Viola Van de Sandt

I didn’t appreciate this song much until I saw it live at the Eras Tour. That TABLE!!! I’ve never been in a relationship like this, but it’s not hard to imagine how it would feel. And surprise, surprise, women being taken for granted and worn down to nubs by men? Common trope in literature!!!

Synopsis

Franca left the Netherlands behind to start her new life in England with Andrew. Andrew, whose parents lived in South Kensington but had a flat their son could “borrow” nearby. Andrew, an old-fashioned British gentleman who encourages her not to work but to instead focus on her writing. Andrew who suggests a dinner party with his colleagues to celebrate their big upcoming launch.

A dinner party that Franca must plan and shop and cook and clean for. A dinner party during a heatwave when the fridge breaks, alcohol replaces water, and an unexpected guest joins their ranks, upending the careful balance between everything Franca once was and what she now is.

no body, no crime

The Female of the Species by Mindy McGinnis

This was the first one that popped into my head when I started making this list. I read this book YEARS ago, and it is technically a YA novel, but with very dark themes. And NBNC immediately joined the playlist I have exclusively dedicated to country songs about murdering abusive men. :)

Synopsis

Alex Craft knows how to kill someone. And she doesn’t feel bad about it.

Three years ago, when her older sister, Anna, was murdered and the killer walked free, Alex uncaged the language she knows best—the language of violence. While her own crime goes unpunished, Alex knows she can’t be trusted among other people. Not with Jack, the star athlete who wants to really know her but still feels guilty over the role he played the night Anna’s body was discovered. And not with Peekay, the preacher’s kid with a defiant streak who befriends Alex while they volunteer at an animal shelter.

As their senior year unfolds, Alex’s darker nature breaks out, setting these three teens on a collision course that will change their lives forever.

happiness

Liars by Sarah Manguso

Ugh, this song is such a heartwrenching encapsulation of that feeling at the end of a relationship when you’re obviously devastated, but also starting to see things clearly and understand that you will be happy again someday, and that the heartbreak now doesn’t negate the happiness you experienced previously in the relationship.

Synopsis

When Jane, an aspiring writer, meets filmmaker John Bridges, they both want the same things: to be in love, to live a successful, creative life, and to be happy. When they marry, Jane believes she has found everything she was looking for, including—a few years later—all the attendant joys and labors of motherhood. But it’s not long until Jane finds herself subsumed by John’s ambitions, whims, and ego; in short, she becomes a wife.

As Jane’s career flourishes, their marriage starts to falter. Throughout the upheavals of family life, Jane tries to hold it all together. That is, until John leaves her.

dorothea

Mayluna by Kelley McNeil

Idk, this song hits me like a ton of bricks every time. That feeling of realizing that someone you once knew like the back of your hand is essentially a stranger, and you only get superficial updates from them on social media when you used to talk about everything and nothing for hours every day…

Synopsis

In the 1990s, Carter Wills was the lead singer of the English alt-rock band Mayluna, securing his place among music legends. His tortured-heart lyrics struck a chord. And so did his secret connection to a woman whose love changed all their lives. Who was she?

Evie Waters’s two grown children discover an iconic photo in an old magazine of a “mystery girl” with Carter: their mother. It all started in a wistful time and place for Evie, her twenty-fifth summer. A young columnist forging her career. Backstage euphoria. A long-shot interview. And an almost cosmic connection with an enigmatic musician on the rise.

What happened between them is a hidden story no one, not even Evie’s family, knows. Until now. Worlds apart, Carter and Evie finally reveal the story--joyful, regretful, and unforgettable. It was a time when the stars aligned for a love so profound the whole world felt it. It was as if it would last forever.

coney island

The Light We Lost by Jill Santopolo

For this one, I wanted to lean into the concept of loving someone, but realizing you’ve grown apart into different people, that maybe you didn’t put them first a few too many times, and now they’re slipping away.

Synopsis

Lucy is faced with a life-altering choice. But before she can make her decision, she must start her story—their story—at the very beginning.

