What If?: Books Like Sliding Doors

In this 2015 UK bestseller, Eva and Jim meet at university in Cambridge in 1958. What happens from there is explored in three different scenarios spanning the following decades — so it’s also a great read for anyone who enjoyed another British bestseller, One Day by David Nicholls.

Published in 2013, this beautifully written novel about a woman born in 1910 won multiple awards. It follows the life of Ursula, or rather her lives. In one scenario, she doesn’t live past babyhood, while in several others, she dies of the 1918 flu epidemic. Eventually, she makes it through to the 1930s and beyond, playing a pivotal role in geopolitical world events.

This sophomore novel by bestselling author Brit Bennett explores the impact of a life decision through the lens of twins, both light-skinned Black women. Stella chooses to pass as white and leave her old life and family behind, while Desiree stays, and they reconnect much later. Twins make for fascinating “what if” storytelling, since those stories start off with two characters whose lives could be assumed to be heading in the same direction. (Though of course we know that both life and fiction are more complex than that!)

What happens when your wedding rehearsal goes disastrously wrong? Maybe you break up. But maybe, if you’re Megan and Tom, you get stuck in a Groundhog Day style time loop, and you have to relive the day, over and over again. What if the wedding day never arrives? And what if it does?

This one is for you if you like offbeat novels! You might know Gabrielle Zevin from her other books, Young Jane Young and The Storied Life of AJ Fikry. This one is a love story that keeps you guessing as to what’s real and what isn’t — that’s the Sliding Doors of it all — and asks us to think about the different versions of ourselves throughout our lives.

Taylor Jenkins Reid’s third novel is one of the books that is most like Sliding Doors. While Hannah is out with her friend Gabby in Los Angeles, she bumps into Ethan, her old boyfriend from high school. When Gabby is ready to go, Ethan offers to take Hannah home later, and her life plays out two different ways according to whom she takes up on the offer of a ride.

Like Sliding Doors and like Maybe in Another Life, this book explores the question of whether there is such a thing as a fate-determined soulmate. Lucy has to decide between staying by the sea and pursuing her dream of becoming a writer or moving to London — and in each location, she has a shot at love with a different guy.

This 2011 novel by prizewinning author Tayari Jones explores the relationship between two girls, only one of whom knows that they have the same father. The secret family versus the public family is an interesting take on parallel lives, and O Magazine calls this book “full of perverse wisdom and proud joy.”

Another take on the “secret sisters” storyline is explored in this novel-in-verse by acclaimed author Elizabeth Acevedo. When the father they unknowingly share dies in a plane crash, the two young women — one in the Dominican Republic, the other in the U.S. — learn of each other and have new realties as well as grief to reckon with.