I watched The Other Bennet Sister in one sitting, cried too many times to count, and was left happier and better for having seen it. Truly, I don’t remember the last period drama I’ve seen that’s had that effect on me.
Of course, I love all the classics like Pride and Prejudice (2005 and 1995), Persuasion (2007, NOT the Dakota Johnson one), all of the Emmas, etcetera. But it’s been a while since something new came out and moved me quite this much.
Because of that, I immediately wanted more — more stories like this, more wonderful writing like this, just more. And it’s hard to find that in movies and TV shows unless you want to rewatch something, so of course, I turned to books.
Fortunately, there are plenty of those to go around. I rounded up some of my favorite stories that reminded me of The Other Bennet Sister, across classics, historical romance, fantasy and contemporary, so you can find something you’ll like. Fair warning, I didn’t include more Mary Bennet stories here or any P&P-universe books. This list is purely books with fresh and new characters that go through similar things as Mary did.
And if you don’t have much time and want to get to reading quickly, he’s an overview of my recommendations:
- The Blue Castle by L. M. Montgomery — My absolute favorite choice if you want something like The Other Bennet Sister, an entirely overlooked classic about a plain spinster with a controlling mother who takes her life into her own hands.
- Black Silk by Judith Ivory — A sexier, more morally gray book than TOBS show, but still worth reading for the romance and seeing Submit, the heroine, find her happiness.
- The Proposition by Judith Ivory — Yet another Ivory, another spicy entry about Lady Edwina whom the world has convinced she’s ugly, but a simple rat-catcher teaches her otherwise and shows her life is worth living without fear.
- North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell — Ultimate yearning man, if you liked Pride and Prejudice and want a lot of tension and an entirely smitten hero.
- Persuasion by Jane Austen — An original Austen, her most romantic story and my personal favorite.
- Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik — Watch three women whose life has not been easy turn their fates around with hard work and effort.
- Book Lovers by Emily Henry — Not exactly like The Other Bennet Sister, but a lovely story about sisterhood and a woman who believes herself hard to be loved as she meets a man who finds it easy.
If any of these strike your fancy, just click on the link and you’ll skip right to its section where you can read a quote from the book and my mini-review of it.
The Blue Castle by L. M. Montgomery
“Love you! Girl, you’re in the very core of my heart. I hold you there like a jewel. Didn’t I promise you I’d never tell you a lie? Love you! I love you with all there is of me to love. Heart, soul, brain. Every fibre of body and spirit thrilling to the sweetness of you. There’s nobody in the world for me but you, Valancy.”
The moment I started watching The Other Bennet Sister, I thought of this book. Valancy Stirling is a heroine much like Mary Bennet. She wakes up on the morning of her 29th birthday, a spinster, unhappy with her life. Her mother is overbearing, her family judgmental and oppressive. Valancy is not allowed to do much, not even read. But then she goes to the doctor one day and finds out some devastating news, which prompts her to change her life entirely.
There’s a swoony hero, a marriage of convenience plot, some secret identity, and more. I promise you’ll love this book because it’s so charming and atmospheric, just a perfect, lovely, short read. Enjoy!
Black Silk by Judith Ivory (Judy Cuevas previously)
“The most consistent thing about Graham Wessit was his attitude of open experiment. Can you even imagine, she asked herself, plain, quiet, intellectual little you spending a lifetime on the arm of such a havoc-producing man?”
Black Silk is probably an unconventional choice since it’s… spicier than The Other Bennet Sister, but if you normally read historical or contemporary romance, this won’t phase you. Don’t expect the same genteel society that Jane Austen presents, but rather a more Bronte-esque approach.
In this story, you follow our heroine, Submit, whose father has trained her all her life to marry into nobility. But she’s plain and too scholarly, so she never had much luck until a rich marquess came along. Perfect, you’d think — but he’s 60 and she’s 16 when they meet. Submit isn’t driven by passion, though. She sees the old marquess as an opportunity and finally achieving her lifelong goal. And she grows to love him too.
And then she’s ripped away from her comfortable life when he dies and his illegitimate son wants to take everything away from her. The only thing she’s allowed to keep is a box of pictures she has to take to her dead husband’s cousin and ward, Graham Wessit, Earl Netham.
Now, he’s entirely not what she expected. He’s full of life, and his life is full of scandal and lovers, but that’s not all there is to him.
I genuinely don’t know how to describe this book, it’s so wonderful. The romance is slow burn, the writing is sublime, and the characters (all of them) are so complex. Neither Submit nor Graham are perfect people, both do bad things, but they grow and change throughout this novel.
The Proposition by Judith Ivory
“When she wasn’t being stiff-necked, she was the friend he most wanted to talk to, who he couldn’t wait to see each day. She came into his mind with the first ray of consciousness at daybreak. He nodded off, smiling over her with his last, heavy-eyed blink before sleep. Sweet Win. Funny Win. Clever Win. Frightened, brave, careful, meticulous Winnie, trying to avoid the bite of the world by pretending it didn’t have teeth.”
Another Judith Ivory, I know, I know — but read one of her books and you’ll realize just what a masterful writer she is. Truth be told, I liked Black Silk more than The Proposition, but I feel like the characters in The Proposition are easier to like, and also that this book’s heroine matches Mary Bennet more than Submit does.
