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Built on ISFDB, Wikipedia, Wikidata and Open Library. Curated reading orders carry their reasoning on the page; the rest follow publication order. Data sources & licenses

© Loreful · data: ISFDB · CC BY

More like Second Thoughts

anchored on:psychic powersour worldcontemporaryyoung adultfantasyurban fantasy+4 more

but

Mood

The mood the book leaves you in.

  • The reading experience is propelled by journeys, exploration, and physical risk; excitement and forward momentum dominate over dread or introspection.
  • Joy and loss are deliberately mixed; the resolution grants characters something real while taking something else away, leaving warmth and sorrow together.
  • The book demands work from the reader — dense prose, difficult structure, unfamiliar ideas, or morally uncomfortable material — as part of its intended effect.
  • Grim events, cruelty, or despair dominate the atmosphere, and the book does not soften them with comfort or comic relief.
  • The atmosphere is quietly unsettling — wrongness, unease, and the uncanny pervade the book without necessarily escalating into overt horror.
  • The book is built to move the reader; character feeling is foregrounded and major scenes aim at a strong emotional response.
  • Humor is a primary aim and the prose plays for laughs — comic situations, wit, or dialogue produce sustained comedy, not occasional levity.
  • The book insists that things can improve; effort and decency are shown to matter, and the arc bends toward better outcomes even through hardship.
  • The book teaches as it goes — real facts, history, science, or craft are conveyed in enough depth that learning is part of the reading experience.
  • The book is designed to uplift and motivate, presenting perseverance or achievement in a way that invites the reader to aspire or act.
  • The overall register is cheerful and easygoing; stakes are kept gentle and the book avoids dwelling on pain or dread.
  • Withheld information drives the experience; the book sustains enigmas and secrets the reader wants resolved, whatever its genre.
  • The book is contemplative and inward-looking, giving more weight to thought, memory, and meaning than to external events.
  • The book works as comfort reading — low tension, a soothing pace, and an atmosphere the reader can unwind in.
  • Grief, loss, or melancholy set the dominant register, and the book lets sorrow stand rather than resolving it into comfort.
  • Sustained suspense is the point; the book keeps the reader braced for what happens next through danger, pressure, or impending revelation.
  • Playful invention and charm define the register — fanciful conceits, light absurdity, and a narration that delights in its own oddity.

About

What the story runs on.

  • Stories in which extraterrestrial beings are central — as characters, cultures, or the object of the plot.
  • Stories structured as a quest — a journey undertaken to find, deliver, or destroy something of great import.
  • Stories in which staying alive against nature, catastrophe, or scarcity is the central problem.
  • Stories of lovers kept apart by law, family, faith, or station, where the obstacle to love is the plot.
  • Stories in which a friendship — its making, testing, or loss — is the emotional center.
  • Stories of growing up — a young protagonist crossing from childhood into adult knowledge and responsibility.
  • Stories about who a character truly is — self-discovery, doubled lives, and the search for a self.
  • Stories about mourning — living through the death of a loved one and what loss does to the survivors.
  • Stories in which a buried family truth — hidden parentage, crimes, or shames — surfaces and reorders the present.
  • Stories driven by maneuvering for power — factions, conspiracies, and statecraft conducted in shadow.
  • Stories in which war itself is the subject — combat, occupation, and what warfare does to soldiers and civilians.
  • Stories organized around investigating a killing — the case, the clues, and the pursuit of the killer, in any genre's clothing.

Shelf

Where it sits in the library.

