The 18 Best Feel-Good Fiction Books of All Time

By YPB TeamSep 9

Novels built to leave a reader lighter than they started: grumpy neighbors who soften, second chances, and endings that land where they should.

1
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
Gail Honeyman's novel about a rigidly isolated woman whose routine cracks open into unexpected friendship.
2
A Man Called Ove
Fredrik Backman's story of a grieving widower whose gruff routine is upended by new neighbors.
3
The Rosie Project
Graeme Simsion's comic novel about a socially rigid geneticist running a project to find a wife.
4
Where'd You Go, Bernadette
Maria Semple's satirical mystery about a mother's disappearance told through emails and documents.
5
The House in the Cerulean Sea
TJ Klune's fantasy about a caseworker sent to inspect an orphanage of magical children.
6
Legends & Lattes
Travis Baldree's cozy fantasy following an orc mercenary who retires to open a coffee shop.
7
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
Rachel Joyce's novel about a retiree who walks the length of England to save an old friend.
8
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
Helen Simonson's novel of a retired English major and a widowed shopkeeper finding late-life romance.
9
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
A postwar epistolary novel about a writer who befriends a book club formed during the German occupation.
10
Anxious People
Fredrik Backman's novel about a botched bank robbery turned hostage situation full of unlikely bonds.
11
Beach Read
Emily Henry's romantic comedy about two rival novelists swapping genres for a summer.
12
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared
Jonas Jonasson's comic caper following a centenarian who flees his own birthday party.
13
Convenience Store Woman
Sayaka Murata's novel about a woman who finds contentment and identity in her convenience-store job.
14
Britt-Marie Was Here
Fredrik Backman's novel about a fastidious woman who reinvents herself coaching a small-town soccer team.
15
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
Alexander McCall Smith's gentle mystery following Botswana's first female private detective.
16
Evvie Drake Starts Over
Linda Holmes's novel about a young widow and a burned-out pitcher finding their footing in small-town Maine.
17
Remarkably Bright Creatures
Shelby Van Pelt's novel about a widow and a curmudgeonly octopus who help solve a decades-old disappearance.
18
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
Gabrielle Zevin's novel about a grieving bookseller whose life is transformed by an abandoned toddler.