If The Midnight Library made you reconsider your own life choices and The Humans reminded you that people are strange and wonderful, these 13 authors like Matt Haig write fiction that’s warm, wise, and quietly profound.
Matt Haig writes about being alive with the bewildered honesty of someone who nearly wasn’t. His memoir Reasons to Stay Alive (2015) documented his experience with severe depression and anxiety, and that emotional honesty runs through all his fiction. The Humans (2013) — about an alien who takes over a Cambridge professor’s body and discovers the baffling beauty of human existence — is a love letter to the species from an outsider’s perspective. The Midnight Library (2020) became a global bestseller, imagining a library between life and death where each book lets you live a different version of your life.
What connects Haig’s work is a simple question: is life worth it? His answer is always yes, but he earns it by acknowledging how hard the question is. He writes about mental health, loneliness, and the search for meaning without being preachy or sentimental. His books are the literary equivalent of a conversation with someone who has been through something difficult and come out the other side with their sense of humour intact.
For more recommendations, explore our guides to best American authors, best British authors, and authors like Nick Hornby.
Authors Like Matt Haig
1. Fredrik Backman
Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called Ove is about a grumpy old man who plans to kill himself and keeps getting interrupted by his annoying neighbours. It sounds grim, but it’s one of the funniest, most tender novels of the last decade. Backman went from blogging in Sweden to becoming one of the world’s bestselling authors, with Anxious People, Beartown, and My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry all hitting international bestseller lists.
Backman shares Haig’s ability to write about depression and loneliness through characters who are outwardly difficult but inwardly heartbreaking. Both writers use humor as a way of making serious subjects approachable. Anxious People — about a failed bank robber who accidentally takes a group of apartment viewers hostage — is Backman at his most Haig-like: absurd, compassionate, and unexpectedly moving.
“Death is a strange thing. People live their whole lives as if it does not exist, and yet it’s often one of the great motivations for living.”
Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove
2. Rachel Joyce
Rachel Joyce’s The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is about a retired man who receives a letter from a dying friend and decides to walk 600 miles across England to see her, believing his journey will keep her alive. It’s a quiet, deeply moving novel about regret, hope, and the small heroism of putting one foot in front of the other.
Joyce shares Haig’s gift for finding the extraordinary inside ordinary lives. Harold Fry isn’t a hero in any conventional sense — he’s an old man in bad shoes — but his walk becomes a meditation on what matters and what we leave behind. The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy (a companion novel) and Miss Benson’s Beetle show the same gentle, humane approach.
“It was the ordinary things that made him realize how far he had come.”
Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
3. Gail Honeyman
Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine follows an office worker whose meticulously structured life hides profound isolation and a traumatic past. Eleanor is one of the most memorable narrators in recent fiction — socially awkward, brutally honest, and utterly unaware of how odd she appears to others.
Honeyman shares Haig’s understanding that mental health struggles can coexist with intelligence, wit, and resilience. Eleanor’s gradual opening up to friendship and self-care mirrors the themes of The Midnight Library — the slow realization that a different life is possible, even when you’ve convinced yourself it isn’t. The novel sold over two million copies and became a book club favourite worldwide.
“I survive, that is my talent. Surviving is my forte.”
Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
4. Nick Hornby
Nick Hornby’s A Long Way Down is about four strangers who meet on a rooftop on New Year’s Eve, all planning to jump. They talk each other out of it, and the novel follows their unlikely friendship. Like Haig, Hornby writes about mental health with humor and without sentimentality — his characters are messy, contradictory, and recognizably human. If you’re inspired by these writers to improve your own prose, Grammarly is a practical tool for catching errors and tightening your writing.
Hornby’s other novels — High Fidelity, About a Boy, Funny Girl — are all about people trying to figure out what they want from life, which is Haig’s core territory. Hornby writes with a music-journalist’s ear for voice and a comedy writer’s timing. He’s less philosophical than Haig, but the emotional honesty is the same.
“Can I explain why I wanted to jump off the top of a tower block? I can try, but no reasons are going to sound good enough.”
Nick Hornby, A Long Way Down
5. Amor Towles
Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow confines a Russian count to a luxury hotel for decades after the 1917 revolution, and watches him build a rich, meaningful life within those four walls. The novel is about finding purpose and connection in constrained circumstances — a theme that resonates deeply with Haig’s work about making the best of the life you have.
Towles writes with more elegance and historical sweep than Haig, but both share an abiding faith in human decency. The Lincoln Highway and Rules of Civility are equally charming. Towles’ characters face limitations — social, political, geographical — and respond with grace, humor, and stubborn optimism.
“If a man does not master his circumstances then he is bound to be mastered by them.”
Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow
6. Claire Keegan
Claire Keegan writes novellas and short fiction with extraordinary compression — every sentence carries weight. Small Things Like These is set in 1980s Ireland, where a coal merchant discovers that a local convent is holding young women against their will. It’s a story about ordinary moral courage, told in under 120 pages.
