If You Want More Colleen Hoover
It Starts with Us – Colleen Hoover
The direct follow-up to It Ends with Us, this one carries the same raw emotional weight — Lily rebuilding her life, Atlas finally getting his shot, and CoHo's signature ability to make you feel everything at once. If you connected with the mother-daughter undercurrent of Regretting You, this hits similar notes.
Find on Amazon →Ugly Love – Colleen Hoover
One of CoHo's most emotionally devastating novels. Tate and Miles agree to a no-feelings arrangement — and you spend 300 pages watching it fall apart beautifully. The dual timeline structure mirrors Regretting You's dual POV, and the backstory reveal lands just as hard.
Find on Amazon →November 9 – Colleen Hoover
Ben and Fallon meet once a year on November 9th. It's quirky, it's romantic, and then it completely blindsides you. The forbidden-ish dynamic and the way CoHo withholds information until the perfect moment makes this a natural next read after Regretting You.
Find on Amazon →Family Drama + Romance
The Last Song – Nicholas Sparks
A teenager reluctantly spends the summer with her estranged father — and falls into an unexpected romance. The parent-child relationship at the center, the emotional revelations, and the bittersweet ending make this one of the closest structural matches to Regretting You outside of CoHo's own catalogue.
Find on Amazon →Big Little Lies – Liane Moriarty
Three mothers whose lives intersect in messy, sometimes dangerous ways. Like Regretting You, family secrets sit at the core and the ending recontextualises everything you thought you knew. The mother-daughter and female friendship dynamics hit especially hard.
Find on Amazon →The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry – Gabrielle Zevin
A grumpy bookstore owner is transformed by an abandoned child and an unexpected romance. It's warmer than Regretting You but shares its core: grief reshaping a family, love arriving sideways, and the sense that life keeps surprising you despite loss.
Find on Amazon →Devastating Love Stories
The Light We Lost – Jill Santopolo
Lucy and Gabe fall in love on 9/11 and spend the next 13 years finding and losing each other. The writing is luminous, the love is all-consuming, and the ending is the kind that sits with you for weeks. Readers who loved the emotional devastation of Regretting You consistently point to this one.
Find on Amazon →Normal People – Sally Rooney
Connell and Marianne orbit each other for years, kept apart by pride and circumstance. Rooney writes the internal emotional landscape of young love with the same precision CoHo brings to it — except Rooney makes it literary. If Regretting You's teenage perspective resonated, this is the next step up.
Find on Amazon →One Day – David Nicholls
Dexter and Emma, same day each year for 20 years. It's funny, it's heartbreaking, and it culminates in one of fiction's most shocking gut-punches. The long-game emotional investment is exactly what makes Regretting You readers love it.
Find on Amazon →Forbidden & Second-Chance Romance
The Hating Game – Sally Thorne
Lucy and Josh are co-workers who hate each other — until they don't. Sally Thorne writes the same kind of crackling, witty, deeply romantic tension that CoHo does, and the emotional payoff is just as satisfying. Great pick if you loved the forbidden-ish thread in Regretting You.
Find on Amazon →People We Meet on Vacation – Emily Henry
Alex and Poppy go on one vacation a year — until something breaks them. Emily Henry writes with CoHo-level emotional intelligence, and the dual timeline (past vacations vs present reunion) echoes the way Regretting You layers past and present grief.
Find on Amazon →The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo – Taylor Jenkins Reid
A fictional Hollywood legend recounts her seven marriages and the one love that defined everything. TJR's control of revelation — doling out secrets across the narrative — mirrors CoHo's technique in Regretting You, and the emotional ending is equally devastating.
Find on Amazon →Grief & Growth
Where the Crawdads Sing – Delia Owens
Kya Clark is abandoned by her entire family and raises herself in the North Carolina marshes. Like Regretting You, the emotional core is about a young woman navigating grief and betrayal alongside a love story — and the mystery subplot adds the same page-turning propulsion.
Find on Amazon →Me Before You – Jojo Moyes
Louisa Clark takes a job caring for Will Traynor and their relationship transforms both their lives. Jojo Moyes writes the same emotionally direct, deeply human romance CoHo does — and the ending will absolutely destroy you. A natural companion read.
Find on Amazon →Start with Ugly Love or November 9 if you want to stay in CoHo's world before branching out. Then move to The Light We Lost or One Day for a literary upgrade that keeps the emotional devastation at full volume.
How Regretting You Compares
| Book | Vibe | Heat Level | Cry Factor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Regretting You | Family trauma + forbidden romance | Medium | ★★★★★ |
| It Starts with Us | Healing + new love | Medium-High | ★★★★☆ |
| The Light We Lost | Epic love story + grief | Medium | ★★★★★ |
| Normal People | Literary + messy love | High | ★★★★☆ |
| One Day | Long-game love + shock | Medium | ★★★★★ |
| Me Before You | Life-changing relationship | Low-Medium | ★★★★★ |