Books like It Starts with Us
Begin with a young widow and a pitcher who can no longer throw: Evvie Drake Starts Over turns that unlikely pairing into a tender argument that damaged lives are not finished lives. All three novels understand what makes Lily and Atlas compelling—love built on patience, honest boundaries, and the courage to imagine a future beyond pain.
If you liked It Starts with Us, you’ll love these
Not lookalikes — kindred books. Each one shares something essential with It Starts with Us, and we tell you exactly what.
Evvie is preparing to leave an unhappy marriage when her husband dies; afterward, grief becomes tangled with guilt and secrets. Dean, a celebrated baseball pitcher who has inexplicably lost his ability to pitch, rents the apartment attached to her house. Their agreement not to discuss the subjects haunting them lasts about as well as you would expect.
Like It Starts with Us, Linda Holmes’s beloved debut treats starting over as difficult emotional work rather than a romantic slogan. Evvie and Dean offer each other humor, room, and companionship—not rescue. Holmes writes with such warmth and perceptiveness that their smallest moments of trust feel momentous. If you loved seeing Lily claim a future without denying her past, Evvie’s complicated, hopeful reinvention is indispensable.
Tiffy and Leon share a one-bedroom apartment while keeping opposite schedules, so for months their relationship exists through Post-it notes, leftover meals, and glimpses of each other’s lives. The playful premise gradually reveals a more serious achievement: a remarkably clear-eyed portrait of recovery from emotional abuse.
Readers who valued Atlas’s steadiness will recognize the appeal of Leon, whose kindness never becomes possessiveness. O’Leary shows how manipulation can distort someone’s confidence—and how safe love helps restore it without magically erasing the damage. This breakout bestseller is funny, deeply comforting, and quietly fierce about the difference between attention and care.
Yasmen and Josiah are divorced, but they still co-parent their children and run a restaurant together. Their marriage did not survive devastating loss and depression; their connection, inconveniently, did. Kennedy Ryan gives both characters a voice, making their longing inseparable from anger, responsibility, therapy, and the question of whether love can return in a healthier form.
This is the choice for readers who loved the adult pressures surrounding Lily and Atlas: children whose needs matter, former partners who cannot simply disappear, and romance that must coexist with hard-won self-respect. Ryan is revered by romance readers for emotional intensity, and here she earns every tear. The result is rawer and more sensual than It Starts with Us, but equally committed to the idea that choosing happiness requires more than merely wanting it.