There exists, as all knowing readers understand, a particular sort of book—the kind that wraps itself around your heart like a beloved shawl and refuses to let go. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is precisely such a book, with its letters flying across the sea, its wartime courage, and its peculiar little book club formed under the most impossible of circumstances.
If you have found yourself bereft since turning its final page, take heart. For here gathered are twelve books that share its particular magic—tales of wit and warmth, of letters and literature, of ordinary people doing extraordinary things, and of communities bound together by something as simple and profound as the love of stories.
1. The Wendy by Erin Michelle Sky and Steven Brown
If The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society captured your heart with its spirited heroine and its delicious wit, then permit me to introduce you to a book that will charm you utterly and completely.
The Wendy is a reimagining of the Peter Pan tale, though to call it a “retelling” would be rather like calling the sea merely “damp.” Set in 1780s England, it follows Wendy Darling—an orphan with a most inconvenient dream of becoming a ship’s captain in an age when women were expected to tend to domestic matters and nothing more.
The narrative voice is something quite special indeed. One reads it with the distinct feeling that a rather clever friend is telling you the most wonderful story, complete with wry observations and a wit that sparkles like sunlight on water. Wendy herself possesses what reviewers have called “a very expressive eyebrow” and a mouth that hides a secret kiss (inherited from her mother, one presumes, if one has read the original)—details that delight and enchant.
What makes this book a perfect companion to Guernsey is its warmth and its celebration of spirited women who refuse to accept the limitations placed upon them. There is magic here—green magic that smells of pickles, if you can imagine such a thing—and adventure aplenty. Captain Hook makes his appearance, though not quite as you might expect, and Peter Pan himself is a mystery wrapped in wings.
Readers have declared it “better than the original” and praised its meticulous historical research, woven so seamlessly into the story that one hardly notices learning whilst being thoroughly entertained. The complete trilogy is now available, so you can sail right through the series without waiting for the next installment.
2. 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
Here we have a book composed entirely of letters—real ones, mind you, not invented—exchanged between an American writer named Helene Hanff and a London bookseller named Frank Doel over the course of twenty years.
Miss Hanff, possessed of rather more wit than money, wrote to the antiquarian bookshop seeking rare editions she could not find in New York. What followed was a correspondence that grew from mere commerce to genuine friendship, crossing the Atlantic with packages of books one way and parcels of ham and eggs the other (for this was after the war, when England was still rather short of such things).
The charm lies in watching reserve melt slowly into affection, in the warmth exchanged between strangers who became something rather more precious.
3. The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner
In 1945, in the small village of Chawton—where Jane Austen herself once lived—a most unlikely group of people unite to save her cottage from an uncertain fate.
There is a farmer, a doctor nursing a broken heart, a Hollywood actress seeking anonymity, and a housemaid with scholarly dreams. They share nothing in common except their love for Miss Austen’s novels and their determination to preserve her legacy.
If you loved how the Guernsey Literary Society brought together disparate souls through their love of books, you will find kindred spirits here. The book has been praised for possessing “that kind of charm” that readers of Guernsey will recognize instantly.
4. The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin
A.J. Fikry is, to put it plainly, a curmudgeon. Widowed, grieving, and drinking rather too much, he runs a struggling bookshop on an island off Massachusetts with all the warmth of a November fog.
Then a toddler appears in his shop. Mysteriously. Without explanation. And this small person, who adores books with the fierce devotion only a child can muster, proceeds to save his life in ways he never anticipated.
This is a book about how stories change us—the ones we read and the ones we live. It is, as one reviewer noted, “a love letter to print books and the people who still buy them.”
5. Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson
Major Ernest Pettigrew is a proper English gentleman—retired army, widowed, devoted to his tea and his father’s antique guns. Mrs. Jasmina Ali runs the village shop and has also lost a spouse. They are both rather invisible to a village consumed with its own prejudices and expectations.
What unfolds is a gentle romance that defies convention—not with grand gestures, but with small kindnesses and the quiet courage of two people who refuse to let society dictate whom they may love.
