Best Uplifting Books: Novels That Restore Your Faith in People
The best uplifting books — from A Man Called Ove and The Midnight Library to Remarkably Bright Creatures and People We Meet on Vacation. Fiction that makes life feel worth living.
The best uplifting books are not books that pretend difficulty doesn’t exist — they are books that look at grief, loneliness, failure, and regret honestly, and still find something worth holding onto. The warmth they offer is earned rather than assumed, which is why it lasts.
The novels below are the ones that make readers feel, when they put them down, that human beings are capable of more kindness than they sometimes show, and that life is more worth living than it sometimes appears.
The Definitive Uplifting Novels
A Man Called Ove — Fredrik Backman (2012)
The most beloved uplifting novel of the last decade. Ove, a recently widowed Swedish man who has organised his life around rigid routine and contempt for everyone around him, begins to make preparations to end his life — and finds those preparations repeatedly interrupted by new neighbours who need help. Backman makes Ove genuinely curmudgeonly (the comedy is real, not coy) and the grief genuinely painful, which means that the novel’s gradual warming of Ove toward life is earned rather than assumed.
The premise sounds sentimental; the execution is honest. By the end, most readers are crying, and not from manipulation.
The Midnight Library — Matt Haig (2020)
The most uplifting novel about the value of life. Nora Seed, who has decided her life is not worth living, finds herself in a library between life and death, containing all the books of lives she might have lived — different choices, different outcomes. Each book allows her to try a different version of her life, and the novel is the account of what she discovers when she does. Haig’s prose is clear and warm, and the argument — that the specific life you are living has an irreplaceable value you may not be able to see from inside it — is made with care.
Contemporary Warm Fiction
Remarkably Bright Creatures — Shelby Van Pelt (2022)
The warmest novel on this list, and the most formally unusual: narrated partly by Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living in an aquarium in a small Washington town. Tova, a seventy-year-old woman who cleans the aquarium at night, and Marcellus become something like friends; the novel is also about Tova’s long-buried grief for her son, who drowned thirty years earlier. Van Pelt manages to make an octopus a genuinely characterised narrator without condescension, and the novel’s resolution is one of the most satisfying in recent commercial fiction.
Anxious People — Fredrik Backman (2020)
Backman’s structural comedy about a failed bank robbery and the eight strangers who end up spending an afternoon together as accidental hostages. The hostages are an assortment of human imperfections — the couple who can’t stop fighting, the woman who can’t stop crying, the man who can’t stop performing competence — and the novel is warm about all of them while remaining funny about them too. The reveal of what actually happened in the apartment is the kind of structural surprise that makes readers want to start again from the beginning.
People We Meet on Vacation — Emily Henry (2021)
Emily Henry’s most beloved novel — the story of Alex and Poppy, best friends who take a trip together every summer for ten years, told in alternating chapters from the present (after a falling-out that ended the trips) and the past (the summers themselves). The structure allows Henry to build the relationship with unusual precision, and the novel is both a friends-to-lovers romance and a book about what it means to be known by someone who has seen all of your worst moments.
Reading Order
Start here: A Man Called Ove → The Midnight Library → Remarkably Bright Creatures.
For Fredrik Backman fans: A Man Called Ove → Anxious People → Beartown.
Contemporary romance warmth: People We Meet on Vacation → then Emily Henry’s other novels.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the most uplifting books to read?
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman is the most widely beloved uplifting novel — its account of a curmudgeonly widower whose plans to end his life are repeatedly interrupted by neighbours who need help is both very funny and genuinely moving. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig is the most uplifting novel about the value of one's own life — Nora Seed explores the lives she might have lived and discovers what her actual life was worth. Remarkably Bright Creatures is the warmest recent novel: a relationship between a grieving woman and a giant Pacific octopus that manages to be about grief, connection, and the unexpected forms that consolation takes.
What is The Midnight Library about?
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig (2020) follows Nora Seed, who finds herself between life and death in a library containing all the books of lives she might have lived — different choices, different outcomes. The library's librarian (her childhood school librarian) allows her to try them. The novel is simultaneously a thought experiment about regret and a warmhearted argument for the specific, irreplaceable value of the life one is actually living. It sold over four million copies and became one of the most widely shared books of the pandemic years.
What is Anxious People about?
Anxious People by Fredrik Backman (2020) begins with a failed bank robbery — the robber takes hostages in an apartment viewing — and develops into a portrait of eight strangers who, through an afternoon of forced proximity, reveal their particular versions of human imperfection and longing. Backman's characteristic mode is warm comedy that reveals serious emotional truths without sentimentality, and the novel's structural reveal (what actually happened in the apartment) earns its optimism through careful preparation.
What makes a book uplifting without being saccharine?
The best uplifting books earn their warmth through honesty about difficulty. A Man Called Ove works because Ove is genuinely curmudgeonly, his grief is genuinely painful, and the novel acknowledges this throughout. The Midnight Library works because Nora's despair is real before her recovery. Remarkably Bright Creatures works because the grief is rendered without shortcuts. The books that fail to uplift are those that ignore difficulty or resolve it too easily; the books that succeed are those that look at difficulty clearly and still find something worth holding onto.
