10 Books Mona Awad has Recommended

1. Bad Marie by Marcy Dermanky (2010)

Bad Marie is the story of Marie, tall, voluptuous, beautiful, thirty years old, and fresh from six years in prison for being an accessory to murder and armed robbery. The only job Marie can get on the outside is as a nanny for her childhood friend Ellen Kendall, an upwardly mobile Manhattan executive whose mother employed Marie’s mother as a housekeeper. After Marie moves in with Ellen, Ellen’s angelic baby Caitlin, and Ellen’s husband, a very attractive French novelist named Benoit Doniel, things get complicated, and almost before she knows what she’s doing, Marie has absconded to Paris with both Caitlin and Benoit Doniel. On the run and out of her depth, Marie will travel to distant shores and experience the highs and lows of foreign culture, lawless living, and motherhood as she figures out how to be an adult; how deeply she can love; and what it truly means to be “bad”.

Goodreads rating: 3.57 [2,492 ratings / 440 reviews]

This does sound like something I’d probably like. I’ve seen Mona recommend this author and this book in particular in a couple of interviews, described as “just so much fun.”

2. The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey (2025)

In an alternate world where nobody won WWII, three brothers are the only boys left in an orphanage whose dark secret is the reason for their existence—and the key to their survival—from the acclaimed author of Pet.

After a very different outcome to WWII than the one history recorded, 1979 England is a country ruled by a government whose aims have sinister underpinnings and alliances. In the Hampshire countryside, 13-year-old triplets Vincent, Lawrence and William are the last remaining residents at the Captain Scott Home for Boys, where every day they must take medicine to protect themselves from a mysterious illness to which many of their friends have succumbed. The lucky ones who recover are allowed to move to Margate, a seaside resort of mythical proportions.

In nearby Exeter, 13-year-old Nancy lives a secluded life with her parents, who dote on her but never let her leave the house. As the triplets’ lives begin to intersect with Nancy’s, bringing to light a horrifying truth about their origins and their likely fate, the children must unite to escape – and survive.

Goodreads rating: 3.80 [2,752 ratings / 672 reviews]

This does sound like something I’d probably like, and even better, it’s 99p on Kobo right now!

3. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis (1991)

Patrick Bateman is twenty-six and works on Wall Street. He is handsome, sophisticated, charming and intelligent. He is also a psychopath. Taking us to head-on collision with America’s greatest dream—and its worst nightmare—American Psycho is a bleak, bitter, black comedy about a world we all recognize but do not wish to confront.

Goodreads rating: 3.80 [354,747 ratings / 24,909 reviews]

I periodically debate reading this (it was also on my 1980s list) and never go because I think the treatment of women in it (given this is Patrick’s POV) will bother me. I think one day I probably will end up giving it a go; it’s 99p on Kobo currently, so I may grab a copy. In Elle, Mona Awad credits it as the book that helped her to be with a character and bring their voice to life.

4. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (1859)

The Woman in White famously opens with Walter Hartright’s eerie encounter on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter becomes embroiled in the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his ‘charming’ friend Count Fosco, who has a taste for white mice, vanilla bonbons, and poison. Pursuing questions of identity and insanity along the paths and corridors of English country houses and the madhouse, The Woman in White is the first and most influential of the Victorian genre that combined Gothic horror with psychological realism.

Goodreads rating: 40.1 [164,169 ratings / 11,093 reviews]

I don’t know about this one, man. Victorian novels can be hard going, and this one is over 600 pages! Mona Awad mentions this in her ‘grew on me’ section and admitted it took 160 pages to get going… a lot of reviews say the start of it is boring. Maybe I’ll try an audio version one day.

5. Slade House by David Mitchell (2015)

Down the road from a working-class British pub, along the brick wall of a narrow alley, if the conditions are exactly right, you’ll find the entrance to Slade House. A stranger will greet you by name and invite you inside. At first, you won’t want to leave. Later, you’ll find that you can’t. Every nine years, the house’s residents — an odd brother and sister — extend a unique invitation to someone who’s different or lonely: a precocious teenager, a recently divorced policeman, a shy college student. But what really goes on inside Slade House? For those who find out, it’s already too late…

Spanning five decades, from the last days of the 1970s to the present, leaping genres, and barreling toward an astonishing conclusion, this intricately woven novel will pull you into a reality-warping new vision of the haunted house story—as only David Mitchell could imagine it.

Goodreads rating: 3.81 [68,938 ratings / 8,538 reviews]

I have read some David Mitchell before, a long, old time ago now – Cloud Atlas and Number9Dream. I enjoyed them both at the time, especially Number9Dream. I think I did have a copy of The Thousand Autumn of Jacob de Zoet, but it was a victim of my book cull during the few years I kept moving house! I haven’t heard of Slade House, but it sounds really intriguing. He’s an author who often populates charity shop shelves so I might start keeping my eyes peeled there.

He is one of two authors Mona credits with being a master class in voice, the other being…

6. Duchess of Nothing by Heather McGowan (2006)

The author of the critically acclaimed Schooling returns with a darkly comic novel about a mentally unpredictable woman intent on giving a young boy a proper education.