Lucy and Gabe meet as seniors at Columbia University on a day that changes both of their lives forever. Together, they decide they want their lives to mean something, to matter. When they meet again a year later, it seems fated—perhaps they’ll find life’s meaning in each other. But then Gabe becomes a photojournalist assigned to the Middle East and Lucy pursues a career in New York. What follows is a thirteen-year journey of dreams, desires, jealousies, betrayals, and, ultimately, of love. Was it fate that brought them together? Is it choice that has kept them away? Their journey takes Lucy and Gabe continents apart, but never out of each other’s hearts.

ivy

A Magic Deep and Drowning by Hester Fox

To me, ivy is about ~~falling in love with a lesbian ghost~~ forbidden love. And what says forbidden love more than The Little Mermaid? This is a gender-swapped retelling of the original Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale, NOT the Disney version.

Synopsis

The Dutch Republic, 1650. One fine spring day in Friesland, twenty-year-old Clara van Wieren is faced with an ill omen: a whale, beached and rotting in the noonday sun. But Clara doesn’t believe in magic and superstition, and this portent is quickly dismissed when a proposal from a wealthy merchant arrives, promising Clara the freedom she seeks from her mother’s overbearing rule.

When her attempts at overseeing the household at the family’s estate lead to her chance encounter with a young man with russet hair and sparkling eyes the color of the sea, she finds herself strangely drawn to him. As Clara grows closer to Maurits, she must choose between the steady, gentle life she has been raised for and the man who makes her blood sing.

But Maurits isn’t who he seems to be, and his secrets, once hidden beneath the waves, threaten to rise up and drown them both. And when an ancient bargain, forged in blood between the mythical people of the sea and the rulers of the land, begins to unravel, Clara finds herself at the heart of a deadly struggle for power.

cowboy like me

The Art of a Lie by Laura Shepherd-Robinson

I’ll admit this is not my favorite TS song by a long shot. I know a lot of people LOVEEEEE this one, but it never really clicked for me. That said, I do like the theme of meeting your match, and realizing someone is as much a swindler, con artist, or entertainer as you are (can’t relate to this, but c’est la vie).

Synopsis

Following the murder of her husband in what looks like a violent street robbery, Hannah Cole is struggling to keep her head above water. Her confectionary shop on Piccadilly is barely turning a profit, her suppliers conspiring to put her out of business because they don’t like women in trade. Henry Fielding, the famous author-turned-magistrate, is threatening to confiscate the money in her husband’s bank account because he believes it might have been illicitly acquired. And even those who claim to be Hannah’s friends have darker intent.

Only William Devereux seems different. A friend of her late husband, Devereux helps Hannah unravel some of the mysteries surrounding his death. He also tells her about an Italian delicacy called iced cream, an innovation she is convinced will transform the fortunes of her shop. But their friendship opens Hannah to speculation and gossip and draws Henry Fielding’s attention her way, locking her into a battle of wits more devastating than anything she can imagine.

long story short

Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill

I will forever love the line “I’m fine with my spite and my beers and my tears and my candles.”

Synopsis

In the beginning, it was easy to imagine their future. They were young and giddy, sure of themselves and of their love for each other. “Dept. of Speculation” was their code name for all the thrilling uncertainties that lay ahead. Then they got married, had a child and navigated the familiar calamities of family life—a colicky baby, a faltering relationship, stalled ambitions.

When their marriage reaches a sudden breaking point, the wife tries to retrace the steps that have led them to this place, invoking everything from Kafka to the Stoics to doomed Russian cosmonauts as she analyzes what is lost and what remains.

marjorie

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Frederik Backman

I teared up several times during the Eras Tour, but this song was the one that finally made me full-on ugly cry. I can’t listen to it without bursting into tears at some point. I love it. It’s fine. Grandmas, am I right?

Synopsis

Elsa is seven years old and different. Her grandmother is seventy-seven years old and crazy—as in standing-on-the-balcony-firing-paintball-guns-at-strangers crazy. She is also Elsa’s best, and only, friend. At night Elsa takes refuge in her grandmother’s stories, in the Land-of-Almost-Awake and the Kingdom of Miamas, where everybody is different and nobody needs to be normal.