    • Fiction built on magic or other supernatural elements that have no scientific explanation.
    • Secondary-world fantasy at large scale, where the fate of nations or the world turns on the protagonists' struggle.
    • Fantasy set in a recognizably modern city or contemporary world where the supernatural intrudes on everyday life.
    • Fantasy that blends in horror's atmosphere and imagery, keeping a fantastical frame around grim or frightening material.
    • Action-driven fantasy following warriors or rogues with personal stakes against sorcerous threats, rather than world-spanning conflicts.
    • Fantasy set in a real historical period or a close analogue of one, with magic woven into the era.
    • Fantasy in which protagonists cross from the ordinary world into another world through a portal or similar passage.
    • Fiction that retells or reworks a traditional fairy tale in a new form or setting.
    • Fantasy drawing directly on myths, legends, and folklore, retelling them or building on their figures and logic.
    • Fantasy of ghosts, vampires, shapeshifters, psychics, and similar phenomena, usually set in an otherwise ordinary world.
    • Fiction mixing science-fictional trappings with overtly magical or impossible elements in one setting.
    • Low-stakes fantasy emphasizing comfort, community, and everyday pleasures over conflict and peril.
    • Speculative fiction of pervasive moral ambiguity, violence, and cynicism that rejects heroic conventions — fantasy and SF alike.
      • Fiction that extrapolates from science and technology — future societies, space travel, or speculative inventions — within at least nominally natural laws.
      • Science fiction of interstellar scope — starships, galactic polities, and adventure across star systems.
      • Science fiction committed to scientific rigor, where technical plausibility constrains the story.
      • Science fiction centered on armed forces and warfare, told largely from a military point of view.
      • Science fiction of networked, corporate-dominated near futures, pairing high technology with social decay.
      • Science fiction styled on nineteenth-century steam-powered technology, often in a Victorian or pseudo-Victorian setting.
      • Fiction depicting an oppressive or catastrophic society, presented as a warning.
      • Fiction set after civilization's collapse, following survivors in the ruins of the old world.
      • Fiction in which characters move between past and future, and the mechanics or consequences of that travel drive the plot.
      • Fiction exploring a world where a historical event went differently and history diverged from ours.
      • Science fiction about humanity's first encounter and communication with an alien intelligence.
      • Science fiction in which extraterrestrial forces attack or occupy Earth and humanity resists.
      • Fiction whose primary aim is to frighten or unsettle the reader through dread, menace, or the monstrous.
      • Horror of vast, indifferent, incomprehensible entities before which humanity is insignificant, in the Lovecraft tradition.
      • Horror of decaying houses, buried family secrets, and oppressive atmosphere in the Gothic literary tradition.
      • Horror centered on hauntings and the returning dead.
      • Horror located in the mind — paranoia, obsession, and unreliable perception rather than external monsters.
      • Horror built around the reanimated dead and survival amid their outbreaks.
      • Horror defined by explicit, transgressive gore that refuses to cut away from violence.
      • Speculative fiction of the strange and uncanny that resists both natural explanation and standard genre categories.
      • Fiction organized around solving a crime or puzzle, typically following an investigator toward the identification of a culprit.
      • A puzzle-first mystery that lays out clues so the culprit's identity can be deduced before the reveal.
      • Crime fiction of moral ambiguity, fatalism, and hard-edged style, set among the corrupt and the doomed.
      • A mystery following the realistic routines of police work — forensics, interviews, and case-building.
      • A gentle mystery with an amateur sleuth, a small community, and violence kept off the page.
      • A mystery set in a past era, where the investigation works within that period's methods and society.
      • Fast-paced fiction driven by imminent danger, pursuit, or high-stakes conspiracy, built to sustain tension.
      • A thriller of espionage — agents, tradecraft, and intelligence services in conflict.
      • A thriller centered on lawyers and the courtroom, where litigation carries the suspense.
      • A thriller driven by detailed contemporary or near-future technology, often military or scientific.
      • A thriller whose tension comes from mental states and manipulation between characters rather than external action.
      • Fiction whose central plot is a romantic relationship and its development toward an emotionally satisfying resolution.
      • Romance in which one or both partners are supernatural beings, blending fantasy elements into the love story.
      • A fantasy-romance hybrid in which the romantic arc and the fantasy plot carry equal weight.
      • Romance set in a past era, with courtship shaped by the period's society and manners.
      • Romance set in the present day, without supernatural or historical elements.
      • Fiction set in a real past period, where the historical setting materially shapes characters and events.
        • General and literary fiction emphasizing prose style, character interiority, or formal ambition over genre plot conventions.
        • Fiction in a realistic world where magical events occur and are treated as ordinary, in the tradition of Latin American literature.
        • Fiction that ridicules people, institutions, or society in order to criticize them.
        • Fiction of dreamlike, irrational imagery and logic that breaks from realistic representation.
        • Fiction that plays with narrative convention through metafiction, fragmentation, and self-reference.
        • Fiction propelled by journeys, exploration, and physical peril, where action and survival carry the plot.
        • Adventure fiction of ships and seafaring — naval engagements, voyages, and life at sea.
        • Fiction of the American frontier West — gunmen, ranchers, and lawmen, typically in the late nineteenth century.
        • Fiction centered on soldiers, campaigns, and the experience of warfare, historical or imagined.
          • Fiction written primarily to amuse, using comedic situations, wit, or parody as its organizing principle.
            • Multi-generational fiction following a family or dynasty across decades, with inheritance and kinship as the through-line.
              • Fiction whose world runs on explicit game mechanics — levels, stats, and skills that characters can see and exploit.
                • Fiction about costumed or superpowered heroes and their conflicts with comparable villains.

