Author Lori Gold’s Favorite Novels About Living Another Life
I have a confession: I am a planner. I don’t do spontaneous. I only “follow my gut” or “rely on instinct” if it comes after hours, days, weeks of contemplation and pro-and-con lists. (And yes, this is just as exhausting as it sounds.) While I may chew on decisions like a cow with cud, I am sure I am not alone in reflecting on choices made, consequences lived and wondering if the grass is truly greener.
But wonder is all real life affords us. Unlike fiction.
We keep hearing that readers are looking for an escape from the current world in their reading. While many believe that to be fueling the romance and fantasy trend, I believe it also speaks to why readers of late are also hungry for grounded speculative fiction that tackles the road not taken: a marriage that could have been, a death that could have been avoided, a family that never was. The question these books share isn’t “what if the world were different?” but “what if I had been?”
My latest novel, Kiss, Marry, Kill, is part of this wave. The novel follows three best friends and cofounders of a health and wellness app who play a spin on the conversation game of “kiss, marry, kill” at their summer outing and wake up the next day in an alternate universe where they’ve each done exactly that. It’s part twisty book club fiction, part female friendship and part meditation on control, chance and the stories we tell ourselves. It is about the path not taken and the many facets of love in our lives, ultimately asking: Do our choices define us or do we define our choices?
Kiss, Marry, Kill uses the multiverse as its speculative mechanism, but as seen in this collection of recent Sliding Doors-esque stories, there are many approaches (from time travel to alternate history to magical realism) that push characters to confront who they are, who they were and who they want to be, prompting the reader to do the same. There are The Midnight Library by Matt Haig; Wrong Place, Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister; This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub; Cassandra in Reverse by Holly Smale; Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore; The Two Lives of Lydia Bird by Josie Silver; and In a Holidaze by Christina Lauren. Beyond those, the titles I most come back to are:
