Recommendations
Books Like Carry On
The chosen hero's final year — and the vampire roommate he's always assumed was trying to kill him
Rainbow Rowell's Carry On is a love letter to and subversion of the chosen-hero-at-magical-school genre. Simon Snow is the Chosen One, the most powerful magician in a generation, who has been fighting the Humdrum — a magical black hole draining the world — for eight years. He's also the worst student at Watford School of Magicks, except at brute magical force. His roommate Tyrannus Basilton Grimm-Pitch is a vampire who has hated him for years, and Simon has always assumed Baz is working against him. In their final year, Baz disappears before term starts — and when he returns, everything Simon assumed about their relationship starts to fall apart. If the warm humor, the deconstruction of the chosen-one narrative from the inside, the romance between two boys who should be enemies, and Rowell's prose gripped you, these eight picks go to the same place.
- 1Buy
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
by J.K. Rowling
Carry On is partly an affectionate deconstruction of Harry Potter tropes — the chosen one, the magical school, the annoying best friend, the ambiguous dark lord. The books are deeply in conversation with each other, and reading Harry Potter after (or before) Carry On enriches both.
- 2Buy
The House in the Cerulean Sea
by TJ Klune
A gentle same-sex romance between two men who start in opposition — Klune's warmth and Rowell's warmth are closely related, and both novels are fundamentally about two people discovering each other across a divide neither of them built.
- 3Buy
Shadow and Bone
by Leigh Bardugo
A girl with a rare power at a magical military academy, and an antagonist who is more complicated than he first appears — Bardugo has Rowell's same gift for a compelling love interest with unclear motivations, and the Grishaverse is as immersive as Watford.
- 4Buy
The Raven Boys
by Maggie Stiefvater
A girl who cannot kiss her true love without killing him, and a group of boys chasing a magical mystery — Stiefvater has Rowell's same ability to write characters who are funny and warm and capable of genuine surprise, and the same sense that who you love is as important as what you're doing.
- 5Buy
An Ember in the Ashes
by Sabaa Tahir
Two protagonists from opposite sides of a conflict, falling in love despite every reason not to — Ember is darker and more intense than Carry On, but the same enemies-to-lovers structure and the same sense that what separates the protagonists is external circumstance rather than character.
- 6Buy
Six of Crows
by Leigh Bardugo
A crew of misfits who trust each other more than they'd ever admit, doing something impossible — the found-family dynamics and the banter-as-intimacy are directly comparable to Simon, Penny, and Baz. Six of Crows is darker and less romantic than Carry On but equally compelling.
- 7Buy
Legendborn
by Tracy Deonn
A Black girl discovers a secret society at her university that's connected to the Arthurian legend — Deonn has Rowell's same gift for a secret magical world hidden inside an institution, and the same sense that the mythology is doing something more than just providing stakes.
- 8Buy
Strange the Dreamer
by Laini Taylor
A romance between two people from opposite sides of an ancient conflict, told in the most beautiful YA prose of the decade — Taylor and Rowell both write romance as emotional urgency rather than plot device, and the worlds both build have the same sense of having been loved into existence.
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