This blog post is all about the best Sally Rooney books to read, reviewed and ranked in order.
Since I have read all of the Sally Rooney books ever written, I thought I would collate all of those ratings and reviews in one place.
I wouldn’t say she is an instant-buy author, but because she’s Irish like myself, I do still feel drawn to her writing and want to read her latest work to see if I will enjoy it.
Normal People is probably one of my favourite books that I’ve read, but the others not so much.
Read on to discover my thoughts on all of the Sally Rooney books that have been written so far.
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This blog post is all about the best Sally Rooney books to read.
The Best Sally Rooney Books Ranked in Order
Below are the best Sally Rooney books (in my humble opinion) and the order in which I’d recommend you to read them.
These best Sally Rooney books are also ranked in order from my favourite to least favourite.
1. Normal People by Sally Rooney
Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in the west of Ireland, but the similarities end there. In school, Connell is popular and well-liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation – awkward but electrifying – something life-changing begins.
Normal People is a story of mutual fascination, friendship and love. It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find they can’t.
My Rating: ★★★★★
I read this book in the space of two days, maybe a little less. I had seen the TV show and heard the book was very similar, if not identical to the show. The lack of speech marks threw me off a little at the beginning, but as there is so much dialogue in the book, I think it worked a lot better not having the speech marks in the text.
I would definitely recommend, even if you haven’t yet watched the TV show as there are so many quotations and lines that I will always remember forever.
2. Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common. Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women.
Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.
My Rating: ★★★★
When Sally Rooney releases a new book, it’s always a must-read. However, after reading Beautiful World, Where Are You? And low-key hating it (sorry Sally), I really wasn’t looking forward to reading Intermezzo, but wanted to give it a go anyway.
When I first started it, I thought, Here we go again, I hate it already. But as I got further into the book, it turned around and I felt myself enjoying it and wanting to keep picking it up. I can see this potentially being turned into a mini-series for TV and I actually wouldn’t begrudge a sequel to see where the characters end up in the future.
3. Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney
Frances, Bobbi, Nick and Melissa ask each other endless questions. As their relationships unfold, in person and online, they discuss sex and friendship, art and literature, politics and gender, and, of course, one another.
Twenty-one-year-old Frances is at the heart of it all, bringing us this tale of a complex menage-a-quatre and her affair with Nick, an older married man.
My Rating: ★★★
Conversations With Friends didn’t strike a chord with me. It was a bit boring for my liking since the plot didn’t really go anywhere. But, apparently this is a theme with Sally Rooney’s writing in that she doesn’t go for plot but really goes for character development and you can see that in the writing as all of her work is beautifully written.
For me, I much prefer a book that has a great plot line that will keep me reading a book and not wanting to put it down, not the opposite where I don’t want to pick the book back up again.
4. Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a distribution warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend Eileen is getting over a break-up, and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood.
Alice, Felix, Eileen and Simon are still young—but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. They have sex, they worry about sex, they worry about their friendships and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?
My Rating: ★★
Unpopular opinion – I really disliked this. I don’t often rate books this low. But I gave it two stars as the writing is quite beautiful. I could tell Sally Rooney was almost writing about herself at times through one of the characters.
However, I was confused at the beginning. Who was who, who was living where and who the male characters were. There was no real plot to the story and there was a lot of NSFW content which I felt quite awkward reading on the tube, I won’t lie. I highly doubt this will be made into any series/movie any time soon as quite frankly, nothing really happens other than looking at people in their mid-twenties/thirties navigate their quite boring and ordinary love lives.
The Best Sally Rooney Books: My Recommendations
Sally Rooney has a way of making the everyday feel incredibly compelling, particularly when it comes to love, friendship, relationships and all the complicated emotions that come with them.
Her books are often quiet and character-driven, but somehow manage to stay with you long after you’ve turned the final page.
Whether you’re new to Sally Rooney or have already worked your way through her books, I hope this guide to the best Sally Rooney books has helped you decide what to read next.
From Normal People to her more recent releases, there’s plenty to explore in her backlist.
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By Orlagh Shanks
Orlagh Shanks is the Editor of Orlagh Claire, an award-winning travel and lifestyle blog.
After working in the PR & Influencer Marketing industry, Orlagh quit her job to travel Asia for 12 months and moved to Sydney, Australia where she is now a full-time travel blogger and content creator sharing travel tips and recommendations for all 30 of the countries she’s visited so far.
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