                Practical

                How long a commitment, whether it stands alone, and whether it has finished.

                Tap a chip to ask for it · tap again to rule it out · once more to clear. Numbers show what would be left.

                • Cover of Old Magic
                  Old Magic

                  Marianne Curley · standalone novel · 2000

                  similar bymysteriouscontemporaryour worldpsychic powerscoming of agefantasyyoung adult+1 more

                  Kate is at a loss. She meets a boy with curious powers and a bizarre history - but he thinks he is very ordinary. How can she convince him that he has a gift, a gift that he must use to unravel mysteries that have hung over his family for generations? And even if she does persuade him, will his talents prove powerful enough to overcome what lies ahead?

                • Cover of Black Dragon
                  Black Dragon

                  series · 2 books · 1983

                  similar bymysteriouscontemporaryour worldfantasyurban fantasynorth americafriendship+2 more

                  R. A. MacAvoy's Tea with the Black Dragon pairs Martha Macnamara, a folk musician searching for her missing daughter, with Mayland Long, a courtly stranger who reveals himself to be a dragon living in human form, as they investigate a computer-fraud scheme in 1980s San Francisco. Its low-key blend of contemporary mystery and gentle fantasy proved popular enough to spawn a sequel, Twisting the Rope, following the same pair into a new case years later.

                • Cover of Sleep No More
                  Sleep No More

                  Aprilynne Pike · standalone novel · 2014

                  similar bymysteriouscontemporarypsychic powersour worldfantasyparanormalyoung adultnorth america+2 more

                  "Charlotte is a sixteen-year-old Oracle who is not supposed to interfere with her visions of the future, but when she foresees a classmate's murder, she realizes she must break the rules to stop the killer"-- Charlotte is a 16-yr-old Oracle who is not supposed to interfere with her visions of the future, but when she foresees a classmate's murder, she realizes she must break the rules to stop the killer. The plot contains profanity and graphic violence.

                • Cover of The Sententia
                  The Sententia

                  series · 3 books · 2014

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                • Cover of Golden
                  Golden

                  series · 2 books · 2006

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                • Cover of The Body Finder
                  The Body Finder

                  series · 5 books · 2010

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                • Cover of The Haunting of Cassie Palmer
                  The Haunting of Cassie Palmer

                  Vivien Alcock · standalone novel · 1980

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                  WorldCat: Thirteen-year-old Cassie, the seventh child of a seventh child, begins to exhibit the gift of second sight which enables her to communicate with the Other World.

                • Cover of The Magic Nation Thing
                  The Magic Nation Thing

                  Zilpha Keatley Snyder · standalone novel · 2005

                  similar bymysteriouscontemporarypsychic powerscoming of agefantasyurban fantasynorth america+1 more

                  Abby O'Malley is a girl who likes things to make sense. School makes sense, and her best friend Paige makes sense (most of the time), but Abby's flighty mother never makes sense. Abby's mom seems to think that she and Abby are descended from a line of witches, and that they have special powers--psychic powers that don't make sense at all. The problem is, Abby knows that she can do certain things that other people can't. Sometimes, when she holds an object in her hand, she's overpowered by sounds and pictures that show where the owner is and what he or she is doing. Abby thinks of this as her "magic nation," because that is what her kindergarten teacher told her it was called. Now 11, Abby has an inkling that her teacher may have been saying it was her "imagination," which unfortunately, she knows it is not. Now some things are happening in her mother's detective agency--cases where Abby's magic nation thing might come in handy. But does Abby want to admit that such a sensible girl could have such an unsensible power?From the Hardcover edition.

