Books of a Feather

Books of a Feather: Finding Comp Titles

Books of a feather tend to be sold together. That’s why we authors are tasked with finding books similar to ours, known in the publishing industry as comp titles. (Comp can be short for comparative, comparable, or comparison. I’ve seen all these used.)

Authors have a strange dichotomy to fulfill: our book must be “unique in all the world” yet not so peculiar that it can’t be grouped with others of its kind.

Recently, I’ve heard two other terms that fit this bill. One that landed in 2007 is called a listicle. This blended word comes from list and article. As predicted, it’s when items are grouped together in article format. It’s a silly term, along the lines of webinar, like it never should’ve become a word, but it did.

My favorite of these terms is read-alikes. Its meaning is clear and it doesn’t sound obnoxiously buzzy. Let’s declare this the new industry standard! It’s not in Merriam-Webster yet, so the campaign begins now.

 

Regardless of the terms, why the obsession with putting things in neat little groups? Everybody’s doing it.

 

Netflix: We think you’ll love these.

Amazon: Products related to this item.

Goodreads: Readers also enjoyed.

 

In short, it works. As humans, we like recommendations based on what we’ve already enjoyed. From an author’s standpoint, the purpose is to help you find your readers. And with all the books out there, that’s what we want: finding who is most likely to love our book.

With that said, I’ve curated a list of 5 classics and 5 modern read-alikes for my book,

Heart of Grit. Because my book is historical fiction, there are some similarities with older books.

 

First, the classics, which I’ll define as books with enduring value that continue to be printed, read, and studied beyond their generation.

 

Please note: I’m not calling my book a classic. I’m simply making comparisons about some of the content and noting that if you liked these, you might like my book. And, well, a girl can dream.

5 Classic Read-alikes for Heart of Grit

1) Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery

 

My two main characters, Beatrice and Charlie, remind me so much of Anne and Gilbert. They’re best friends, prone to get a rise out of each other, yet they share a rare bond that they don’t even realize until later.  

 

Beatrice, like Anne, reads every book she has access to and prides herself in having exceptional knowledge. Whereas Charlie unlike Gilbert, stopped attending school at 12, claiming he was done being told to stop “dangling his participles and whatnot.”

 

In the moment that Bea begins to wonder if her feelings for Charlie have gone beyond friendship, she resists the notion, telling herself, “I’m Beatrice. I deserve a Dante. A scholar, an intellectual, a poet. Any other sort would never appreciate me, my literary citations, my clever quips.”

 

Beatrice gets plenty of humbling in this regard. Alas, she admits to herself, “No, that wasn’t true. Charlie was cleverer than most. He knew different things than I did, but he was no less clever. He was the one with clever quips.”

 

2) Little Women, Louisa May Alcott

 

Beyond the friendship similarities between Jo and Laurie and my main characters, both couples spend time apart on their own paths with distinct lessons to learn. (A reader might argue that Laurie’s journey was a distraction from Jo, but that’s another matter.) In the end, their journeys dovetail into a conclusion where their life lessons parallel each other but are not the same.

 

Also, the way Charlie puts Bea’s family on a pedestal is similar to how Laurie views the Marches. One might wonder if these poor fellows are conflating the object of their desire with the family she belongs to. Both these boys were deprived of the traditional family settings with suppers, chores, and siblings to pester. Can they not help romanticizing it all, wrapping it in one big package?

 

After Charlie makes a huge personal blunder, he watches the Brannons interact together.

 

“As I watched the scene, a pin pricked the core of me. Holy Moses, I thought. I’ll have to leave them behind. I always thought I’d belong to them someday, to this family. In many ways, I belonged to them now, but if I uttered the words…(redacted for spoilers)…Mrs. Brannon would cast me away from the house. All rights and privileges would be revoked, and they’d never speak to me again.”

3) True Grit, Charles Portis

 

True Grit follows 14-year-old Mattie Ross as she seeks revenge on her father’s murderer with the help of the callous Rooster Cogburn. I love this book! Mattie is fearless and determined; such an enjoyable character to read.

 

Mattie has an innate desire to make wrong things right, especially when it comes to her family. Beatrice is the same way. You simply don’t mess with these characters’ families. In fact, their sense of justice isn’t awakened until their family lives are threatened.

 

4) Shane, Jack Schaefer

 

Shane is the story of a man with uncompromising integrity who defeats the evildoers and becomes a hero in the eyes of a boy.

 

Westerns are notorious for showing how heroes are made. The hero always has ridiculous amounts of integrity and honor. The hero must risk their life for the sake of their principles. There’s no showing too much caution or cowering from an unfair fight. It’s do or die. The whole idea of a duel is to rectify a perceived threat to one’s honor.  

 

I’d seen this idea play out in so many westerns and decided to feature it as part of Charlie’s character in melodramatic fashion (chapter 22).