The wit here is decidedly English, and the satire of village life deliciously sharp. Perfect for readers who loved Guernsey’s celebration of community and found family.
6. Dear Mrs. Bird by A.J. Pearce
London, 1941. Emmy Lake dreams of becoming a war correspondent. Instead, she finds herself working for a women’s magazine, answering letters for an advice columnist named Mrs. Bird—who refuses to acknowledge any question that might be considered “Unpleasant.”
Emmy, being Emmy, cannot simply ignore the desperate women who write in. And so she begins secretly answering the letters Mrs. Bird discards.
The book captures the spirit of the Blitz with warmth and humor, celebrating the friendship, resilience, and gentle rebellion of women during wartime. It is the first of a series, should you wish to continue the adventure.
7. The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa
Here is something rather extraordinary: a mathematics professor whose memory lasts only eighty minutes, a housekeeper hired to care for him, and her young son, whom the professor nicknames “Root.”
Every morning, they must begin again. And yet, somehow, a profound friendship forms—through numbers, through kindness, through the simple rituals of daily life.
The prose is quiet and meditative, and mathematics becomes, quite unexpectedly, a language of love. It won Japan’s most prestigious book awards for good reason.
8. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
A blind French girl. A German orphan boy with a gift for radios. Their lives, set against the vast canvas of World War II, move inevitably toward a single moment in the besieged city of Saint-Malo.
This is a book that took its author ten years to write, and one can feel that care in every luminous sentence. It won the Pulitzer Prize and sold over fifteen million copies.
For readers who loved Guernsey’s portrayal of ordinary people surviving wartime with courage and grace, this offers something more sweeping in scope but equally tender in its human moments.
9. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
Two sisters in occupied France: Vianne, who must protect her daughter while German soldiers are billeted in her home, and Isabelle, who joins the Resistance and leads downed Allied airmen over the Pyrenees to safety.
The book was inspired by the real story of Andrée de Jongh, a Belgian woman who personally escorted over a hundred airmen to freedom. It has sold more than four million copies and been translated into forty-five languages.
Readers seeking the wartime courage and sisterhood that makes Guernsey so moving will find it here in abundance.
10. Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
Tova Sullivan, a widow in her seventies, works the night shift at an aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Her son disappeared thirty years ago, and the mystery has never been solved.
Marcellus is a giant Pacific octopus living in the aquarium. He is, by his own estimation, considerably more intelligent than the humans around him. And he knows what happened to Tova’s son.
This is a book about grief and second chances, told partly from the perspective of a remarkably sardonic cephalopod. It is utterly charming and more moving than one might expect from a novel featuring tentacles.
11. Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
Paris, 1942. Ten-year-old Sarah is arrested with her parents during the Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup. Before she goes, she locks her four-year-old brother in a cupboard, promising to return for him.
Sixty years later, an American journalist discovers that the apartment her family is about to move into was once Sarah’s home. The two stories interweave, revealing a tragedy that France tried very hard to forget.
This is not a comfortable book. But it is an important one, and for readers who appreciate Guernsey’s unflinching look at wartime occupation, it offers a different but equally essential perspective.
12. The Downstairs Girl by Stacey Lee
Jo Kuan is a seventeen-year-old Chinese American young woman in 1890s Atlanta. By day, she works as a lady’s maid for one of the city’s most prominent families. By night, she secretly writes an advice column that challenges every expectation society has placed upon her.
This is historical fiction with a modern sensibility—a young woman refusing to be invisible in a world determined not to see her. The epistolary elements and sharp social commentary will appeal to readers who loved Guernsey’s wit and its celebration of women who speak their minds.
Finding Your Next Beloved Book
Each of these books shares something essential with The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society: they remind us that stories matter, that connection transcends circumstance, and that ordinary people are capable of extraordinary courage.
Whether you choose the letter-writing charm of 84, Charing Cross Road, the wartime resistance of The Nightingale, or the whimsical adventure of The Wendy, you will find yourself in good company—surrounded by characters who feel like friends and stories that stay with you long after the final page.