When Elsa’s grandmother dies and leaves behind a series of letters apologizing to people she has wronged, Elsa’s greatest adventure begins. Her grandmother’s instructions lead her to an apartment building full of drunks, monsters, attack dogs, and old crones but also to the truth about fairy tales and kingdoms and a grandmother like no other.

closure

The Adjunct by Maria Adelman

Releases March 31st, 2026

I will forever love the line “I’m fine with my spite and my beers and my tears and my candles.”

Synopsis

Meet Sam, an adjunct professor at a public university in Baltimore who takes a last-minute gig at the private liberal arts college down the road. Overworked and underpaid, her life is a blur of back-to-back classes, side hustles, and job applications as she attempts to claw her way toward a full-time position. But her already precarious existence is thrown into disarray when she runs into her former grad school adviser, Dr. Tom Sternberg, on campus.

Tom and Sam have a complicated history, the lasting impact of which has haunted her academic career, and it’s the last thing she wants to think about as she navigates academic politics, institutional hurdles, and romantic entanglements with men and women that further complicate a sexuality not even she can define. Then she learns that Tom left his old job for undisclosed reasons—and his long-awaited second novel is about a professor’s reckoning with his checkered past. As whispers spread that Sam is the inspiration behind a central character, she fights to regain control of the story while questioning everything she thought she knew about her future—and herself.

evermore

Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

Incredibly sad, but also ending on a high note of yes, there will be sadness and misery – but no, it will not last forever.

Synopsis

Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend, Eileen, is getting over a breakup, and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood.

Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are still young—but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. They have sex, they worry about sex, they worry about their friendships and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?

right where you left me

Heart the Lover by Lily King

I can’t shut up about this book, I refuse to. It’s so beautiful. And the best part is, this song applies to basically all the main characters.

Synopsis

Our narrator understands good love stories – their secrets and subtext, their highs and free falls. But her greatest love story, the one she lived, never followed the simple rules.

In the fall of her senior year of college, she meets two star students from her 17th-Century Lit class: Sam and Yash. Best friends living off campus in the elegant house of a professor on sabbatical, the boys invite her into their intoxicating world of academic fervor, rapid-fire banter and raucous card games. They nickname her Jordan, and she quickly discovers the pleasures of friendship, love and her own intellectual ambition. But youthful passion is unpredictable, and soon she finds herself at the center of a charged and intricate triangle. As graduation comes and goes, choices made will alter these three lives forever.

Decades later, the vulnerable days of Jordan’s youth seem comfortably behind her. But when a surprise visit and unexpected news bring the past crashing into the present, she returns to a world she left behind and must confront the decisions and deceptions of her younger self.

it’s time to go

The White Hot by Quiara Alegría Hudes

This song is all about knowing when it’s, well, time to go, and having the courage to leave a situation, relationship, party, etc. with your pride and convictions intact. And while motherhood is maybe stretching the boundaries of that particular concept, I think this story fits perfectly.

Synopsis

April is a young mother raising her daughter in an intergenerational house of unspoken secrets and loud arguments. Her only refuge is to hide away in a locked bathroom, her ears plugged into an ambient soundscape, and a mantra on her lips: dead inside. That is, until one day, as she finds herself spiraling toward the volcanic rage she calls the white hot, a voice inside her tells her to just . . . walk away. She wanders to a bus station and asks for a ticket to the furthest destination; she tells the clerk to make it one-way. That ticket takes her from her Philly home to the threshold of a wilderness and the beginning of a nameless quest—an accidental journey that shakes her awake, almost kills her, and brings her to the brink of an impossible choice.

The White Hot takes the form of a letter from mother to daughter about a moment of abandonment that would stretch from ten days to ten years—an explanation, but not an apology. Hudes narrates April’s story—spiritual and sexy, fierce and funny—with delicate lyricismand tough love. Just as April finds in her painful and absurd sojourn the key to freeing herself and her family from a cage of generational trauma, so Hudes turns April’s stumbling pursuit of herself into an unforgettable short epic of self-discovery.