                • Cover of Becca King
                  Becca King

                  series · 4 books · 2012

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                • Cover of The Gift
                  The Gift

                  Peter Dickinson · standalone novel · 1973

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                  A Welsh youth with extrasensory perception is warned by his grandmother that bad luck happens to family members who try to use the ability.

                • Cover of Midnighters
                  Midnighters

                  series · 3 books · 2004

                  similar bycontemporarypsychic powerscoming of agefantasyurban fantasyyoung adultour world+2 more

                  The Midnighters Trilogy is a science-fiction fantasy series written by Scott Westerfeld. It was published by Eos in 2004. It comprises three books: The Secret Hour, Touching Darkness. and Blue Noon. Over the course of the trilogy, Jessica encounters other Midnighters with whom she allies herself. The protagonists in the trilogy are the eponymous Midnighters Desdemona, Rex, Jonathan, and Melissa. The antagonists of the series are Darklings and Slithers, dangerous and powerful beings that created and live in the Blue Hour.

                • Cover of The Dark Elite
                  The Dark Elite

                  series · 3 books · 2009

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                • Cover of The Soul Seekers (Alyson Noël)
                  The Soul Seekers (Alyson Noël)

                  series · 4 books · 2012

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                • Cover of Blue Is for Nightmares
                  Blue Is for Nightmares

                  series · 5 books · 2003

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                  Blue Is for Nightmares is a young adult mystery novel and subsequent eponymous series by Laurie Faria Stolarz. The first book in the series, Blue is for Nightmares, was made an "ALA’s Young Adult Library Services Association as a Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers in 2005 and as a Popular Paperback for Young Adults in 2007."

                • Cover of Bailey Morgan
                  Bailey Morgan

                  series · 2 books · 2007

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                • Cover of Spirit and Dust
                  Spirit and Dust

                  Rosemary Clement-Moore · standalone novel · 2013

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                  Raised in a family of psychics and witches, teen Daisy Goodnight is happy to help local police solve cold cases but when the FBI seeks her talents, she becomes involved in a mess that even has the spirits terrified.

                • Cover of The Bright Sessions
                  The Bright Sessions

                  series · 3 books · 2019

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                • Cover of The Lynburn Legacy
                  The Lynburn Legacy

                  series · 3 books · 2012

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                • Cover of House of Night
                  House of Night

                  series · 20 books · 2007

                  similar bycontemporaryparanormalyoung adultfantasynorth america+3 more

                  House of Night is a series of young adult vampire-themed fantasy novels by American author P. C. Cast and her daughter Kristin Cast. It follows the adventures of Zoey Redbird, a 16-year-old girl who is "marked", becomes a fledgling vampyre and is required to attend the House of Night boarding school in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Books in the series have been on the New York Times Best Seller list for 63 weeks and have sold over seven million copies in North America, and more than ten million books worldwide, in 39 countries.

                • Cover of Sweep / Wicca (UK)
                  Sweep / Wicca (UK)

                  series · 15 books · 2001

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                • Cover of The Curse Workers
                  The Curse Workers

                  series · 3 books · 2010

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                  Holly Black's Curse Workers trilogy is set in an alternate America where 'curse work' — magic that harms or transforms through touch — is illegal, enforced through gloves and Prohibition-era-style crime families. It follows Cassel Sharpe, the only non-worker in a family of con artists and workers, as he tries to stay out of his family's schemes despite his own hidden connection to their world. The series runs from White Cat through two further novels.

                • Cover of Connected (Kat Stiles)
                  Connected (Kat Stiles)

                  series · 2 books · 2015

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                • Cover of The Disappearance of Emily H.
                  The Disappearance of Emily H.

                  Barrie Summy · standalone novel · 2015

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                  Eighth-grader Raine, a new girl at Yielding Middle Schooi, uses her supernatural ability to see other people's memories to solve the disappearance of a teenaged girl.

                • Cover of Clare Fern
                  Clare Fern

                  series · 2 books · 2011

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