Lady Edwina Bolash is sipping her tea in a teahouse, when a dishevelled young man runs in, chased by the family of a girl he supposedly kissed. They mean to kill him, but his accent makes Edwina (a linguist) stop them, and then a pair of twins (rich, idle, chaos-bringers) wrap both of them up in a bet.
If Edwina (who teaches young ladies the ways of nobility) can make Mick (the chased man, a rat-exterminator), into something else by her uncle’s ball, they’ll pay Mick money and Edwina will get the satisfaction of having one-upped the uncle that took everything away from her.
Mick is a man who loves life, and Edwina is an anxious, proper woman who fears practically everything. She believes herself to be plain, too tall, too big of a nose, glasses on top of that. No man would like her. But then Mick, of course, proves her wrong.
This is more like if Mary Bennet liked Mr. Ryder more, because Mick just has that lively spirit, but it’s a beautiful story nonetheless, and perhaps a bit lighter and simpler than Black Silk.
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
“One word more. You look as if you thought it tainted you to be loved by me. You cannot avoid it. Nay, I, if I would, cannot cleanse you from it. But I would not, if I could. I have never loved any woman before: my life has been too busy, my thoughts too much absorbed with other things. Now I love, and will love. But do not be afraid of too much expression on my part.”
North and South is a classic for anyone who loves Pride and Prejudice. In this book, Margaret Hale is made to move from her lovely home to an industrial town in the North of England. She’s initially repulsed by everything around her, but then grows to care for the poor, ill-treated mill workers. And there she meets John Thorton, a self-made man and the mill owner, whom she argues with constantly.
If you liked the yearning in The Other Bennet Sister, may I introduce you to yearner supreme — John Thorton. He talks about Margaret so much that his family gets annoyed whenever he mentions her name. He obsesses over her, and though they argue a lot because they disagree on almost everything, there are so many tender moments as well.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes Pride and Prejudice or Jane Austen in general because Elizabeth Gaskell captures those same themes and emotions so perfectly.
Persuasion by Jane Austen
“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you.”
This is kind of an obvious choice, but if you haven’t read Jane Austen before and only seen the movies or just The Other Bennet Sister, I would really encourage you to read Persuasion. Most people prefer to start with P&P or Emma but Persuasion is by far my favorite Austen.
It’s so yearny, so devastating and sad and romantic, I cannot begin to describe it and I honestly believe no movie does it justice, not even the 2007 one, and most certainly not the Dakota Johnson monstrosity they made for Netflix.
In Persuasion, you follow Anne Elliot, who once had a lovely man in love with her, a man she adored just as much, but she was persuaded (get it?) to end her engagement to him because he was poor. Now it’s eight years later, and Anne is still unmarried, and endures life as she can with her snobbish family.
And then her former fiance returns (Captain Wentworth), and she has to deal with her feelings for him, as well as the society which pressures her to find a husband, and her own sense of guilt and lack of confidence.
Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
“There are men who are wolves inside, and want to eat up other people to fill their bellies. That is what was in your house with you, all your life. But here you are with your brothers, and you are not eaten up, and there is not a wolf inside you. You have fed each other, and you kept the wolf away.”
If you want stories about overlooked, shunned women finding their happiness through hard work and their own efforts rather than romance, this book has them aplenty. There’s Miryem, Irina and Wanda, each of whom gets their own story.
Miryem is a lender’s daughter but her father is so bad at collecting debt that her family is destitute. So Miryem takes things into her own hands and starts collecting debts herself. She’s so good at it that she captures the attention of an ancient fae lord, who asks her to turn silver into gold or he’ll kill her family.
Irina’s father is scheming to marry her to a tsar, only the tsar is possessed by a fire demon that wants to consume the whole land and its people.
Finally, Wanda is a commoner whose life has not been easy. Her father is abusive, her mother dead and she has two brothers to take care of.
Watch these three women work to make their lives better, and watch their paths cross in their individual quests. It’s truly a lovely story, and beautifully written too. There’s not much romance, but I think you’ll enjoy it anyway!
Book Lovers by Emily Henry
“Maybe love shouldn’t be built on a foundation of compromises, but maybe it can’t exist without them either. Not the kind that forces two people into shapes they don’t fit in, but the kind that loosens their grips, always leaves room to grow. Compromises that say, there will be a you-shaped space in my heart, and if your shape changes, I will adapt. No matter where we go, our love will stretch out to hold us, and that makes me feel like … like everything will be okay.”
This doesn’t match The Other Bennet Sister entirely, but it’s a good contemporary choice if you want to read about a woman who believes herself to be unloveable (due to her personality), who feels less than her sister, and has a bad mother. The hero is also wonderfully bookish and the whole plot is very charming.
Again, this is not a full match, but it does kind of lean into similar tropes, so I would recommend it anyway.
Final Words
So there you have it — some books to tide you over until the next great period drama comes out (or until your next rewatch of The Other Bennet Sister). I hope these books make you happy and I hope you find something to love in all of them. If you have any recommendations for me, please feel free to let me know in the comments (no, seriously, throw your recs at me)!
