This is oddly specific, but I’m looking for a book that follows a female adult protagonist and has zero romance.
I have nothing against romance/love stories, in fact they’re some of my favorites. However, sometimes I just want a book about a woman doing something and it not involve a romance subplot. I picked out a few books over the past year I thought we be like that, but somehow a love interest element always worms its way in.
Any genre is fine, but I’d prefer something uplifting and joyful over something sad/depressing. Not looking for a “woman finding herself” story either and I’d prefer to follow a single protagonist, not multiple.
Any suggestions?
by GirlisNo1
18 Comments
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
*My Year of Rest and Relaxation*, *You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine* both have some current/ex boyfriend in the picture but there’s zero romance and the story doesn’t even really care about them.
It’s hard to say if they count as “woman finding herself” because broadly every single novel ever is about characters finding themselves, but they don’t do the eat pray love shit so I assume that’s what you meant.
*The Crying of Lot 49* strays even further from romance, she fucks once near the start and then it basically never comes up again. It’s about a woman following a bizarre conspiracy which is pretty far from finding herself.
*Bunny* is comedy horror and any romantic moments are basically immediately ruined, it’s more like a weird version of Heathers.
The Help by Kathryn Stockett perhaps. There’s a very minor romantic subplot (she does go on a couple of dates) but it’s really not what the book is about.
Up the Down Staircase by Bel Kaufman (again, a very minor romantic subplot consisting of a couple of dates)
Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett
And for less uplifting and joyful:
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
Smilla’s Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg
Kinsey Milhone series by Sue Grafton
Squirrel Girl Universe by Tristan Palmgren. There’s a couple in it, but they’re already together and it’s not plot relevant.
It’s about a super hero (not romantically involved, not dating) who is extremely positive and joyful and a bit silly. She’s a computer science major, and a big fan of not automatically resorting to violence to solve every trouble.
It’s a very positive, optimistic book about confronting the kind of terminally negative nihilism you often see online.
You don’t need to have Squirrel Girl knowledge to read it, or any super hero knowledge. Arguably it’s intended to get new people into that stuff.
I’d say it’s a bit tonally like a fun Dr Who episode with less angst and less sexism.
Carroll O’Connell Mallory detective series. She doesn’t date. Some men in her life. But that’s their problem. Found on the street as a child and adopted by a detective and his wife. I like her . The series is ongoing.
idk if it’s up your alley, but the graphic novel Nimona has a kickass female lead & there’s no romance. just swashbuckling adventure & delightful weirdness.
In Becky Chambers’ *A Psalm for the Wild Built*, I don’t know that the protagonist’s gender is ever determined, if that helps. And her novel *A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet* is, I believe, entirely the perspective of a female engineer. Also, I believe *Aurora* by Kim Stanley Robinson is told from the standpoint of a woman, at least primarily. It’s been a while since I read that, but I don’t really remember any romance in it. And then there was a novella in *The Expanse* series that focused on Bobbie Draper, pretty much all about her investigating something and kicking ass in the process on Mars (can’t remember the title).
All of these are sci-fi.
The space between us by thrity umrigar
Convenience Store Woman
The Shamer’s Daughter by Lene Kaaberbøl (Danish middle grade fantasy)
The Moth Keeper by Kay O’Neill
Frizzy by Claribel A. Ortega
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
Maybe The Book of Gothel by Mary McMyne? There was a love interest, but I don’t remember him having much of an importance to the overall story, at least in terms of a romance subplot.
Galatea by Madeline Miller
No Exit by Taylor Adams, YA thriller
The Girl with Ghost Eyes by M.H. Boroson, more action packed than uplifting, but the main character’s a young widower, she’s still in the grieving period so there’s no romance whatsoever.
Dragon Pearl by Yoon Ha Lee, middle grade sci-fi
The Seventh Bride by T. Kingfisher. It’s dark fantasy, but I thought the main character was pretty fun to follow.
The Girls at the Kingfisher Club by Genevieve Valentine. It does have a controlling father and there’s 12 sisters, but we do follow the oldest as she wrangles everyone during their nightly rebellions.
Artemis by Andy Weir
Ninth House is pretty a-romantic…there’s a prior subplot with a boyfriend but it’s not a love story by *any* means
– The Dallergut Dream Department Store by Miye Lee- a young woman gets a job at a dream department store— a store that sells dreams to people who are asleep.
– Yellowface by RF Kuang- a woman steals a manuscript from her deceased friend and publishes herself without giving any credit
– How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix- a horror about a woman who goes to sell the house owned by her recently deceased parents only to realize it is haunted. I didn’t personally like this book too much but maybe you will!
– A House with Good Bones and Hollow Places both by T Kingfisher- both horror books with 30-something single women main characters
– The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa- a dystopian book about an island community where objects or concepts are erased from memory and being every so often.
This might be a little odd, as it follows a robot more than a human, but Klara and the sun is a wonderful novel about the meaning of love (not in the romantic sense) and what it means to be human. Highly recommend!
Hennah Artist. She finds love, but it just happens, is not really important to the plot. Th plot focuses on how she rises up from a village girl.
The Lost Apothecary also is along the same lines, focused on the historical and current lady, there’s an ex, but it’s mostly about her and women finding their way
I highly recommend The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion by Beth Brower! They’re set in 19th century London and truly delightful. I don’t consider myself a “regency” era reader at all, but these were so easy to get into. I often laugh out loud reading them, and I can’t say that about many books. I’ve read the first 5 and there is no romance so far 🙂
A tree grows in Brooklyn. Fabulous classic novel!