A few weeks ago, I had a reader question about what books I’d recommend to readers of my books who want more things like that.

That’s a little tricky. I haven’t really found anything quite like my books. That’s part of the reason that selling and marketing my books is so challenging. They aren’t much like anything else in the market, so there’s nothing editors can point to and say “this is like that, so we know how to market it and we know how it will sell.” And there’s nothing quite close enough for me to know the best way to package what I write. Most of the contemporary fantasy, for instance, is darker and has vampires and werewolves. Or if it was published as paranormal chick lit, it still has vampires or has a lot more sex. I haven’t really found anything else that has all the elements I’m looking for that I didn’t have to write for myself. The best I can do is find some things that work for me, with some caveats. There’s also a fine line between books I like and can recommend, with the idea that if you like my books, you might like some of the same books I like, and books that I really think will give people a similar reading experience as my books do.

This may become an ongoing series, since I know that the moment I post, I’ll think of dozens of others. And if you have suggestions, feel free to comment, and I can later add reader recommendations to future posts.

Obviously, there’s the Harry Potter series. Wanting something like that, but for grown-ups, was what spurred me to write Enchanted, Inc. in the first place. I’ve seen a review of my books that wondered if they had origins in Harry Potter fan fiction, and the answer is no. I’ve never even mentally written Harry Potter fanfic. These were never characters or situations from that world. It’s just that I was basically Hermione when I was that age, and since I related to her tween/teen experiences, I found myself wanting to read about adult issues with magic involved. I really wanted a cross between chick lit and fantasy and couldn’t find it, so I wrote it.

About the closest I found in contemporary fantasy when I was researching the market to see what was out there was Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman. It’s a lot darker and edgier than my books, but it does have that sense of whimsy and quirkiness and a way of making you look at the city in a different way, like there’s magical stuff going on around you that you aren’t seeing if you aren’t looking for it.

She writes science fiction rather than fantasy, but I think some of Connie Willis’s books are in kind of the same niche as the Enchanted, Inc. books, in that they have that sassy romantic comedy voice and all kinds of chaos going on, only the chaos has to do with science rather than magic. Of her older books, there’s Bellwether and Remake. More recently, there’s Crosstalk, which is outright a science fiction romantic comedy. Her To Say Nothing of the Dog is a Victorian time travel book that may be of interest to fans of Rebel Mechanics. It takes place around the same time, and one of the characters even has the same name as my heroine (I didn’t name her after this book, though this book was where I discovered the name. I used it for different reasons).

Fans of Enchanted, Inc. and A Fairy Tale might also like the Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch. They are a bit darker and get pretty violent, even gory, but they’re contemporary fantasy with a bit of a sassy tone, and they draw heavily upon folklore, looking at what beings from folklore might be doing in the modern world.

Some of the Heather Webber/Heather Blake (same person under different names) mysteries remind me of the Enchanted, Inc. books in tone. The Heather Webber ones may be a bit more romancey/sexy. The Heather Blake ones do a lot of magical worldbuilding and have a secret magical society in parallel with the normal world.

The Rogue Agent books by K.E. Mills are kind of like if the Enchanted, Inc. books and the Rebel Mechanics books had a baby. They have the magical organization like in the Enchanted, Inc. books but take place in a quasi-Victorian steampunky setting. They do take the occasional turn to very dark and her hero goes through all kinds of torture, though. I actually stumbled on these when I ran across the second book in the series, Witches Incorporated, in a publisher catalog and thought it might be like Enchanted, Inc., so I got the first book and discovered that it wasn’t quite what I was expecting, but I still liked it. Supposedly, the author sold another few books in this series, but I haven’t seen any news about them being published.

I’ll keep digging through my reading logs and bookcases to come up with more recommendations.