After leaving her husband and their suffocating marriage for a new lover in Rome, the narrator of Heather McGowan’s Duchess of Nothing has her freedom, but is still trapped by the routine of life and haunted by her past. Even worse, her lover, Edmund, is just as self-absorbed and remote as her former husband. Her one source of entertainment is Edmund’s seven-year-old brother, a curious, precocious, and defiant child who becomes her responsibility during her lover’s long absences. Spending their days together, they wander the city, simultaneously repelled by and drawn to each other as she teaches him important lessons he would otherwise never learn in school, such as “marriage is a tomb” and being an expert liar is key to getting ahead in the world. But when Edmund abandons them altogether, the amusing relationship between the narrator and her charge suddenly becomes a necessity, and she realizes how much she has come to depend on the boy.

Clever, wry, and acutely aware of her own precarious grasp on the world around her, the narrator of McGowan’s pitch-perfect novel speaks with a cutting honesty and a hilarious, twisted logic that keeps us riveted to the page.

Goodreads rating: 3.28 [122 ratings / 21 reviews]

This doesn’t have the best review on Goodreads, though people do applaud it for a strong character voice, even if they found it lacking. I realised I had another book by this author on my Museum titles list and that one (Friends of the Museum), and other another novel Schooling, all have a slightly lower 3 average. I am curious to try one of them because the number of reviews and ratings for them all is very low, so I wonder if she’s just not reaching the right audience… and maybe that’s me. Mona Awad also tends to get a mid 3.5 average.

I suspect part of the problem is that I can’t find any of them on eBook, and physical copies are so expensive, I assume – being stylistically experimental – her books weren’t really released in the UK.

7. The Torn Skirt by Rebecca Godfrey (2001)

At Mt. Douglas (a.k.a. Mt. Drug) High, all the girls have feathered hair, and the sweet scent of Love’s Baby Soft can’t hide the musk of raw teenage anger, apathy, and desire. Sara Shaw is a girl full of fever and longing, a girl looking for something risky, something real. Her only possible salvation comes in the willowy form of the mysterious Justine, the outlaw girl in the torn skirt. The search for Justine will lead Sara on a daring odyssey into an underworld of hookers and johns, junkies and thieves, runaway girls and skater boys, and, ultimately, into a violent tragedy.

Goodreads rating: 3.47 [2,284 ratings / 209 reviews]

This sounds somewhat similar to Junk by Melvin Burgess, which is a book I loved as a teenager. However, like the above, this seems difficult to get hold. Paperbacks are really expensive; it has no eBook version in the UK, but does have an Audible version… which seems strange.

8. Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys (1939)

In 1930s Paris, where one cheap hotel room is very like another, a young woman is teaching herself indifference. She has escaped personal tragedy and has come to France to find courage and seek independence. She tells herself to expect nothing, especially not kindness, least of all from men. Tomorrow, she resolves, she will dye her hair blonde.

Goodreads rating: 3.85 [12,377 ratings / 1,388 reviews]

This sounds really cool, but it is only 176 pages, and the Penguin Modern Classics edition is £10! I will keep my eye out for this one. Mona Awad describes it as “It’s close and dreamy and vulnerable,” and included it the makes me feel seen’ section.

9. The Merry Spinster by Daniel M. Lavery (2018)

From Daniel M. Lavery comes a collection of darkly mischievous stories based on classic fairy tales. Adapted from his beloved “Children’s Stories Made Horrific” series, The Merry Spinster takes up the trademark wit that endeared Lavery to readers of both The Toast and his best-selling debut Texts from Jane Eyre. The feature become among the most popular on the site, with each entry bringing in tens of thousands of views, as the stories proved a perfect vehicle for Lavery’s eye for deconstruction and destabilization. Sinister and inviting, familiar and alien all at the same time, The Merry Spinster updates traditional children’s stories and fairy tales with elements of psychological horror, emotional clarity, and a keen sense of feminist mischief.

Goodreads rating: 3.28 [6,357 ratings / 1,203 reviews]

Short story collections are always a mixed bag, so I’m not sure about this one as much as I saw Mona raving a bout it in several places. I am, however, very intrigued by Texts from Jane Eyre, which sounds very stupid.

10. The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde by Oscar Wilde (1888)

From Daniel M. Lavery comes a collection of darkly mischievous stories based on classic fairy tales. Adapted from his beloved “Children’s Stories Made Horrific” series, The Merry Spinster takes up the trademark wit that endeared Lavery to readers of both The Toast and his best-selling debut Texts from Jane Eyre. The feature become among the most popular on the site, with each entry bringing in tens of thousands of views, as the stories proved a perfect vehicle for Lavery’s eye for deconstruction and destabilization. Sinister and inviting, familiar and alien all at the same time, The Merry Spinster updates traditional children’s stories and fairy tales with elements of psychological horror, emotional clarity, and a keen sense of feminist mischief.

Goodreads rating: 4.17 [33,908 ratings / 2,178 reviews]

I didn’t know these existed – other than The Happy Prince – I’ll add to the list along with all the Brothers’ Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson once I’ve got in the queue!