 

In the end, Bea accuses Charlie of having a “blinding sense of honor,” which Charlie is ashamed of, but doesn’t refute.

 

(I enjoyed the book but loved the movie more. It was my dad’s favorite movie! Also, the movie removed a lot of racist elements present in the book.)

5) The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri

 

One of the classics that Bea has access to is The Divine Comedy, about Dante’s journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. Readers will recognize this as a major motif in my book.

 

In Dante’s epic poem, the character Beatrice represents divine love. My Beatrice greatly aspires to the “refinement, radiance, and intelligence” of Dante’s Beatrice. At the same time, she knows she’ll never attain it, and in the end realizes that Beatrice isn’t a real person anyway, but an idea.

 

On the surface there aren’t many similarities. However, one day I may write a post about some of the aligning themes, such as ignorance is not bliss, the power of introspection, and how one must confront the darkness in order to find the light.

 

5 Modern Read-alikes for Heart of Grit

1) Daughters of a Dead Empire, Carolyn Tara O’Neil

 

This instantly became one of my favorite books. Set in 1918, it tells the intertwining stories of Anna and Evgenia, both from vastly different social classes and areas of Russia at the time of the execution of Tsar Nicholas II. The two girls’ journeys get entangled as a case of mistaken identity incurs deadly consequences.

 

Aside from the young adult historical fiction aspect, both books are written in dual POV (like mine) and feature one or more of the characters hiding their identity for survival’s sake.

 

2) Jo & Laurie, Margaret Stohl and Melissa de la Cruz

 

This romantic retelling of Little Women begins after Jo has published her first novel, and I was impressed how the language really has the Louisa May Alcott feel to it. Keep in mind, if you’re attached to how the original book ends, you may want to skip this one. But if you want to indulge in a bit of “what if?” that creates some new storylines for the same beloved characters then this is for you.

 

I’ve already mentioned the similar friendships of the characters. In addition, the theme of women and girls choosing their own paths makes another play in this novel.

 

3) Olivia Twist, Lorie Langdon

 

This historical fiction novel is a reimagining of Dickins’ classic Oliver Twist. The main character, Olivia, is raised on the streets of London and has to disguise herself as a boy to survive. All grown up now, she considers the role that love will play in her new life. Both Olivia and Jack, her potential love interest, must stand their ground amidst harrowing circumstances. And both go through the gauntlet to figure out their feelings.

 

I’m finding that girls who dress as boys to either protect themselves or to fit into a boys’ world is a common trope, also found in my book.

 

4) The Downstairs Girl, Stacey Lee

 

Stacey Lee has become a historical fiction go-to for me. Another read-alike is called Under a Painted Sky, by the same author, but I’ll focus on The Downstairs Girl today. Kirkus describes it: “Jo Kuan leads a double life: a public role as a quiet lady’s maid and a secret one as the voice behind the hottest advice column in 1890 Atlanta.”

 

I’m an absolute sucker for a story with an anonymous column writer that everybody’s talking about. This one is called “Miss Sweetie.” Jo is so likeable, and the romance with her love interest develops so gradually that it kept me wondering if it would happen. (Although I had my suspicions, of course.)

Jo uses her voice/column to bring important things to light, amid useful bits of advice. I love when young people get involved in activism of their day.

 

5) Lovely War, Julie Berry

 

There are so many elements to this young adult historical fiction book, I hardly know how to summarize it. The setting is both WWI and WWII and follows the dramatic storylines of two couples. Behind it all is a classical element. Aphrodite, the goddess of love, has been caught by her husband, Hephaestus, in an affair with his brother, Ares. To justify her actions, she tells the stories of these lovers in hopes of answering the question of why love and war are so intertwined.

 

I loved the mixing of modern with mythology! Hopefully if you loved this, you’ll appreciate the addition of Dante’s Divine Comedy references in Heart of Grit. I didn’t want to be too heavy-handed in order to not alienate anyone who hasn’t read it. And I figured whether they’ve read it or not, they’ve heard the phrase “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” And I desperately wanted to use that.

 

Hopefully this will give you more insight into my book if you haven’t read it yet, and if you have, you may want to try some of the books in this listicle, er, listed article.

P.S. If you've read any good books that remind you of Heart of Grit, please let me know in the comments. I'd enjoy checking them out.

Editorial note: My blog editor, Bob, hadn’t read through this post before I published it, which is a break in protocol. After reading it, though, he makes the point that me making these comparisons is not a matter of me copying elements from these books. In the case of Anne of Green Gables and Little Women, I don’t think I could help but be influenced by these stories from my childhood. But even these comparisons weren’t obvious to me back when I went on a quest to find comparable titles. As part of the quest, I read so many books I thought would be similar, but they ended up not being a fit. Most of these books I read after my story was written. (Dante I read during.)