Keegan shares Haig’s belief that small acts of kindness matter enormously. Her prose is much sparser than Haig’s — she achieves in a paragraph what many writers need a chapter for — but the emotional effect is similar. Foster (adapted as the film The Quiet Girl) is equally devastating. Both writers remind you that literature’s job is to make you feel something real.
“In life, I have learned that there is always a ordinary moment when you realise what matters.”
Claire Keegan
7. Andrew Sean Greer
Andrew Sean Greer’s Less won the Pulitzer Prize — a comic novel about a failed novelist who travels the world to avoid his ex-boyfriend’s wedding. It’s funny, self-deprecating, and quietly devastating. Arthur Less is one of fiction’s great loveable disasters, and his journey from self-pity to self-acceptance mirrors the emotional arc of The Midnight Library.
Greer shares Haig’s talent for wrapping serious themes in humor. Less is about aging, failure, loneliness, and the fear that your life hasn’t added up to anything — but it treats these anxieties with such warmth and wit that the novel feels like a gift. The sequel, Less Is Lost, continues the journey.
“You are not worthless. You are not pointless. You are just less.”
Andrew Sean Greer, Less
8. Bonnie Garmus
Bonnie Garmus’ Lessons in Chemistry is about a brilliant chemist in the 1960s who ends up hosting a cooking show where she teaches housewives chemistry. It’s funny, furious, and surprisingly moving. Elizabeth Zott refuses to accept the limitations placed on women, and her refusal changes everyone around her.
Garmus shares Haig’s ability to write about injustice without losing her sense of humor. Both writers create protagonists who don’t fit the world they live in and slowly reshape that world through sheer stubbornness and goodness. Lessons in Chemistry was one of the biggest debuts of 2022.
“Courage is the root of change — and change is what we’re chemically designed to do.”
Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry
9. Katherine May
Katherine May’s Wintering is a memoir about learning to rest during life’s difficult seasons — illness, burnout, loss. May draws on nature, history, and personal experience to argue that withdrawal and stillness aren’t failures but necessary parts of being human.
May shares Haig’s openness about mental health and his belief that writing about vulnerability is an act of courage. Wintering sits alongside Reasons to Stay Alive as essential reading for anyone going through a hard time. Her follow-up, Enchantment, explores wonder and re-engagement with the world after withdrawal.
“We must learn to invite the winter in. We may never choose it, but we can make ourselves ready for it.”
Katherine May, Wintering
10. Cecelia Ahern
Cecelia Ahern’s P.S. I Love You was a global bestseller about a young widow who receives letters from her dead husband, each one guiding her back to life. Ahern writes about grief, love, and second chances with an Irish warmth that’s impossible to resist.
Ahern shares Haig’s use of magical or fantastical premises to explore real emotional truths. The Year I Met You, Flawed, and Postscript all use high-concept setups to examine ordinary human experiences. Her tone is more sentimental than Haig’s, but the underlying compassion is the same.
“You only need one person to make you feel special and alive.”
Cecelia Ahern, P.S. I Love You
11. Patrick Ness
Patrick Ness’ A Monster Calls is about a boy whose mother is dying of cancer, visited nightly by a monster who demands that he tell the truth. Conceived by Siobhan Dowd (who died before she could write it), the novel is one of the most powerful explorations of grief and denial in any genre.
Ness shares Haig’s ability to address the hardest parts of human experience through imaginative frameworks. Both use fantastical elements — monsters, midnight libraries, alien perspectives — to make overwhelming emotions approachable. A Monster Calls won the Carnegie Medal and the Kate Greenaway Medal simultaneously, the first book to win both.
“Stories are wild creatures. When you let them loose, who knows what havoc they might wreak?”
Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls
12. Liane Moriarty
Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies looks like a suburban comedy about competitive parenting but reveals itself as a dark, complex novel about domestic violence, friendship, and the lies people tell to survive. Moriarty writes about the gap between how lives look and how lives feel.
Moriarty shares Haig’s interest in the disconnect between appearance and reality. Nine Perfect Strangers (about a wellness retreat that goes sideways) and Apples Never Fall explore similar territory — people who seem fine on the surface hiding significant pain. Her tone is warmer and funnier than most literary fiction, which is exactly what connects her to Haig.
“Why did we do this to ourselves? Why did we pretend that everything was just great?”
Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies
13. A.J. Pearce
A.J. Pearce’s Dear Mrs. Bird is set in World War II London, where a young woman takes a job at a magazine’s advice column and starts secretly answering the desperate letters her censorious boss throws away. It’s warm, funny, and quietly moving — a story about small acts of kindness during impossible times.
Pearce shares Haig’s conviction that ordinary decency matters. Emmy Lake isn’t saving the world — she’s answering letters — but her compassion makes a real difference in people’s lives. The Emmy Lake Chronicles continue across the war years, and each book maintains the same gentle, humane tone that Haig fans will recognise instantly.
“In a world where everyone was just trying to get through the day, being kind was the bravest thing you could do.”
A.J. Pearce, Dear Mrs. Bird